Head to Head Contrast: Carlyle Secured Lending (NASDAQ:CGBD) and Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE:ICE)

Carlyle Secured Lending (NASDAQ:CGBD) and Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE:ICE) are both finance companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their dividends, earnings, valuation, institutional ownership, profitability, risk and analyst recommendations.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Carlyle Secured Lending and Intercontinental Exchange”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Carlyle Secured Lending	$255.57 million	2.87	$69.97 million	$0.51	20.90
Intercontinental Exchange	$12.64 billion	7.04	$3.31 billion	$7.08	22.38

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

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent recommendations and price targets for Carlyle Secured Lending and Intercontinental Exchange, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Carlyle Secured Lending	0	4	1	1	2.50
Intercontinental Exchange	1	4	11	1	2.71

Carlyle Secured Lending currently has a consensus price target of $11.33, indicating a potential upside of 6.32%. Intercontinental Exchange has a consensus price target of $186.31, indicating a potential upside of 17.56%. Given Intercontinental Exchange’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Intercontinental Exchange is more favorable than Carlyle Secured Lending.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

24.5% of Carlyle Secured Lending shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 89.3% of Intercontinental Exchange shares are held by institutional investors. 0.3% of Carlyle Secured Lending shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 0.8% of Intercontinental Exchange shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Profitability

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

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Carlyle Secured Lending	14.26%	8.85%	3.90%
Intercontinental Exchange	30.08%	14.95%	2.77%

Dividends

Carlyle Secured Lending pays an annual dividend of $1.40 per share and has a dividend yield of 13.1%. Intercontinental Exchange pays an annual dividend of $2.08 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.3%. Carlyle Secured Lending pays out 274.5% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Intercontinental Exchange pays out 29.4% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Intercontinental Exchange has increased its dividend for 9 consecutive years.

Volatility & Risk

Carlyle Secured Lending has a beta of 0.66, suggesting that its stock price is 34% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Intercontinental Exchange has a beta of 0.94, suggesting that its stock price is 6% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Intercontinental Exchange beats Carlyle Secured Lending on 14 of the 17 factors compared between the two stocks.

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.

About Intercontinental Exchange

Intercontinental Exchange, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in the provision of market infrastructure, data services, and technology solutions for financial institutions, corporations, and government entities in the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Singapore, India, Abu Dhabi, Israel, and Canada. It operates through three segments: Exchanges, Fixed Income and Data Services, and Mortgage Technology. The company operates regulated marketplaces for listing, trading, and clearing an array of derivatives contracts and financial securities, such as commodities, interest rates, foreign exchange, and equities, as well as corporate and exchange-traded funds; and trading venues, including regulated exchanges and clearing houses. It also offers energy, agricultural and metals, and financial futures and options; and cash equities and equity options, and over-the-counter and other markets, as well as listings and data and connectivity services. In addition, the company provides fixed income data and analytic, fixed income execution, CDS clearing, and other multi-asset class data and network services. Further, it offers proprietary and comprehensive mortgage origination platform, which serves residential mortgage loans; closing solutions that provides customers connectivity to the mortgage supply chain and facilitates the secure exchange of information; data and analytics services; and Data as a Service for lenders to access data and origination information. Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. was founded in 2000 and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.