CCRN vs AMN Stock Comparison: AI Score, Valuation, Performance and Upside
CCRN (Cross Country Healthcare) and AMN (AMN Healthcare) are both travel healthcare staffing companies navigating the same post-COVID normalization cycle — both experienced extraordinary revenue and margin peaks during 2020-2022 when hospital demand for travel nurses skyrocketed, and both face severe post-COVID revenue decline as hospitals return to normal staffing patterns. AMN is significantly larger with managed service programs providing more contractual stability; Cross Country is smaller with more exposure to spot market travel nurse pricing.
CCRN vs AMN is mid-size travel healthcare staffing recovery play (Cross Country Healthcare's travel nurse and allied health platform recovering from post-COVID volume and rate normalization with technology-enabled matching and diversified staffing segments) versus largest U.S. healthcare staffing company with managed service programs (AMN Healthcare's scale and hospital system relationships providing more contractual revenue stability during normalization while both companies navigate the multi-year cycle bottom) — smaller more exposed staffing versus largest with managed services.
AMN holds the edge across 3 of 5 key metrics in this comparison. AMN leads on both 1-year return (+38.61%) and forward P/E (28.53x vs 47.04x for CCRN), a relatively favorable combination of momentum and valuation. Analyst consensus implies meaningfully more upside for CCRN (-4.33%) than for AMN (-9.16%).
- →Believe the travel nurse cycle has bottomed and that Cross Country's recovery will be faster than consensus expects given the structural nursing shortage supporting above-trend staffing volumes
- →Accept Cross Country's smaller scale and higher spot market exposure as offset by a lower valuation multiple versus AMN that may provide more relative upside in a staffing upcycle
- →Value Cross Country's technology investment as enabling more efficient matching that reduces cost-to-fill versus traditional staffing competitors
- →Want the largest, most diversified healthcare staffing company with managed service programs providing more contractual revenue stability than pure spot-market travel nurse competitors
- →Value AMN's physician locum tenens business as an additional revenue stream with a different cyclical profile than travel nursing that provides some earnings diversification
- →Believe AMN's scale gives it sustainable advantages in managed service vendor relationships with major hospital systems that smaller competitors cannot replicate
| Metric | CCRN | AMN |
|---|---|---|
| AI score | 24.3 | 26.0 |
| AI rank | #3182 | #2663 |
| Latest close | $13.17 | $30.98 |
| 1M return | +0.53% | +15.08% |
| 6M return | +64.63% | +90.65% |
| 1Y return | -7.58% | +38.61% |
How much would $10,000 be worth today if invested at the start of each period, with all dividends reinvested?
| Period | CCRN | AMN |
|---|---|---|
| 1Y ago | $9.24K (-7.6%) started 2025-06-18 | $13.86K (+38.6%) started 2025-06-18 |
| 5Y ago | $7.39K (-26.1%) started 2021-06-18 | $3.3K (-67.0%) started 2021-06-18 |
| 10Y ago | $9.52K (-4.8%) started 2016-06-20 | $7.83K (-21.7%) started 2016-06-20 |
Hypothetical — past performance does not guarantee future results.
| Metric | CCRN | AMN |
|---|---|---|
| Market cap | $425.48M | $1.2B |
| Trailing P/E | N/A | N/A |
| Forward P/E | 47.04 | 28.53 |
| Price/Sales | 0.42 | 0.35 |
| EV/Revenue | 0.32 | 0.42 |
| Analyst target | $12.60 | $28.14 |
| Target upside | -4.33% | -9.16% |
| Metric | CCRN | AMN |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue growth | -17.80% | 99.90% |
| Earnings growth | N/A | N/A |
| EPS growth | N/A | N/A |
| FCF margin | +4.70% | +19.64% |
| Operating margin | N/A | N/A |
| Profit margin | -9.84% | -0.95% |
| ROIC proxy | -26.98% | -4.54% |
| Return on equity | -26.98% | -4.54% |
| Dividend yield | 0.00% | 0.00% |
| Beta | 0.45 | 0.44 |
| Debt/equity | 0.65 | 108.99 |
| Current ratio | 3.29 | 1.09 |
| Quick ratio | 3.20 | 0.96 |
Lower drawdown and smaller single-period drops generally indicate a smoother ride, though they do not guarantee lower future risk.
| Period | Metric | CCRN | AMN |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1Y | Growth | -7.58% | +38.61% |
| CAGR | -7.58% | +38.64% | |
| Sharpe ratio | 0.05 | 0.74 | |
| Max drawdown | 47.16% | 32.44% | |
| Max daily drop | 20.32% | 16.79% | |
| Max wkly drop | 29.43% | 22.01% | |
| 5Y | Growth | -26.05% | -66.99% |
| CAGR | -5.86% | -19.88% | |
| Sharpe ratio | 0.10 | -0.25 | |
| Max drawdown | 80.24% | 88.11% | |
| Max daily drop | 20.32% | 29.01% | |
| Max wkly drop | 29.43% | 41.67% | |
| 10Y | Growth | -4.77% | -21.67% |
| CAGR | -0.49% | -2.41% | |
| Sharpe ratio | 0.19 | 0.09 | |
| Max drawdown | 80.24% | 88.11% | |
| Max daily drop | 31.62% | 29.01% | |
| Max wkly drop | 32.02% | 41.67% |
| Category | CCRN | AMN |
|---|---|---|
| Company | Cross Country Healthcare, Inc. | AMN Healthcare Services, Inc. |
| Sector | Industrials - Healthcare Staffing | Industrials - Healthcare Staffing |
| Industry | N/A | N/A |
| Core business | Cross Country Healthcare is a leading healthcare staffing company providing temporary and permanent staffing solutions — primarily travel nurses (nurses who take 13-week contracts at hospitals nationwide), allied health professionals (physical therapists, imaging technicians, pharmacy technicians), and physician staffing. Cross Country operates a Talent Acquisition strategy connecting healthcare professionals with hospital and health system clients through technology-enabled matching. | AMN Healthcare is the largest U.S. healthcare staffing company — providing travel nurse, allied health, physician locum tenens, and healthcare language services. AMN's scale enables it to work with virtually all major hospital systems (Kaiser Permanente, HCA, Ascension, CommonSpirit) as a preferred or exclusive vendor. AMN's workforce solutions include traditional staffing, managed service programs (managing hospitals' entire contingent labor), and predictive workforce analytics. AMN is approximately 3-4x larger than Cross Country by revenue. |
| Investor focus | Investors track Cross Country's revenue per travel nurse contract, nurse hours worked, the ratio of bill rate to pay rate (spread), client retention, and earnings recovery from the post-COVID travel nurse demand normalization. | Investors track AMN's travel nurse volume and revenue per nurse, managed service program expansion (higher-value, more sticky workforce solutions), physician locum tenens recovery, and operating leverage from AMN's scale advantages versus smaller competitors. |
- →Travel nurse market structural tailwinds from nursing shortage — the U.S. has a persistent nursing shortage projected to worsen; hospital capacity constraints and expanding healthcare demand create structural demand for flexible travel nurse staffing above permanent levels
- →Technology platform for nurse matching and placement — Cross Country's technology tools (ConnectMyHealth, staffing apps) improve the efficiency of matching nurses to available contracts, reducing time-to-fill and improving nurse satisfaction
- →Diversification across nurse, allied health, and physician staffing — multiple staffing segments reduce dependence on any single healthcare professional category
- →Market leadership scale creates preferred vendor status with major health systems — AMN's size enables hospitals to designate AMN as a primary or sole workforce management vendor; managed service programs lock in multi-year contracts with minimum volumes
- →Managed service programs are higher value and more defensive than spot staffing — AMN's managed service providers (MSPs) manage the entire contingent labor process for large hospital systems; this embedded relationship is much stickier than transactional staffing
- →Physician locum tenens and language services provide revenue diversification — AMN's physician staffing and language interpretation services offer revenue sources less correlated to travel nurse market cycles
- →Post-COVID travel nurse rate normalization severe — travel nurse bill rates tripled during COVID (hospitals paid premium rates for emergency pandemic staffing); bill rates have normalized significantly from COVID peaks, compressing revenue per nurse; revenue declined dramatically from 2022 peaks
- →Hospital staffing budget pressure driving vendor consolidation — hospitals that relied on expensive travel nurses during COVID are aggressively reducing contract labor costs; some hospitals prefer managing fewer vendor relationships (benefiting largest staffers) while others build their own internal float pools
- →Competition from direct-to-nurse platform startups — digital staffing platforms (Aya Healthcare, Trusted Health, ShiftKey) are challenging traditional staffing agencies with technology-first, lower-cost models
- →COVID travel nurse spike created revenue cliff in normalization — AMN's revenue peaked at $5.7B in 2022 during COVID; normalization back to 2019-level volumes represents a severe revenue decline from peak; the magnitude of normalization was larger than anticipated
- →Hospital system clients pushing for permanent workforce solutions rather than expensive travel staff — the $15,000-25,000 weekly cost of travel nurses during COVID shock health systems into investments in permanent staff, internal float pools, and international nurse recruitment; permanent solutions reduce long-term travel nurse demand
- →Managed service program pricing pressure as market normalizes — when hospital demand for contingent labor declines, AMN's managed service clients renegotiate terms; pricing pressure at scale is harder to resist for AMN given client concentration
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