Reviewing Visa (NYSE:V) and Getty Images (NYSE:GETY)

Visa (NYSE:V) and Getty Images (NYSE:GETY) are both business services companies, but which is the superior business? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their profitability, valuation, institutional ownership, dividends, analyst recommendations, risk and earnings.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of current ratings and target prices for Visa and Getty Images, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Visa	0	5	18	0	2.78
Getty Images	0	3	4	0	2.57

Visa presently has a consensus target price of $296.87, suggesting a potential upside of 7.58%. Getty Images has a consensus target price of $6.35, suggesting a potential upside of 61.58%. Given Getty Images’ higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Getty Images is more favorable than Visa.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Visa and Getty Images’ revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Visa	$32.65 billion	15.52	$17.27 billion	$8.69	31.76
Getty Images	$916.55 million	1.74	$19.34 million	$0.04	98.25

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

Insider & Institutional Ownership

82.2% of Visa shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 45.8% of Getty Images shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.2% of Visa shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 13.0% of Getty Images shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Risk & Volatility

Visa has a beta of 0.96, indicating that its stock price is 4% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Getty Images has a beta of 2.12, indicating that its stock price is 112% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares Visa and Getty Images’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Visa	53.92%	50.02%	20.83%
Getty Images	2.11%	9.30%	2.34%

Summary

Visa beats Getty Images on 10 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Visa

Visa Inc. operates as a payment technology company in the United States and internationally. The company operates VisaNet, a transaction processing network that enables authorization, clearing, and settlement of payment transactions. It also offers credit, debit, and prepaid card products; tap to pay, tokenization, and click to pay services; Visa Direct, a solution that facilitates the delivery of funds to eligible cards, deposit accounts, and digital wallets; Visa B2B Connect, a multilateral business-to-business cross-border payments network; Visa Cross-Border Solution, a cross-border consumer payments solution; and Visa DPS that provides a range of value-added services, including fraud mitigation, dispute management, data analytics, campaign management, a suite of digital solutions, and contact center services. The company also provides acceptance solutions, which include Cybersource that provides modular and value-added services for connecting merchants to payment processing; risk and identity solutions, such as Visa Advanced Authorization, Visa Secure, Visa Risk and Decision Manager, Visa Consumer Authentication Service, and payment-decisioning solutions for fraud prevention; and Visa Consulting and Analytics, a payment consulting advisory services. It provides its services under the Visa, Visa Electron, Interlink, V PAY, and PLUS brand names. The company serves merchants, financial institutions, and government entities. Visa Inc. was founded in 1958 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

About Getty Images

Getty Images Holdings, Inc. offers creative and editorial visual content solutions in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia-Pacific. Its products include Getty Images that offers creative and editorial content including stills, music and video which focuses on corporate, agency, and media customers; iStock.com, an e-commerce offering where customers have access to creative stills and video; Unsplash.com, a platform offering free stock photo downloads and paid subscriptions targeted to the high-growth prosumer and semi-professional creator segments; and Unsplash+ that provides access to unique model released content with expanded legal protections. In addition, it maintains privately-owned photographic archives covering news, sport, and entertainment, as well as variety of subjects, including lifestyle, business, science, health, wellness, beauty, sports, transportation, and travel. Further, the company provides music licensing, and digital asset management and distribution services. It serves media outlets, advertising agencies and corporations, individual creators, and prosumers. The company was formerly known as Getty Images, Inc. Getty Images Holdings, Inc. was founded in 1995 and is headquartered in Seattle, Washington.