Fluent (NASDAQ:FLNT – Get Free Report) and Integral Ad Science (NASDAQ:IAS – Get Free Report) are both small-cap business services companies, but which is the superior business? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their earnings, profitability, risk, analyst recommendations, dividends, institutional ownership and valuation.
Analyst Recommendations
This is a summary of current ratings and recommmendations for Fluent and Integral Ad Science, as reported by MarketBeat.
| Sell Ratings | Hold Ratings | Buy Ratings | Strong Buy Ratings | Rating Score | |
| Fluent | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2.00 |
| Integral Ad Science | 0 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 2.00 |
Fluent currently has a consensus target price of $2.50, suggesting a potential upside of 30.21%. Integral Ad Science has a consensus target price of $11.52, suggesting a potential upside of 12.19%. Given Fluent’s higher possible upside, equities research analysts plainly believe Fluent is more favorable than Integral Ad Science.
Earnings and Valuation
| Gross Revenue | Price/Sales Ratio | Net Income | Earnings Per Share | Price/Earnings Ratio | |
| Fluent | $229.84 million | 0.24 | -$29.28 million | ($1.15) | -1.67 |
| Integral Ad Science | $530.10 million | 3.25 | $37.79 million | $0.28 | 36.68 |
Integral Ad Science has higher revenue and earnings than Fluent. Fluent is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Integral Ad Science, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Profitability
This table compares Fluent and Integral Ad Science’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.
| Net Margins | Return on Equity | Return on Assets | |
| Fluent | -11.69% | -97.82% | -24.66% |
| Integral Ad Science | 7.91% | 4.45% | 4.03% |
Insider and Institutional Ownership
23.3% of Fluent shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 95.8% of Integral Ad Science shares are owned by institutional investors. 43.5% of Fluent shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 2.0% of Integral Ad Science shares are owned by company 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.
Risk and Volatility
Fluent has a beta of 1.28, indicating that its stock price is 28% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Integral Ad Science has a beta of 1.59, indicating that its stock price is 59% more volatile than the S&P 500.
Summary
Integral Ad Science beats Fluent on 10 of the 12 factors compared between the two stocks.
About Fluent
Fluent, Inc. provides data-driven digital marketing services in the United States and internationally. The company operates through Fluent and All Other segments. It offers customer acquisition services by operating digital marketing campaigns, through which the company connects its advertiser clients with consumers. The company also delivers data and performance-based marketing executions to various consumer brands, direct marketers, and agencies across a range of industries, including financial products and services, media and entertainment, health and life sciences, retail and consumer, and staffing and recruitment. Fluent, Inc. was founded in 2010 and is headquartered in New York, New York.
About Integral Ad Science
Integral Ad Science Holding Corp. operates as a digital advertising verification company in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Singapore, Australia, Japan, India, and the Nordics. The company provides IAS Signal, a cloud-based technology platform that offers return on ad spend needs; and deliver independent measurement and verification of digital advertising across devices, channels, and formats, including desktop, mobile, connected TV, social, display, and video. Its digital media quality solutions offer ad fraud detection and prevention, viewability, brand safety and suitability, contextual targeting, inventory yield management, and reporting. In addition, the company offers Quality Impressions, a metric designed to verify that digital ads are served to a real person rather than a bot, viewable on-screen, and presented in a brand-safe and suitable environment in the correct geography; Context Control solution that delivers contextual targeting and brand suitability capabilities; pre-bid programmatic and post-bid verification solutions for advertisers; and optimization and verification solutions for publishers. It serves advertisers and agencies, publishers, and supply side platforms. The company was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in New York, New York.
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