Critical Contrast: Criteo (NASDAQ:CRTO) and VeriSign (NASDAQ:VRSN)

Criteo (NASDAQ:CRTO) and VeriSign (NASDAQ:VRSN) are both computer and technology companies, but which is the better business? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their dividends, profitability, valuation, analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, earnings and risk.

Profitability

This table compares Criteo and VeriSign’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Criteo	7.41%	18.21%	9.01%
VeriSign	50.23%	-41.37%	54.37%

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Criteo and VeriSign”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Criteo	$1.93 billion	0.75	$111.57 million	$2.46	10.14
VeriSign	$1.58 billion	16.80	$785.70 million	$8.18	34.46

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

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current recommendations for Criteo and VeriSign, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Criteo	1	4	6	0	2.45
VeriSign	0	0	2	1	3.33

Criteo currently has a consensus price target of $46.70, suggesting a potential upside of 87.17%. VeriSign has a consensus price target of $277.50, suggesting a potential downside of 1.55%. Given Criteo’s higher probable upside, research analysts plainly believe Criteo is more favorable than VeriSign.

Risk and Volatility

Criteo has a beta of 0.48, indicating that its share price is 52% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, VeriSign has a beta of 0.78, indicating that its share price is 22% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

94.3% of Criteo shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 92.9% of VeriSign shares are owned by institutional investors. 1.7% of Criteo shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 0.8% of VeriSign shares are owned by company 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.

Summary

VeriSign beats Criteo on 9 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 VeriSign

VeriSign, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides domain name registry services and internet infrastructure that enables internet navigation for various recognized domain names worldwide. The company enables the security, stability, and resiliency of internet infrastructure and services, including providing root zone maintainer services, operating two of thirteen internet root servers; and offering registration services and authoritative resolution for the .com and .net domains, which supports global e-commerce. It operates directory for .name and .cc; and back-end systems for .edu, domain names. VeriSign, Inc. was incorporated in 1995 and is headquartered in Reston, Virginia.