When comparing two stocks, I don't think you should be using the price per share as a reason to buy one over the other. Depending upon the market cap, a $1.70 stock can be considerably more overpriced than a $26 per share stock.
When you are comparing relative sizes of company's, you should really be looking at market capitalization (stock price x outstanding shares). In this case, obviously Moneygram is considerably smaller than Western Union, but it is by a margin of $140 million to $20 billion (Western Union is 143 times larger)
One of the major reasons this particular company's stock has declined is because it got wrapped up in investing in the mortgage backed securities. They took about a $300 million hit in Q1 (total market cap of this company is $140 million). It appears that they have sold off the majority of these investments, but still have a considerable amount (approximately $500 million as of March 31, 2008) on their balance sheet.
Personally, based on their investment portfolio, unless you are the type of investor who loves a lot of risk and who is plowing money into financial stocks right now, I would stay away from this one. Might be too conservative of a take, but that is just my two cents.
In addition, I am assuming you saw the following article, but in case you didn't:
https://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080808/earns_moneygram_international.html?.v=1
"We are maintaining our 'Hold' rating on the stock largely due to a multitude of risks that investors in the company take on with MGI," Rana said in an investor note, using the company's New York Stock Exchange ticker symbol. He named potential further investment losses, an ongoing SEC investigation, several investor lawsuits, and potential significant equity dilution of the minority shareholders, among the issues investors should watch."
Good luck though in whatever you decide
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