Analyzing Moody’s (NYSE:MCO) & Amber International (NASDAQ:AMBR)

Amber International (NASDAQ:AMBR) and Moody’s (NYSE:MCO) are both finance companies, but which is the better stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, risk, earnings, institutional ownership, dividends, valuation and profitability.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent recommendations and price targets for Amber International and Moody’s, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Amber International	1	0	1	0	2.00
Moody’s	0	5	13	1	2.79

Moody’s has a consensus target price of $555.12, suggesting a potential upside of 22.02%. Given Moody’s’ stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Moody’s is more favorable than Amber International.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

92.1% of Moody’s shares are held by institutional investors. 15.1% of Amber International shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 0.1% of Moody’s shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Amber International and Moody’s”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Amber International	$66.09 million	2.54	$3.75 million	$0.01	178.00
Moody’s	$7.72 billion	10.21	$2.46 billion	$15.77	28.85

Moody’s has higher revenue and earnings than Amber International. Moody’s is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Amber International, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Profitability

This table compares Amber International and Moody’s’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Amber International	-0.27%	1.07%	0.42%
Moody’s	34.25%	80.35%	19.38%

Volatility and Risk

Amber International has a beta of 0.66, suggesting that its stock price is 34% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Moody’s has a beta of 1.34, suggesting that its stock price is 34% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Moody’s beats Amber International on 13 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Amber International

iClick Interactive Asia Group Limited, together with its subsidiaries, provides online marketing services in the People’s Republic of China and internationally. It offers iAudience, an audience identification solution that allows marketers to search, identify, and customize their targeted audience to generate or enhance brand awareness; iAccess and iActivation, an audience engagement and activation solution tailored for brand awareness-driven and performance-driven campaigns; iExpress, the lite version of iAccess solution for small and medium-sized enterprises; iNsights, an online campaign results monitoring and measurement solution; and iExperience, a content creation solution. The company also provides mobile marketing solutions, which are non-search engine marketing solutions to identify, engage, and activate audience on mobile apps, as well as monitor and measure the results of online marketing activities on such channels; and other solutions that focuses on identifying, engaging, and activating audience on non-mobile app content distribution channels comprising PC banner displays, PC video advertisements, and search engine marketing. In addition, it offers enterprise solutions that help clients collate information from various consumer touchpoints and integrate them into a single data management platform to drive sales and marketing decisions to new retail, online education, real estate, and other sectors. The company sells its solutions by entering into sales contracts with entities or marketing agencies, including marketing campaign contracts. It has a strategic collaboration with Tencent International Business Group to co-develop Smart Retail and Smart Travel SaaS solutions. The company was formerly known as Optimix Media Asia Limited and changed its name to iClick Interactive Asia Group Limited in March 2017. iClick Interactive Asia Group Limited was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in Quarry Bay, Hong Kong.

About Moody’s

Moody’s Corporation operates as an integrated risk assessment firm worldwide. It operates in two segments, Moody’s Analytics and Moody’s Investors Services. The Moody’s Analytics segment develops a range of products and services that support the risk management activities of institutional participants in financial markets. It also offers credit research, credit models and analytics, economics data and models, and structured finance solutions; data sets on companies and securities; and SaaS solutions supporting banking, insurance, and know your customer workflows. The Moody’s Investors Service segment publishes credit ratings and provides assessment services on various debt obligations, programs and facilities, and entities that issue such obligations, such as various corporate, financial institution, and governmental obligations, as well as structured finance securities. The company was formerly known as Dun and Bradstreet Company and changed its name to Moody’s Corporation in September 2000. Moody’s Corporation was founded in 1900 and is headquartered in New York, New York.