Head to Head Review: Alight (NYSE:ALIT) and Viad (NYSE:VVI)

Viad (NYSE:VVI) and Alight (NYSE:ALIT) are both industrials companies, but which is the superior investment? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their dividends, valuation, earnings, analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, profitability and risk.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Viad and Alight”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Viad	$1.31 billion	0.58	$16.02 million	($0.38)	-93.97
Alight	$3.36 billion	1.21	-$345.00 million	($0.62)	-11.71

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

Volatility & Risk

Viad has a beta of 2.04, meaning that its stock price is 104% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Alight has a beta of 0.86, meaning that its stock price is 14% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

89.9% of Viad shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 96.7% of Alight shares are held by institutional investors. 4.1% of Viad shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 5.3% of Alight shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings and price targets for Viad and Alight, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Viad	0	0	2	0	3.00
Alight	0	1	9	0	2.90

Viad currently has a consensus price target of $41.50, suggesting a potential upside of 16.21%. Alight has a consensus price target of $10.75, suggesting a potential upside of 48.07%. Given Alight’s higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Alight is more favorable than Viad.

Profitability

This table compares Viad and Alight’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Viad	2.30%	29.43%	3.10%
Alight	-6.58%	5.42%	2.36%

About Viad

Viad Corp provides hospitality, leisure activities, experiential marketing, and live events in the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. It operates in three segments: Pursuit, Spiro, and GES Exhibitions. The Pursuit segment offers recreational attractions, hotels and lodges, food and beverage, retail, sightseeing, and ground transportation services. This segment consists of Banff Jasper Collection, the Alaska Collection, the Glacier Park Collection, FlyOver, and Sky Lagoon. The Spiro segment operates as an experiential marketing agency that partners with brands around the world to manage and elevate their global experiential marketing activities. The GES Exhibition segment engages as an exhibition services company that partners with exhibition and conference organizers as a full-service provider of strategic and logistics solutions to manage the complexity of their shows. It serves event organizers and corporate brand marketers; and tour operators, tour wholesalers, destination management companies, and retail travel agencies. Viad Corp was founded in 1926 and is headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona.

About Alight

Alight, Inc. provides cloud-based integrated digital human capital and business solutions worldwide. The company operates through two segments, Employer Solutions and Professional Services. The Employer Solutions segment offers employee wellbeing, integrated benefits administration, healthcare navigation, financial wellbeing, leave of absence management, retiree healthcare and payroll; and operates AI-led capabilities software. The Professional Services segment offers consulting offerings, such as cloud advisory, deployment, and optimization services for cloud platforms. The company provides Alight Worklife, an intuitive, cloud-based employee engagement platform. Its solutions enable employees to enrich their health, wealth, and wellbeing that helps organizations achieve a high-performance culture. Alight, Inc. was founded in 2020 and is based in Lincolnshire, Illinois.