Both Grand Canyon Education Inc. (NASDAQ:LOPE) and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company (NASDAQ:HMHC) are Education & Training Services companies, competing one another. We will contrast their dividends, institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, profitability, risk, earnings and valuation.

Earnings & Valuation

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Grand Canyon Education Inc.	845.50M	6.64	229.01M	4.73	25.11
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company	1.32B	0.71	137.46M	-1.21	0.00

Table 1 shows gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation of the two companies.

Profitability

Table 2 represents Grand Canyon Education Inc. (NASDAQ:LOPE) and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company (NASDAQ:HMHC)’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Grand Canyon Education Inc.	27.09%	20.3%	17.1%
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company	-10.41%	-32.4%	-9.9%

Volatility & Risk

Grand Canyon Education Inc. is 2.00% more volatile than Standard and Poor’s 500 because the company has a beta of 1.02. In other hand, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company has beta of 0.83 which is 17.00% less volatile than Standard and Poor’s 500.

Liquidity

The Current Ratio and a Quick Ratio of Grand Canyon Education Inc. are 3.8 and 3.8. Competitively, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company has 1.5 and 1.2 for Current and Quick Ratio. Grand Canyon Education Inc.’s better ability to pay short and long-term obligations than Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company.

Analyst Ratings

Grand Canyon Education Inc. and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company Recommendations and Ratings are available on the next table.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Grand Canyon Education Inc.	0	0	3	3.00
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company	0	0	1	3.00

$136 is Grand Canyon Education Inc.’s average target price while its potential upside is 15.77%. Meanwhile, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company’s average target price is $11, while its potential upside is 45.70%. The results provided earlier shows that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company appears more favorable than Grand Canyon Education Inc., based on analyst belief.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

Institutional investors owned 0% of Grand Canyon Education Inc. shares and 96.8% of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company shares. Grand Canyon Education Inc.’s share owned by insiders are 1.3%. On the other hand, insiders owned about 0.2% of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company’s shares.

Performance

In this table we show the Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Half Yearly, Yearly and YTD Performance of both pretenders.

	Performance (W)	Performance (M)	Performance (Q)	Performance (HY)	Performance (Y)	Performance (YTD)
Grand Canyon Education Inc.	2.33%	27.82%	-1.21%	-0.51%	22.6%	23.57%
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company	-8.3%	-23.02%	-15.25%	25.94%	21.2%	-9.03%

For the past year Grand Canyon Education Inc. has 23.57% stronger performance while Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company has -9.03% weaker performance.

Summary

Grand Canyon Education Inc. beats on 10 of the 12 factors Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company.

Grand Canyon Education, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides postsecondary education services in the United States and Canada. It offers approximately 200 graduate and undergraduate degree programs and certificates across nine colleges online and on ground through campus in Phoenix, Arizona; leased facilities; and facilities owned by third party employers. As of December 31, 2016, it had 81,900 students enrolled in its programs. The company was founded in 1949 and is based in Phoenix, Arizona.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company provides content, services, and technology solutions for educational institutions and consumers. It primarily delivers kindergarten through 12th grade (K-12) education content. The company operates in two segments, Education and Trade Publishing. The Education segment offers various comprehensive curriculum programs that focus on reading, literature and language arts, mathematics, science, world languages, and social studies for the pre-K-12 market; and comprehensive intervention solutions for assisting English language learners, as well as products providing incremental instruction in a particular subject area. It also provides professional books and developmental resources to pre-K-12 teachers; and consulting services, such as learning resources that are supported with professional development in classroom assessment, digital implementation, teacher effectiveness, and high-impact leadership. In addition, this segment offers district and state level solutions focused on cognitive and formative assessment tools, and platform solutions; sells educational solutions; and provides early learning services. The Trade Publishing segment develops, markets, and sells consumer books in print and digital format, as well as licenses book rights to other publishers and electronic businesses. This segment provides a library of general interest, young readers, and reference materials, including adult and childrenÂ’s fiction and non-fiction books. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company serves approximately 50 million students in approximately 150 countries worldwide. The company was formerly known as HMH Holdings (Delaware), Inc. and changed its name to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company in October 2013. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company was founded in 1832 and is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.