Head to Head Analysis: Ark Restaurants (NASDAQ:ARKR) & Booking (NASDAQ:BKNG)

Booking (NASDAQ:BKNG) and Ark Restaurants (NASDAQ:ARKR) are both consumer discretionary companies, but which is the superior business? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, dividends, institutional ownership, earnings, profitability, valuation and risk.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Booking and Ark Restaurants”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Booking	$28.24 billion	4.63	$5.40 billion	$9.04	19.24
Ark Restaurants	$165.75 million	0.10	-$11.47 million	($0.88)	-5.48

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

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of current ratings and price targets for Booking and Ark Restaurants, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Booking	0	8	27	2	2.84
Ark Restaurants	1	0	0	0	1.00

Booking presently has a consensus target price of $236.70, indicating a potential upside of 36.10%. Given Booking’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, equities analysts clearly believe Booking is more favorable than Ark Restaurants.

Risk and Volatility

Booking has a beta of 1.07, suggesting that its share price is 7% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Ark Restaurants has a beta of 0.35, suggesting that its share price is 65% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares Booking and Ark Restaurants’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Booking	25.53%	-102.96%	26.60%
Ark Restaurants	-2.04%	-10.61%	-2.58%

Insider and Institutional Ownership

92.4% of Booking shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 32.0% of Ark Restaurants shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.2% of Booking shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 37.5% of Ark Restaurants shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Summary

Booking beats Ark Restaurants on 13 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Booking

Booking Holdings Inc, formerly The Priceline Group Inc., is a provider of travel and restaurant online reservation and related services. The Company, through its online travel companies (OTCs), connects consumers wishing to make travel reservations with providers of travel services across the world. It offers consumers an array of accommodation reservations (including hotels, bed and breakfasts, hostels, apartments, vacation rentals and other properties) through its Booking.com, priceline.com and agoda.com brands. Its other brands include KAYAK, Rentalcars.com and OpenTable, Inc. (OpenTable). As of December 31, 2016, Booking.com offered accommodation reservation services for over 1,115,000 properties in over 220 countries and territories on its various Websites and in over 40 languages, which included over 568,000 vacation rental properties (updated property counts were available on the Booking.com Website).

About Ark Restaurants

Ark Restaurants Corp., through its subsidiaries, owns and operates restaurants and bars in the United States. It operates restaurants in New York City; Washington, D.C.; Las Vegas, Nevada; Atlantic City, New Jersey; Florida; and Alabama, as well as fast food concepts and catering operations. The company was incorporated in 1983 and is based in New York, New York.