Lufax (NYSE:LU) & LendingTree (NASDAQ:TREE) Head to Head Comparison

Lufax (NYSE:LU) and LendingTree (NASDAQ:TREE) are both small-cap finance companies, but which is the better stock? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their institutional ownership, risk, dividends, earnings, valuation, profitability and analyst recommendations.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

69.1% of Lufax shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 68.3% of LendingTree shares are held by institutional investors. 4.0% of LendingTree shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent recommendations and price targets for Lufax and LendingTree, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Lufax	2	1	1	0	1.75
LendingTree	0	2	5	0	2.71

Lufax currently has a consensus target price of $1.70, indicating a potential upside of 42.26%. LendingTree has a consensus target price of $61.33, indicating a potential upside of 120.58%. Given LendingTree’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe LendingTree is more favorable than Lufax.

Risk & Volatility

Lufax has a beta of 0.76, indicating that its stock price is 24% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, LendingTree has a beta of 2.05, indicating that its stock price is 105% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Lufax and LendingTree”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Lufax	$21.65 billion	0.05	-$291.79 million	($0.61)	-1.96
LendingTree	$1.12 billion	0.35	$151.31 million	$12.90	2.16

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

Profitability

This table compares Lufax and LendingTree’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Lufax	N/A	N/A	N/A
LendingTree	14.33%	14.57%	4.49%

Summary

LendingTree beats Lufax on 12 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Lufax

Lufax Holding Ltd operates as a financial service empowering institution for small and micro businesses in China. The company offers loan products, including general unsecured loans and secured loans, as well as consumer finance loans. It also provides wealth management products, such as asset management plans, mutual fund products, private investment fund products, and trust products. The company was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in Shanghai, China.

About LendingTree

LendingTree, Inc., through its subsidiary, operates online consumer platform in the United States. It operates through three segments: Home, Consumer, and Insurance. The Home segment offers purchase mortgage, refinance mortgage, and home equity loans and lines of credit; and real estate brokerage services. The Consumer segment provides credit cards; personal, small business, student, and auto loans; deposit accounts; and other credit products, such as debt settlement services. The Insurance segment includes information, tools, and access to insurance quote products, including home, automobile, and health and Medicare through which consumers are matched with insurance lead aggregators to obtain insurance offers and policies. In addition, the company offers QuoteWizard, a marketplace for insurance comparison; ValuePenguin, a personal finance website that offers consumers objective analysis on various financial topics from insurance to credit cards; and Stash, a consumer investing and banking platform that offers a suite of personal investment accounts, traditional and Roth IRAs, custodial investment accounts, and banking services, including checking accounts and debit cards with a Stock-Back rewards program. The company was formerly known as Tree.com, Inc. and changed its name to LendingTree, Inc. in January 2015. LendingTree, Inc. was incorporated in 1996 and is based in Charlotte, North Carolina.