MarketAxess (NASDAQ:MKTX) & Webull (NASDAQ:BULL) Financial Review

Webull (NASDAQ:BULL) and MarketAxess (NASDAQ:MKTX) are both mid-cap finance companies, but which is the better investment? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their institutional ownership, valuation, dividends, analyst recommendations, risk, profitability and earnings.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings and target prices for Webull and MarketAxess, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Webull	1	1	3	0	2.40
MarketAxess	0	12	1	0	2.08

Webull presently has a consensus target price of $10.00, suggesting a potential upside of 76.99%. MarketAxess has a consensus target price of $159.44, suggesting a potential downside of 3.17%. Given Webull’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, equities research analysts clearly believe Webull is more favorable than MarketAxess.

Volatility & Risk

Webull has a beta of 0.64, indicating that its stock price is 36% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, MarketAxess has a beta of 0.8, indicating that its stock price is 20% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

92.5% of Webull shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 99.0% of MarketAxess shares are held by institutional investors. 35.0% of Webull shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 0.7% of MarketAxess shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Profitability

This table compares Webull and MarketAxess’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Webull	6.26%	5.95%	1.60%
MarketAxess	33.51%	23.15%	12.43%

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Webull and MarketAxess”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Webull	$571.00 million	5.35	$24.77 million	$0.08	70.62
MarketAxess	$846.27 million	6.85	$246.63 million	$8.17	20.16

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

Summary

MarketAxess beats Webull on 9 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Webull

Webull Corp. engages in the provision of financial services. It offers trading, wealth management product distribution, market data and information, user community, and investor education. The company was founded by An Quan Wang in 2016 and is headquartered in St. Petersburg, FL.

About MarketAxess

MarketAxess Holdings Inc., together with its subsidiaries, operates an electronic trading platform for institutional investor and broker-dealer companies worldwide. The company offers trading technology that provides liquidity access in U.S. high-grade bonds, U.S. high-yield bonds, emerging market debt, eurobonds, municipal bonds, U.S. government bonds, and other fixed-income securities; and executes bond trades between and among institutional investor and broker-dealer clients in an all-to-all anonymous trading environment for corporate bonds through its Open Trading protocols. It also provides trading-related products and services, including composite+ pricing and other market data products to assist clients with trading decisions; auto-execution and other execution services for clients requiring specialized workflow solutions; connectivity solutions that facilitate straight-through processing; and technology services to optimize trading environments. In addition, the company offers various pre-and post-trade services, such as trade matching, trade publication, regulatory transaction reporting, and market and reference data across a range of fixed-income and other products. MarketAxess Holdings Inc. was incorporated in 2000 and is headquartered in New York, New York.