Financial Review: Gray Media (NYSE:GTN) & Fluent (NASDAQ:FLNT)

Fluent (NASDAQ:FLNT) and Gray Media (NYSE:GTN) are both small-cap communication services companies, but which is the better stock? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, earnings, dividends, valuation, risk, profitability and institutional ownership.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings and target prices for Fluent and Gray Media, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Fluent	0	1	1	0	2.50
Gray Media	1	1	3	1	2.67

Fluent currently has a consensus target price of $5.00, suggesting a potential upside of 68.07%. Gray Media has a consensus target price of $7.88, suggesting a potential upside of 73.65%. Given Gray Media’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Gray Media is more favorable than Fluent.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

23.3% of Fluent shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 78.6% of Gray Media shares are held by institutional investors. 38.4% of Fluent shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 8.9% of Gray Media shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Risk and Volatility

Fluent has a beta of 0.7, meaning that its stock price is 30% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Gray Media has a beta of 1, meaning that its stock price has a similar volatility profile to the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares Fluent and Gray Media’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Fluent	-11.48%	-155.09%	-30.36%
Gray Media	-0.83%	-1.12%	-0.23%

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Fluent and Gray Media”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Fluent	$208.76 million	0.45	-$27.17 million	($0.77)	-3.86
Gray Media	$3.10 billion	0.15	-$85.00 million	($0.61)	-7.43

Fluent has higher earnings, but lower revenue than Gray Media. Gray Media is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Fluent, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Summary

Gray Media beats Fluent on 11 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Fluent

Fluent, Inc. provides data-driven digital marketing services in the United States and internationally. The company operates through Fluent and All Other segments. It offers customer acquisition services by operating digital marketing campaigns, through which the company connects its advertiser clients with consumers. The company also delivers data and performance-based marketing executions to various consumer brands, direct marketers, and agencies across a range of industries, including financial products and services, media and entertainment, health and life sciences, retail and consumer, and staffing and recruitment. Fluent, Inc. was founded in 2010 and is headquartered in New York, New York.

About Gray Media

Gray Television, Inc., a television broadcasting company, owns and/or operates television stations and digital assets in the United States. It also broadcasts secondary digital channels affiliated to ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX, as well as various other networks and program services, including CW Plus Network, MY Network, the MeTV Network, Circle, Telemundo, THE365, and Outlaw; and local news/weather channels in various markets. It owns and operates television stations and digital assets that serve television markets in the United States. The company was formerly known as Gray Communications Systems, Inc. and changed its name to Gray Television, Inc. in August 2002. Gray Television, Inc. was founded in 1891 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.