Financial Comparison: Lionsgate Studios (NYSE:LION) and BuzzFeed (NASDAQ:BZFD)

BuzzFeed (NASDAQ:BZFD) and Lionsgate Studios (NYSE:LION) are both small-cap consumer discretionary companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their profitability, institutional ownership, risk, dividends, analyst recommendations, earnings and valuation.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings and target prices for BuzzFeed and Lionsgate Studios, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
BuzzFeed	0	0	0	1	4.00
Lionsgate Studios	0	4	6	1	2.73

Lionsgate Studios has a consensus target price of $8.8333, indicating a potential upside of 37.16%. Given Lionsgate Studios’ higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Lionsgate Studios is more favorable than BuzzFeed.

Risk and Volatility

BuzzFeed has a beta of 3.46, meaning that its share price is 246% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Lionsgate Studios has a beta of -0.25, meaning that its share price is 125% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares BuzzFeed and Lionsgate Studios’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
BuzzFeed	4.75%	-28.11%	-11.14%
Lionsgate Studios	-6.19%	N/A	-1.83%

Insider and Institutional Ownership

37.6% of BuzzFeed shares are held by institutional investors. 20.3% of BuzzFeed 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.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares BuzzFeed and Lionsgate Studios”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
BuzzFeed	$189.89 million	0.39	-$10.10 million	$0.25	8.04
Lionsgate Studios	$3.20 billion	0.58	-$128.50 million	($0.67)	-9.61

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

Summary

BuzzFeed beats Lionsgate Studios on 8 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About BuzzFeed

BuzzFeed, Inc., a digital media company, distributes content across owned and operated, as well as third-party platforms. The company offers BuzzFeed, a go-to authority for entertainment, pop culture, and Internet with articles, lists, quizzes, videos, and original series; BuzzFeed News, a pocket friendly newsroom; Tasty, a platform for food content; HuffPost, media platform for news, politics, opinion, entertainment, features, and lifestyle content. It also provides display, programmatic, and video advertising on its owned and operated sites and applications. BuzzFeed, Inc. is headquartered in New York, New York.

About Lionsgate Studios

Lionsgate Studios Corp. engages in the provision of motion picture and studio operations that bring a varied portfolio of entertainment to consumers. The company is headquartered in Santa Monica, CA.