Analyzing DarkIris (NASDAQ:DKI) and Via Transportation (NYSE:VIA)

Via Transportation (NYSE:VIA – Get Free Report) and DarkIris (NASDAQ:DKI – Get Free Report) are both small-cap services companies, but which is the better business? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their valuation, risk, earnings, dividends, institutional ownership, profitability and analyst recommendations.

Profitability

This table compares Via Transportation and DarkIris’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

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Insider & Institutional Ownership

74.4% of Via Transportation shares are owned by institutional investors. 39.3% of Via Transportation shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of current ratings and price targets for Via Transportation and DarkIris, as provided by MarketBeat.

Via Transportation presently has a consensus price target of $37.10, indicating a potential upside of 106.40%. Given Via Transportation’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Via Transportation is more favorable than DarkIris.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Via Transportation and DarkIris”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

DarkIris has lower revenue, but higher earnings than Via Transportation.

Summary

Via Transportation beats DarkIris on 7 of the 8 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Via Transportation

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Via transforms antiquated and siloed public transportation systems into smart, data-driven, and efficient digital networks. We are addressing a striking gap in the $545 billion global public transportation market. While billions of people across the globe rely on public transportation, this critical form of mobility has yet to meaningfully benefit from recent advances in technology. Buses still follow fixed routes and schedules planned years, if not decades ago, regardless of actual demand for their service. We can track our pizza from the moment it leaves the oven, but parents of more than 25 million children in the United States have no way of knowing when their child’s school bus will arrive. Some of our most vulnerable citizens, who depend on paratransit to access critical medical care, have no alternative to cumbersome phone reservations that must be made a day or more in advance. Government agencies and private organizations responsible for providing public transportation operate in a complex and demanding environment. They must maintain reliable and affordable service in the face of continuously changing and difficult to predict traffic and ridership patterns. The industry has historically had no option but to rely on fragmented technology systems with limited functional flexibility, aging infrastructure, and poor end-user experience. Rising operating costs and labor shortages have placed a growing strain on budgets. Via’s unified platform of cutting-edge software and technology-enabled services replaces fragmented legacy systems and consolidates operations across silos. When our customers adopt our platform, they can leapfrog years of technology neglect and drive meaningful efficiencies in their operations. Public transportation is deeply local in nature; our highly-configurable vertical stack supports the broad and diverse localization requirements of our customers. The use of machine learning and AI is intrinsic to our platform and underlies continuous improvement in the performance of our software. We offer a curated suite of technology-enabled services that enable customers to more easily adopt our software and benefit from lower-cost operations. In turn, the passengers who live in the communities we serve benefit from an improved rider experience and greater access to opportunity. Our journey to pioneer this category began over a decade ago. We were driven by a simple mission: to create public transportation systems that provide far greater access to jobs, healthcare, and education. Our vision was to reimagine public transit, from a static system of predetermined routes and schedules, to a dynamic network where routes are determined in real time based on passenger demand and data. In 2013, we launched in New York City what was, to our knowledge, the world’s first two-sided marketplace for on-demand shared rides in order to demonstrate the efficacy of this new mode of transportation and begin to build a rich foundation of data to power our algorithms. Out of this marketplace grew a platform so compelling that today it is utilized by hundreds of cities across more than 30 countries. Shaped by feedback from millions of passengers and drivers and informed by data from hundreds of millions of trips, we have developed a proven solution that is reshaping the public transportation landscape. Our platform has expanded well beyond its origins in on-demand shared rides — a new mode of mass transit now known to the world as microtransit — and today offers a comprehensive, end-to-end public transit solution: • Planning and scheduling: Our software enables cities to plan smarter transit networks. By combining multiple disparate operational and demographic data sets, and leveraging billions of data points, our tools provide insights that allow city planners to immediately quantify the impact of potential changes to their transit network. In the Dallas suburbs, the Denton County Transit Authority (“DCTA”) was able to use Via’s planning tools to identify underperforming bus lines and replace them with microtransit. This helped DCTA grow their monthly ridership by approximately five times without increasing operating budget. • Operating Software: We provide a deep, cloud-based vertical platform with the necessary range of tools to manage the operations of dynamic and fixed-route forms of mobility, including microtransit, paratransit, school transport, and non-emergency medical transport. Our technology stack offers modules to digitize and automate workstreams across areas such as program eligibility, government reporting and compliance, real-time dispatch and reservations, and customer support. For example, North Carolina’s GoRaleigh was able to reduce driver overtime by approximately 50% once they switched to Via’s software. • Technology-enabled services: Many of our government customers require additional support in order to adopt modern technology. As a critical part of our go-to-market strategy, we have embedded into our platform a suite of services, vertically integrated into our technology, that complements our powerful software. The services we provide lower barriers to adoption, simplify compliance with complex procurements, support local integration with existing infrastructure, and ultimately meaningfully enhance our ability to deliver successful outcomes. Customers can select from an à la carte menu of services or a full turnkey solution. Examples of services we provide include fleet and driver management, autonomous and electric vehicle management, digital marketing, call center support, and more. In Sarasota, Florida, Breeze Transit used Via to procure a flexible fleet of rental vehicles and independent contractor drivers, allowing them to achieve an approximately 50% reduction in average cost per ride. • Passenger tools: We provide consumer-grade applications for passengers to seamlessly plan, book, and pay for their transit journeys. Our customers have a choice of passenger facing tools. Using Via’s white-labeled apps, governments can engage local audiences with best-in-class, frictionless user experience that faithfully represents their brand. We also offer Citymapper, one of the world’s premier journey planning MaaS (Mobility-as-a-Service) apps, which is used by millions globally. Citymapper achieves arrival / departure time estimates that are, on average, 15% more accurate than industry norms. • Data and insights: We are often able to unlock unprecedented data insights for our customers, allowing them, for example, to understand changing demand patterns and rapidly adapt operational plans to performance reality. Our integrated planning, operating, and passenger tools provide the end-to-end data necessary for the holistic optimization of entire transit systems. Sioux Area Metro was able to increase ridership by 10% while reducing average cost per ride by 13% by leveraging Via’s platform to optimize their network. We are in the early innings of transforming an enormous addressable market. For the quarter ended June 30, 2025, we provided solutions for 689 customers in over 30 countries. This represents approximately 1% of the total addressable market in North America and Western Europe, which we estimate to be approximately 63,000 customers, based on a report commissioned by us from a major consulting firm. Our potential for growth is further evidenced by our current penetration: at our current revenue, we capture less than 1% of our Serviceable Addressable Market (“SAM”) in our two core geographies of North America and Western Europe. More than 90% of our revenue comes from government customers, in most cases represented by a municipality or a local transit agency or authority. We also serve blue-chip corporate and university customers who leverage Via’s platform to power campus transportation solutions. Our founder-led executive team is unique in its long tenure and alignment of mission. We deeply understand the technical and operational challenges that our customers and their end-users face every day. Thanks to our deep knowledge of the complex needs of government customers, we have developed a go-to-market strategy that allows us to efficiently and effectively sell to our customers at scale. We employ a consultative sales process, leveraging our technology to model the impact of our solutions to our customers, allowing them to gain confidence that change can be low-risk and high reward. When customers adopt our platform, the measurable increase in efficiency and ridership can generate a virtuous cycle that leads to growth in contract scope and value over time. Our Platform Net Revenue Retention Rate averaged over 120% in each of the last two years. And, as transit agencies are in many cases part of collaborative multi-government coalitions such as regional planning authorities, customer references are a major driver of our growth. We often see the adoption of our platform by one city or agency quickly leading to adoption by similar customers in the surrounding area. The unique value of our platform is demonstrated by our rapid and sustained growth. From 2021 to 2024, our revenue grew from $100.0 million to $337.6 million, representing a compound annual growth rate of 50%. Our revenue was $248.9 million and $337.6 million for the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2024, respectively, representing a year-over-year increase of 36%. For the six months ended June 30, 2025, our revenue was $205.8 million. Our Platform revenue was $237.3 million and $330.8 million in the year ended December 31, 2023 and 2024, respectively, representing a year-over-year increase of 39%. For the six months ended June 30, 2025, our Platform revenue was $205.8 million. Our Platform segment represented 95%, 98% and 100% of our revenue in the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2024, and the six months ended June 30, 2025, respectively. In addition to our Platform segment, we have one legacy operating segment (which we refer to as our Legacy segment). The Legacy segment had included our historical on-demand shared rides marketplace, which we ceased to operate in 2021, and includes a legacy operational contract, which terminated in June 2024. We no longer earn any revenue from our Legacy segment. Our Platform Annual Run-Rate Revenue of $366.7 million as of December 31, 2024 represented an increase of 37% from December 31, 2023. Our Platform Annual Run-Rate Revenue of $428.5 million as of June 30, 2025 represented an increase of 34% from June 30, 2024. Platform Annual Run-Rate Revenue as of the last date in any quarter represents our Platform revenue for that quarter multiplied by four. Our principal executive offices are located in New York, NY.

About DarkIris

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DarkIris Inc. is a holding company incorporated as an exempted company on May 31, 2024 under the laws of the Cayman Islands. We operate substantially all of our business through our subsidiaries in Hong Kong, namely Quantum Arts Co., Limited (“Quantum”) and Hongkong Stellar Wisdom Co., Limited (“Stellar”). Operated in Hong Kong, we are a comprehensive technology enterprise engaged in the development, publishing and operating of mobile digital games via various third-party digital storefronts. Our activities encompass including game design, programming and graphics, as well as distribution and operation of mobile games on various platforms. We leverage on (i) the innovative, creative and technical expertise of the gaming industry communities in Hong Kong and (ii) the multicultural environment and diversified interests of mobile game players in these regions. Our goal is to create and promote a broader array of engaging, immersive, and captivating mobile game genres to cater to a global audience of gamers. Over the past seven years, we have successfully released numerous popular games. We are committed to consistently demonstrating exceptional strength and unique allure across diverse sectors of games, leading the way in pioneering advancements within the gaming industry. Quantum is our operating subsidiary in Hong Kong dedicated to games development and publishing, which is committed to bringing unique gaming experiences to game players around the world. It has a team of game developers who are not only technically proficient, but also have keen market insights to quickly capture and respond to the diverse needs of the global game market. Historically, Turing was our operating subsidiary in Guangzhou, PRC, committed to mobile game publishing and management of our intellectual property resources, and successfully published a broad range of games. In addition, Turing has always operated as a cost center of the Company, relying on personnel for research and development to support the overall business of the group. To align with the nature of our business, in which the majority of our revenue was generated overseas and the revenue generated from Turing only accounted for less than 3% of the Company, improve the operation efficiency, and lower our operation costs, we began shifting our business focus toward overseas operations centered in Hong Kong, starting from early 2025. During the transition period, all the software copyrights and trademarks owned by Turing have been or in the process of transferring to Quantum. On May 14, 2025, Quantum entered into a share transfer agreement with Xiamen Yusanjia, an unaffiliated third party, to transfer all outstanding shares of Turing, at the price approximately at RMB2.0 million (US$268,000) based on its unaudited net assets as of April 30, 2025. After the Disposition, our operation remains the same. Over the past seven years, we have rapidly grown into a mobile game publisher with significant influence in popular game categories such as card games, action role-playing games (“ARPGs”), and massively multiplayer online games (“MMOs”) by virtue of its deep insight into the global game market. Our core product offerings are: . Games Development. We develop, market and distribute our self-developed mobile games; and . Games Publishing and Operation. We publish and operate our self-developed mobile games and mobile games we license from other game developers. Our principal office is in Sheung Wan, Hong Kong.

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