Financial Survey: FirstCash (NASDAQ:FCFS) & Mercurity Fintech (NASDAQ:MFH)

FirstCash (NASDAQ:FCFS) and Mercurity Fintech (NASDAQ:MFH) are both business services companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their profitability, earnings, valuation, risk, institutional ownership, dividends and analyst recommendations.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings for FirstCash and Mercurity Fintech, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
FirstCash	0	1	3	2	3.17
Mercurity Fintech	1	0	0	0	1.00

FirstCash presently has a consensus target price of $198.00, suggesting a potential downside of 11.31%. Given FirstCash’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, equities analysts clearly believe FirstCash is more favorable than Mercurity Fintech.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

80.3% of FirstCash shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 30.8% of Mercurity Fintech shares are held by institutional investors. 2.9% of FirstCash shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 62.8% of Mercurity Fintech shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Profitability

This table compares FirstCash and Mercurity Fintech’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
FirstCash	9.15%	18.68%	8.18%
Mercurity Fintech	N/A	N/A	N/A

Volatility and Risk

FirstCash has a beta of 0.52, meaning that its stock price is 48% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Mercurity Fintech has a beta of 4.3, meaning that its stock price is 330% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares FirstCash and Mercurity Fintech”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
FirstCash	$3.66 billion	2.67	$330.38 million	$7.98	27.98
Mercurity Fintech	$2.35 million	254.60	-$4.53 million	N/A	N/A

FirstCash has higher revenue and earnings than Mercurity Fintech.

Summary

FirstCash beats Mercurity Fintech on 10 of the 13 factors compared between the two stocks.

About FirstCash

FirstCash Holdings, Inc, together with its subsidiaries, operates retail pawn stores in the United States, Mexico, and rest of Latin America. The company operates in three segments: U.S. Pawn, Latin America Pawn, and Retail POS Payment Solutions segments. Its pawn stores lend money on the collateral of pledged personal property, including jewelry, electronics, tools, appliances, sporting goods, and musical instruments; and retails merchandise acquired through collateral forfeitures on forfeited pawn loans and over-the-counter purchases of merchandise directly from customers. The company also provides retail POS payment solutions, which focuses on LTO products and facilitating other retail financing payment options across the network of traditional and e-commerce merchant partners. It serves cash and credit-constrained consumers. The company was formerly known as FirstCash, Inc and changed its name to FirstCash Holdings, Inc. in December 2021. FirstCash Holdings, Inc was incorporated in 1988 and is headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas.

About Mercurity Fintech

Mercurity Fintech Holding Inc. operates as a fintech company powered by blockchain. The company provides digital asset trading infrastructure solutions based on internet and blockchain technologies for cryptocurrency traders; and asset digitalization platform, which offers blockchain-based digitalization solutions for traditional assets, such as fiat currencies, bonds, and precious metals. It also offers cryptocurrency mining services that provides computing power to the mining pool; and digital consultation services, such as digital payment solutions, asset management, and online and traditional brokerage services. The company was formerly known as JMU Limited and changed its name to Mercurity Fintech Holding Inc. in April 2020. Mercurity Fintech Holding Inc. was incorporated in 2011 and is headquartered in New York, New York.