Financial Review: Health Catalyst (NASDAQ:HCAT) versus OptimizeRx (NASDAQ:OPRX)

OptimizeRx (NASDAQ:OPRX) and Health Catalyst (NASDAQ:HCAT) are both small-cap healthcare companies, but which is the superior investment? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their earnings, analyst recommendations, dividends, institutional ownership, valuation, risk and profitability.

Profitability

This table compares OptimizeRx and Health Catalyst’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
OptimizeRx	4.66%	9.44%	7.11%
Health Catalyst	-90.61%	-1.83%	-0.80%

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares OptimizeRx and Health Catalyst”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
OptimizeRx	$98.65 million	1.75	$5.13 million	$0.23	39.78
Health Catalyst	$292.25 million	0.44	-$177.97 million	($3.68)	-0.46

OptimizeRx has higher earnings, but lower revenue than Health Catalyst. Health Catalyst is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than OptimizeRx, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

76.5% of OptimizeRx shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 85.0% of Health Catalyst shares are held by institutional investors. 7.5% of OptimizeRx shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 19.4% of Health Catalyst shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent recommendations and price targets for OptimizeRx and Health Catalyst, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
OptimizeRx	1	2	6	0	2.56
Health Catalyst	1	6	2	0	2.11

OptimizeRx currently has a consensus price target of $11.57, indicating a potential upside of 26.46%. Health Catalyst has a consensus price target of $2.15, indicating a potential upside of 27.22%. Given Health Catalyst’s higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Health Catalyst is more favorable than OptimizeRx.

Volatility and Risk

OptimizeRx has a beta of 1.26, suggesting that its share price is 26% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Health Catalyst has a beta of 1.54, suggesting that its share price is 54% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

OptimizeRx beats Health Catalyst on 9 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About OptimizeRx

OptimizeRx Corporation, a digital health technology company, enables care-focused engagement between life sciences organizations, healthcare providers, and patients at critical junctures throughout the patient care journey. It offers various tech-enabled marketing solutions through its Artificial Intelligence-generated Dynamic Audience and Activation Platform, which enables customers to execute traditional marketing campaigns on its proprietary digital point-of-care network, as well as dynamic marketing campaigns that optimize audiences in real time to increase the value of treatment information for healthcare professionals and patients in response to clinical care events. The company was founded in 2006 and is based in Waltham, Massachusetts.

About Health Catalyst

Health Catalyst, Inc. provides data and analytics technology and services to healthcare organizations in the United States. It operates in two segments, Technology and Professional Services. The company provides data operating system data platform which provides clients single comprehensive environment to integrate and organize data from their disparate software systems; and analytics applications, a software analytics applications build for data platform to analyze clients face across clinical and quality, population health, and financial and operational use cases. It offers services expertise solutions comprising data and analytics, domain expertise and education, tech-enabled managed, and implementation services; and opportunity analysis and prioritization, data governance, data modeling and analysis, quality and process improvement strategy, cost accounting, data abstraction, and population health strategies. The company was formerly known as HQC Holdings, Inc. and changed its name to Health Catalyst, Inc. in March 2017. Health Catalyst, Inc. was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in South Jordan, Utah.