AppFolio (NASDAQ:APPF – Get Free Report) and Braze (NASDAQ:BRZE – Get Free Report) are both mid-cap computer and technology companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their institutional ownership, profitability, earnings, valuation, risk, dividends and analyst recommendations.
Earnings and Valuation
This table compares AppFolio and Braze”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.
| Gross Revenue | Price/Sales Ratio | Net Income | Earnings Per Share | Price/Earnings Ratio | |
| AppFolio | $950.82 million | 6.22 | $140.92 million | $4.20 | 39.80 |
| Braze | $738.18 million | 3.37 | -$131.29 million | ($1.22) | -17.98 |
Insider & Institutional Ownership
85.2% of AppFolio shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 90.5% of Braze shares are owned by institutional investors. 4.7% of AppFolio shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 18.2% of Braze shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a company is poised for long-term growth.
Profitability
This table compares AppFolio and Braze’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.
| Net Margins | Return on Equity | Return on Assets | |
| AppFolio | 15.27% | 32.35% | 25.69% |
| Braze | -17.78% | -18.75% | -10.60% |
Analyst Recommendations
This is a breakdown of recent ratings and recommmendations for AppFolio and Braze, as provided by MarketBeat.com.
| Sell Ratings | Hold Ratings | Buy Ratings | Strong Buy Ratings | Rating Score | |
| AppFolio | 0 | 1 | 9 | 0 | 2.90 |
| Braze | 1 | 1 | 22 | 0 | 2.88 |
AppFolio presently has a consensus target price of $252.29, indicating a potential upside of 50.92%. Braze has a consensus target price of $36.90, indicating a potential upside of 68.21%. Given Braze’s higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Braze is more favorable than AppFolio.
Risk & Volatility
AppFolio has a beta of 0.82, meaning that its stock price is 18% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Braze has a beta of 0.78, meaning that its stock price is 22% less volatile than the S&P 500.
Summary
AppFolio beats Braze on 10 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.
About AppFolio
AppFolio, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides cloud business management solutions for the real estate industry in the United States. The company provides a cloud-based platform that enables users to automate and optimize common workflows; tools that assist with leasing, maintenance, and accounting; and other technology and services offered by third parties. It offers AppFolio Property Manager Core, a platform that provides the basic functionalities required to operate a property management business, as well as serves as a system of record; AppFolio Property Manager Plus, which offers housing management, student housing management, complex accounting, leasing insights, large-scale operations support, role-based permissions, stack integrations, and enhanced customer support services; AppFolio Property Manager Max offers customer relationship management functionality, field customization, customer database functionality, and customer success management services; and AppFolio Investment Manager, a software that provides investment management, asset management, and relationship management solutions. The company also provides value-added services that are designed to enhance, automate, and streamline processes and workflows for property management businesses, such as electronic payment, tenant screening, and insurance services. AppFolio, Inc. was incorporated in 2006 and is headquartered in Santa Barbara, California.
About Braze
Braze, Inc. operates a customer engagement platform that provides interactions between consumers and brands worldwide. The company offers Braze software development kits that automatically manage data ingestion and deliver mobile and web notifications, in-application/in-browser interstitial messages, and content cards; REST API that can be used to import or export data or to trigger workflows between Braze and brands' existing technology stacks; Partner Data Integrations, which allow brands to sync user cohorts from partners; Data Transformation, in which brands can programmatically sync and transform user data; and Braze Cloud Data Ingestion that enables brands to harness their customer data. It also offers classification products, including segmentation that can define reusable segments of consumers based upon attributes, events, or predictive propensity scores; segment insights, which allows customers to analyze how segments are performing relative to each other across a set of pre-selected key performance indicators; and predictive suite that allows customers to identify groups of consumers that are of critical business value. In addition, the company provides Canvas, an orchestration tool that allows customers to create journeys, mapping out multi-steps, and cross-channel messaging experiences; campaigns, which allows customers to send one set of single-channel or multi-channel messages to be delivered to customers in a particular user segment; event and API triggering; marketing pressure management; and reporting and analytics. Further, it offers personalization products, such as liquid templating platform, connected content platform, content blocks, intelligent timing and channel, personalized variant, and AI item recommendations, and catalogs; and action products. The company was formerly known as Appboy, Inc. and changed its name to Braze, Inc. in November 2017. Braze, Inc. was incorporated in 2011 and is headquartered in New York, New York.
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