Head-To-Head Comparison: Braze (NASDAQ:BRZE) vs. Guidewire Software (NYSE:GWRE)

Guidewire Software (NYSE:GWRE) and Braze (NASDAQ:BRZE) are both computer and technology companies, but which is the superior investment? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their earnings, valuation, dividends, risk, institutional ownership, analyst recommendations and profitability.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent ratings and target prices for Guidewire Software and Braze, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Guidewire Software	1	4	11	1	2.71
Braze	1	1	21	1	2.92

Guidewire Software presently has a consensus price target of $269.50, indicating a potential upside of 45.53%. Braze has a consensus price target of $46.95, indicating a potential upside of 56.14%. Given Braze’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Braze is more favorable than Guidewire Software.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

90.5% of Braze shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.5% of Guidewire Software shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 18.2% of Braze shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Volatility & Risk

Guidewire Software has a beta of 1.08, meaning that its share price is 8% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Braze has a beta of 1.08, meaning that its share price is 8% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Guidewire Software and Braze”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Guidewire Software	$1.20 billion	13.09	$69.80 million	$1.05	176.36
Braze	$593.41 million	5.69	-$103.74 million	($1.10)	-27.34

Guidewire Software has higher revenue and earnings than Braze. Braze is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Guidewire Software, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Profitability

This table compares Guidewire Software and Braze’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Guidewire Software	7.23%	10.15%	5.49%
Braze	-16.85%	-17.87%	-10.05%

Summary

Guidewire Software beats Braze on 8 of the 13 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Guidewire Software

Guidewire Software, Inc. provides a platform for property and casualty (P&C) insurers worldwide. The company offers Guidewire InsuranceSuite Cloud, such as PolicyCenter Cloud, BillingCenter Cloud, and ClaimCenter Cloud applications. It also provides Guidewire InsuranceNow, a cloud-based platform that offers policy, billing, and claims management functionality to insurers; and Guidewire InsuranceSuite for Self-Managed. In addition, the company offers Guidewire Rating Management to manage the pricing of insurance products; and Guidewire Reinsurance Management to use rules-based logic to execute reinsurance strategy through underwriting and claims processes. Further, it provides Guidewire Underwriting Management, a cloud-based integrated business application; Guidewire AppReader, a submission intake management solution; Guidewire ClaimCenter Package for the London market supports the claims workflow used by London Market insurers and brokers; Guidewire Digital Engagement Applications, which enable insurers to provide digital experiences to customers, agents, vendors, and field personnel through their device of choice; and Guidewire for Salesforce to provide customer information regarding policies and claims. Additionally, the company offers Guidewire Predict, a P&C-specific machine-learning platform; Guidewire HazardHub that allows insurers to understand, assess, price, and manage property risk; Guidewire Canvas, Guidewire Compare, and Guidewire Explore cloud-native applications; and Guidewire Cyence, a cyber-risk economic modeling product. The company was incorporated in 2001 and is headquartered in San Mateo, 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.