Comparing SKYX Platforms (NASDAQ:SKYX) and Ibotta (NYSE:IBTA)

Ibotta (NYSE:IBTA) and SKYX Platforms (NASDAQ:SKYX) are both small-cap business services companies, but which is the better stock? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, profitability, institutional ownership, risk, valuation, earnings and dividends.

Volatility and Risk

Ibotta has a beta of -1.19, meaning that its share price is 219% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, SKYX Platforms has a beta of -3723.67, meaning that its share price is 372,467% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Ibotta and SKYX Platforms”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Ibotta	$367.25 million	2.30	$68.74 million	$2.88	11.59
SKYX Platforms	$89.03 million	1.98	-$35.77 million	($0.36)	-4.36

Ibotta has higher revenue and earnings than SKYX Platforms. SKYX Platforms is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Ibotta, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of current ratings for Ibotta and SKYX Platforms, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Ibotta	3	6	1	0	1.80
SKYX Platforms	1	1	1	1	2.50

Ibotta currently has a consensus target price of $34.14, suggesting a potential upside of 2.29%. SKYX Platforms has a consensus target price of $5.00, suggesting a potential upside of 218.47%. Given SKYX Platforms’ stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe SKYX Platforms is more favorable than Ibotta.

Profitability

This table compares Ibotta and SKYX Platforms’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Ibotta	26.24%	24.26%	15.33%
SKYX Platforms	-41.24%	-3,407.81%	-56.83%

Institutional & Insider Ownership

11.8% of SKYX Platforms shares are owned by institutional investors. 16.1% of Ibotta shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 30.0% of SKYX Platforms shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Summary

Ibotta beats SKYX Platforms on 9 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Ibotta

Ibotta’s mission is to Make Every Purchase Rewarding. Our technology allows CPG brands to deliver digital promotions to over 200 million consumers through a single, convenient network called the Ibotta Performance Network (IPN). We are pioneers in success-based marketing: we only get paid when our client’s promotion results in a sale, not when a consumer merely views or clicks on the promotion. We have built the largest digital item-level promotions network in the United States by forming strategic relationships with major retailers such as Walmart Inc. (Walmart) and Dollar General Corporation (Dollar General), which use our digital offers to power their loyalty programs on a white-label basis. Through the IPN, our clients can also reach millions more consumers on our widely used rewards app digital properties, which include the Ibotta-branded cash back mobile app, website, and browser extension (collectively, Ibotta D2C). We work directly with over 850 different clients, representing over 2,400 different CPG brands to source exclusive offers as of December 31, 2023. Most of our offers cover products in non-discretionary categories, such as grocery, but we also work with general merchandise manufacturers in categories such as toys, clothing, beauty, electronics, pet, home goods, and sporting goods. Over time, our clients have generally ramped up their spend with us, and they rarely drop off our network. In fact, of our top 100 clients, 96% were retained from 2022 to 2023. Our technology platform uses an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled offer engine that is designed to match and distribute the right offer to the right consumer at the right time. This is possible because we receive a large volume of item-level purchase data through our secure point of sale (POS) integrations with 85 different retailers as of December 31, 2023. Using this data, we form a profile of each consumer based on what they have bought in the past and how they have responded to various price promotions. From there, we build recommenders that are driven by machine learning and designed to create personalized savings experiences for each consumer. The more data we accumulate, the smarter our recommenders become. Whatever our clients’ specific objectives may be – such as encouraging brand switching, shortening purchase cycles, incentivizing consumers to stock up, or promoting around key seasonal events – our platform helps them design a promotional campaign to accomplish their goals. Ibotta’s technology tracks which offers are selected by consumers, matches offers to the products that have been purchased, logs redemptions, handles the flow of funds, and takes care of all downstream billing and logistics. We perform the function of “air traffic control,” meaning our network enables offers to be matched, distributed, and redeemed across multiple large third-party publishers in a coordinated fashion. This minimizes the risks that offer budgets are exceeded and that consumers redeem the same offer several times for a single purchase (i.e., offer stacking). Our client tools allow CPG brands to set up campaigns, monitor redemption and budget levels, and analyze overall campaign performance – all in a single, convenient interface. We deliver success-based digital promotions at-scale because we manage a growing, open network of third-party publishers that host our offers. Retailers are among our most important publishers because their apps and websites are frequently visited by consumers with high purchase intent. A retailer may ingest digital offers from Ibotta’s Application Programming Interface (API) and present them to its consumers as part of its own branded loyalty program. We call these partners “retailer publishers.” We believe retailer publishers choose to work with Ibotta because we are a trusted partner that can provide a large universe of exclusive offers coupled with a set of plug and play capabilities that would be difficult for them to create and scale on their own. For example, Ibotta and Walmart entered into a multi-year strategic relationship that makes Ibotta the exclusive provider of digital item-level rebate offer content for Walmart U.S., across all product categories, for online and offline shopping. Consumers redeem our offers on Walmart properties without ever creating an Ibotta account. Instead, they can select manufacturer offers from the Walmart website or app, buy the featured items in-store or online, and instantly earn Walmart Cash which can be applied to future purchases in a Walmart store or on Walmart.com. All CPG brands wishing to run digital item-level rebates on Walmart’s website can only do so through the IPN. Ibotta also partners with several other leading retailer publishers. For example, Ibotta partners with Family Dollar, a subsidiary of Dollar Tree, Inc. We also work indirectly to publish offers on certain retailer properties, including Kroger (powering Kroger Cash) and Shell (powering Shell Fuel Rewards). In addition to providing digital offers for retailers, Ibotta also makes the same offers available on its own digital properties, which include Ibotta D2C. Since 2012, over 50 million Americans have registered for our free app. Ibotta D2C reaches a highly engaged audience of savings-conscious consumers who want a single digital starting point where they can find cash back offers across a variety of retailers. Many of these consumers decide where to shop based on the availability of deals in different retailers. Once the IPN launched, Ibotta D2C became a publisher on the IPN, meaning it is now one of many nodes through which our digital offers are delivered to the end consumer. In the future, we believe the IPN may be extended to other publishers across a variety of new verticals. For example, new publishers could include delivery services, banks, or other apps and websites that want to give their consumers access to offers on popular everyday items without having to source those offers from thousands of different CPG brands or secure item-level data from multiple integrated retailers where the offers can be redeemed. We believe Ibotta is well positioned to capitalize on a large and growing market opportunity. U.S. consumers spent approximately $1.2 trillion dollars in the grocery sector in 2023. CPG brands compete fiercely to influence consumer spending habits, spending approximately $200 billion on marketing annually in the United States. In fact, no other industry spends more on marketing, as a percentage of overall budgets, than CPG. Most of our revenue is redemption revenue which is generated from redemptions of offers across the IPN. A significant portion of that redemption revenue arises from offer redemptions on third-party publishers. We also generate revenue by selling ad products on our Ibotta D2C properties. Specifically, we allow CPG brands and retailers to enhance awareness of their offers by buying display ads, in-app videos, or email marketing campaigns. We also charge partners a licensing fee to leverage our aggregated data in ways that help them better understand their target consumers and improve their promotional activities. Finally, on Ibotta’s D2C properties, we also allow thousands of online retailers to advertise and present consumers with their own sitewide cash back offers. These clients benefit from the incremental sales generated by Ibotta’s savings-conscious audience. Our revenue growth significantly accelerated with the addition of new publishers to the IPN. Most recently, the rollout of our offers on the digital property of Walmart has attracted larger audiences, and in turn, resulted in greater spend by CPG brands and a greater number of redeemed offers. These developments have increased our scale, growth and profitability. • Total revenue grew from $210.7 million in 2022 to $320.0 million in 2023, an increase of 52%; • Redemption revenue grew from $138.7 million (or 66% of total revenue) in 2022 to $243.9 million (or 76% of total revenue) in 2023, an increase of 76%; • Gross profit grew from $164.5 million in 2022 to $276.0 million in 2023, an increase of 68%; • Net income (loss) improved from $(54.9) million in 2022 to $38.1 million in 2023; • Net income (loss) as a percent of revenue improved from (26)% in 2022 to 12% in 2023; and • Adjusted EBITDA margin improved from (13)% in 2022 to 26% in 2023. We were incorporated in 2011 as Zing Enterprises, Inc., a Delaware corporation. In 2012, we changed our name to Ibotta, Inc. Our principal executive office is located at 1801 California Street, Suite 400, Denver, Colorado.

About SKYX Platforms

SKYX Platforms Corp. provides a series of safe-smart platform technologies. The company’s first and second-generation technologies enable light fixtures, ceiling fans, and other electrically wired products to be installed and plugged into a ceiling’s electrical outlet box. It also provides universal power-plugs and receptacle products. In addition, it offers smart products, such as SkyHome App; sky smart universal power-plug and receptacle; sky-smart plug and play ceiling fans and lightings; and all-in-one smart sky platform. The company was formerly known as SQL Technologies Corp. and changed its name to SKYX Platforms Corp. in June 2022. SKYX Platforms Corp. was incorporated in 2004 and is based in Pompano Beach, Florida.