Contrasting Applied Digital (NASDAQ:APLD) & HeartCore Enterprises (NASDAQ:HTCR)

HeartCore Enterprises (NASDAQ:HTCR) and Applied Digital (NASDAQ:APLD) are both small-cap computer and technology companies, but which is the superior investment? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their institutional ownership, dividends, risk, earnings, profitability, analyst recommendations and valuation.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of current recommendations for HeartCore Enterprises and Applied Digital, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
HeartCore Enterprises	0	0	0	0	0.00
Applied Digital	0	0	9	0	3.00

Applied Digital has a consensus target price of $12.11, indicating a potential upside of 94.09%. Given Applied Digital’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Applied Digital is more favorable than HeartCore Enterprises.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares HeartCore Enterprises and Applied Digital”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
HeartCore Enterprises	$30.29 million	0.63	-$4.19 million	$0.24	3.78
Applied Digital	$211.62 million	6.57	-$149.27 million	($1.73)	-3.61

HeartCore Enterprises has higher earnings, but lower revenue than Applied Digital. Applied Digital is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than HeartCore Enterprises, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Volatility & Risk

HeartCore Enterprises has a beta of 1.75, suggesting that its share price is 75% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Applied Digital has a beta of 4.69, suggesting that its share price is 369% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares HeartCore Enterprises and Applied Digital’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
HeartCore Enterprises	16.25%	65.33%	22.92%
Applied Digital	-127.86%	-117.67%	-27.84%

Insider and Institutional Ownership

1.7% of HeartCore Enterprises shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 65.7% of Applied Digital shares are held by institutional investors. 64.2% of HeartCore Enterprises shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 11.8% of Applied Digital shares are held by 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.

About HeartCore Enterprises

HeartCore Enterprises, Inc., a software development company, provides Software as a Service solutions to enterprise customers in Japan and internationally. Its customer experience management platform includes marketing, sales, service, and content management systems, as well as other tools and integrations, which enable companies to enhance the customer experience and drive engagement. The company also operates a digital transformation business that offers customers with robotics process automation, process mining, and task mining to accelerate the digital transformation of enterprises. In addition, it provides consulting services; and education, services, and support solutions. The company was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.

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.