Reviewing TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC (NYSE:TPVG) and Beneficient (NASDAQ:BENF)

Beneficient (NASDAQ:BENF) and TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC (NYSE:TPVG) are both small-cap finance companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their profitability, institutional ownership, valuation, earnings, dividends, risk and analyst recommendations.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent ratings and recommmendations for Beneficient and TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Beneficient	1	0	0	0	1.00
TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC	2	3	0	0	1.60

TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC has a consensus price target of $5.17, suggesting a potential upside of 20.86%. Given TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC is more favorable than Beneficient.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

90.6% of Beneficient shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 12.8% of TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC shares are owned by institutional investors. 10.1% of Beneficient shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 1.5% of TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Profitability

This table compares Beneficient and TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Beneficient	N/A	N/A	-19.31%
TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC	44.58%	10.68%	4.58%

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Beneficient and TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Beneficient	-$14.34 million	-0.86	-$87.43 million	($7.11)	-0.11
TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC	$45.91 million	3.79	$49.21 million	$0.99	4.32

TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC has higher revenue and earnings than Beneficient. Beneficient is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Volatility and Risk

Beneficient has a beta of -0.01, indicating that its stock price is 101% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC has a beta of 1.37, indicating that its stock price is 37% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC beats Beneficient on 11 of the 13 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Beneficient

Beneficient, a technology-enabled financial services company, provides liquidity solutions and related trustee, custody and trust administrative services to participants in the alternative asset industry in the United States. It operates through Ben Liquidity, Ben Custody, and Customer ExAlt Trusts segments. The company offers Ben AltAccess platform for secure, online, and end-to-end delivery of each of the Ben business unit products and services, including upload documents, and work through tasks, and complete their transactions with standardized transaction agreements. It also provides Ben Liquidity, which offers alternative asset liquidity and fiduciary financing products; Ben Custody that provides custody and trust administration services to trustees and document custodian services to customers; and Ben Markets, which provides broker-dealer and transfer agency services. In addition, the company provides Ben Insurance Services, which offers insurance products and services; and Ben Data that provides data collection, evaluation, and analytics products and services. It serves individual and institutional investors, wealth advisors, and general partners. Beneficient is based in Dallas, Texas.

About TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC

TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC Corp. is a business development company specializing investments in venture capital-backed companies at the growth stage investments. It also provides debt financing to venture growth space companies which includes growth capital loans, secured and customized loans, equipment financings, revolving loans and direct equity investments. The fund seeks to invest in e-commerce, entertainment, technology and life sciences sector. Within technology the areas of focus include: Security, wireless communication equipments, network system and software, business applications software, conferencing equipments/services .big data, cloud computing, data storage, electronics, energy efficiency, hardware, information services, internet and media, networking, semiconductors, software, software as a service, and other technology related subsectors and within life sciences the areas of focus include: biotechnology, bio fuels/bio mass, diagnostic testing and bioinformatics, drug delivery, drug discovery, healthcare information systems, healthcare services, medical, surgical and therapeutic devices, pharmaceuticals and other life science related subsectors. Within growth capital loans it invests between $5 million and $50 million, for equipment financings it invests between $5 million and $25 million, for revolving loans it invests between $1 million and $25 million, and for direct equity investments it may invest between $0.1 million and $5 million (generally not exceeding 5% of the company’s total equity). The debt financing products are typically structured as lines of credit and it invests through warrants and secured loans. It targeted returns between 10% and 18%. It does not take board seat in the company.