Appian (NASDAQ:APPN – Get Rating) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Rating) are both computer and technology companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their profitability, risk, institutional ownership, valuation, dividends, earnings and analyst recommendations.
Risk & Volatility
Appian has a beta of 1.63, suggesting that its share price is 63% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Microsoft has a beta of 0.93, suggesting that its share price is 7% less volatile than the S&P 500.
Institutional & Insider Ownership
50.9% of Appian shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 69.2% of Microsoft shares are held by institutional investors. 43.5% of Appian shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 0.0% of Microsoft shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.
Analyst Recommendations
| Sell Ratings | Hold Ratings | Buy Ratings | Strong Buy Ratings | Rating Score | |
| Appian | 2 | 3 | 4 | 0 | 2.22 |
| Microsoft | 1 | 4 | 31 | 0 | 2.83 |
Appian presently has a consensus price target of $45.89, indicating a potential upside of 36.05%. Microsoft has a consensus price target of $322.88, indicating a potential upside of 5.72%. Given Appian’s higher probable upside, equities research analysts plainly believe Appian is more favorable than Microsoft.
Valuation and Earnings
This table compares Appian and Microsoft’s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.
| Gross Revenue | Price/Sales Ratio | Net Income | Earnings Per Share | Price/Earnings Ratio | |
| Appian | $467.99 million | 5.25 | -$150.92 million | ($2.08) | -16.22 |
| Microsoft | $207.59 billion | 10.94 | $72.74 billion | $9.23 | 33.09 |
Microsoft has higher revenue and earnings than Appian. Appian is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Microsoft, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Profitability
This table compares Appian and Microsoft’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.
| Net Margins | Return on Equity | Return on Assets | |
| Appian | -32.25% | -66.82% | -25.34% |
| Microsoft | 33.25% | 38.98% | 19.05% |
Summary
Microsoft beats Appian on 11 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.
About Appian
Appian Corp. engages in the provision of business process management (BPM) solutions. Its products include BPM software, case management, mobile application development, and platform-as-a-service. The company was founded by Matthew Wheeler Calkins, Robert Charles Kramer, Marc Wilson, and Michael Beckley in 1999 and is headquartered in McLean, VA.
About Microsoft
Microsoft Corp. engages in the development and support of software, services, devices, and solutions. It operates through the following business segments: Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, and More Personal Computing. The Productivity and Business Processes segment consists of Office Commercial (Office 365 subscriptions, the Office 365 portion of Microsoft 365 Commercial subscriptions, and Office licensed on-premises), Exchange, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Office 365 Security and Compliance, and Skype for Business, Office Consumer, including Microsoft 365 Consumer subscriptions, Office licensed on-premises, and other Office services, LinkedIn, including Talent Solutions, Marketing Solutions, Premium Subscriptions, Sales Solutions, and Learning Solutions, Dynamics business solutions, including Dynamics 365, comprising a set of intelligent, cloud-based applications across ERP, CRM, Customer Insights, Power Apps, and Power Automate, and on-premises ERP and CRM applications. The Intelligent Cloud segment consists of Server products and cloud services, including Azure and other cloud services, SQL Server, Windows Server, Visual Studio, System Center, and related C
Receive News & Ratings for Appian Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Appian and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter.
