Fundamentals · Published August 5, 2026

How to Compare Two Stocks on the Same Yardstick

By Slowio

Two companies in the same business can be genuinely hard to rank: different reporting currencies, different fiscal calendars, different disclosure styles. Most side-by-side comparisons quietly fall apart because the numbers being compared were not computed the same way.

The fix is mechanical rather than clever: put both companies on one yardstick — identical score definitions, identical ratio formulas, identical fiscal-year alignment — and let the differences that remain be real ones. Below, the method applied to Adyen and PayPal, two payment companies with very different profiles.

Charts and figures are computed from Slowio’s data snapshot as of 2026-08-05 and are refreshed when the article is next updated.
Feature spotlight · Comparisons

Two companies, same yardstick

Reading two annual reports side by side takes an afternoon. The Comparisons page computes the same four scores and the same ratios, the same way, for every company Slowio follows — so a Dutch payments platform and a US one line up on a single yardstick. Adyen NV next to PayPal Holdings Inc, from the latest fiscal year on file:

ADYEN.AS · Adyen NV
Technology · Software - Infrastructure · Netherlands
59
Global
37
Value
80
Health
83
Effic.
41.0
P/E avg
5.5
Price / Book
22.2%
ROE avg
PYPL.US · PayPal Holdings Inc
Financial Services · Credit Services · USA
63
Global
58
Value
60
Health
75
Effic.
15.3
P/E avg
2.8
Price / Book
20.4%
ROE avg

Any ratio can be charted for both companies at once. Return on equity, for instance — the same profitability yardstick regardless of reporting currency:

Bar chart: return on equity by fiscal year, 2018-2025, ADYEN.AS vs PYPL.US
Adyen NV and PayPal Holdings Inc — return on equity by fiscal year (2018–2025), overlaid on one chart exactly as the Comparisons page draws it.

The numbers tell a price-versus-growth story: both businesses earn a comparable return on equity (22.2% vs 20.4%, 5-year basis), but Adyen NV grew earnings per share +31% a year over five years against +9% for PayPal Holdings Inc — and the market prices that difference at 41.0× versus 15.3× average earnings. Whether either price is justified is exactly the kind of question the page is built to frame.

The same yardstick extends to how the two move: over 180-day returns since 2019, Adyen NV and PayPal Holdings Inc correlate at +0.83 — and the Correlations tab puts both next to the four big asset classes (US equities, long-term and inflation-linked Treasuries, gold):

Chart matrix: pairwise 180-day return scatters, histograms and correlation values for ADYEN.AS, PYPL.US, SPY, TLT, TIP and GLD
Every pair of the six — scatter below the diagonal, return histograms on it, correlation above: 1,887 overlapping 180-day observations, 2019–2026, each series in its listing currency.
Scatter chart with marginal histograms: ADYEN.AS versus PYPL.US 180-day returns with regression line
The two companies against each other — correlation +0.83; the dashed line is the fitted trend.
Open the comparison →

The link opens the Comparisons page with ADYEN.AS and PYPL.US preselected — any other company can be added from the dropdown.

Slowio is an educational research tool, not financial advice. Figures are computed from Slowio’s data snapshot at build time and may not reflect the latest market data — nothing in this email is a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Do your own research.

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