Critical Comparison: Carlyle Secured Lending (NASDAQ:CGBD) & Galaxy Digital (NASDAQ:GLXY)

Galaxy Digital (NASDAQ:GLXY) and Carlyle Secured Lending (NASDAQ:CGBD) are both finance companies, but which is the superior investment? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their earnings, risk, institutional ownership, profitability, analyst recommendations, valuation and dividends.

Volatility & Risk

Galaxy Digital has a beta of 5.06, suggesting that its share price is 406% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Carlyle Secured Lending has a beta of 0.62, suggesting that its share price is 38% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of current ratings and recommmendations for Galaxy Digital and Carlyle Secured Lending, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Galaxy Digital	2	2	10	0	2.57
Carlyle Secured Lending	0	4	3	0	2.43

Galaxy Digital currently has a consensus price target of $38.83, indicating a potential upside of 92.53%. Carlyle Secured Lending has a consensus price target of $12.50, indicating a potential upside of 13.43%. Given Galaxy Digital’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, equities analysts plainly believe Galaxy Digital is more favorable than Carlyle Secured Lending.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Galaxy Digital and Carlyle Secured Lending”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Galaxy Digital	$61.36 billion	0.13	-$241.35 million	($0.65)	-31.03
Carlyle Secured Lending	$48.70 million	15.72	$69.97 million	$0.51	21.61

Carlyle Secured Lending has lower revenue, but higher earnings than Galaxy Digital. Galaxy Digital is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Carlyle Secured Lending, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Profitability

This table compares Galaxy Digital and Carlyle Secured Lending’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Galaxy Digital	-0.75%	-6.10%	-1.67%
Carlyle Secured Lending	14.26%	8.70%	3.83%

Institutional and Insider Ownership

24.5% of Carlyle Secured Lending shares are owned by institutional investors. 51.5% of Galaxy Digital shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 0.4% of Carlyle Secured Lending shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

Carlyle Secured Lending beats Galaxy Digital on 8 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Galaxy Digital

Galaxy Digital Holdings Ltd. is a financial services and an investment management company, which engages in the digital asset, cryptocurrency, and block chain technology sectors. It operates through the following segments: Trading, Principal Investment, Asset Management, Investment Banking, Mining, and Corporate & Other. The Trading segment manages positions in cryptocurrency and other liquid digital assets contributed to the business at the outset and continues to invest and trade in those and related assets. The Principal Investment segment includes portfolio of private principal investments across the block chain ecosystem, including early- and later-stage equity, pre-launch network contributions, and other structured alternative investments. The Asset Management segment manages capital on behalf of third parties in exchange for management fees and performance-based compensation. The Investment Banking segment offers the spectrum of investment banking, including, but not limited to general corporate advisory, mergers and acquisition, transaction advisory, restructuring and capital rising. The Mining segment focuses to provide financial services for North American miners, through its partnerships. The Corporate & Other consists of the partnership’s unallocated corporate overhead and other unallocated costs not identifiable to any of the reportable segments. The company was founded by Michael Edward Novogratz on February 10, 2006 and is headquartered in New York, NY.

About Carlyle Secured Lending

Carlyle Secured Lending, Inc. is business development company specializing in first lien debt, senior secured loans, second lien senior secured loan unsecured debt, mezzanine debt and investments in equities. It specializes in directly investing. It specializes in middle market. It targets healthcare and pharmaceutical, aerospace and defense, high tech industries, business services, software, beverage food and tobacco, hotel gamming and leisure, banking finance insurance and in real estate sector. The fund seeks to invest across United States of America, Luxembourg, Cayman Islands, Cyprus, and United Kingdom. It invests in companies with EBITDA between $25 million and $100 million.