Contrasting Brookfield Business Partners (NYSE:BBU) & Acacia Research (NASDAQ:ACTG)

Acacia Research (NASDAQ:ACTG) and Brookfield Business Partners (NYSE:BBU) are both business services companies, but which is the superior business? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their institutional ownership, earnings, dividends, profitability, valuation, risk and analyst recommendations.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent ratings and price targets for Acacia Research and Brookfield Business Partners, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Acacia Research	0	1	1	0	2.50
Brookfield Business Partners	2	0	6	0	2.50

Acacia Research currently has a consensus target price of $6.00, indicating a potential upside of 20.00%. Brookfield Business Partners has a consensus target price of $43.00, indicating a potential upside of 36.68%. Given Brookfield Business Partners’ higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Brookfield Business Partners is more favorable than Acacia Research.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

86.7% of Acacia Research shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 85.0% of Brookfield Business Partners shares are held by institutional investors. 1.1% of Acacia Research shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Acacia Research and Brookfield Business Partners”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Acacia Research	$285.23 million	1.69	$21.68 million	$0.23	21.74
Brookfield Business Partners	$27.46 billion	0.10	-$26.00 million	($0.26)	-121.00

Acacia Research has higher earnings, but lower revenue than Brookfield Business Partners. Brookfield Business Partners is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Acacia Research, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Volatility & Risk

Acacia Research has a beta of 0.44, meaning that its share price is 56% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Brookfield Business Partners has a beta of 1.3, meaning that its share price is 30% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares Acacia Research and Brookfield Business Partners’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Acacia Research	7.60%	4.11%	3.05%
Brookfield Business Partners	1.41%	2.67%	0.51%

Summary

Acacia Research beats Brookfield Business Partners on 9 of the 13 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Acacia Research

Acacia is a publicly traded (Nasdaq: ACTG) company that is focused on acquiring and operating businesses across the industrial, energy and technology sectors where it believes it can leverage its expertise, significant capital base, and deep industry relationships to drive value. Acacia evaluates opportunities based on the attractiveness of the underlying cash flows, without regard to a specific investment horizon. Acacia operates its businesses based on three key principles of people, process, and performance and has built a management team with demonstrated expertise in research, transactions and execution, and operations and management.

About Brookfield Business Partners

Brookfield Business Partners L.P. is a private equity firm specializing in acquisition. The firm typically invests in business services, infrastructure services, construction, energy, and industrials sector. It prefers to take majority stake in companies. The firm seeks returns of at least 15% on its investments. Brookfield Business Partners L.P. was founded in 2016 and is based in Hamilton, Bermuda. Brookfield Business Partners L.P. operates as a subsidiary of Brookfield Corporation.