Head-To-Head Comparison: Xunlei (NASDAQ:XNET) versus Elastic (NYSE:ESTC)

Elastic (NYSE:ESTC) and Xunlei (NASDAQ:XNET) are both technology companies, but which is the better business? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their institutional ownership, profitability, earnings, analyst recommendations, valuation, risk and dividends.

Profitability

This table compares Elastic and Xunlei’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Elastic	20.84%	-0.35%	-0.14%
Xunlei	-15.25%	0.62%	0.52%

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Elastic and Xunlei”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Elastic	$1.74 billion	5.19	$367.77 million	$3.57	24.08
Xunlei	$462.41 million	0.49	$1.05 billion	($1.24)	-2.85

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

Risk and Volatility

Elastic has a beta of 0.97, suggesting that its stock price is 3% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Xunlei has a beta of 1.13, suggesting that its stock price is 13% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent ratings and target prices for Elastic and Xunlei, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Elastic	0	12	17	1	2.63
Xunlei	0	1	0	0	2.00

Elastic presently has a consensus price target of $98.56, suggesting a potential upside of 14.65%. Given Elastic’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, research analysts clearly believe Elastic is more favorable than Xunlei.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

97.0% of Elastic shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 5.1% of Xunlei shares are held by institutional investors. 12.7% of Elastic shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 21.7% of Xunlei shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Summary

Elastic beats Xunlei on 9 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Elastic

Elastic N.V., a data analytics company, delivers solutions designed to run in public or private clouds in multi-cloud environments. It primarily offers Elastic Stack, a set of software products that ingest and store data from various sources and formats, as well as performs search, analysis, and visualization on that data. The company's Elastic Stack product portfolio comprises Elasticsearch, a distributed, real-time search and analytics engine, and data store for various types of data, including textual, numerical, geospatial, structured, and unstructured; Kibana, a user interface, management, and configuration interface for the Elastic Stack; Elastic Agent that offers integrated host protection and central management services; Beats, a single-purpose data shippers for sending data from edge machines to Elasticsearch or Logstash; and Logstash, a data processing pipeline for ingesting data into Elasticsearch or other storage systems from a multitude of sources simultaneously. It also provides software solutions on the Elastic Stack that address cases, including search applications, workplace search, logs, metrics, application performance monitoring, synthetic monitoring, security information and event management (SIEM), endpoint security, extended detection and response, and cloud security. The company was incorporated in 2012 and is based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

About Xunlei

Xunlei Limited, together with its subsidiaries, operates an internet platform for digital media content in the People's Republic of China. Its platform is based on cloud technology that enables users to access, store, manage, and consume digital media content. The company offers Xunlei Accelerator, which enables users to accelerate digital transmission over the internet; mobile acceleration plug-in, which provides mobile device users with benefits of download speed acceleration and download success rate improvements; and subscription services that offer users premium services through Green Channel and Fast Bird products. It also provides Mobile Xunlei, a mobile application that allows users to search, download, consume, and store digital media content; Xunlei Media Player, which supports online and offline play of digital media content, as well as simultaneous play of digital media content while it is being transmitted by Xunlei Accelerator; online games through online game website and mobile app; advertising services; live streaming products, including video and audio livestreaming; and develops software and computer software, as well as other internet value-added services. In addition, the company offers cloud computing services through OneThing Cloud, and StellarCloud; and hardware for edging computing, such as OneThing Edge Cube, and OneThing Edge Atom. Further it offers ThunderChain, a blockchain infrastructure product that enables its users to develop and manage blockchain applications. The company was formerly known as Giganology Limited and changed its name to Xunlei Limited in January 2011. Xunlei Limited was founded in 2003 and is headquartered in Shenzhen, the People's Republic of China.