Financial Survey: Appian (NASDAQ:APPN) versus Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE)

Appian (NASDAQ:APPN) and Backblaze (NASDAQ:BLZE) are both small-cap computer and technology companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their risk, valuation, analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, earnings, profitability and dividends.

Profitability

This table compares Appian and Backblaze’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Appian	0.12%	-26.12%	2.16%
Backblaze	-14.97%	-20.54%	-8.90%

Risk and Volatility

Appian has a beta of 0.9, indicating that its stock price is 10% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Backblaze has a beta of 1.71, indicating that its stock price is 71% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent recommendations for Appian and Backblaze, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Appian	2	4	1	0	1.86
Backblaze	2	1	6	1	2.60

Appian presently has a consensus price target of $26.00, indicating a potential upside of 30.85%. Backblaze has a consensus price target of $8.00, indicating a potential downside of 1.48%. Given Appian’s higher probable upside, equities analysts clearly believe Appian is more favorable than Backblaze.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

52.7% of Appian shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 54.0% of Backblaze shares are owned by institutional investors. 44.0% of Appian shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 4.2% of Backblaze shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Appian and Backblaze”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Appian	$726.94 million	2.01	$1.23 million	$0.01	1,987.00
Backblaze	$145.84 million	3.35	-$25.61 million	($0.39)	-20.82

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

Summary

Appian beats Backblaze on 8 of the 15 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 Backblaze

Backblaze, Inc., a storage cloud platform, provides businesses and consumers cloud services to store, use, and protect data in the United States and internationally. The company offers cloud services through a web-scale software infrastructure built on commodity hardware. It also provides Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage, which enables customers to store data, developers to build applications, and partners to expand their use cases. This service is offered as a consumption-based Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and serves use cases, such as public, hybrid, and multi-cloud data storage; application development and DevOps; content delivery and edge computing; security and ransomware protection; media management; backup, archive, and tape replacement; repository for analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning; and Internet of Things. In addition, the company offers Backblaze Computer Backup that automatically backs up data from laptops and desktops for businesses and individuals, which provides a subscription-based Software-as-a-Service and serves use cases, including computer backup, ransomware protection, theft and loss protection, and remote access. It serves the public cloud IaaS storage and Data-Protection-as-a-Service markets. The company was incorporated in 2007 and is headquartered in San Mateo, California.