Analyzing C3.ai (NYSE:AI) and Agora (NASDAQ:API)

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

Insider & Institutional Ownership

39.0% of C3.ai shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 27.7% of Agora shares are held by institutional investors. 34.0% of C3.ai shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 14.6% of Agora shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares C3.ai and Agora’s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
C3.ai	$266.80 million	12.15	-$268.84 million	($2.34)	-11.98
Agora	$151.59 million	1.74	-$120.38 million	($1.18)	-2.08

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

Volatility & Risk

C3.ai has a beta of 1.49, suggesting that its share price is 49% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Agora has a beta of 0.13, suggesting that its share price is 87% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings and recommmendations for C3.ai and Agora, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
C3.ai	2	6	2	0	2.00
Agora	0	0	0	0	N/A

C3.ai currently has a consensus target price of $26.36, indicating a potential downside of 5.98%. Agora has a consensus target price of $5.40, indicating a potential upside of 120.41%. Given Agora’s higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Agora is more favorable than C3.ai.

Profitability

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

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
C3.ai	-99.42%	-27.70%	-23.76%
Agora	-82.36%	-17.59%	-16.16%

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 Agora

Agora, Inc. provides real-time engagement platform-as-a-service (RTE-PaaS) in the People's Republic of China, the United States, and internationally. The company's RTE-PaaS offers developers with software tools to embed real-time voice, video, interactive live-streaming, chat, whiteboard, and artificial intelligence functionalities. Its products include video calling, voice calling, interactive live streaming, chat, and signaling; and extensions, which comprise interactive whiteboard, recording, 3D spatial audio, AI noise suppression, analytics, and extensions marketplace products to enable developers to launch RTE in specific use cases. The company also provides Flexible Classroom that offers a low-code application platform as a service; and App Builder, a no-code application platform. Its real-time engagement products are delivered through its software-defined real-time network, which is a virtual network overlay on top of the public internet. The company serves social, entertainment, gaming, education, enterprise solutions, e-commerce, financial services, healthcare, and IoT industries. Agora, Inc. was incorporated in 2013 and is based in Shanghai, the People's Republic of China.