Critical Contrast: TaskUs (NASDAQ:TASK) & HireQuest (NASDAQ:HQI)

TaskUs (NASDAQ:TASK) and HireQuest (NASDAQ:HQI) are both small-cap industrials companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their earnings, institutional ownership, profitability, analyst recommendations, risk, dividends and valuation.

Volatility & Risk

TaskUs has a beta of 1.75, indicating that its stock price is 75% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, HireQuest has a beta of 1.14, indicating that its stock price is 14% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of current ratings for TaskUs and HireQuest, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
TaskUs	2	4	1	1	2.12
HireQuest	0	1	2	0	2.67

TaskUs presently has a consensus target price of $9.60, suggesting a potential upside of 17.94%. HireQuest has a consensus target price of $19.00, suggesting a potential upside of 18.38%. Given HireQuest’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe HireQuest is more favorable than TaskUs.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

44.6% of TaskUs shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 12.0% of HireQuest shares are held by institutional investors. 31.9% of TaskUs shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 42.9% of HireQuest shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Profitability

This table compares TaskUs and HireQuest’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
TaskUs	8.75%	27.02%	11.58%
HireQuest	27.06%	16.35%	12.11%

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares TaskUs and HireQuest”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
TaskUs	$1.18 billion	0.63	$102.28 million	$1.16	7.02
HireQuest	$30.64 million	7.28	$6.33 million	$0.57	28.16

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

Summary

HireQuest beats TaskUs on 8 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About TaskUs

TaskUs, Inc. provides digital outsourcing services for companies in Philippines, the United States, India, and internationally. It offers digital customer experience that consists of omni-channel customer care services primarily delivered through non-voice digital channels; and other solutions, including experience and customer care services for new product or market launches, and customer acquisition solutions. The company also provides trust and safety solutions, such as review and disposition of user and advertiser generated visual, text, and audio content, which include removal or labeling of policy violating, and offensive or misleading content, as well as risk management, compliance, identity management, and fraud services; and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions that consist of data labeling, annotation, context relevance, and transcription services for training and tuning machine learning algorithms that enables to develop AI systems. It serves clients in various industry segments comprising e-commerce, FinTech, food delivery and ride sharing, gaming, technology, HealthTech, social media, and streaming media. The company was formerly known as TU TopCo, Inc. and changed its name to TaskUs, Inc. in December 2020. TaskUs, Inc. was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in New Braunfels, Texas.

About HireQuest

HireQuest, Inc. provides temporary staffing services in the United States. It offers staffing services, including direct-dispatch, executive search, consultant, unskilled and semi-skilled industrial and construction personnel, clerical and administrative personnel, and permanent placement services, as well as commercial and non-CDL drivers, and skilled personnel in the medical and dental industries. The company provides its services under the HireQuest Direct, HireQuest, SNelling, DriverQuest, HireQuest Health, Northbound Executive Search, and MRI trade names. It serves construction, recycling, warehousing, logistics, auctioneering, manufacturing, hospitality, landscaping, and retail industries, as well as dental practices. HireQuest, Inc. was founded in 2002 and is headquartered in Goose Creek, South Carolina.