C3.ai (AI) & Its Peers Financial Comparison

C3.ai (NYSE:AI) is one of 954 public companies in the “Software” industry, but how does it weigh in compared to its peers? We will compare C3.ai to related businesses based on the strength of its institutional ownership, earnings, profitability, dividends, risk, valuation and analyst recommendations.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

39.0% of C3.ai shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 41.8% of shares of all “Software” companies are held by institutional investors. 19.8% of C3.ai shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 19.9% of shares of all “Software” companies are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Profitability

This table compares C3.ai and its peers’ 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	-612.31%	21.01%	-8.89%

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings for C3.ai and its peers, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
C3.ai	7	5	2	0	1.64
C3.ai Competitors	5714	21419	44677	1492	2.57

C3.ai currently has a consensus target price of $9.62, indicating a potential downside of 18.71%. As a group, “Software” companies have a potential upside of 27.85%. Given C3.ai’s peers stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe C3.ai has less favorable growth aspects than its peers.

Volatility and Risk

C3.ai has a beta of 2.11, meaning that its share price is 111% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, C3.ai’s peers have a beta of 1.25, meaning that their average share price is 25% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Earnings and Valuation

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

	Gross Revenue	Net Income	Price/Earnings Ratio
C3.ai	$250.27 million	-$470.37 million	-3.84
C3.ai Competitors	$1.79 billion	$385.13 million	111.21

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

Summary

C3.ai peers beat C3.ai on 11 of the 13 factors compared.

About C3.ai

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.