Appian (NASDAQ:APPN) and SAP (NYSE:SAP) Head-To-Head Contrast

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

Volatility & Risk

SAP has a beta of 1.23, indicating that its stock price is 23% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Appian has a beta of 1.57, indicating that its stock price is 57% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

52.7% of Appian shares are held by institutional investors. 7.4% of SAP shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 44.0% of Appian shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Earnings & Valuation

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

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
SAP	$33.27 billion	9.19	$6.64 billion	$2.50	99.53
Appian	$595.66 million	4.70	-$111.44 million	($1.22)	-26.88

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

Profitability

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

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
SAP	8.15%	11.44%	6.92%
Appian	-14.88%	-532.05%	-10.11%

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of current recommendations and price targets for SAP and Appian, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
SAP	0	1	8	0	2.89
Appian	1	4	1	0	2.00

SAP presently has a consensus target price of $252.33, indicating a potential upside of 1.41%. Appian has a consensus target price of $40.80, indicating a potential upside of 24.43%. Given Appian’s higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Appian is more favorable than SAP.

Summary

SAP beats Appian on 10 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About SAP

SAP SE, together with its subsidiaries, provides applications, technology, and services worldwide. It offers SAP S/4HANA that provides software capabilities for finance, risk and project management, procurement, manufacturing, supply chain and asset management, and research and development; SAP SuccessFactors solutions for human resources, including HR and payroll, talent and employee experience management, and people and workforce analytics; and spend management solutions that covers direct and indirect spend, travel and expense, and external workforce management. The company also provides SAP customer experience solutions; SAP Business Technology platform that enables customers and partners to build, integrate, and automate applications; and SAP Business Network, a business-to-business collaboration platform that helps digitalize key business processes across the supply chain and enables communication between trading partners. In addition, it offers SAP Signavio to help customers to discover, analyze, and understand their business process operations; SAP's industry cloud solutions that provides modular solutions addressing industry-specific functions; Taulia solutions for working capital management to help enable customers mitigate the effects of inflation by providing visibility into working capital and access to liquidity; and sustainability solutions and services. SAP SE was founded in 1972 and is headquartered in Walldorf, Germany.

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.