Head to Head Contrast: Verisk Analytics (NASDAQ:VRSK) vs. SS&C Technologies (NASDAQ:SSNC)

SS&C Technologies (NASDAQ:SSNC) and Verisk Analytics (NASDAQ:VRSK) are both large-cap industrials companies, but which is the better business? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their valuation, risk, analyst recommendations, profitability, institutional ownership, dividends and earnings.

Dividends

SS&C Technologies pays an annual dividend of $1.20 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.5%. Verisk Analytics pays an annual dividend of $2.00 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.0%. SS&C Technologies pays out 34.5% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Verisk Analytics pays out 30.7% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Both companies have healthy payout ratios and should be able to cover their dividend payments with earnings for the next several years. SS&C Technologies has increased its dividend for 9 consecutive years and Verisk Analytics has increased its dividend for 6 consecutive years. SS&C Technologies is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and longer track record of dividend growth.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of current ratings and recommmendations for SS&C Technologies and Verisk Analytics, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
SS&C Technologies	1	2	8	1	2.75
Verisk Analytics	0	7	6	1	2.57

SS&C Technologies presently has a consensus price target of $96.57, suggesting a potential upside of 20.13%. Verisk Analytics has a consensus price target of $224.79, suggesting a potential upside of 14.51%. Given SS&C Technologies’ stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, equities research analysts clearly believe SS&C Technologies is more favorable than Verisk Analytics.

Risk and Volatility

SS&C Technologies has a beta of 1.09, indicating that its stock price is 9% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Verisk Analytics has a beta of 0.69, indicating that its stock price is 31% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

96.9% of SS&C Technologies shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 90.0% of Verisk Analytics shares are owned by institutional investors. 16.0% of SS&C Technologies shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 0.5% of Verisk Analytics shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Profitability

This table compares SS&C Technologies and Verisk Analytics’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
SS&C Technologies	12.76%	21.74%	7.25%
Verisk Analytics	28.24%	-239.55%	18.56%

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares SS&C Technologies and Verisk Analytics”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
SS&C Technologies	$6.27 billion	3.01	$796.90 million	$3.48	23.10
Verisk Analytics	$3.07 billion	8.32	$908.30 million	$6.51	30.15

Verisk Analytics has lower revenue, but higher earnings than SS&C Technologies. SS&C Technologies is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Verisk Analytics, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Summary

SS&C Technologies beats Verisk Analytics on 10 of the 17 factors compared between the two stocks.

About SS&C Technologies

SS&C Technologies Holdings, Inc. engages in the development and provision of software solutions to the financial services and healthcare industries. It operates through the following geographical segments: United States, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific and Japan, Canada, and the Americas, excluding the United States and Canada. Its products include advent genesis, antares, asset allocators, AWD, axys, BANC mall, BRIX, DST vision, evare, lightning, and moxy. The company was founded by William Charles Stone in March 1986 and is headquartered in Windsor, CT.

About Verisk Analytics

Verisk Analytics, Inc. provides data analytics and technology solutions to the insurance markets in the United States and internationally. It offers policy language, prospective loss costs, policy writing and rating rules, and various underwriting solutions for risk selection and segmentation, pricing, and workflow optimization; property- and auto- specific rating and underwriting information solutions that allows clients to understand, quantify, underwrite, mitigate, and avoid potential loss for risks; catastrophe modeling solutions, which enables companies to identify, quantify, and plan for the financial consequences of catastrophes for use by insurers, reinsurers, intermediaries, financial institutions, and governments. The company also provides life insurance solutions for transforming current workflows in life insurance underwriting, claim insights, policy administration, unclaimed property/equity, compliance and fraud detection, and actuarial and portfolio modeling; Marketing Solutions, such as compliant, real-time decisioning, profitability, and risk assessment for inbound consumer interactions; and international underwriting and claims solutions. In addition, it offers claims insurance solutions, which provides analytics in fraud detection, compliance reporting, subrogation liability assessment, litigation, and repair cost estimation and valuation solutions; and casualty solutions, such as compliance, casualty claims decision support, and workflow automation solutions. Further, the company supplies software to the specialty insurance market. The company was founded in 1971 and is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.