Head-To-Head Contrast: Bowman Consulting Group (NASDAQ:BWMN) & SPS Commerce (NASDAQ:SPSC)

Bowman Consulting Group (NASDAQ:BWMN) and SPS Commerce (NASDAQ:SPSC) are both business services companies, but which is the better business? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their valuation, dividends, profitability, institutional ownership, risk, analyst recommendations and earnings.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings for Bowman Consulting Group and SPS Commerce, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Bowman Consulting Group	1	2	3	0	2.33
SPS Commerce	1	7	2	1	2.27

Bowman Consulting Group presently has a consensus target price of $47.50, suggesting a potential upside of 39.42%. SPS Commerce has a consensus target price of $76.45, suggesting a potential upside of 44.86%. Given SPS Commerce’s higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe SPS Commerce is more favorable than Bowman Consulting Group.

Volatility and Risk

Bowman Consulting Group has a beta of 1.36, meaning that its share price is 36% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, SPS Commerce has a beta of 0.58, meaning that its share price is 42% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares Bowman Consulting Group and SPS Commerce’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Bowman Consulting Group	2.02%	3.98%	1.84%
SPS Commerce	11.92%	12.43%	10.37%

Insider & Institutional Ownership

63.2% of Bowman Consulting Group shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 99.0% of SPS Commerce shares are owned by institutional investors. 17.5% of Bowman Consulting Group shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 0.6% of SPS Commerce shares are owned by company 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.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Bowman Consulting Group and SPS Commerce”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Bowman Consulting Group	$490.02 million	1.22	$12.85 million	$0.60	56.78
SPS Commerce	$751.51 million	2.58	$93.34 million	$2.40	21.99

SPS Commerce has higher revenue and earnings than Bowman Consulting Group. SPS Commerce is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Bowman Consulting Group, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Summary

SPS Commerce beats Bowman Consulting Group on 10 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Bowman Consulting Group

Bowman Consulting Group Ltd. provides a range of real estate, energy, infrastructure, and environmental management solutions in the United States. It offers civil and site engineering services, such as conceptual land planning, environmental consulting and permitting, planning/zoning and entitlements, roadway and highway designs, erosion and sediment designs, stormwater management designs, construction administration, traffic studies, floodplain studies, and utility relocation designs; and commissioning and energy efficiency services comprise construction observation, direct systems functional performance testing, system development readiness checklist, post occupancy review, review of construction documents, deferred/seasonal functional testing, final commissioning report, and commissioning review of submittals. The company also provides construction management services, including constructability review, value engineering, budgeting and cost estimating, interagency and utility coordination, onsite observation and report evaluation, public communication and outreach, and resident engineer services, as well as bid solicitation, documentation, and preparation services; and environmental consulting services consisting of wetlands and waters of the U.S. delineations, natural resources inventories, wildlife and vegetation surveys, threatened and endangered species surveys, endangered species conservation and management, wetland creation and enhancement design, NEPA documentation, section 404/401 permitting and compliance, NPDES permitting, and phase I environmental site assessment. In addition, it offers landscape architecture, land procurement and right-of-way acquisition, structural engineering, surveying and geospatial engineering, and transportation and water resources engineering services, as well as mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineering services. The company was incorporated in 1995 and is headquartered in Reston, Virginia.

About SPS Commerce

SPS Commerce, Inc. provides cloud-based supply chain management solutions in the United States and internationally. It offers solutions through the SPS Commerce, a cloud-based platform that enhances the way retailers, grocers, suppliers, distributors, and logistics firms manage and fulfill omnichannel orders, optimize sell-through performance, and automate new trading relationships. The company also provides Fulfillment, an electronic data interchange solution that scales as a business grows, where companies use a single system to manage orders and logistics from various sales channels, including wholesale, eCommerce, and marketplaces; and Analytics product that enables organizations to enhance visibility into how products are selling through a single connection across various sales channels, including wholesale, eCommerce, and marketplaces, as well as enhances access and usage of sales and inventory data through a combination of analytics applications, network of connections, and industry-leading expertise. In addition, it offers various complimentary products, such as assortment product, which simplifies the communication of robust, accurate item data by automatically translating item attributes, and hierarchies; and community product that allows organizations to accelerate digitization of their supply chain and improve collaboration with suppliers through change management and onboarding programs. The company was formerly known as St. Paul Software, Inc. and changed its name to SPS Commerce, Inc. in May 2001. SPS Commerce, Inc. was incorporated in 1987 and is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota.