Contrasting Fair Isaac (NYSE:FICO) & EPAM Systems (NYSE:EPAM)

EPAM Systems (NYSE:EPAM) and Fair Isaac (NYSE:FICO) are both computer and technology companies, but which is the better stock? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, earnings, dividends, profitability, institutional ownership, risk and valuation.

Volatility & Risk

EPAM Systems has a beta of 1.45, meaning that its stock price is 45% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Fair Isaac has a beta of 1.24, meaning that its stock price is 24% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares EPAM Systems and Fair Isaac”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
EPAM Systems	$5.56 billion	1.03	$377.68 million	$6.97	15.68
Fair Isaac	$2.26 billion	13.24	$651.95 million	$31.57	40.78

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

Profitability

This table compares EPAM Systems and Fair Isaac’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
EPAM Systems	6.96%	14.71%	11.14%
Fair Isaac	33.67%	-41.04%	37.92%

Institutional & Insider Ownership

91.6% of EPAM Systems shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 85.8% of Fair Isaac shares are held by institutional investors. 3.8% of EPAM Systems shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 3.0% of Fair Isaac shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of current ratings and recommmendations for EPAM Systems and Fair Isaac, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
EPAM Systems	2	6	7	0	2.33
Fair Isaac	0	5	10	0	2.67

EPAM Systems presently has a consensus target price of $152.00, indicating a potential upside of 39.04%. Fair Isaac has a consensus target price of $1,619.36, indicating a potential upside of 25.77%. Given EPAM Systems’ higher possible upside, equities research analysts clearly believe EPAM Systems is more favorable than Fair Isaac.

Summary

Fair Isaac beats EPAM Systems on 8 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About EPAM Systems

EPAM Systems, Inc. provides digital platform engineering and software development services worldwide. The company offers engineering services, including requirements analysis and platform selection, customization, cross-platform migration, implementation, and integration; infrastructure management services, such as software development, testing, performance tuning, deployment, maintenance, and support services. It also provides operation solutions comprising integrated engineering practices and smart automation services. In addition, the company offers business, experience, technology, data, and technical advisory consulting services; and digital and service design solutions, which comprise strategy, design, creative, and program management services, as well as physical product development, such as artificial intelligence, robotics, and virtual reality. The company serves the financial services, travel and consumer, software and hi-tech, business information and media, life sciences and healthcare, and other industries EPAM Systems, Inc. was founded in 1993 and is headquartered in Newtown, Pennsylvania.

About Fair Isaac

Fair Isaac Corporation develops analytic, software, and digital decisioning technologies and services that enable businesses to automate, enhance, and connect decisions in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific. The company operates in two segments, Scores and Software. The Software segment provides pre-configured analytic and decision management solution designed for various business needs or processes, such as account origination, customer management, customer engagement, fraud detection, financial crimes compliance, and marketing, as well as associated professional services. This segment also offers FICO Platform, a modular software offering designed to support advanced analytic and decision use cases, as well as stand-alone analytic and decisioning software that can be configured by customers to address a wide range of business use cases. The Scores segment provides business-to-business scoring solutions and services for consumers that give clients access to predictive credit and other scores that can be integrated into their transaction streams and decision-making processes, as well as business-to-consumer scoring solutions comprising myFICO.com subscription offerings. It offers FICO Customer Analytics, FICO Responsible AI, FICO Advisors, FICO Business Outcome Simulator, FICO Forecaster, FICO TRIAD Customer Manager, FICO Blaze Advisor, FICO Xpress Optimization, FICO Falcon Fraud Manager, FICO Analytics Workbench, FICO Data Orchestrator, FICO DMP Streaming, FICO Decision Optimizer, and FICO Strategy Director, as well as software implementation and configuration services. The company markets its products and services primarily through its direct sales organization and indirect channels, as well as online. The company was formerly known as Fair Isaac & Company, Inc. and changed its name to Fair Isaac Corporation in July 1992. Fair Isaac Corporation was founded in 1956 and is headquartered in Bozeman, Montana.