PubMatic (NASDAQ:PUBM) & Liberty Global (NASDAQ:LBTYB) Critical Review

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

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of recent ratings and target prices for Liberty Global and PubMatic, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

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

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

Institutional & Insider Ownership

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

Volatility & Risk

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

Profitability

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

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

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Liberty Global and PubMatic”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

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

PubMatic has lower revenue, but higher earnings 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.

Summary

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

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.

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.