Head-To-Head Contrast: Piper Sandler Companies (NYSE:PIPR) and Miami International (NYSE:MIAX)

Piper Sandler Companies (NYSE:PIPR) and Miami International (NYSE:MIAX) are both mid-cap financial services companies, but which is the superior stock? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their valuation, profitability, risk, earnings, institutional ownership, analyst recommendations and dividends.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

72.8% of Piper Sandler Companies shares are held by institutional investors. 2.7% of Piper Sandler Companies shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Piper Sandler Companies and Miami International”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Piper Sandler Companies	$1.53 billion	4.10	$181.11 million	$13.27	26.64
Miami International	$1.32 billion	2.56	$1.63 million	$0.02	2,069.00

Piper Sandler Companies has higher revenue and earnings than Miami International. Piper Sandler Companies is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Miami International, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings and target prices for Piper Sandler Companies and Miami International, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Piper Sandler Companies	1	3	2	0	2.17
Miami International	1	4	4	0	2.33

Piper Sandler Companies presently has a consensus price target of $389.67, indicating a potential upside of 10.22%. Miami International has a consensus price target of $47.20, indicating a potential upside of 14.06%. Given Miami International’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Miami International is more favorable than Piper Sandler Companies.

Profitability

This table compares Piper Sandler Companies and Miami International’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Piper Sandler Companies	13.73%	19.91%	13.64%
Miami International	N/A	N/A	N/A

Summary

Piper Sandler Companies beats Miami International on 9 of the 13 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Piper Sandler Companies

Piper Sandler Companies operates as an investment bank and institutional securities firm that serves corporations, private equity groups, public entities, non-profit entities, and institutional investors in the United States and internationally. The company offers investment banking and institutional sales, trading, and research services for various equity and fixed income products. It provides advisory services, such as mergers and acquisitions, equity private placements, and debt and restructuring advisory; raises capital through equity and debt financings; underwrites municipal issuances; and offers municipal financial advisory and loan placement services, as well as various over-the-counter derivative products. The company also offers public finance investment banking services that focus on state and local governments, and cultural and social service non-profit entities, as well as the education, healthcare, hospitality, senior living, and transportation sectors. In addition, it provides equity and fixed income advisory and trade execution services for institutional investors, and government and non-profit entities. Further, the company is involved in the alternative asset management funds merchant banking and healthcare to invest firm capital and to manage capital from outside investors, as well as trading activities. The company was formerly known as Piper Jaffray Companies and changed its name to Piper Sandler Companies in January 2020. Piper Sandler Companies was founded in 1895 and is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

About Miami International

We are a technology-driven leader in building and operating regulated financial marketplaces across multiple asset classes and geographies. Our MIAX Exchanges, MIAX Futures and BSX marketplaces are enabled by our in-house built, proprietary technology. We believe the speed and performance of our proprietary technology coupled with our fully integrated, award-winning customer service, sets us apart from our competitors. Our MIAX Exchange trading platform was originally built to meet the high-performance quoting demands of the U.S. options trading industry. We are regarded as a market leader relative to many of our peers with respect to our technology, based on feedback from our customers. We differentiate our trading platform with our throughput, latency, reliability and wire-order determinism. We maintain a broad portfolio of U.S. exchange and clearing licenses, in both securities and futures. We operate markets across a diverse number of asset classes including options and cash equities as well as futures and options on futures. Our markets currently include: options on our exchanges regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) through MIAX Options®, MIAX Pearl®, MIAX Emerald®, and MIAX Sapphire™; U.S. equities through MIAX Pearl Equities — also regulated by the SEC; U.S. futures and options on futures through MIAX Futures Exchange, LLC (“MIAX Futures,” formerly the Minneapolis Grain Exchange, LLC (“MGEX”)), which is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (the “CFTC”); and international listings through The Bermuda Stock Exchange (“BSX”), which is regulated by the Bermuda Monetary Authority (the “BMA”), and The International Stock Exchange Group Limited (“TISEG”), which via its subsidiary, The International Stock Exchange Authority Limited (“TISEA”), is regulated by the Guernsey Financial Services Commission (“GFSC”). We also own Dorman Trading, LLC (“Dorman Trading”), a full-service Futures Commission Merchant (“FCM”) registered with the CFTC and the National Futures Association (“NFA”) and LedgerX LLC d/b/a MIAX Derivatives Exchange (“MIAXdx”), which is regulated by the CFTC, where we have the ability to list for trading fully collateralized U.S. futures, options on futures and swaps. We entered into a master index services license agreement in July 2024 (the “Bloomberg License Agreement”) with Bloomberg Index Services Limited (“Bloomberg”) to develop a suite of proprietary products, including index futures, options on futures, and cash index options, based on Bloomberg’s portfolio of indexes as agreed to by the parties from time to time (the “Bloomberg Products”). Pursuant to a service schedule product license entered into in July 2024 (the “Service Schedule”) under the Bloomberg License Agreement, we have a ten year exclusive license to list futures, options on futures, and cash-settled index options on (i) the Bloomberg 500 Index (the “B500 Index”) and (ii) the Bloomberg US Large Cap Volatility Index (the “B500 Volatility Index”). We have the right to list these proprietary products on any of our affiliated U.S. exchanges in North and South America. The ten-year term under the Service Schedule does not expire until the tenth anniversary of the date the first product is listed. The Service Schedule also provides for automatic three-year renewal terms, provided certain minimum revenue thresholds are met. The first Bloomberg Products we plan to exclusively list are futures and cash-settled index options on the B500 Index. We expect to launch futures on the B500 Index in the fourth quarter of 2025 or in the first quarter of 2026 on MIAX Futures, cash-settled index options on the B500 Index in the first half of 2026 on MIAX Options, and options on futures on the B500 Index on MIAX Futures targeted for the second half of 2026, subject to certain regulatory filings. We plan to have the Bloomberg Products cleared at The Options Clearing Corporation (“OCC”), also subject to certain regulatory filings. We currently list Hard Red Spring Wheat futures and options on futures contracts on MIAX Futures. We offer clearing services for U.S. futures and options on futures through the MIAX Futures derivatives clearing organization license (“MIAX Futures Clearing”), and may offer clearing for fully collateralized futures, options on futures and swaps through the MIAXdx derivatives clearing organization license (“MIAXdx Clearing”). In addition to the Bloomberg Products, we are developing other new products for our markets and plan to expand our suite of proprietary and other products on MIAX Futures and MIAXdx, and may enter into additional clearing as a service agreements with other futures markets. New MIAX Futures products will be traded on our own MIAX Futures Onyx trading system (“MIAX Futures Onyx”), which we launched on June 29, 2025. Since launching our first options exchange in 2012, MIAX has grown to be the 14th largest global derivatives exchange operator as of June 30, 2025, as measured by the total number of futures and options contracts traded on exchanges as reported by the Futures Industry Association (the “FIA”). In 2024, trading in multi-listed U.S. options on our MIAX Exchanges totaled 1.69 billion contracts, a 6.5% increase from the 2023 total and a 30.1% increase from the 2022 total. Total volume of futures and options on futures on the MIAX Futures exchange reached 3.2 million contracts in 2024, an increase of 10.2% from the 2023 total and a 3.2% decrease from the 2022 total. For the six months ended June 30, 2025, trading in multi-listed U.S. options on our exchanges totaled 1.1 billion contracts, a 30.5% increase from the same period in 2024. Total volume of futures and options on futures on the MIAX Futures exchange was 2.2 million contracts for the six months ended June 30, 2025, an increase of 36.6% from the same period in 2024. MIAX has a strong track record of organic growth. By increasing scale and launching new marketplaces, we have been able to substantially grow our transaction volume. Our average daily volume in U.S. options on the MIAX Exchanges increased from 1.0 million contracts in 2015 to 6.7 million contracts in 2024, a compound annual growth rate of 23.5%. Our average daily volume in U.S. options on the MIAX Exchanges in 2024 was 6.7 million contracts, as compared to 6.3 million contracts in 2023 and 5.2 million contracts in 2022. For the six months ended June 30, 2025, our average daily volume in U.S. options on the MIAX Exchanges was 8.7 million contracts, as compared to 6.5 million contracts in the same period in 2024. Our revenue consists primarily of transaction fees, access fees, and market data fees related to transactions executed on our exchanges. Our principal executive offices are located in Princeton, New Jersey.