I believe that he is, I'm not even arguing just battle-wise I mean aura-wise as well. I definitely think Netero was downplaying his power for most of the arc, and colts comments don't phase me because he's not necessarily saying that they are stronger than than netero, but that he'd be killed before he gets to the king. That could be due to one royal guard, or due to all three royal guards. 

Moreover, when netero sees pitou for the the first time and says that she's stronger than him... (right before he started some of his power back) why would his first instinct and thought be "let's avoid as much conflict as possible" and not be immediately excited at the prospect of fighting Pitou? Probably because he knows he can get back to a power level that could beat Pitou, it wouldn't be a cakewalk, but when he hears about the prospect of fighting the king and potentially having to deal with the other royal guards that's when he gets genuinely excited. 

And if not aura-wise then I definitely don't think pitou would've gone into the netero fight with the same mentality that Meruem did. The only true counterargument I fear, is the simple tail whip meruem gave to pitous head that didn't manage to blow her head off, and the fact that the moment he seemed to touch any of netero's limbs it was pulled cleanly right off.   
  
The final thing would be we don't see anything of the Kite fight, kite was admittedly incredibly strong, maybe about Morel's level. But like the fight went till the sunlight was out and we see pitou, not bleeding, but pretty roughed up. 

Kite was fighting for his life, as he pulled that specific number on crazy slots for it, so perhaps his condition gave him an insane combat boost, an ability that let him preserve his spirit in some way (I believe this is heavily implied to be the case), or both. But I think its noteworthy that one armed kite did enough to give pitou a reason to consider him a worthwhile opponent, and I don't think that Netero would think likewise of Kite. 

Is Pitou truly stronger than Netero?