Head-To-Head Review: Certara (NASDAQ:CERT) versus Veeva Systems (NYSE:VEEV)

Veeva Systems (NYSE:VEEV) and Certara (NASDAQ:CERT) are both healthcare companies, but which is the superior stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their dividends, valuation, institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, profitability, risk and earnings.

Profitability

This table compares Veeva Systems and Certara’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Veeva Systems	28.37%	13.72%	11.31%
Certara	-16.75%	3.86%	2.65%

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Veeva Systems and Certara”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Veeva Systems	$3.20 billion	11.91	$908.91 million	$5.61	41.76
Certara	$418.84 million	2.94	-$1.60 million	($0.45)	-17.93

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

Volatility & Risk

Veeva Systems has a beta of 0.92, indicating that its stock price is 8% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Certara has a beta of 1.44, indicating that its stock price is 44% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current recommendations and price targets for Veeva Systems and Certara, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Veeva Systems	1	8	18	1	2.68
Certara	1	6	4	1	2.42

Veeva Systems currently has a consensus price target of $247.08, suggesting a potential upside of 5.47%. Certara has a consensus price target of $8.28, suggesting a potential upside of 2.57%. Given Veeva Systems’ stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Veeva Systems is more favorable than Certara.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

88.2% of Veeva Systems shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 74.0% of Certara shares are held by institutional investors. 10.6% of Veeva Systems shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 1.1% of Certara 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.

Summary

Veeva Systems beats Certara on 13 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Veeva Systems

Veeva Systems Inc. provides cloud-based software for the life sciences industry. It offers Veeva Commercial Cloud, a suite of software and analytics solutions, such as Veeva customer relationship management (CRM) that enable customer-facing employees at pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies; Veeva Vault PromoMats, an end-to-end content and digital asset management solution; Veeva Vault Medical that provides source of medical content across multiple channels and geographies; Veeva Crossix, an analytics platform for pharmaceutical brands; Veeva OpenData, a customer reference data solution; Veeva Link, a data application that allows link to generate real-time intelligence; and Veeva Compass includes de-identified and longitudinal patient data for the United States. The company also provides Veeva Development Cloud, a suite of applications for the clinical, regulatory, quality, and safety functions, including Veeva Vault Clinical, Veeva Vault RIM, Veeva Vault Safety, and Veeva Vault Quality; Veeva QualityOne, a quality and document management, and training solution; Veeva RegulatoryOne, a solution that helps companies to manage regulatory submission content; and Veeva Claims addresses the end-to-end product and marketing claims management process. In addition, it offers professional and support services, including implementation and deployment planning and project management; requirements analysis, solution design, and configuration; systems environment management and deployment services; services focused on advancing or transforming business and operating processes related to Veeva solutions; data migration and systems integrations technical consulting services; training on its solutions; and ongoing managed services, such as outsourced systems administration. The company was formerly known as Verticals onDemand, Inc. and changed its name to Veeva Systems Inc. in April 2009. Veeva Systems Inc. was incorporated in 2007 and is headquartered in Pleasanton, California.

About Certara

Certara, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides software products and technology-enabled services to customers for biosimulation in drug discovery, preclinical and clinical research, regulatory submissions, and market access in the United States and internationally. It offers solutions for model-informed drug development, as well as biosimulation solution used to predict both pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. The company provides Simcyp Simulator, a mechanistic biosimulation platform mechanistic biosimulation investigational new drug and translational stages; Simcyp Biopharmaceutics, used to identify and refine drug formulations; and Simcyp Secondary Intelligence which integrates toxicology with quantitative analysis of networks of molecular and functional biological changes to identify drug toxicity and adverse drug reactions. In addition, it offers Phoenix WinNonlin, a platform for non-compartmental analysis, pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic, and toxicokinetic; phoenix hosted, that provides a secured and validated certara amazon web services workspace; Phoenix NLME, a population modeling and simulation software for nonlinear mixed effects models; and pirana modeling workbench. Further, the company provides pinnacle 21, a cloud-based platform for clinical data automation, standardization, and validation; Pinnacle 21 Data Exchange, used to define data standards and specifications; and Metadata Repository, to enable study design using controlled and standardized data. It serves life sciences companies, biopharmaceutical companies, research organizations, academic institutions, and global regulators, as well as animal health, crop science, bio science, medical devices, and public sector industries. Certara Inc. was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey.