Analyzing Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW) & Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ:AKAM)

Snowflake (NYSE:SNOW) and Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ:AKAM) are both large-cap technology companies, but which is the better investment? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their dividends, profitability, valuation, risk, institutional ownership, earnings and analyst recommendations.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Snowflake and Akamai Technologies”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Snowflake	$5.43 billion	21.53	-$1.33 billion	($3.18)	-104.29
Akamai Technologies	$4.32 billion	3.51	$452.03 million	$2.78	37.97

Akamai Technologies has lower revenue, but higher earnings than Snowflake. Snowflake is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Akamai Technologies, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Profitability

This table compares Snowflake and Akamai Technologies’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Snowflake	-20.07%	-46.32%	-10.90%
Akamai Technologies	9.51%	11.32%	4.47%

Volatility and Risk

Snowflake has a beta of 1.33, meaning that its stock price is 33% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Akamai Technologies has a beta of 0.63, meaning that its stock price is 37% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

65.1% of Snowflake shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 94.3% of Akamai Technologies shares are owned by institutional investors. 4.8% of Snowflake shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 2.3% of Akamai Technologies shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent ratings for Snowflake and Akamai Technologies, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Snowflake	1	5	34	0	2.83
Akamai Technologies	2	9	13	0	2.46

Snowflake currently has a consensus target price of $414.24, indicating a potential upside of 24.91%. Akamai Technologies has a consensus target price of $141.62, indicating a potential upside of 34.15%. Given Akamai Technologies’ higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Akamai Technologies is more favorable than Snowflake.

Summary

Akamai Technologies beats Snowflake on 8 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Snowflake

Snowflake Inc. provides a cloud-based data platform for various organizations in the United States and internationally. Its platform offers Data Cloud, which enables customers to consolidate data into a single source of truth to drive meaningful business insights, build data-driven applications, and share data and data products, as well as applies artificial intelligence (AI) for solving business problems. The company was formerly known as Snowflake Computing, Inc. and changed its name to Snowflake Inc. in April 2019. Snowflake Inc. was incorporated in 2012 and is based in Bozeman, Montana.

About Akamai Technologies

Akamai Technologies, Inc. provides cloud computing, security, and content delivery services in the United States and internationally. The company offers cloud solutions to keep infrastructure, websites, applications, application programming interfaces, and users safe from various cyberattacks and online threats while enhancing performance. It also provides web and mobile performance solutions to enable dynamic websites and applications; media delivery solutions, including video streaming and video player services, game and software delivery, broadcast operations, authoritative domain name system, resolution, and data and analytics; and cloud computing services, such as compute, storage, networking, database, and container management services to build, deploy, and secure applications and workloads. In addition, the company offers content delivery solutions; and an array of service and support to assist customers with integrating, configuring, optimizing, and managing its offerings. It sells its solutions through various channel partners. Akamai Technologies, Inc. was incorporated in 1998 and is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.