Critical Review: ITV (OTC:ITVPY) & Roku (NASDAQ:ROKU)

Roku (NASDAQ:ROKU) and ITV (OTC:ITVPY) are both consumer discretionary companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their valuation, dividends, institutional ownership, risk, profitability, analyst recommendations and earnings.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent ratings and target prices for Roku and ITV, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Roku	1	7	14	2	2.71
ITV	0	0	0	0	0.00

Roku presently has a consensus price target of $96.71, suggesting a potential upside of 26.14%. Given Roku’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, research analysts plainly believe Roku is more favorable than ITV.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Roku and ITV”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Roku	$4.11 billion	2.72	-$129.39 million	($0.89)	-86.15
ITV	$4.50 billion	0.85	$261.22 million	N/A	N/A

ITV has higher revenue and earnings than Roku.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

86.3% of Roku shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 51.4% of ITV shares are held by institutional investors. 14.0% of Roku shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 0.0% of ITV 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.

Profitability

This table compares Roku and ITV’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Roku	-3.15%	-5.34%	-3.07%
ITV	N/A	N/A	N/A

Volatility & Risk

Roku has a beta of 2.12, indicating that its stock price is 112% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, ITV has a beta of 1.47, indicating that its stock price is 47% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Roku beats ITV on 8 of the 13 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Roku

Roku, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, operates a TV streaming platform in the United states and internationally. The company operates in two segments, Platform and Devices. Its streaming platform allows users to find and access TV shows, movies, news, sports, and others. The Platform segment offers digital advertising, including direct and programmatic video advertising, media and entertainment promotional spending, and related services; and streaming services distribution, such as subscription and transaction revenue shares, and sale of premium subscriptions and branded app buttons on remote controls. The Devices segment provides sale of streaming players, Roku-branded TVs, smart home products and services, audio products, and related accessories as well as licensing arrangements with service operators. Roku, Inc. was incorporated in 2002 and is headquartered in San Jose, California.

About ITV

ITV plc, an integrated production, broadcasting, and streaming company, which creates, owns, and distributes content on various platforms worldwide. It operates through ITV Studios and Media & Entertainment segments. The ITV Studios segment creates and produces programs and formats that include sports, drama, entertainment, factual, and news for its own channels and other broadcasters. The segment also operates as an unscripted independent producer of content in the United States; and produces content for local broadcasters and international OTT platforms in Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark. In addition, this segment engages in licensing its finished programmes, formats, and third-party content internationally, as well as finances productions. The Media & Entertainment segment broadcasts and streams various contents on its family of free-to-air TV channels; and offers television advertising services. The company also delivers content through linear television broadcasting, as well as on the ITV Hub, BritBox UK, ITVX, catch up services on pay platforms, and through direct content deals. In addition, this segment offers online advertising, HD digital channel on pay platform, and ITV Premium subscription services. The company was founded in 1955 is based in London, the United Kingdom.