BOX (NYSE:BOX) vs. C3.ai (NYSE:AI) Head-To-Head Comparison

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

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent recommendations and price targets for BOX and C3.ai, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
BOX	1	4	3	0	2.25
C3.ai	7	4	2	0	1.62

BOX presently has a consensus target price of $37.80, indicating a potential downside of 0.56%. C3.ai has a consensus target price of $9.36, indicating a potential downside of 19.67%. Given BOX’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, equities analysts plainly believe BOX is more favorable than C3.ai.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

86.7% of BOX shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 39.0% of C3.ai shares are held by institutional investors. 4.0% of BOX shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 19.8% of C3.ai shares are held 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.

Volatility & Risk

BOX has a beta of 0.72, indicating that its stock price is 28% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, C3.ai has a beta of 2.11, indicating that its stock price is 111% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares BOX and C3.ai”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
BOX	$1.18 billion	4.43	$115.38 million	$0.69	55.09
C3.ai	$250.27 million	7.49	-$470.37 million	($3.08)	-3.78

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

Profitability

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

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
BOX	10.59%	-20.97%	4.47%
C3.ai	-192.10%	-61.25%	-49.03%

Summary

BOX beats C3.ai on 10 of the 13 factors compared between the two stocks.

About BOX

Box, Inc. engages in the provision of an enterprise content platform that enables organizations to securely manage enterprise content while allowing easy, secure access and sharing of this content from anywhere, on any device. Its products include cloud content management, IT and admin controls, Box Governance, Box Zones, Box Relay, Box Shuttle, and Box KeySafe. The company was founded by Aaron Levie, Dylan Smith, Jeff Queisser, and Sam Ghods in March 2005 and is headquartered in Redwood City, CA.

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.