NextPlay Technologies (NASDAQ:NXTP) and Western Union (NYSE:WU) Critical Analysis

Western Union (NYSE:WU) and NextPlay Technologies (NASDAQ:NXTP) are both business services companies, but which is the superior business? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their risk, analyst recommendations, valuation, profitability, dividends, earnings and institutional ownership.

Risk and Volatility

Western Union has a beta of 0.72, meaning that its share price is 28% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, NextPlay Technologies has a beta of 2.45, meaning that its share price is 145% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent recommendations and price targets for Western Union and NextPlay Technologies, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Western Union	4	6	0	0	1.60
NextPlay Technologies	0	0	0	0	0.00

Western Union currently has a consensus target price of $10.78, suggesting a potential upside of 10.15%. Given Western Union’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, equities research analysts plainly believe Western Union is more favorable than NextPlay Technologies.

Profitability

This table compares Western Union and NextPlay Technologies’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Western Union	22.19%	96.90%	7.43%
NextPlay Technologies	N/A	N/A	N/A

Institutional & Insider Ownership

91.8% of Western Union shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 3.0% of NextPlay Technologies shares are held by institutional investors. 1.6% of Western Union shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 24.5% of NextPlay Technologies shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Western Union and NextPlay Technologies”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Western Union	$4.14 billion	0.78	$934.20 million	$2.68	3.65
NextPlay Technologies	$8.20 million	0.00	-$37.97 million	N/A	N/A

Western Union has higher revenue and earnings than NextPlay Technologies.

Summary

Western Union beats NextPlay Technologies on 9 of the 11 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Western Union

The Western Union Company provides money movement and payment services worldwide. The company operates through Consumer Money Transfer and Consumer Services segments. The Consumer Money Transfer segment facilitates money transfers for international cross-border and intra-country transfers, primarily through a network of retail agent locations, as well as through websites and mobile devices. The Consumer Services segments offers bill payment services, which facilitate payments for consumers, businesses, and other organizations, as well as money order services, retail foreign exchange services, prepaid cards, lending partnerships, and digital wallets. The company was founded in 1851 and is headquartered in Denver, Colorado.

About NextPlay Technologies

NextPlay Technologies, Inc., a technology solutions company, provides games, in-game advertising, digital asset products and services, connected TV, and travel booking services to consumers and corporations in the United States, Puerto Rico, Europe, and Thailand. The company operates through three segments: Media, FinTech, and Travel. The Media segment provides HotPlay games studio, a game development studio that develops a range of casual games; HotPlay redemption mobile application, a digital wallet that is used to collect the HotPlay IGA rewards; HotPlay In game advertising and rewards platform, that enable advertisements and rewards to be inserted in game; goPlay platform, a gamification platform for users to compete against each other through tournaments and challenges, as well as a reward platform that rewards users for their continued loyalty and continuous game; and Zappware, a TV as a Service platform, which includes media source ingest, encoding and transcoding, packaging, protection, delivery, playback, and analytics that provide telco operators for their digital media processing, as well as a client side set top box and smart TV middleware platform, associated application framework and corresponding, and supporting content management system. The FinTech segment engages in the development of NextFinTech Platform, an integrated digital financial platform, which offers mobile banking, investments into alternative assets, and insurance to businesses and individuals. The Travel segment offers booking solutions for business and leisure; and travel technology solutions comprising alternative lodging rental properties under NextTrip ConNextions brand. The company was incorporated in 2005 and is based in Sunrise, Florida.