Critical Review: Freightos (NASDAQ:CRGO) versus FirstCash (NASDAQ:FCFS)

Freightos (NASDAQ:CRGO) and FirstCash (NASDAQ:FCFS) are both business services companies, but which is the superior stock? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, profitability, institutional ownership, risk, dividends, valuation and earnings.

Volatility & Risk

Freightos has a beta of 0.07, meaning that its stock price is 93% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, FirstCash has a beta of 0.47, meaning that its stock price is 53% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings and price targets for Freightos and FirstCash, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Freightos	1	0	1	0	2.00
FirstCash	0	2	3	1	2.83

Freightos presently has a consensus price target of $3.00, suggesting a potential upside of 87.50%. FirstCash has a consensus price target of $183.25, suggesting a potential downside of 5.97%. Given Freightos’ higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Freightos is more favorable than FirstCash.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Freightos and FirstCash”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Freightos	$29.46 million	2.79	-$17.52 million	($0.35)	-4.57
FirstCash	$3.66 billion	2.34	$330.38 million	$7.42	26.26

FirstCash has higher revenue and earnings than Freightos. Freightos is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than FirstCash, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

22.7% of Freightos shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 80.3% of FirstCash shares are owned by institutional investors. 19.6% of Freightos shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 2.9% of FirstCash shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Profitability

This table compares Freightos and FirstCash’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Freightos	-59.46%	-37.28%	-25.50%
FirstCash	9.02%	17.99%	8.03%

Summary

FirstCash beats Freightos on 12 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Freightos

Freightos Limited, together with its subsidiaries, operates a vendor-neutral booking and payment platform for international freight. It operates WebCargo, a platform for connecting carriers and forwarders; and Freightos.com, a platform for connecting service providers to importers/exporters. The company also offers software-as-a-service solutions, such as WebCargo Air for airline rates and ebookings; WebCargo AcceleRate, a multi-modal rate repository; data services; and WebCargo Airline Control Panel that enables airlines to control bookings and optimize pricing with real-time booking analytics. In addition, it provides digital customs brokerage services. The company is based in Jerusalem, Israel.

About FirstCash

FirstCash Holdings, Inc, together with its subsidiaries, operates retail pawn stores in the United States, Mexico, and rest of Latin America. The company operates in three segments: U.S. Pawn, Latin America Pawn, and Retail POS Payment Solutions segments. Its pawn stores lend money on the collateral of pledged personal property, including jewelry, electronics, tools, appliances, sporting goods, and musical instruments; and retails merchandise acquired through collateral forfeitures on forfeited pawn loans and over-the-counter purchases of merchandise directly from customers. The company also provides retail POS payment solutions, which focuses on LTO products and facilitating other retail financing payment options across the network of traditional and e-commerce merchant partners. It serves cash and credit-constrained consumers. The company was formerly known as FirstCash, Inc and changed its name to FirstCash Holdings, Inc. in December 2021. FirstCash Holdings, Inc was incorporated in 1988 and is headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas.