Comparing Riskified (NYSE:RSKD) and Appian (NASDAQ:APPN)

Appian (NASDAQ:APPN) and Riskified (NYSE:RSKD) are both technology companies, but which is the superior stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their valuation, institutional ownership, profitability, analyst recommendations, earnings, dividends and risk.

Volatility and Risk

Appian has a beta of 0.94, indicating that its share price is 6% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Riskified has a beta of 1.38, indicating that its share price is 38% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

52.7% of Appian shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 59.0% of Riskified shares are owned by institutional investors. 42.8% of Appian shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 17.4% of Riskified shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of current ratings and price targets for Appian and Riskified, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Appian	2	3	1	1	2.14
Riskified	2	3	2	0	2.00

Appian presently has a consensus target price of $31.00, indicating a potential downside of 17.33%. Riskified has a consensus target price of $6.50, indicating a potential upside of 3.92%. Given Riskified’s higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Riskified is more favorable than Appian.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Appian and Riskified”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Appian	$726.94 million	3.70	$1.23 million	($0.15)	-250.00
Riskified	$344.64 million	2.69	-$27.57 million	($0.11)	-56.86

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

Profitability

This table compares Appian and Riskified’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Appian	-1.34%	-35.20%	3.64%
Riskified	-4.23%	-3.93%	-2.79%

Summary

Appian beats Riskified on 8 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Appian

Appian Corporation, a software company that provides low-code design platform in the United States, Mexico, Portugal, and internationally. The company's platform offers artificial intelligence, process automation, data fabric, and process mining. It provides The Appian Platform, an integrated automation platform that enables organizations to design, automate, and optimize mission-critical business processes. The company also offers professional and customer support services. It serves to financial services, government, life sciences, insurance, manufacturing, energy, healthcare, telecommunications, and transportation industries. Appian Corporation was incorporated in 1999 and is headquartered in McLean, Virginia.

About Riskified

Riskified Ltd., together with its subsidiaries, develops and offers an e-commerce risk management platform that allows online merchants to create trusted relationships with consumers in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Asia-Pacific, and the Americas. It offers Chargeback Guarantee that ensures the legitimacy of merchants' online orders; Policy Protect, a machine learning solution designed to detect and prevent refund and returns policy abuse in real-time; Account Secure, a solution that cross-checks every login attempt; Dispute Resolve, which is used to compile submissions for fraud and non-fraud related chargeback issues; and PSD2 Optimize that helps merchants avoid bank authorization failures and abandoned shopping carts. The company serves direct-to-consumer brands, online-only retailers, omnichannel retailers, online marketplaces, and e-commerce service providers in various industries, such as payments, money transfer and crypto, tickets and travel, electronics, home, and fashion and luxury goods. Riskified Ltd. was incorporated in 2012 and is headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel.