Financial Contrast: Paylocity (NASDAQ:PCTY) vs. MariaDB (NYSE:MRDB)

Paylocity (NASDAQ:PCTY) and MariaDB (NYSE:MRDB) are both computer and technology companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, dividends, risk, profitability, valuation and earnings.

Profitability

This table compares Paylocity and MariaDB’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Paylocity	14.74%	22.17%	5.13%
MariaDB	-72.29%	N/A	-146.29%

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings and target prices for Paylocity and MariaDB, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Paylocity	0	6	9	0	2.60
MariaDB	0	0	0	0	N/A

Paylocity currently has a consensus target price of $179.87, indicating a potential upside of 10.07%. Given Paylocity’s higher possible upside, research analysts plainly believe Paylocity is more favorable than MariaDB.

Valuation & Earnings

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

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Paylocity	$1.40 billion	6.57	$206.77 million	$3.44	47.50
MariaDB	$54.56 million	0.69	-$51.86 million	($0.59)	-0.93

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

Risk and Volatility

Paylocity has a beta of 0.95, suggesting that its stock price is 5% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, MariaDB has a beta of 0.64, suggesting that its stock price is 36% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

94.8% of Paylocity shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 30.7% of MariaDB shares are owned by institutional investors. 22.5% of Paylocity shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 26.1% of MariaDB shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

Paylocity beats MariaDB on 12 of the 13 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Paylocity

Paylocity Holding Corporation provides cloud-based human capital management and payroll software solutions for workforce in the United States. The company offers Payroll and Tax Services solution to simplifies payroll, automates processes, and manages compliance requirements within one system; and expense management, on demand payment, and garnishment solutions. It provides human capital management and employee self-service solutions, document library, compliance dashboard, and HR edge; time and attendance solution; schedule tracking services; and time collection devices, including kiosks, time clocks, and mobile and web applications. In addition, the company offers talent management solutions comprising recruiting and onboarding, as well as learning, performance, and compensation management; and third-party administrative solutions; employee experiences solutions, including community, premium video, survey, and peer recognition; and insights and recommendations solutions, such as modern workforce index, data insights, and reporting. Further, it provides implementation and training, client, and tax and regulatory services. The company serves for-profit and non-profit organizations across industries, including business services, financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, restaurants, retail, technology, and others. It sells its products through sales representatives. Paylocity Holding Corporation was founded in 1997 and is headquartered in Schaumburg, Illinois.

About MariaDB

MariaDB plc operates as a cloud database company in North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific. It offers database solutions, including MariaDB Enterprise Server, a premium version of community server; MariaDB Xpand, a distributed structured query language (SQL) database for transactional workloads; MariaDB ColumnStore for data warehousing; MariaDB MaxScale for availability and load balancing; and MariaDB SkySQL, a database-as-a-service for its products on public clouds. The company also provides consulting, training, remote database administration, and engineering architecture services. It serves financial services, government, technology, retail, telecommunications, and transportation industries. The company is headquartered in Redwood City, California.