Coursera (NYSE:COUR – Get Free Report) and ACI Worldwide (NASDAQ:ACIW – Get Free Report) are both business services companies, but which is the better stock? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their valuation, institutional ownership, risk, earnings, analyst recommendations, dividends and profitability.
Analyst Ratings
This is a breakdown of recent ratings for Coursera and ACI Worldwide, as provided by MarketBeat.
| Sell Ratings | Hold Ratings | Buy Ratings | Strong Buy Ratings | Rating Score | |
| Coursera | 1 | 3 | 9 | 0 | 2.62 |
| ACI Worldwide | 0 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 2.50 |
Coursera currently has a consensus price target of $10.52, indicating a potential upside of 24.07%. ACI Worldwide has a consensus price target of $49.50, indicating a potential downside of 5.88%. Given Coursera’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Coursera is more favorable than ACI Worldwide.
Profitability
| Net Margins | Return on Equity | Return on Assets | |
| Coursera | -11.44% | -10.43% | -6.86% |
| ACI Worldwide | 14.04% | 21.67% | 8.45% |
Earnings and Valuation
This table compares Coursera and ACI Worldwide”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.
| Gross Revenue | Price/Sales Ratio | Net Income | Earnings Per Share | Price/Earnings Ratio | |
| Coursera | $684.37 million | 1.96 | -$116.55 million | ($0.51) | -16.63 |
| ACI Worldwide | $1.62 billion | 3.41 | $121.51 million | $2.11 | 24.92 |
ACI Worldwide has higher revenue and earnings than Coursera. Coursera is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than ACI Worldwide, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Insider and Institutional Ownership
89.6% of Coursera shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 94.7% of ACI Worldwide shares are held by institutional investors. 16.3% of Coursera shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 1.0% of ACI Worldwide shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.
Volatility & Risk
Coursera has a beta of 1.49, indicating that its share price is 49% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, ACI Worldwide has a beta of 1.19, indicating that its share price is 19% more volatile than the S&P 500.
Summary
ACI Worldwide beats Coursera on 9 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.
About Coursera
Coursera, Inc. operates an online educational content platform in the United States, Europe, Africa, the Asia Pacific, the Middle East, and internationally. It operates in three segments: Consumer, Enterprise, and Degrees. The company offers guided projects, courses, and specializations, as well as online degrees; and certificates for entry-level professional, non-entry level professional, university, and MasterTrack. It offers its products to individuals, enterprise, business, campus, and government. The company was formerly known as Dkandu, Inc. and changed its name to Coursera, Inc. in April 2012. Coursera, Inc. was incorporated in 2011 and is headquartered in Mountain View, California.
About ACI Worldwide
ACI Worldwide, Inc., a software company, develops, markets, installs, and supports a range of software products and solutions for facilitating digital payments in the United States and internationally. The company operates in three segments: Banks, Merchants, and Billers. The company offers ACI Acquiring, a solution to process credit, debit, and prepaid card transactions, deliver digital innovation, and fraud prevention; ACI Issuing, a digital payment issuing solution for new payment offering; and ACI Enterprise Payments Platform that provides payment processing and orchestration capabilities for digital payments. It also provides ACI Low Value Real-Time Payments, a platform for processing real-time payments; and ACI High Value Real-Time Payments, a payments engine that offers multi-bank, multi-currency, 24×7 payment processing, and SWIFT messaging. In addition, the company offers ACI Payments Orchestration Platform for optimizing payments; omni-channel payment platform; ACI Fraud Management, a real-time approach to fraud management; and ACI Speedpay, an integrated suite of digital billing, payment, disbursement, and communication services. The company offers electronic bill presentment and payment services to consumer finance, insurance, healthcare, higher education, utility, government, telecommunications, and mortgage sectors; implementation services, include product installations and configurations, and custom software modifications; and business and technical consultancy, on-site support, product education, and testing services, as well as distributes or acts as a sales agent for software developed by third parties. It markets its products under the ACI Worldwide brand. The company was formerly known as Transaction Systems Architects, Inc. and changed its name to ACI Worldwide, Inc. in July 2007. The company was founded in 1975 and is based in Elkhorn, Nebraska.
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