Head-To-Head Comparison: Airship AI (NASDAQ:AISP) & Wi-LAN (OTCMKTS:QTRHF)

Wi-LAN (OTCMKTS:QTRHF) and Airship AI (NASDAQ:AISP) are both small-cap business services companies, but which is the superior business? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, valuation, dividends, risk, profitability and earnings.

Profitability

This table compares Wi-LAN and Airship AI’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Wi-LAN	-12.64%	-16.03%	-8.71%
Airship AI	-364.06%	N/A	-191.02%

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of current ratings and price targets for Wi-LAN and Airship AI, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Wi-LAN	0	0	1	0	3.00
Airship AI	1	0	0	0	1.00

Airship AI has a consensus price target of $8.00, indicating a potential upside of 120.39%. Given Airship AI’s higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Airship AI is more favorable than Wi-LAN.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Wi-LAN and Airship AI”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Wi-LAN	$153.30 million	0.51	-$11.02 million	($0.17)	-3.91
Airship AI	$23.05 million	5.03	-$57.47 million	($2.02)	-1.80

Wi-LAN has higher revenue and earnings than Airship AI. Wi-LAN is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Airship AI, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

5.9% of Airship AI shares are held by institutional investors. 46.8% of Airship AI shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Volatility and Risk

Wi-LAN has a beta of 1.08, indicating that its share price is 8% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Airship AI has a beta of 0.32, indicating that its share price is 68% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Wi-LAN beats Airship AI on 8 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Wi-LAN

Quarterhill Inc., together with its subsidiaries, operates in intelligent transportation system business in Canada and internationally. The company offers riteSuite, which offers mobility solutions, such as all-electronic tolling, dynamic pricing, agency interoperability, hosted mobility solutions, and machine learning; back-office solutions, which offers account management, customer service, violation processing, and technical services operations; roadside solutions, which offers onsite and remote maintenance and field operations services, including tolling facility support, lane equipment control, and cash management services; and international road dynamics products and services, which offers automated truck weigh stations, toll road systems and equipment, red light and speed enforcement systems, and traffic management and safety systems. It also provides VectorSense, a tire sensor suite; Vehicle Information-In-Motion traffic intelligence system, an integrated traffic control system; permanent Weigh-InMotion systems; portable slow speed Weigh-In-Motion systems; portable wheel load scales; traffic data collection products, vehicle and axle detection equipment, and automated vehicle identification services and equipment; and other hardware and software products and offerings. The company was formerly known as Wi-LAN Inc. and changed its name to Quarterhill Inc. in June 2017. Quarterhill Inc. was incorporated in 1992 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.

About Airship AI

Airship AI Holdings, Inc. offers AI-driven video, sensor, and data management surveillance platform in the United States. The company provides Airship Acropolis OS, an IP and analog video surveillance; Airship Command, a suite of visualization tools that allows users to view data and evidence ingested from the edge; and Airship Outpost for high-definition recording with user defined low-bit rate video stream encoding. It serves government, public sector, law enforcement, military, and commercial enterprise organizations. The company was formerly known as Super Simple AI, Inc. and changed its name to Airship AI Holdings, Inc. in March 2023. Airship AI Holdings, Inc. was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Redmond, Washington.