Head-To-Head Analysis: Public Policy (NASDAQ:PPHC) and Leidos (NYSE:LDOS)

Leidos (NYSE:LDOS) and Public Policy (NASDAQ:PPHC) are both industrials companies, but which is the superior investment? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their dividends, valuation, institutional ownership, risk, profitability, earnings and analyst recommendations.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of recent recommendations for Leidos and Public Policy, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Leidos	0	11	5	1	2.41
Public Policy	1	1	2	0	2.25

Leidos presently has a consensus target price of $156.14, indicating a potential upside of 25.07%. Public Policy has a consensus target price of $17.00, indicating a potential upside of 65.85%. Given Public Policy’s higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Public Policy is more favorable than Leidos.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

76.1% of Leidos shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.8% of Leidos shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 14.6% of Public Policy shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Profitability

This table compares Leidos and Public Policy’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Leidos	7.80%	30.81%	10.78%
Public Policy	-18.85%	-0.26%	-0.11%

Dividends

Leidos pays an annual dividend of $1.72 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.4%. Public Policy pays an annual dividend of $0.23 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.2%. Leidos pays out 16.0% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Public Policy pays out 209.1% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Leidos has increased its dividend for 6 consecutive years.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Leidos and Public Policy”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Leidos	$17.17 billion	0.91	$1.45 billion	$10.72	11.65
Public Policy	$186.54 million	1.67	-$39.00 million	$0.11	93.18

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

Summary

Leidos beats Public Policy on 12 of the 17 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Leidos

Leidos Holdings, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides services and solutions in the defense, intelligence, civil, and health markets in the United States and internationally. The company operates through Defense Solutions, Civil, and Health segments. The Defense Solutions segment offers national security solutions and systems for air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace for the U.S. Intelligence Community, the Department of Defense, the space development agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, defense information systems agency, military services, and government agencies of U.S. allies abroad, as well as other federal and commercial customers in the national security industry. The solutions include technology, large-scale systems, command and control platforms, data analytics, logistics, and cybersecurity solutions, as well as intelligence analysis and operations support services to critical missions. The Civil segment provides systems integration services to air navigation service providers, including the federal aviation administration, the En route automation modernization, advanced technology oceanic procedure, time based flow management, terminal flight data management, geo-7, and future flight services, as well as enterprise-information display systems; and security detection services. It also offers information technology (IT) solutions in cloud computing, mobility, application modernization, DevOps, data center, network modernization, asset management, help desk operations, and digital workplace enablement; and environment, energy, and infrastructure services. The Health segment offers solutions to federal and commercial customers responsible for health and well-being of people, include health information management, managed health, digital modernization, and life sciences research and development services. Leidos Holdings, Inc. was founded in 1969 and is headquartered in Reston, Virginia.

About Public Policy

Our mission is to become the preeminent provider of global strategic communications by uniting a diverse group of leading government relations, corporate communications and public affairs specialists around the world for the collective success of our clients, employees, and shareholders. Founded by veteran advisors with decades of experience in Washington, D.C.’s public policy and government relations landscape, we have grown and diversified our global communications advisory business through targeted acquisitions and organic growth. We designed our business to address the growing complexity and costs facing major corporate and non-profit entities in managing increasingly intricate and interdependent public policy and reputational challenges, and we now help more than 1,400 clients around the world navigate today’s complex mosaic of stakeholders across the full spectrum of corporate affairs. Our clients include nearly half of the Fortune 100. Across our growing portfolio, our specialized firms offer global strategic communications services, including government relations, corporate communications, public affairs, research, crisis management, financial communications and investor relations, and creative communications delivery. We are active in all major sectors of the economy, including healthcare and pharmaceuticals, asset management and financial services, energy, technology, telecoms and transportation. Our diverse and complementary services help clients enhance, fortify and defend their reputations, advance corporate strategy, manage regulatory risk and opportunities, and maintain productive, ongoing engagement with their most important stakeholders including federal- and state-level policy makers, investors, employees, customers, the media and the general public. We do this in multiple jurisdictions with our diverse and complementary capabilities. Our business comprises three reporting segments—Government Relations Consulting, Corporate Communications & Public Affairs Consulting and Compliance and Insights Services—corresponding to the different types of strategic communications services our member companies provide to our clients: Government Relations Consulting services (which is also commonly referred to as “lobbying”) include advocacy, strategic guidance, political intelligence and issue monitoring at the US federal and state levels and in the United Kingdom through our offices in London; Corporate Communications & Public Affairs Consulting services include crisis communications, financial communications and investor relations, litigation support, community relations, social and digital media, public opinion research, branding and messaging, and relationship marketing, across the United States and internationally through our offices in London, Shanghai, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai; and Compliance and Insights Services include lobbying compliance services and legislative tracking. Importantly, as distinct from legacy branded competitors in our industry who have sought to be all-in-one providers of strategic communications services to their clients, we deliver complementary strategic communications services through stand-alone firms. Each of our firms is recognized for excellence in its respective area of expertise, and it is incentivized to collaborate and to partner with each of our other firms while maintaining a strong focus on its specialized services. Our business model allows us to deliver both the scale and reach of those all-in-one providers and also the higher standards of quality, service, creativity and agility that traditionally have been the domain of smaller boutiques. We seek to eliminate the traditional trade-off between scale and quality, and our growth demonstrates that our business model is well-suited to the needs and preferences of modern clients. Since our inception in 2014, we have acquired and integrated numerous businesses specializing in key facets of the global strategic communications market. Under our holding company, we now operate as 12 member companies in the United States and the United Kingdom, with expanding reach into Europe and parts of Asia and the Middle East. Our 12 member companies (together with PPHC, the “Company”) include Crossroads Strategies, LLC (“Crossroads”), Forbes Tate Partners LLC (“Forbes Tate”), Blue Engine Message & Media, LLC (doing business as Seven Letter) (“Seven Letter”), O’Neill & Partners, LLC (doing business as O’Neill & Associates) (“O’Neill”), Alpine Group Partners, LLC (“Alpine”), KP Public Affairs LLC (“KP”), MultiState Associates, LLC (“MultiState”), Concordant LLC (“Concordant”), Lucas Public Affairs, LLC (“Lucas”), Pagefield Communications Limited (“Pagefield”),TrailRunner International, LLC (“TrailRunner”), and Pine Cove Strategies, LLC (“Pine Cove”). We announced the earnings-accretive acquisition of Texas-based TrailRunner for initial consideration of $33.0 million in January 2025, comprising $28.1 million in cash and 2,966,138 shares of our Common Stock (representing 593,228 shares of Common Stock after giving effect to the Reverse Stock Split). Closing occurred on April 1, 2025. TrailRunner operates with a global team across offices in Texas, New York, Nashville, and Northern California, London, Shanghai, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai. There are additional contingent payments, up to $37.0 million, that the TrailRunner seller can earn in the future depending on certain operating results that are achieved. We announced the earnings-accretive acquisition of Pine Cove for initial consideration of $3.0 million in July 2025, comprising $2.6 million in cash and 214,146 of new shares of Common Stock (representing 42,830 shares of Common Stock after giving effect to the Reverse Stock Split). Closing occurred on August 1, 2025. Pine Cove is a strategic consulting firm that serves as a long-term partner to clients ranging from start-ups to established businesses and Fortune 500 companies. It advises and supports clients in navigating regulatory and complex business challenges. There are additional contingent payments, up to $10.0 million, that Pine Cove can earn in the future depending on certain operating results that are achieved. We operate in large, growing markets. We estimate that our total addressable market (“TAM”) in 2024 was in excess of $20.0 billion, comprising $4.4 billion of disclosed federal lobbying expenditure, $2.2 billion of disclosed US state-based lobbying expenditure, an estimated $5.6 billion of global public affairs spend, and an estimated $8.4 billion global corporate communications spend. The latter, which covers corporate, crisis, and financial communications, became a larger part of our offering with the 2025 acquisition of TrailRunner. As a company designed by and for the operators of advisory businesses, we optimize corporate strategy, cross-selling and referral opportunities for our portfolio companies through proactive and collaborative engagement both firm-to-firm and at the holding company level. We provide our companies with a scalable platform for growth, providing uniform and efficient financial infrastructure, legal services, human resources, compliance and administration at the parent company level. We incentivize cross-company selling, talent referral and retention opportunities to sustain our world-class talent, and we aim to reduce the overall incidence of client or sector conflicts by incentivizing our member companies to refer potential clients to other member companies or individual employees who are unconflicted and available to engage. These signature operator-friendly aspects of the business have enabled PPHC to successfully acquire firms that are among the very best in their fields, to retain and attract great talent in those firms and to drive strong organic growth across the platform. We have grown our geographical reach and practice capabilities to provide clients a full range of services through multiple member companies. Our evolution to date is the result of a careful and methodical strategy to build a unique service platform to simplify and more effectively address global client needs and opportunities in an increasingly fragmented and fast-moving environment where business, government, and public perception converge. This growth strategy is predicated on adding both geographic reach and a broad set of capabilities to help clients anticipate the expectations of key stakeholders and drive stakeholder engagement and alignment. Building on the globalization of public policy and reputation challenges, our founders and many of our senior managers operate in Washington, D.C., and have past careers and/or close professional ties to the US executive branch, Congress and regulatory authorities. Other leaders operate principally at the state or regional level, drawing on decades of experience, deep community ties and relationships with key stakeholders in key markets, including Sacramento, Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, and New York. With the acquisitions of Pagefield in June 2024 and TrailRunner in April 2025, we expanded our operations to other key US markets as well as to London, Shanghai, Abu Dhabi and Dubai, giving us truly global reach in key financial centers. We continue to look for opportunities to broaden the geographic scope of our services both domestically and abroad. As of December 31, 2025, we had more than 1,400 active client relationships. In 2025, 613 clients contributed $100,000 or more in annual revenue, with no single client representing more than 2.1% of overall revenue, reflecting relatively low client concentration risk. We have a track record of high client retention, with an average annual client renewal rate of approximately 77.4% and an average revenue retention rate of 85.5% between 2021 to 2025. We are a Delaware corporation and were incorporated on February 4, 2021. Our principal executive offices are located in Washington, D.C.