Appian (NASDAQ:APPN – Get Free Report) and Agora (NASDAQ:API – Get Free Report) are both technology companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their profitability, valuation, dividends, institutional ownership, risk, earnings and analyst recommendations.
Risk & Volatility
Appian has a beta of 0.94, meaning that its stock price is 6% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Agora has a beta of 0.79, meaning that its stock price is 21% less volatile than the S&P 500.
Insider and Institutional Ownership
52.7% of Appian shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 40.4% of Agora shares are owned by institutional investors. 42.8% of Appian shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 14.6% of Agora shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a company is poised for long-term growth.
Valuation & Earnings
| Gross Revenue | Price/Sales Ratio | Net Income | Earnings Per Share | Price/Earnings Ratio | |
| Appian | $726.94 million | 3.78 | $1.23 million | ($0.15) | -255.80 |
| Agora | $141.06 million | 2.62 | $9.53 million | $0.11 | 38.55 |
Agora has lower revenue, but higher earnings than Appian. Appian is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Agora, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Profitability
This table compares Appian and Agora’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.
| Net Margins | Return on Equity | Return on Assets | |
| Appian | -1.34% | -35.20% | 3.64% |
| Agora | 7.23% | 1.96% | 1.52% |
Analyst Recommendations
This is a summary of current ratings for Appian and Agora, as reported by MarketBeat.com.
| Sell Ratings | Hold Ratings | Buy Ratings | Strong Buy Ratings | Rating Score | |
| Appian | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2.14 |
| Agora | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2.00 |
Appian presently has a consensus target price of $31.00, indicating a potential downside of 19.21%. Agora has a consensus target price of $6.80, indicating a potential upside of 60.38%. Given Agora’s higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Agora is more favorable than Appian.
Summary
Appian beats Agora on 8 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.
About Appian
Appian Corporation, a software company that provides low-code design platform in the United States, Mexico, Portugal, and internationally. The company's platform offers artificial intelligence, process automation, data fabric, and process mining. It provides The Appian Platform, an integrated automation platform that enables organizations to design, automate, and optimize mission-critical business processes. The company also offers professional and customer support services. It serves to financial services, government, life sciences, insurance, manufacturing, energy, healthcare, telecommunications, and transportation industries. Appian Corporation was incorporated in 1999 and is headquartered in McLean, Virginia.
About Agora
Agora, Inc. operates in real-time engagement technology business in the People's Republic of China, the United States, and internationally. The company offers real-time engagement platform-as-a-services providing developers with application programming interfaces to embed real-time voice, video, interactive live-streaming, chat, whiteboard, and artificial intelligence capabilities into their applications. It also provides video and voice calling, interactive live and broadcast streaming, chat, signaling, and interactive whiteboard products; and extensions, such as analytics, recording, AI noise suppression, 3D spatial audio, real-time transcription, and extensions marketplace. In addition, the company offers Application Platforms, including Flexible Classroom, a low-code application Platform as a Service, which combines video, voice, chat, signaling, whiteboard and recording functionalities into an integrated cloud-based solution for education providers; and App Builder, a no-code application platform, designed for developers with little or no coding experience to build their own applications with video conference and live streaming functionalities. It operates through Agora and Shengwang brands. Agora, Inc. was incorporated in 2013 and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California.
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