Head to Head Survey: NIQ Global Intelligence (NYSE:NIQ) and Criteo (NASDAQ:CRTO)

Criteo (NASDAQ:CRTO) and NIQ Global Intelligence (NYSE:NIQ) are both communication services companies, but which is the superior business? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their valuation, profitability, institutional ownership, earnings, dividends, risk and analyst recommendations.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent recommendations and price targets for Criteo and NIQ Global Intelligence, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Criteo	3	3	6	0	2.25
NIQ Global Intelligence	1	2	7	1	2.73

Criteo currently has a consensus price target of $22.65, indicating a potential upside of 30.62%. NIQ Global Intelligence has a consensus price target of $18.50, indicating a potential upside of 4.91%. Given Criteo’s higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Criteo is more favorable than NIQ Global Intelligence.

Risk & Volatility

Criteo has a beta of 0.27, suggesting that its stock price is 73% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, NIQ Global Intelligence has a beta of -0.24, suggesting that its stock price is 124% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

94.3% of Criteo shares are held by institutional investors. 1.5% of Criteo shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 3.8% of NIQ Global Intelligence shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Criteo and NIQ Global Intelligence”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Criteo	$1.94 billion	0.44	$144.60 million	$1.97	8.80
NIQ Global Intelligence	$4.20 billion	1.24	-$353.30 million	($1.22)	-14.45

Criteo has higher earnings, but lower revenue than NIQ Global Intelligence. NIQ Global Intelligence is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Criteo, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Profitability

This table compares Criteo and NIQ Global Intelligence’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Criteo	5.60%	14.33%	8.05%
NIQ Global Intelligence	-8.01%	14.84%	2.60%

Summary

Criteo beats NIQ Global Intelligence on 8 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Criteo

Criteo S.A., a technology company, provides marketing and monetization services on the open Internet in North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia-Pacific. The company's Criteo Shopper Graph, which derives clients' proprietary commerce data, such as transaction activity on their digital properties. It also offers Criteo AI Engine solutions, including lookalike finder, recommendation, and predictive bidding algorithms; recommendation algorithms, dynamic creative optimization+, sponsored product placement algorithms, and other product placement algorithms. The company's technology comprises data synchronization, storage, and analysis of distributed computing infrastructure in various geographies, as well as fast data collection and retrieval using multi-layered caching infrastructure; and experimentation platform, an offline/online testing platform to enhance the capabilities and effectiveness of prediction models. In addition, it provides Criteo Marketing Solutions that allow commerce companies to address various marketing goals by engaging their consumers with personalized ads across the web, mobile, and offline store environments; and Criteo Retail Media solutions, which allows retailers to generate advertising revenues from consumer brands, and/or to drive sales for themselves, by monetizing their data and audiences through personalized ads, either on their own digital property or on the open Internet. Further, the company offers real-time advertising technology and trading infrastructure, delivering advanced media buying, selling, and packaging capabilities for media owners, agencies, performance advertisers, and third-party AdTech platforms. It serves companies in digital retail, travel, and classifieds sectors. Criteo S.A. was incorporated in 2005 and is headquartered in Paris, France.

About NIQ Global Intelligence

Nuveen Intermediate Duration Quality Municipal Term Fund is a close ended fixed income mutual fund launched by Nuveen Investments Inc. The fund is co-managed by Nuveen Fund Advisors LLC and Nuveen Asset Management, LLC. It invests into public fixed income markets of the United States. The fund seeks to invest in stocks of companies that are operating across diversified sectors. It primarily invests in municipal securities that are exempt from federal income taxes, and seeks to maintain a portfolio with an intermediate effective duration of between 3 and 10 years, including the effects of leverage. The fund invests at least 80% of its managed assets in municipal securities rated investment grade i.e. Baa/BBB or at the time of investment. It employs fundamental analysis, with focus on bottom-up approach to create its portfolio. The fund benchmarks the performance of its portfolio against the S&P Municipal Bond Intermediate Index and a composite index comprising 50% of S&P Municipal Bond Intermediate Index and 50% of the S&P Municipal Bond High Yield Index. Nuveen Intermediate Duration Quality Municipal Term Fund was founded on February 7,2012 and is domiciled in the United States.