Head to Head Review: Liberty Global (NASDAQ:LBTYB) and PubMatic (NASDAQ:PUBM)

PubMatic (NASDAQ:PUBM) and Liberty Global (NASDAQ:LBTYB) are both communication services companies, but which is the better stock? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their valuation, analyst recommendations, earnings, dividends, profitability, risk and institutional ownership.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings and recommmendations for PubMatic and Liberty Global, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
PubMatic	1	1	10	0	2.75
Liberty Global	1	0	0	0	1.00

PubMatic presently has a consensus target price of $18.25, suggesting a potential upside of 10.67%. Given PubMatic’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, research analysts clearly believe PubMatic is more favorable than Liberty Global.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

64.3% of PubMatic shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 0.5% of Liberty Global shares are owned by institutional investors. 27.8% of PubMatic shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 6.5% of Liberty Global shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Profitability

This table compares PubMatic and Liberty Global’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
PubMatic	-4.66%	-5.41%	-1.99%
Liberty Global	-62.11%	-28.82%	-13.28%

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares PubMatic and Liberty Global”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
PubMatic	$282.93 million	2.65	-$14.46 million	($0.30)	-54.97
Liberty Global	$4.88 billion	0.91	-$7.14 billion	($8.98)	-1.45

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

Volatility and Risk

PubMatic has a beta of 1.58, indicating that its share price is 58% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Liberty Global has a beta of 0.42, indicating that its share price is 58% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

PubMatic beats Liberty Global on 12 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About PubMatic

PubMatic, Inc., a technology company, engages in the provision of a cloud infrastructure platform that enables real-time programmatic advertising transactions for digital content creators, advertisers, agencies, agency trading desks, and demand side platforms worldwide. Its PubMatic SSP, a sell-side platform, used for the purchase and sale of digital advertising inventory for publishers and buyers. The company also provides solutions, including OpenWrap, a header bidding solution; Openwrap OTT, a prebid-powered unified bidding solution; Openwrap SDK, an enterprise-grade management tools and analytics; Connect, a solution that provides additional data and insights to publishers and buyers; Activate, which allows buyers to execute direct deals on its platform across publisher inventory; Convert, a commerce media solution; and Identity Hub, an ID management tool for publishers that leverages specialized technology?infrastructure?to simplify the complex alternative identifier marketplace. Its platform supports an array of ad formats and digital device types, including mobile app, mobile web, desktop, display, video, over-the-top (OTT), connected television, and media. The company was incorporated in 2006 and is based in Redwood City, California.

About Liberty Global

Liberty Global Plc is an international television and broadband company, which engages in the provision of broadband communications services. It operates through the following geographical segments: U.K. and Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, Central and Eastern Europe, and Central and Corporate. Its products include broadband, WiFi, connectivity products, TV platforms, and TV content. The company was founded in 2004 and is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom.