Reviewing VeriSign (NASDAQ:VRSN) and Applied Digital (NASDAQ:APLD)

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

Volatility & Risk

VeriSign has a beta of 0.69, suggesting that its share price is 31% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Applied Digital has a beta of 5.99, suggesting that its share price is 499% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings and recommmendations for VeriSign and Applied Digital, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
VeriSign	0	2	4	0	2.67
Applied Digital	2	2	12	3	2.84

VeriSign presently has a consensus target price of $352.00, indicating a potential upside of 14.58%. Applied Digital has a consensus target price of $57.75, indicating a potential upside of 224.07%. Given Applied Digital’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Applied Digital is more favorable than VeriSign.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares VeriSign and Applied Digital”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
VeriSign	$1.66 billion	16.63	$825.70 million	$9.30	33.03
Applied Digital	$611.31 million	8.81	-$244.00 million	($1.64)	-10.87

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

Profitability

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

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
VeriSign	49.06%	-38.40%	59.95%
Applied Digital	-51.28%	-27.21%	-5.23%

Institutional & Insider Ownership

92.9% of VeriSign shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 65.7% of Applied Digital shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.6% of VeriSign shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 9.5% of Applied Digital shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

About VeriSign

VeriSign, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides domain name registry services and internet infrastructure that enables internet navigation for various recognized domain names worldwide. The company enables the security, stability, and resiliency of internet infrastructure and services, including providing root zone maintainer services, operating two of thirteen internet root servers; and offering registration services and authoritative resolution for the .com and .net domains, which supports global e-commerce. It operates directory for .name and .cc; and back-end systems for .edu, domain names. VeriSign, Inc. was incorporated in 1995 and is headquartered in Reston, Virginia.

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.