Great Elm Capital Group (NASDAQ:GECC) and MSCI (NYSE:MSCI) Head-To-Head Review

Great Elm Capital Group (NASDAQ:GECC) and MSCI (NYSE:MSCI) are both finance companies, but which is the better stock? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, profitability, institutional ownership, risk, valuation, earnings and dividends.

Volatility & Risk

Great Elm Capital Group has a beta of 0.98, indicating that its stock price is 2% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, MSCI has a beta of 1.33, indicating that its stock price is 33% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Dividends

Great Elm Capital Group pays an annual dividend of $1.48 per share and has a dividend yield of 19.2%. MSCI pays an annual dividend of $7.20 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.3%. Great Elm Capital Group pays out 94.9% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. MSCI pays out 47.7% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Great Elm Capital Group has increased its dividend for 2 consecutive years and MSCI has increased its dividend for 11 consecutive years.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

38.8% of Great Elm Capital Group shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 90.0% of MSCI shares are held by institutional investors. 8.7% of Great Elm Capital Group shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 3.3% of MSCI shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Profitability

This table compares Great Elm Capital Group and MSCI’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Great Elm Capital Group	36.81%	12.49%	4.36%
MSCI	39.46%	-143.13%	23.46%

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of current ratings for Great Elm Capital Group and MSCI, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Great Elm Capital Group	0	1	0	0	2.00
MSCI	0	3	10	1	2.86

Great Elm Capital Group currently has a consensus target price of $11.00, suggesting a potential upside of 43.04%. MSCI has a consensus target price of $649.70, suggesting a potential upside of 18.84%. Given Great Elm Capital Group’s higher probable upside, equities analysts plainly believe Great Elm Capital Group is more favorable than MSCI.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Great Elm Capital Group and MSCI”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Great Elm Capital Group	$39.32 million	2.26	$3.55 million	$1.56	4.93
MSCI	$2.86 billion	14.81	$1.11 billion	$15.10	36.20

MSCI has higher revenue and earnings than Great Elm Capital Group. Great Elm Capital Group is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than MSCI, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Summary

MSCI beats Great Elm Capital Group on 14 of the 18 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Great Elm Capital Group

Great Elm Capital Corp. is a business development company which specializes in loan and mezzanine, middle market investments. It invests in the debt instruments of middle market companies. The fund prefers to invest in media, commercial services and supplies, healthcare, telecommunication services, communications equipment. It typically makes equity investments between $3 million and $10 million in companies with revenues between $3 million and $75 million.

About MSCI

MSCI Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides critical decision support tools and solutions for the investment community to manage investment processes worldwide. The Index segment provides indexes for use in various areas of the investment process, including indexed financial product, such as ETFs, mutual funds, annuities, futures, options, structured products, and over-the-counter derivatives; performance benchmarking; portfolio construction and rebalancing; and asset allocation, as well as licenses GICS and GICS Direct. The Analytics segment offers risk management, performance attribution and portfolio management content, application, an integrated view of risk and return service, and an analysis of market, credit, liquidity, counterparty, and climate risk across asset classes; managed services, including consolidation of client portfolio data, review and reconciliation of input data and results, and customized reporting; and HedgePlatform to measure, evaluate, and monitor the risk of hedge fund investments. The ESG and Climate segment provides products and services that help institutional investors understand how ESG impacts the long-term risk and return of their portfolio and individual security-level investments; and data, ratings, research, and tools to help investors navigate increasing regulation. The All Other Private Assets segment includes real estate and infrastructure data, benchmarks, return-analytics, climate assessments and market insights; business intelligence to real estate owners, managers, developers, and brokers; and offers investment decision support tools for private capital. The Private Capital Solutions segment offers tools to help private asset investors across mission-critical workflows, such as sourcing terms and conditions, evaluating operating performance, managing risk and other activities supporting private capital investing. MSCI Inc. was incorporated in 1998 and is headquartered in New York, New York.