Comparing C3.ai (NYSE:AI) & Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE)

Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE) and C3.ai (NYSE:AI) are both technology companies, but which is the superior stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, profitability, institutional ownership, dividends, earnings, valuation and risk.

Profitability

This table compares Adobe and C3.ai’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Adobe	28.05%	65.65%	25.54%
C3.ai	-192.10%	-61.25%	-49.03%

Institutional & Insider Ownership

81.8% of Adobe shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 39.0% of C3.ai shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.2% of Adobe shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 19.8% of C3.ai shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current recommendations and price targets for Adobe and C3.ai, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Adobe	8	19	9	0	2.03
C3.ai	7	5	2	0	1.64

Adobe currently has a consensus price target of $282.52, indicating a potential upside of 18.06%. C3.ai has a consensus price target of $9.62, indicating a potential downside of 17.74%. Given Adobe’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, equities analysts plainly believe Adobe is more favorable than C3.ai.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Adobe and C3.ai”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Adobe	$25.97 billion	3.59	$7.13 billion	$17.92	13.35
C3.ai	$250.27 million	7.52	-$470.37 million	($3.08)	-3.80

Adobe has higher revenue and earnings than C3.ai. C3.ai is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Adobe, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Risk & Volatility

Adobe has a beta of 1.37, suggesting that its share price is 37% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, C3.ai has a beta of 2.17, suggesting that its share price is 117% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Adobe beats C3.ai on 11 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Adobe

Adobe Inc., together with its subsidiaries, operates as a diversified software company worldwide. It operates through three segments: Digital Media, Digital Experience, and Publishing and Advertising. The Digital Media segment offers products, services, and solutions that enable individuals, teams, and enterprises to create, publish, and promote content; and Document Cloud, a unified cloud-based document services platform. Its flagship product is Creative Cloud, a subscription service that allows members to access its creative products. This segment serves content creators, students, workers, marketers, educators, enthusiasts, and communicators. The Digital Experience segment provides an integrated platform and set of applications and services that enable brands and businesses to create, manage, execute, measure, monetize, and optimize customer experiences from analytics to commerce. This segment serves marketers, advertisers, agencies, publishers, merchandisers, merchants, web analysts, data scientists, developers, and executives across the C-suite. The Publishing and Advertising segment offers products and services, such as e-learning solutions, technical document publishing, web conferencing, document and forms platform, web application development, and high-end printing, as well as Advertising Cloud offerings. It also provides consulting, technical support, and learning services. The company offers its products and services directly to enterprise customers through its sales force and local field offices, as well as to end users through app stores and through its website at adobe.com. It also distributes products and services through distributors, value-added resellers, systems integrators, software vendors and developers, retailers, and original equipment manufacturers. The company was formerly known as Adobe Systems Incorporated and changed its name to Adobe Inc. in October 2018. Adobe Inc. was founded in 1982 and is headquartered in San Jose, California.

About C3.ai

C3.ai, Inc. operates as an enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) software company in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Asia Pacific, and internationally. The company provides C3 AI platform, an application development and runtime environment that enables customers to design, develop, and deploy enterprise AI applications; C3 AI Ex Machina for analysis-ready data; C3 AI CRM, an industry specific customer relationship management solution; and C3 Generative AI Product Suite that enables to locate, retrieve, and present information. It also offers C3 AI applications, including C3 AI Inventory Optimization, a solution to optimize raw material, in-process, and finished goods inventory levels; C3 AI Supply Network Risk, which identifies emerging inbound and outbound risks across the network; C3 AI Sustainability Suite, which helps to decrease greenhouse gas emission; C3 AI Production Schedule Optimization, a solution for scheduling production; C3 AI Financial Services Suite, which helps to minimize compliance risks; and C3 AI Energy Management solution. In addition, it offers integrated turnkey enterprise AI applications for oil and gas, chemicals, utilities, manufacturing, financial services, defense, intelligence, aerospace, healthcare, and telecommunications market. It has strategic partnerships with Baker Hughes in the areas of oil and gas market; Booz Allen to provide solutions to government, defense, and intelligence sectors; Raytheon; and AWS, Google, and Microsoft. The company was formerly known as C3 IoT, Inc. and changed its name to C3.ai, Inc. in June 2019. C3.ai, Inc. was incorporated in 2009 and is headquartered in Redwood City, California.