Critical Comparison: Uber Technologies (NYSE:UBER) vs. Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ:AKAM)

Uber Technologies (NYSE:UBER) and Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ:AKAM) are both large-cap computer and technology companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their dividends, earnings, analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, profitability, valuation and risk.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings and target prices for Uber Technologies and Akamai Technologies, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Uber Technologies	0	8	30	2	2.85
Akamai Technologies	4	11	6	0	2.10

Uber Technologies currently has a consensus target price of $108.26, indicating a potential upside of 24.95%. Akamai Technologies has a consensus target price of $93.63, indicating a potential upside of 4.37%. Given Uber Technologies’ stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, research analysts plainly believe Uber Technologies is more favorable than Akamai Technologies.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Uber Technologies and Akamai Technologies”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Uber Technologies	$49.61 billion	3.63	$9.86 billion	$7.78	11.14
Akamai Technologies	$4.13 billion	3.12	$504.92 million	$3.41	26.31

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

Risk and Volatility

Uber Technologies has a beta of 1.46, meaning that its share price is 46% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Akamai Technologies has a beta of 0.72, meaning that its share price is 28% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

80.2% of Uber Technologies shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 94.3% of Akamai Technologies shares are owned by institutional investors. 3.8% of Uber Technologies shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 2.0% of Akamai Technologies shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Profitability

This table compares Uber Technologies and Akamai Technologies’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Uber Technologies	33.54%	68.17%	29.80%
Akamai Technologies	10.40%	14.26%	6.50%

Summary

Uber Technologies beats Akamai Technologies on 13 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Uber Technologies

Uber Technologies, Inc. develops and operates proprietary technology applications in the United States, Canada, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia excluding China and Southeast Asia. It operates through three segments: Mobility, Delivery, and Freight. The Mobility segment connects consumers with a range of transportation modalities, such as ridesharing, carsharing, micromobility, rentals, public transit, taxis, and other modalities; and offers riders in a variety of vehicle types, as well as financial partnerships products and advertising services. The Delivery segment allows to search for and discover restaurants to grocery, alcohol, convenience, and other retails; order a meal or other items; and Uber direct, a white-label Delivery-as-a-Service for retailers and restaurants, as well as advertising. The Freight segment manages transportation and logistics network, which connects shippers and carriers in digital marketplace including carriers upfronts, pricing, and shipment booking; and provides on-demand platform to automate logistics end-to-end transactions for small-and medium-sized business to global enterprises. The company was formerly known as Ubercab, Inc. and changed its name to Uber Technologies, Inc. in February 2011. Uber Technologies, Inc. was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

About Akamai Technologies

Akamai Technologies, Inc. provides cloud computing, security, and content delivery services in the United States and internationally. The company offers cloud solutions to keep infrastructure, websites, applications, application programming interfaces, and users safe from various cyberattacks and online threats while enhancing performance. It also provides web and mobile performance solutions to enable dynamic websites and applications; media delivery solutions, including video streaming and video player services, game and software delivery, broadcast operations, authoritative domain name system, resolution, and data and analytics; and cloud computing services, such as compute, storage, networking, database, and container management services to build, deploy, and secure applications and workloads. In addition, the company offers content delivery solutions; and an array of service and support to assist customers with integrating, configuring, optimizing, and managing its offerings. It sells its solutions through various channel partners. Akamai Technologies, Inc. was incorporated in 1998 and is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.