Head-To-Head Contrast: Taboola.com (NASDAQ:TBLA) versus System1 (NYSE:SST)

System1 (NYSE:SST) and Taboola.com (NASDAQ:TBLA) are both small-cap business services companies, but which is the superior business? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their dividends, earnings, analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, risk, profitability and valuation.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings and price targets for System1 and Taboola.com, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
System1	0	0	1	0	3.00
Taboola.com	0	2	4	0	2.67

System1 presently has a consensus price target of $50.00, indicating a potential upside of 1,089.06%. Taboola.com has a consensus price target of $4.25, indicating a potential upside of 19.38%. Given System1’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, equities analysts plainly believe System1 is more favorable than Taboola.com.

Profitability

This table compares System1 and Taboola.com’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
System1	-24.18%	-68.85%	-18.27%
Taboola.com	-1.96%	-1.68%	-1.04%

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares System1 and Taboola.com”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
System1	$333.52 million	1.18	-$227.22 million	($1.12)	-3.75
Taboola.com	$1.78 billion	0.64	-$82.04 million	$0.04	89.00

Taboola.com has higher revenue and earnings than System1. System1 is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Taboola.com, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

87.5% of System1 shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 42.9% of Taboola.com shares are owned by institutional investors. 13.2% of System1 shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 24.7% of Taboola.com shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Volatility & Risk

System1 has a beta of 1.2, meaning that its share price is 20% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Taboola.com has a beta of 1.29, meaning that its share price is 29% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Taboola.com beats System1 on 9 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About System1

System1, Inc. provides omnichannel customer acquisition platform services through its proprietary responsive acquisition marketing platform in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands, and internationally. It operates through two segments: Owned and Operated Advertising, and Partner Network. The company engages in the provision of acquiring traffic to its owned and operated websites, as well as revenue-sharing arrangements and related services. It also operates MapQuest, a web-based navigation service that delivers turn-by-turn direction services to users; Info.com, a metasearch engine that consumers can use to search for relevant information; HowStuffWorks, a commercial website focused on helping people solve problems in their daily lives by using various types of digital media to easily breakdown and explain complex concepts, topics, terminology and mechanisms; Startpage, a private search engine that allows users to browse and search the Internet in complete privacy; and CouponFollow for coupon destinations for online shoppers, as well as ActiveBeat and Infospace. In addition, the company provides antivirus software solutions, which offers customers a single packaged solution that provides protection and reporting to the end users. The company is based in Los Angeles, California.

About Taboola.com

Taboola.com Ltd., together with its subsidiaries, operates an artificial intelligence-based algorithmic engine platform in Israel, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and internationally. It offers Taboola, a platform that partners with websites, devices, and mobile apps to recommend editorial content and advertisements on the open web to users. The company was incorporated in 2006 and is headquartered in New York, New York.