Applied Digital (NASDAQ:APLD – Get Free Report) and TaskUs (NASDAQ:TASK – Get Free Report) are both small-cap finance companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their institutional ownership, dividends, profitability, risk, valuation, earnings and analyst recommendations.
Profitability
This table compares Applied Digital and TaskUs’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.
| Net Margins | Return on Equity | Return on Assets | |
| Applied Digital | -88.95% | -111.80% | -26.35% |
| TaskUs | 5.44% | 16.93% | 8.64% |
Valuation & Earnings
This table compares Applied Digital and TaskUs”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.
| Gross Revenue | Price/Sales Ratio | Net Income | Earnings Per Share | Price/Earnings Ratio | |
| Applied Digital | $165.57 million | 10.69 | -$149.27 million | ($0.79) | -10.44 |
| TaskUs | $925.29 million | 1.17 | $45.69 million | $0.51 | 24.06 |
Risk and Volatility
Applied Digital has a beta of 4.51, meaning that its stock price is 351% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, TaskUs has a beta of 2.29, meaning that its stock price is 129% more volatile than the S&P 500.
Insider and Institutional Ownership
65.7% of Applied Digital shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 44.6% of TaskUs shares are owned by institutional investors. 20.5% of Applied Digital shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 29.3% of TaskUs shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.
Analyst Recommendations
This is a summary of recent ratings for Applied Digital and TaskUs, as reported by MarketBeat.com.
| Sell Ratings | Hold Ratings | Buy Ratings | Strong Buy Ratings | Rating Score | |
| Applied Digital | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 3.00 |
| TaskUs | 1 | 5 | 2 | 0 | 2.13 |
Applied Digital currently has a consensus price target of $8.40, indicating a potential upside of 1.82%. TaskUs has a consensus price target of $15.38, indicating a potential upside of 25.31%. Given TaskUs’ higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe TaskUs is more favorable than Applied Digital.
Summary
TaskUs beats Applied Digital on 9 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.
About Applied Digital
Applied Digital Corporation designs, develops, and operates datacenters in North America. Its datacenters provide digital infrastructure solutions to the high-performance computing industry. The company also provides artificial intelligence cloud services, high performance computing datacenter hosting, and crypto datacenter hosting services. The company was formerly known as Applied Blockchain, Inc. and changed its name to Applied Digital Corporation in November 2022. Applied Digital Corporation is based in Dallas, Texas.
About TaskUs
TaskUs, Inc. provides digital outsourcing services for companies in Philippines, the United States, India, and internationally. It offers digital customer experience that consists of omni-channel customer care services primarily delivered through non-voice digital channels; and other solutions, including experience and customer care services for new product or market launches, and customer acquisition solutions. The company also provides trust and safety solutions, such as review and disposition of user and advertiser generated visual, text, and audio content, which include removal or labeling of policy violating, and offensive or misleading content, as well as risk management, compliance, identity management, and fraud services; and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions that consist of data labeling, annotation, context relevance, and transcription services for training and tuning machine learning algorithms that enables to develop AI systems. It serves clients in various industry segments comprising e-commerce, FinTech, food delivery and ride sharing, gaming, technology, HealthTech, social media, and streaming media. The company was formerly known as TU TopCo, Inc. and changed its name to TaskUs, Inc. in December 2020. TaskUs, Inc. was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in New Braunfels, Texas.
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