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

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

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Applied Digital and HeartCore Enterprises”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Applied Digital	$211.62 million	7.37	-$149.27 million	($1.73)	-4.05
HeartCore Enterprises	$30.29 million	0.64	-$4.19 million	$0.24	3.88

HeartCore Enterprises has lower revenue, but higher earnings 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.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

65.7% of Applied Digital shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 1.7% of HeartCore Enterprises shares are held by institutional investors. 11.8% of Applied Digital shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 64.2% of HeartCore Enterprises shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of current recommendations and price targets for Applied Digital and HeartCore Enterprises, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

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

Applied Digital currently has a consensus target price of $12.11, suggesting a potential upside of 73.02%. Given Applied Digital’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, research analysts plainly believe Applied Digital is more favorable than HeartCore Enterprises.

Profitability

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

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

Volatility & Risk

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

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.

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.