Comparing Shift4 Payments (NYSE:FOUR) & NextPlay Technologies (NASDAQ:NXTP)

NextPlay Technologies (NASDAQ:NXTP) and Shift4 Payments (NYSE:FOUR) are both consumer discretionary companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their institutional ownership, dividends, analyst recommendations, profitability, risk, earnings and valuation.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares NextPlay Technologies and Shift4 Payments”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
NextPlay Technologies	$8.20 million	0.00	-$37.97 million	N/A	N/A
Shift4 Payments	$3.33 billion	2.56	$86.20 million	$3.07	30.85

Shift4 Payments has higher revenue and earnings than NextPlay Technologies.

Risk & Volatility

NextPlay Technologies has a beta of 2.65, suggesting that its share price is 165% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Shift4 Payments has a beta of 1.72, suggesting that its share price is 72% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares NextPlay Technologies and Shift4 Payments’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
NextPlay Technologies	N/A	N/A	N/A
Shift4 Payments	6.89%	29.00%	6.69%

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings for NextPlay Technologies and Shift4 Payments, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
NextPlay Technologies	0	0	0	0	0.00
Shift4 Payments	0	7	13	0	2.65

Shift4 Payments has a consensus target price of $115.05, suggesting a potential upside of 21.49%. Given Shift4 Payments’ stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Shift4 Payments is more favorable than NextPlay Technologies.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

3.0% of NextPlay Technologies shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 98.9% of Shift4 Payments shares are owned by institutional investors. 24.5% of NextPlay Technologies shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 30.6% of Shift4 Payments shares are owned 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

Shift4 Payments beats NextPlay Technologies on 10 of the 11 factors compared between the two stocks.

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.

About Shift4 Payments

Shift4 Payments, Inc. (NYSE FOUR) provides integrated payment processing and technology solutions in the United States. Its payments platform provides omni-channel card acceptance and processing solutions, including end-to-end payment processing for various payment types; merchant acquiring; proprietary omni-channel gateway; complementary software integrations; integrated and mobile point-of-sale (POS) solutions; security and risk management solutions; and reporting and analytical tools, as well as tokenization, risk management/underwriting, payment device and chargeback management, fraud prevention, and gift card solutions. The company also offers suite of technology solutions, such as Lighthouse, a cloud-based business intelligence tool that includes customer engagement, social media management, online reputation management, scheduling, and product pricing, as well as reporting and analytics; integrated POS for merchants business; and Skytab, a mobile payment solution. In addition, it provides marketplace technology that enable seamless integrations into third-party applications, which includes online delivery services, payroll, timekeeping, and other human resource services. Further, the company offers merchant management, training and education, marketing management, and incentives tracking solutions. Additionally, it provides merchant underwriting, onboarding and activation, training, risk management, and support services; and software integrations and compliance management, and partner support and services. The company was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Allentown, Pennsylvania.