Rapid7 (NASDAQ:RPD) vs. Bridgeline Digital (NASDAQ:BLIN) Head to Head Review

Bridgeline Digital (NASDAQ:BLIN) and Rapid7 (NASDAQ:RPD) are both small-cap technology companies, but which is the better stock? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, valuation, institutional ownership, risk, earnings, dividends and profitability.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Bridgeline Digital and Rapid7″s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Bridgeline Digital	$15.38 million	0.59	-$2.52 million	($0.12)	-5.97
Rapid7	$855.92 million	0.99	$23.38 million	$0.31	40.68

Rapid7 has higher revenue and earnings than Bridgeline Digital. Bridgeline Digital is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Rapid7, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

15.1% of Bridgeline Digital shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 95.7% of Rapid7 shares are held by institutional investors. 27.5% of Bridgeline Digital shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 2.0% of Rapid7 shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Profitability

This table compares Bridgeline Digital and Rapid7’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Bridgeline Digital	-8.65%	-14.51%	-8.76%
Rapid7	2.35%	27.89%	2.66%

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of current ratings and recommmendations for Bridgeline Digital and Rapid7, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Bridgeline Digital	1	1	1	0	2.00
Rapid7	5	17	1	0	1.83

Bridgeline Digital presently has a consensus price target of $4.62, indicating a potential upside of 544.89%. Rapid7 has a consensus price target of $12.09, indicating a potential downside of 4.15%. Given Bridgeline Digital’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, equities research analysts plainly believe Bridgeline Digital is more favorable than Rapid7.

Volatility and Risk

Bridgeline Digital has a beta of 0.92, indicating that its stock price is 8% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Rapid7 has a beta of 1.02, indicating that its stock price is 2% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Rapid7 beats Bridgeline Digital on 10 of the 13 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Bridgeline Digital

Bridgeline Digital, Inc. operates as a marketing technology company in the United States, Canada, and internationally. The company offers HawkSearch, a site search, recommendation, and personalization application for marketers, merchandisers, and developers; Celebros Search, a commerce-oriented site search product that provides natural language processing with artificial intelligence; and Woorank, a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) audit tool that generates an instant performance audit of the site's technical, on-page, and off-page SEO. It also provides Bridgeline TruPresence, a web content management and eCommerce platform to support the needs of multi-unit organizations and franchises; Bridgeline Unbound, a technology suite that empower marketers to easily manage their digital experiences and create personalized customer journeys; and OrchestraCMS, a digital experience platform that enables development of custom solutions, third-party integrations, and delivery of digital transformation initiatives on the Salesforce platform. In addition, the company offers digital engagement services comprising digital strategy, web design and web development, usability engineering, information architecture, and SEO, as well as hosting services. It serves vertical markets, such as industrial distributors and wholesalers, franchises and enterprises, manufacturers, eCommerce retailers, health services and life sciences, technology, credit unions and banks, and associations and foundations through its direct sales force. The company was formerly known as Bridgeline Software, Inc. Bridgeline Digital, Inc. was incorporated in 2000 and is based in Woburn, Massachusetts.

About Rapid7

Rapid7, Inc. provides cybersecurity solutions under the Rapid7, Nexpose, and Metasploit brand names. The company offers endpoint to cloud data collection and sharing applications, such as Rapid7 Insight Agent, a software-based agent that is used on assets across on-premises and cloud environments to centralize and monitor data on company's platform; Rapid7 Insight Network Sensor that analyzes raw end-to-end network traffic to increase visibility into user activity, pinpoint real threats, and investigations; Rapid7 Cloud Event Data Harvesting that offers visibility into changes made to cloud resources; and third-party integrations and ecosystem, as well as orchestration and automation solutions. It also offers various platforms, including Rapid7 managed threat complete consisting of managed detection response that delivers end-to-end threat detection and response, as well as offloads day-to-day vulnerability management operations. In addition, it provides Rapid7 threat complete consisting of InsightIDR, a security information and event management, and extended detection and response solution; and InsightVM, a vulnerability management solution that provides visibility across on-premise and remote endpoints for security teams to evaluate the business risks, and configurations, and share with their IT counterparts for remediation. Further, the company offers Rapid7 cloud risk complete, which includes InsightCloudSec, a cloud risk and compliance management solution; and InsightAppSec, a dynamic application security testing tool. It also provides professional services. It serves a range of industries, including business services, pharmaceuticals, technology, energy, financial services, healthcare and life sciences, manufacturing, media and entertainment, retail, education, real estate, travel and transportation, government, online services, telecommunications, and professional services. The company was incorporated in 2000 and is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.