Financial Contrast: Integral Ad Science (NASDAQ:IAS) versus Nexxen International (NASDAQ:NEXN)

Nexxen International (NASDAQ:NEXN) and Integral Ad Science (NASDAQ:IAS) are both small-cap business services companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their risk, analyst recommendations, earnings, dividends, valuation, profitability and institutional ownership.

Profitability

This table compares Nexxen International and Integral Ad Science’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Nexxen International	-6.47%	2.94%	1.80%
Integral Ad Science	1.53%	0.83%	0.62%

Institutional & Insider Ownership

54.2% of Nexxen International shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 95.8% of Integral Ad Science shares are held by institutional investors. 2.0% of Integral Ad Science shares are held 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.

Risk and Volatility

Nexxen International has a beta of 1.81, meaning that its share price is 81% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Integral Ad Science has a beta of 1.58, meaning that its share price is 58% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent recommendations and price targets for Nexxen International and Integral Ad Science, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Nexxen International	0	1	3	0	2.75
Integral Ad Science	0	3	10	0	2.77

Nexxen International currently has a consensus price target of $7.75, suggesting a potential upside of 40.40%. Integral Ad Science has a consensus price target of $17.38, suggesting a potential upside of 74.72%. Given Integral Ad Science’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Integral Ad Science is more favorable than Nexxen International.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Nexxen International and Integral Ad Science’s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Nexxen International	$331.99 million	1.16	-$21.49 million	($0.15)	-36.80
Integral Ad Science	$474.37 million	3.35	$7.24 million	$0.04	248.81

Integral Ad Science has higher revenue and earnings than Nexxen International. Nexxen International is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Integral Ad Science, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Summary

Integral Ad Science beats Nexxen International on 11 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Nexxen International

Nexxen International Ltd. provides end-to-end software platform that enables advertisers to reach publishers Israel. The company's demand side platform (DSP) offers full-service and self-managed marketplace access to advertisers and agencies to execute their digital marketing campaigns in real time across various ad formats. Its sell supply side platform (SSP) provides access to data and a comprehensive product suite to drive inventory management and revenue optimization. The company also offers data management platform solution, which integrates DSP and SSP solutions enabling advertisers and publishers to use data from various sources in order to optimize results of their advertising campaigns. It serves ad buyers, advertisers, brands, agencies, and digital publishers in the United States, the Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The company was formerly known as Tremor International Ltd and changed its name to Nexxen International Ltd. in January 2024. Nexxen International Ltd. was incorporated in 2007 and is headquartered in Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel.

About Integral Ad Science

Integral Ad Science Holding Corp. operates as a digital advertising verification company in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Singapore, Australia, Japan, India, and the Nordics. The company provides IAS Signal, a cloud-based technology platform that offers return on ad spend needs; and deliver independent measurement and verification of digital advertising across devices, channels, and formats, including desktop, mobile, connected TV, social, display, and video. Its digital media quality solutions offer ad fraud detection and prevention, viewability, brand safety and suitability, contextual targeting, inventory yield management, and reporting. In addition, the company offers Quality Impressions, a metric designed to verify that digital ads are served to a real person rather than a bot, viewable on-screen, and presented in a brand-safe and suitable environment in the correct geography; Context Control solution that delivers contextual targeting and brand suitability capabilities; pre-bid programmatic and post-bid verification solutions for advertisers; and optimization and verification solutions for publishers. It serves advertisers and agencies, publishers, and supply side platforms. The company was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in New York, New York.