Critical Analysis: Yelp (NYSE:YELP) and Getty Images (NYSE:GETY)

Yelp (NYSE:YELP) and Getty Images (NYSE:GETY) are both small-cap communication services companies, but which is the better investment? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their risk, valuation, analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, earnings, dividends and profitability.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of current ratings and recommmendations for Yelp and Getty Images, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Yelp	3	3	1	0	1.71
Getty Images	2	3	1	0	1.83

Yelp presently has a consensus price target of $26.57, indicating a potential upside of 42.97%. Getty Images has a consensus price target of $3.92, indicating a potential upside of 8,094.15%. Given Getty Images’ stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Getty Images is more favorable than Yelp.

Profitability

This table compares Yelp and Getty Images’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Yelp	8.59%	19.52%	13.44%
Getty Images	-16.24%	-26.82%	-5.25%

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Yelp and Getty Images”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Yelp	$1.47 billion	0.68	$145.60 million	$2.09	8.89
Getty Images	$978.00 million	0.02	-$206.12 million	($0.39)	-0.12

Yelp has higher revenue and earnings than Getty Images. Getty Images is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Yelp, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

90.1% of Yelp shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 45.8% of Getty Images shares are owned by institutional investors. 8.3% of Yelp shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 9.3% of Getty Images shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Risk and Volatility

Yelp has a beta of 0.45, suggesting that its stock price is 55% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Getty Images has a beta of 2.21, suggesting that its stock price is 121% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Yelp beats Getty Images on 9 of the 13 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Yelp

Yelp Inc. operates a platform that connects consumers with local businesses in the United States and internationally. The company's platform covers various categories, including restaurants, shopping, beauty and fitness, health, and other categories, as well as home, local, auto, professional, pets, events, real estate, and financial services. It provides free and paid advertising products to businesses, which include cost-per-click advertising and multi-location Ad products, as well as enables businesses to deliver targeted advertising to large and high-intent audience; and business listing page products. The company also offers other services comprising Yelp Guest Manager, a subscription-based suite of front-of-house management tools for restaurants, nightlife and certain other venues, which include online reservations, a waitlist management solution that allows consumers to check wait times and join waitlists remotely, as well as through hostless kiosks, and seating and server rotation management tools; Yelp Knowledge program that offers business owners local analytics and insights through access to its historical data and other proprietary content; and Yelp Fusion, which offers free access to various basic information through publicly available APIs, and paid access to content and data for consumer-facing enterprise use. In addition, it provides content licensing, as well as allows third-party data providers to update and manage business listing information on behalf of businesses. Further, the company offers its products directly through its sales force; indirectly through partners; and online through its website and business app, as well as non-advertising partner arrangements. It has partnership with Grubhub for providing consumers with a service to place food orders for pickup and delivery. The company was incorporated in 2004 and is based in San Francisco, California.

About Getty Images

Getty Images Holdings, Inc. offers creative and editorial visual content solutions in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia-Pacific. Its products include Getty Images that offers creative and editorial content including stills, music and video which focuses on corporate, agency, and media customers; iStock.com, an e-commerce offering where customers have access to creative stills and video; Unsplash.com, a platform offering free stock photo downloads and paid subscriptions targeted to the high-growth prosumer and semi-professional creator segments; and Unsplash+ that provides access to unique model released content with expanded legal protections. In addition, it maintains privately-owned photographic archives covering news, sport, and entertainment, as well as variety of subjects, including lifestyle, business, science, health, wellness, beauty, sports, transportation, and travel. Further, the company provides music licensing, and digital asset management and distribution services. It serves media outlets, advertising agencies and corporations, individual creators, and prosumers. The company was formerly known as Getty Images, Inc. Getty Images Holdings, Inc. was founded in 1995 and is headquartered in Seattle, Washington.