Reviewing IREN (NASDAQ:IREN) and Zscaler (NASDAQ:ZS)

IREN (NASDAQ:IREN) and Zscaler (NASDAQ:ZS) are both technology companies, but which is the better stock? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their risk, analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, valuation, dividends, earnings and profitability.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares IREN and Zscaler”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
IREN	$707.01 million	11.93	-$702.62 million	($4.08)	-5.25
Zscaler	$3.35 billion	9.68	-$63.18 million	($0.39)	-510.36

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

Institutional & Insider Ownership

41.1% of IREN shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 46.5% of Zscaler shares are held by institutional investors. 6.8% of IREN shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 17.2% of Zscaler shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Profitability

This table compares IREN and Zscaler’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
IREN	-99.38%	-15.46%	-5.51%
Zscaler	-1.88%	1.23%	0.40%

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of recent ratings for IREN and Zscaler, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
IREN	1	5	15	1	2.73
Zscaler	1	8	36	0	2.78

IREN presently has a consensus target price of $64.57, indicating a potential upside of 201.59%. Zscaler has a consensus target price of $236.65, indicating a potential upside of 18.90%. Given IREN’s higher probable upside, research analysts clearly believe IREN is more favorable than Zscaler.

Volatility and Risk

IREN has a beta of 4.33, meaning that its stock price is 333% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Zscaler has a beta of 0.82, meaning that its stock price is 18% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Zscaler beats IREN on 10 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About IREN

IREN Limited, formerly known as Iris Energy Limited, owns and operates bitcoin mining data centers. The company was incorporated in 2018 and is headquartered in Sydney, Australia.

About Zscaler

Zscaler, Inc. operates as a cloud security company worldwide. The company offers Zscaler Internet Access solution that provides users, workloads, IoT, and OT devices secure access to externally managed applications, including software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications and internet destinations; and Zscaler Private Access solution, which is designed to provide access to managed applications hosted internally in data centers, and private or public clouds. It also provides Zscaler Digital Experience that measures end-to-end user experience across business applications, as well as provides an easy-to-understand digital experience score for each user, application, and location within an enterprise. In addition, the company offers Posture Control solutions comprising Cloud Security Posture Management that identifies and remediates application misconfigurations in SaaS, infrastructure as a service, and PaaS to reduce risk and ensure compliance with industry and organizational benchmarks; Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management that detects and remediates excessive or unused cloud permissions and enforces least privileged access without disrupting productivity; Infrastructure as Code (IaC), which analyzes IaC templates to identify misconfigurations and other security issues prior to deployment to cloud infrastructure; and Vulnerability Scanning and Data Loss Prevention solutions. Its platform modules include Zscaler Central Authority, Zscaler Enforcement Node, and Zscaler Log Servers. The company serves customers in airlines and transportation, conglomerates, consumer goods and retail, financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, media and communications, public sector and education, technology, and telecommunications services industries. The company was formerly known as SafeChannel, Inc., and changed its name to Zscaler, Inc. in August 2008. Zscaler, Inc. was incorporated in 2007 and is headquartered in San Jose, California.