MarketAxess (NASDAQ:MKTX) vs. Moelis & Company (NYSE:MC) Head to Head Survey

Moelis & Company (NYSE:MC) and MarketAxess (NASDAQ:MKTX) are both mid-cap finance companies, but which is the better business? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their risk, analyst recommendations, earnings, dividends, profitability, institutional ownership and valuation.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent recommendations and price targets for Moelis & Company and MarketAxess, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Moelis & Company	0	10	2	0	2.17
MarketAxess	1	7	4	0	2.25

Moelis & Company currently has a consensus price target of $76.33, indicating a potential upside of 15.77%. MarketAxess has a consensus price target of $200.40, indicating a potential upside of 11.73%. Given Moelis & Company’s higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Moelis & Company is more favorable than MarketAxess.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Moelis & Company and MarketAxess”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Moelis & Company	$1.52 billion	3.40	$233.04 million	$2.94	22.43
MarketAxess	$846.27 million	7.88	$246.63 million	$6.66	26.93

MarketAxess has lower revenue, but higher earnings than Moelis & Company. Moelis & Company is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than MarketAxess, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Profitability

This table compares Moelis & Company and MarketAxess’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Moelis & Company	15.36%	43.19%	18.91%
MarketAxess	29.14%	20.88%	14.30%

Institutional and Insider Ownership

91.5% of Moelis & Company shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 99.0% of MarketAxess shares are owned by institutional investors. 6.4% of Moelis & Company shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 0.7% of MarketAxess shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Dividends

Moelis & Company pays an annual dividend of $2.60 per share and has a dividend yield of 3.9%. MarketAxess pays an annual dividend of $3.04 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.7%. Moelis & Company pays out 88.4% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. MarketAxess pays out 45.6% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Moelis & Company has raised its dividend for 1 consecutive years and MarketAxess has raised its dividend for 2 consecutive years.

Risk & Volatility

Moelis & Company has a beta of 1.87, suggesting that its share price is 87% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, MarketAxess has a beta of 0.97, suggesting that its share price is 3% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

MarketAxess beats Moelis & Company on 10 of the 17 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Moelis & Company

Moelis & Co. operates as a holding company. It engages in the provision of financial advisory, capital raising and asset management services to a client base including corporations, governments, sovereign wealth funds and financial sponsors. The firm focuses on clients including large public multinational corporations, middle market private companies, financial sponsors, entrepreneurs and governments. The company was founded by Kenneth David Moelis, Navid Mahmoodzadegan, Jeffrey Raich and Elizabeth Ann Crain in July 2007 and is headquartered in New York, NY.

About MarketAxess

MarketAxess Holdings Inc., together with its subsidiaries, operates an electronic trading platform for institutional investor and broker-dealer companies worldwide. The company offers trading technology that provides liquidity access in U.S. high-grade bonds, U.S. high-yield bonds, emerging market debt, eurobonds, municipal bonds, U.S. government bonds, and other fixed-income securities; and executes bond trades between and among institutional investor and broker-dealer clients in an all-to-all anonymous trading environment for corporate bonds through its Open Trading protocols. It also provides trading-related products and services, including composite+ pricing and other market data products to assist clients with trading decisions; auto-execution and other execution services for clients requiring specialized workflow solutions; connectivity solutions that facilitate straight-through processing; and technology services to optimize trading environments. In addition, the company offers various pre-and post-trade services, such as trade matching, trade publication, regulatory transaction reporting, and market and reference data across a range of fixed-income and other products. MarketAxess Holdings Inc. was incorporated in 2000 and is headquartered in New York, New York.