Comparing C3.ai (AI) & The Competition

C3.ai (NYSE:AI) is one of 953 publicly-traded companies in the “Software” industry, but how does it weigh in compared to its competitors? We will compare C3.ai to similar businesses based on the strength of its institutional ownership, valuation, analyst recommendations, risk, profitability, earnings and dividends.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings and target prices for C3.ai and its competitors, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
C3.ai	7	5	2	0	1.64
C3.ai Competitors	5724	21431	44705	1492	2.57

C3.ai presently has a consensus target price of $9.62, indicating a potential downside of 16.54%. As a group, “Software” companies have a potential upside of 28.13%. Given C3.ai’s competitors stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe C3.ai has less favorable growth aspects than its competitors.

Dividends

C3.ai pays an annual dividend of $0.90 per share and has a dividend yield of 7.8%. C3.ai pays out -29.2% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. As a group, “Software” companies pay a dividend yield of 2.0% and pay out 49.4% of their earnings in the form of a dividend. C3.ai is clearly a better dividend stock than its competitors, given its higher yield and lower payout ratio.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

39.0% of C3.ai shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 41.9% of shares of all “Software” companies are held by institutional investors. 19.8% of C3.ai shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 19.8% of shares of all “Software” companies are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Risk & Volatility

C3.ai has a beta of 2.16, indicating that its share price is 116% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, C3.ai’s competitors have a beta of 1.27, indicating that their average share price is 27% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares C3.ai and its competitors gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Net Income	Price/Earnings Ratio
C3.ai	$232.38 million	-$470.37 million	-3.74
C3.ai Competitors	$1.91 billion	$385.94 million	110.48

C3.ai’s competitors have higher revenue and earnings than C3.ai. C3.ai is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than its competitors, indicating that it is currently more affordable than other companies in its industry.

Profitability

This table compares C3.ai and its competitors’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
C3.ai	-192.10%	-61.25%	-49.03%
C3.ai Competitors	-620.53%	20.98%	-8.95%

Summary

C3.ai competitors beat C3.ai on 11 of the 15 factors compared.

C3.ai Company Profile

C3.ai, Inc. operates as an enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) software company in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Asia Pacific, and internationally. The company provides C3 AI platform, an application development and runtime environment that enables customers to design, develop, and deploy enterprise AI applications; C3 AI Ex Machina for analysis-ready data; C3 AI CRM, an industry specific customer relationship management solution; and C3 Generative AI Product Suite that enables to locate, retrieve, and present information. It also offers C3 AI applications, including C3 AI Inventory Optimization, a solution to optimize raw material, in-process, and finished goods inventory levels; C3 AI Supply Network Risk, which identifies emerging inbound and outbound risks across the network; C3 AI Sustainability Suite, which helps to decrease greenhouse gas emission; C3 AI Production Schedule Optimization, a solution for scheduling production; C3 AI Financial Services Suite, which helps to minimize compliance risks; and C3 AI Energy Management solution. In addition, it offers integrated turnkey enterprise AI applications for oil and gas, chemicals, utilities, manufacturing, financial services, defense, intelligence, aerospace, healthcare, and telecommunications market. It has strategic partnerships with Baker Hughes in the areas of oil and gas market; Booz Allen to provide solutions to government, defense, and intelligence sectors; Raytheon; and AWS, Google, and Microsoft. The company was formerly known as C3 IoT, Inc. and changed its name to C3.ai, Inc. in June 2019. C3.ai, Inc. was incorporated in 2009 and is headquartered in Redwood City, California.