Head to Head Analysis: BigCommerce (NASDAQ:BIGC) vs. Okta (NASDAQ:OKTA)

BigCommerce (NASDAQ:BIGC) and Okta (NASDAQ:OKTA) are both retail/wholesale companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their risk, profitability, institutional ownership, earnings, valuation, dividends and analyst recommendations.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

79.2% of BigCommerce shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 86.6% of Okta shares are owned by institutional investors. 9.1% of BigCommerce shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 7.0% of Okta shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares BigCommerce and Okta’s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
BigCommerce	$309.39 million	1.90	-$64.67 million	($0.64)	-11.88
Okta	$2.36 billion	6.29	-$355.00 million	($1.67)	-52.87

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

Risk and Volatility

BigCommerce has a beta of 1, suggesting that its stock price has a similar volatility profile to the S&P 500.Comparatively, Okta has a beta of 1.03, suggesting that its stock price is 3% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares BigCommerce and Okta’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
BigCommerce	-15.39%	-109.97%	-6.10%
Okta	-11.69%	-3.81%	-2.50%

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings and price targets for BigCommerce and Okta, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
BigCommerce	1	6	1	0	2.00
Okta	0	19	12	0	2.39

BigCommerce currently has a consensus price target of $9.63, suggesting a potential upside of 26.64%. Okta has a consensus price target of $105.58, suggesting a potential upside of 19.57%. Given BigCommerce’s higher probable upside, research analysts clearly believe BigCommerce is more favorable than Okta.

Summary

Okta beats BigCommerce on 9 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About BigCommerce

BigCommerce Holdings, Inc. operates a software-as-a-service platform for enterprises, small businesses, and mid-markets in the United States, North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the AsiaPacific. The company provides a platform for launching and scaling an ecommerce operation, including store design, catalog management, hosting, checkout, order management, reporting, and pre-integration into third-party services. It serves stores in various sizes, product categories, and purchase types, such as business-to-business and business-to-consumer. The company was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in Austin, Texas.

About Okta

Okta, Inc. operates as an identity partner in the United States and internationally. The company offers Okta's suite of products and services used to manage and secure identities, such as Single Sign-On that enables users to access applications in the cloud or on-premises from various devices; Adaptive Multi-Factor Authentication provides a layer of security for cloud, mobile, web applications, and data; API Access Management enables organizations to secure APIs; Access Gateway enables organizations to extend Workforce Identity Cloud; and Okta Device Access enables end users to securely log in to devices with Okta credentials. It also provides Universal Directory, a cloud-based system of record to store and secure user, application, and device profiles for an organization; Lifecycle Management enables IT organizations or developers to manage a user's identity throughout its lifecycle; Okta Identity Governance provides identity access management and identity governance solutions; Advanced Server Access offers access management to secure cloud infrastructure; Okta Privileged Access enables organizations to reduce risk with unified access and governance management for on-premises and cloud resources; and Okta Workforce Identity Workflows. In addition, the company offers Universal Login, which allows customers to provide login experience across different applications and devices; and Attack Protection, a suite of security capabilities that protects customers from different types of malicious traffic. Further, it provides Adaptive Multi-Factor Authentication, Passwordless, Machine to Machine, Private Cloud, Organizations, Actions and Extensibility, and Enterprise Connections. The company sells its products directly to customers through sales force and channel partners. The company was formerly known as Saasure, Inc. Okta, Inc. was incorporated in 2009 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.