Critical Contrast: Stran & Company, Inc. (NASDAQ:SWAG) and Fluent (NASDAQ:FLNT)

Stran & Company, Inc. (NASDAQ:SWAG) and Fluent (NASDAQ:FLNT) are both small-cap business services companies, but which is the better stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their valuation, earnings, analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, profitability, dividends and risk.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

56.4% of Stran & Company, Inc. shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 23.3% of Fluent shares are held by institutional investors. 49.6% of Stran & Company, Inc. shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 38.4% of Fluent shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of recent recommendations for Stran & Company, Inc. and Fluent, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Stran & Company, Inc.	1	0	0	0	1.00
Fluent	0	1	1	0	2.50

Fluent has a consensus price target of $4.25, suggesting a potential upside of 110.40%. Given Fluent’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Fluent is more favorable than Stran & Company, Inc..

Volatility & Risk

Stran & Company, Inc. has a beta of 1.89, indicating that its stock price is 89% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Fluent has a beta of 1.03, indicating that its stock price is 3% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Stran & Company, Inc. and Fluent”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Stran & Company, Inc.	$116.19 million	0.34	-$750,000.00	$0.01	212.00
Fluent	$198.41 million	0.30	-$27.17 million	($0.87)	-2.32

Stran & Company, Inc. has higher earnings, but lower revenue than Fluent. Fluent is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Stran & Company, Inc., indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Profitability

This table compares Stran & Company, Inc. and Fluent’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Stran & Company, Inc.	0.33%	1.26%	0.73%
Fluent	-12.22%	-132.41%	-30.65%

Summary

Stran & Company, Inc. beats Fluent on 10 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Stran & Company, Inc.

Stran & Co., Inc. engages in the provision of promotional marketing and branded merchandise services. It offers promotional product, custom manufacturing, custom packaging, warehousing, and program management. The company was founded by Andrew Shape and Andrew Stranberg in 1994 and is headquartered in Quincy, MA.

About Fluent

Fluent, Inc. provides data-driven digital marketing services in the United States and internationally. The company operates through Fluent and All Other segments. It offers customer acquisition services by operating digital marketing campaigns, through which the company connects its advertiser clients with consumers. The company also delivers data and performance-based marketing executions to various consumer brands, direct marketers, and agencies across a range of industries, including financial products and services, media and entertainment, health and life sciences, retail and consumer, and staffing and recruitment. Fluent, Inc. was founded in 2010 and is headquartered in New York, New York.