Reviewing Payoneer Global (NASDAQ:PAYO) & Acacia Research (NASDAQ:ACTG)

Acacia Research (NASDAQ:ACTG) and Payoneer Global (NASDAQ:PAYO) are both finance companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their profitability, dividends, valuation, analyst recommendations, earnings, risk and institutional ownership.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings and target prices for Acacia Research and Payoneer Global, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Acacia Research	1	0	1	0	2.00
Payoneer Global	0	8	1	0	2.11

Acacia Research presently has a consensus target price of $6.00, suggesting a potential upside of 36.36%. Payoneer Global has a consensus target price of $7.40, suggesting a potential upside of 3.50%. Given Acacia Research’s higher probable upside, equities analysts plainly believe Acacia Research is more favorable than Payoneer Global.

Profitability

This table compares Acacia Research and Payoneer Global’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Acacia Research	-5.39%	0.44%	0.33%
Payoneer Global	4.65%	9.97%	0.80%

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Acacia Research and Payoneer Global”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Acacia Research	$285.23 million	1.51	$21.68 million	($0.15)	-29.33
Payoneer Global	$1.05 billion	2.30	$73.19 million	$0.14	51.07

Payoneer Global has higher revenue and earnings than Acacia Research. Acacia Research is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Payoneer Global, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

86.7% of Acacia Research shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 82.2% of Payoneer Global shares are held by institutional investors. 1.7% of Acacia Research shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 2.1% of Payoneer Global shares are held 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.

Volatility & Risk

Acacia Research has a beta of 0.51, meaning that its share price is 49% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Payoneer Global has a beta of 0.88, meaning that its share price is 12% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Payoneer Global beats Acacia Research on 11 of the 13 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Acacia Research

Acacia is a publicly traded (Nasdaq: ACTG) company that is focused on acquiring and operating businesses across the industrial, energy and technology sectors where it believes it can leverage its expertise, significant capital base, and deep industry relationships to drive value. Acacia evaluates opportunities based on the attractiveness of the underlying cash flows, without regard to a specific investment horizon. Acacia operates its businesses based on three key principles of people, process, and performance and has built a management team with demonstrated expertise in research, transactions and execution, and operations and management.

About Payoneer Global

Payoneer Global Inc. operates as a financial technology company. It operates a payment infrastructure platform that provides customers with a one-stop, global, multi-currency account to serve their accounts receivable and accounts payable needs. The company delivers a suite of services that includes cross-border payments, physical and virtual MasterCard cards, working capital, risk management, and other services. It also offers various payment options with minimal integration required, full back-office functions, and customer support offered. The company's platform delivers bank-grade security, stability, and redundancy. It serves customers, such as small and medium-sized businesses in approximately 190 countries and territories worldwide. Payoneer Global Inc. was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in New York, New York.