Lazard (NYSE:LAZ) versus Amber International (NASDAQ:AMBR) Critical Analysis

Amber International (NASDAQ:AMBR) and Lazard (NYSE:LAZ) are both finance companies, but which is the superior investment? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their dividends, analyst recommendations, earnings, institutional ownership, valuation, profitability and risk.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current recommendations and price targets for Amber International and Lazard, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Amber International	1	0	1	0	2.00
Lazard	2	4	4	0	2.20

Lazard has a consensus target price of $47.62, indicating a potential upside of 31.17%. Given Lazard’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Lazard is more favorable than Amber International.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Amber International and Lazard”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Amber International	$56.58 million	3.32	$3.75 million	$0.01	199.00
Lazard	$3.10 billion	1.30	$236.83 million	$2.04	17.80

Lazard has higher revenue and earnings than Amber International. Lazard is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Amber International, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

54.8% of Lazard shares are held by institutional investors. 15.1% of Amber International shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 0.9% of Lazard shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Profitability

This table compares Amber International and Lazard’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Amber International	-0.27%	1.07%	0.42%
Lazard	6.95%	23.58%	4.63%

Volatility and Risk

Amber International has a beta of 0.68, suggesting that its stock price is 32% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Lazard has a beta of 1.47, suggesting that its stock price is 47% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Lazard beats Amber International on 11 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

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.

About Lazard

Lazard, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, operates as a financial advisory and asset management firm in North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia. It operates in two segments, Financial Advisory and Asset Management. The Financial Advisory segment offers financial advisory services, such as mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, shareholder, sovereign, geopolitical advisory, and other strategic advisory services, as well as restructuring and liability management, and capital raising and placement services. This segment offers its services to corporate, partnership, institutional, government, sovereign, and individual clients to various industry areas, including consumers, financial institutions, healthcare and life sciences, industrials, power and energy/infrastructure, real estate, technology, telecommunication, and media and entertainment. The Asset Management segment offers a range of investment solutions; investment and wealth management services in equity and fixed income strategies; asset allocation strategies; and alternative investments and private equity funds to corporations, public funds, sovereign entities, endowments and foundations, labor funds, financial intermediaries, and private clients. Lazard, Inc. was incorporated in 1848 and is headquartered in New York, New York.