Reviewing Sphere 3D (NASDAQ:ANY) & Fair Isaac (NYSE:FICO)

Sphere 3D (NASDAQ:ANY) and Fair Isaac (NYSE:FICO) are both technology companies, but which is the better business? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their earnings, profitability, dividends, analyst recommendations, risk, valuation and institutional ownership.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of current ratings and recommmendations for Sphere 3D and Fair Isaac, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Sphere 3D	1	0	0	0	1.00
Fair Isaac	2	4	10	0	2.50

Fair Isaac has a consensus target price of $1,143.50, indicating a potential upside of 48.56%. Given Fair Isaac’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Fair Isaac is more favorable than Sphere 3D.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

17.3% of Sphere 3D shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 85.8% of Fair Isaac shares are held by institutional investors. 6.4% of Sphere 3D shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 3.0% of Fair Isaac shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Volatility and Risk

Sphere 3D has a beta of 3.32, suggesting that its stock price is 232% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Fair Isaac has a beta of 1.35, suggesting that its stock price is 35% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Sphere 3D and Fair Isaac”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Sphere 3D	$11.18 million	2.24	-$21.48 million	($3.68)	-0.78
Fair Isaac	$1.99 billion	8.35	$651.95 million	$34.62	22.23

Fair Isaac has higher revenue and earnings than Sphere 3D. Sphere 3D is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Fair Isaac, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Profitability

This table compares Sphere 3D and Fair Isaac’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Sphere 3D	-332.50%	-111.12%	-94.02%
Fair Isaac	34.05%	-32.51%	40.61%

Summary

Fair Isaac beats Sphere 3D on 12 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Sphere 3D

Sphere 3D Corp. engages in the bitcoin mining business. It is involved with digital asset mining pool operators to provide computing power to the mining pools. The company is based in Stamford, Connecticut.

About Fair Isaac

Fair Isaac Corporation develops analytic, software, and digital decisioning technologies and services that enable businesses to automate, enhance, and connect decisions in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific. The company operates in two segments, Scores and Software. The Software segment provides pre-configured analytic and decision management solution designed for various business needs or processes, such as account origination, customer management, customer engagement, fraud detection, financial crimes compliance, and marketing, as well as associated professional services. This segment also offers FICO Platform, a modular software offering designed to support advanced analytic and decision use cases, as well as stand-alone analytic and decisioning software that can be configured by customers to address a wide range of business use cases. The Scores segment provides business-to-business scoring solutions and services for consumers that give clients access to predictive credit and other scores that can be integrated into their transaction streams and decision-making processes, as well as business-to-consumer scoring solutions comprising myFICO.com subscription offerings. It offers FICO Customer Analytics, FICO Responsible AI, FICO Advisors, FICO Business Outcome Simulator, FICO Forecaster, FICO TRIAD Customer Manager, FICO Blaze Advisor, FICO Xpress Optimization, FICO Falcon Fraud Manager, FICO Analytics Workbench, FICO Data Orchestrator, FICO DMP Streaming, FICO Decision Optimizer, and FICO Strategy Director, as well as software implementation and configuration services. The company markets its products and services primarily through its direct sales organization and indirect channels, as well as online. The company was formerly known as Fair Isaac & Company, Inc. and changed its name to Fair Isaac Corporation in July 1992. Fair Isaac Corporation was founded in 1956 and is headquartered in Bozeman, Montana.