Reviewing National Research (NASDAQ:NRC) and Evolent Health (NYSE:EVH)

Evolent Health (NYSE:EVH) and National Research (NASDAQ:NRC) are both small-cap healthcare companies, but which is the better investment? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their risk, earnings, institutional ownership, dividends, analyst recommendations, valuation and profitability.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings and recommmendations for Evolent Health and National Research, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Evolent Health	1	4	11	0	2.62
National Research	0	1	1	0	2.50

Evolent Health currently has a consensus price target of $5.96, indicating a potential upside of 36.02%. National Research has a consensus price target of $26.00, indicating a potential upside of 22.17%. Given Evolent Health’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, equities research analysts plainly believe Evolent Health is more favorable than National Research.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Evolent Health and National Research”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Evolent Health	$2.10 billion	0.24	-$534.51 million	($4.57)	-0.96
National Research	$137.39 million	3.52	$11.60 million	$0.25	85.13

National Research has lower revenue, but higher earnings than Evolent Health. Evolent Health is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than National Research, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Profitability

This table compares Evolent Health and National Research’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Evolent Health	-24.08%	-4.27%	-1.06%
National Research	4.18%	164.26%	14.67%

Volatility and Risk

Evolent Health has a beta of 0.79, indicating that its stock price is 21% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, National Research has a beta of 0.34, indicating that its stock price is 66% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

47.3% of National Research shares are held by institutional investors. 1.5% of Evolent Health shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 9.2% of National Research shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

National Research beats Evolent Health on 9 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Evolent Health

Evolent Health, Inc., through its subsidiary, Evolent Health LLC, offers specialty care management services in oncology, cardiology, and musculoskeletal markets in the United States. The company provides platform for health plan administration and value-based business infrastructure. It offers administrative services, such as health plan services, pharmacy benefits management, risk management, analytics and reporting, and leadership and management; and Identifi, a proprietary technology system that aggregates and analyzes data, manages care workflows, and engages patients. In addition, the company provides holistic total cost of care management. Evolent Health, Inc. was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia.

About National Research

National Research Corporation provides analytics and insights that facilitate measurement and enhancement of the patient and employee experience. Its portfolio of subscription-based solutions provides actionable information and analysis to healthcare organizations across a range of mission-critical, constituent-related elements, including patient experience, service recovery, care transitions, employee engagement, reputation management, and brand loyalty. The company also offers marketing solutions that allow the tracking of awareness, perception, and consistency of healthcare brands; assessment of competitive differentiators; and enhanced segmentation tools to evaluate needs, wants, and behaviors of communities through real-time competitive assessments and enhanced segmentation tools. In addition, it provides experience solutions, such as patient experience, employee engagement, health risk assessments, care transition, and improvement tools. Further, the company provides reputation solutions that allow healthcare organizations to share a picture of their organization and ensure that timely and relevant content informs consumer decision-making; and governance solutions for not-for-profit hospital and health system boards of directors, executives, and physician leadership. National Research Corporation was founded in 1981 and is headquartered in Lincoln, Nebraska.