Financial Survey: Amber International (NASDAQ:AMBR) vs. Moody’s (NYSE:MCO)

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

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of current ratings and recommmendations for Moody’s and Amber International, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Moody’s	0	5	14	1	2.80
Amber International	1	0	1	0	2.00

Moody’s currently has a consensus price target of $553.61, indicating a potential upside of 17.59%. Given Moody’s’ stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, equities research 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. 0.1% of Moody’s shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 15.1% of Amber International shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Risk & Volatility

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

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Moody’s and Amber International”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Moody’s	$7.72 billion	10.56	$2.46 billion	$15.77	29.85
Amber International	$66.09 million	2.89	$3.75 million	$0.01	202.40

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

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

Summary

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

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.

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.