Critical Survey: Maplebear (NASDAQ:CART) & Alibaba Group (NYSE:BABA)

Maplebear (NASDAQ:CART) and Alibaba Group (NYSE:BABA) are both retail/wholesale companies, but which is the superior stock? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their institutional ownership, earnings, profitability, risk, analyst recommendations, valuation and dividends.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings and price targets for Maplebear and Alibaba Group, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Maplebear	2	9	13	1	2.52
Alibaba Group	0	5	16	2	2.87

Maplebear currently has a consensus price target of $51.09, indicating a potential upside of 23.83%. Alibaba Group has a consensus price target of $188.76, indicating a potential upside of 56.11%. Given Alibaba Group’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Alibaba Group is more favorable than Maplebear.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

63.1% of Maplebear shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 13.5% of Alibaba Group shares are held by institutional investors. 24.0% of Maplebear shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 12.5% of Alibaba Group shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Volatility and Risk

Maplebear has a beta of 0.88, indicating that its stock price is 12% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Alibaba Group has a beta of 0.47, indicating that its stock price is 53% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Maplebear and Alibaba Group”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Maplebear	$3.86 billion	2.51	$447.00 million	$1.79	23.05
Alibaba Group	$1,023.67 billion	0.28	$15.02 billion	$6.09	19.86

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

Profitability

This table compares Maplebear and Alibaba Group’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Maplebear	12.50%	18.67%	13.45%
Alibaba Group	10.31%	4.76%	2.79%

Summary

Maplebear beats Alibaba Group on 8 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Maplebear

Maplebear Inc., doing business as Instacart, engages in the provision of online grocery shopping services to households in North America. It sells and delivers grocery products, as well as pickup services through a mobile application and website. It also operates virtual convenience stores; and provides software-as-a-service solutions to retailers. The company was incorporated in 2012 and is based in San Francisco, California.

About Alibaba Group

Alibaba Group Holding Limited, through its subsidiaries, provides technology infrastructure and marketing reach to help merchants, brands, retailers, and other businesses to engage with their users and customers in the People's Republic of China and internationally. The company operates through seven segments: China Commerce, International Commerce, Local Consumer Services, Cainiao, Cloud, Digital Media and Entertainment, and Innovation Initiatives and Others. It operates Taobao, a digital retail platform; Tmall, a third-party online and mobile commerce platform; Alimama, a monetization platform; 1688.com and Alibaba.com, which are online wholesale marketplaces; AliExpress, a retail marketplace; Lazada, Trendyol, and Daraz that are e-commerce platforms; Freshippo, a retail platform for groceries and fresh goods; and Tmall Global, an import e-commerce platform. The company also operates Cainiao Network logistic services platform; Ele.me, an on-demand delivery and local services platform; Koubei, a restaurant and local services guide platform; and Fliggy, an online travel platform. In addition, it offers pay-for-performance, in-feed, and display marketing services; and Taobao Ad Network and Exchange, a real-time online bidding marketing exchange. Further, the company provides elastic computing, storage, network, security, database, big data, and IoT services; and hardware, software license, software installation, and application development and maintenance services. Additionally, it operates Youku, an online video platform; Quark, a platform for information search, storage, and consumption; Alibaba Pictures and other content platforms that provide online videos, films, live events, news feeds, literature, music, and others; Amap, a mobile digital map, navigation, and real-time traffic information app; DingTalk, a business efficiency mobile app; and Tmall Genie smart speaker. The company was incorporated in 1999 and is based in Hangzhou, the People's Republic of China.