Contrasting Workiva (NYSE:WK) & C3.ai (NYSE:AI)

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

Analyst Recommendations

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

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
C3.ai	7	4	2	0	1.62
Workiva	1	1	9	0	2.73

C3.ai currently has a consensus price target of $9.36, suggesting a potential downside of 17.32%. Workiva has a consensus price target of $87.00, suggesting a potential upside of 15.25%. Given Workiva’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Workiva is more favorable than C3.ai.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares C3.ai and Workiva”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
C3.ai	$232.38 million	7.84	-$470.37 million	($3.08)	-3.68
Workiva	$884.57 million	4.79	-$26.17 million	$0.82	92.05

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

Profitability

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

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
C3.ai	-192.10%	-61.25%	-49.03%
Workiva	4.87%	-140.17%	3.74%

Volatility and Risk

C3.ai has a beta of 2.11, indicating that its share price is 111% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Workiva has a beta of 0.53, indicating that its share price is 47% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

39.0% of C3.ai shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 92.2% of Workiva shares are held by institutional investors. 19.8% of C3.ai shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 4.8% of Workiva shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

Workiva beats C3.ai on 10 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

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.

About Workiva

Workiva Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides cloud-based reporting solutions in the United States and internationally. The company offers Workiva platform, a multi-tenant cloud software that provides data linking capabilities; audit trail services; administrators access management; and allows customers to connect data from multiple enterprise resource planning, human capital management, and customer relationship management systems, as well as other third-party cloud and on-premise applications. It serves public and private companies, government agencies, and higher-education institutions. Workiva Inc. was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Ames, Iowa.