Contrasting Huron Consulting Group (HURN) and Its Peers

Huron Consulting Group (NASDAQ:HURN) is one of 203 publicly-traded companies in the “Professional Services” industry, but how does it weigh in compared to its peers? We will compare Huron Consulting Group to similar companies based on the strength of its profitability, earnings, dividends, institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, risk and valuation.

Volatility & Risk

Huron Consulting Group has a beta of 0.09, meaning that its stock price is 91% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Huron Consulting Group’s peers have a beta of 0.98, meaning that their average stock price is 2% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent recommendations and price targets for Huron Consulting Group and its peers, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Huron Consulting Group	0	1	6	0	2.86
Huron Consulting Group Competitors	1580	6438	9165	430	2.48

Huron Consulting Group presently has a consensus target price of $200.50, indicating a potential upside of 2.82%. As a group, “Professional Services” companies have a potential upside of 26.54%. Given Huron Consulting Group’s peers higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Huron Consulting Group has less favorable growth aspects than its peers.

Profitability

This table compares Huron Consulting Group and its peers’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Huron Consulting Group	6.38%	32.33%	9.29%
Huron Consulting Group Competitors	-0.60%	20.41%	4.31%

Institutional & Insider Ownership

93.9% of Huron Consulting Group shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 57.4% of shares of all “Professional Services” companies are owned by institutional investors. 2.1% of Huron Consulting Group shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 17.2% of shares of all “Professional Services” companies are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Huron Consulting Group and its peers top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Net Income	Price/Earnings Ratio
Huron Consulting Group	$1.81 billion	$105.04 million	29.19
Huron Consulting Group Competitors	$3.32 billion	$228.36 million	35.61

Huron Consulting Group’s peers have higher revenue and earnings than Huron Consulting Group. Huron Consulting Group is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than its peers, indicating that it is currently more affordable than other companies in its industry.

Summary

Huron Consulting Group peers beat Huron Consulting Group on 7 of the 13 factors compared.

Huron Consulting Group Company Profile

Huron Consulting Group Inc., a professional services firm, provides consultancy services in the United States and internationally. It operates through three segments: Healthcare, Education, and Commercial. The Healthcare segment provides financial and operational performance improvement consulting services; digital offerings, spanning technology and analytic-related services; software products; organizational transformation services; revenue cycle managed and outsourcing services; financial and capital advisory consulting services; and strategy and innovation consulting services to national and regional health systems, academic and community health systems, federal health system, public, children’s and critical access hospitals, physician practices and medical groups, payors, and long-term care or post-acute providers. The Education segment provides digital solutions, spanning technology, and analytic-related services; Huron Research product suite, a software suite designed to facilitate and enhance research administration service delivery and compliance; research-focused consulting and managed services; strategy and operations consulting services for public and private colleges and universities, research institutes, and other education-related organizations. The Commercial segment delivers digital services and software products, and financial advisory services to financial, energy and utilities, professional and business services, life science, consumer products, and industrials and manufacturing industries, as well as public sector and nonprofit organizations. The company was incorporated in 2002 and is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.