Analyzing BlackLine (NASDAQ:BL) and Trend Micro (OTCMKTS:TMICY)

Trend Micro (OTCMKTS:TMICY) and BlackLine (NASDAQ:BL) are both mid-cap computer and technology companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their earnings, valuation, dividends, profitability, risk, analyst recommendations and institutional ownership.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

0.0% of Trend Micro shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 95.1% of BlackLine shares are held by institutional investors. 9.9% of BlackLine shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent ratings and target prices for Trend Micro and BlackLine, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Trend Micro	0	0	0	0	0.00
BlackLine	2	6	4	0	2.17

BlackLine has a consensus price target of $64.10, indicating a potential upside of 2.91%. Given BlackLine’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe BlackLine is more favorable than Trend Micro.

Profitability

This table compares Trend Micro and BlackLine’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Trend Micro	9.06%	19.06%	6.57%
BlackLine	19.83%	31.02%	4.92%

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Trend Micro and BlackLine”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Trend Micro	$1.77 billion	4.12	$76.20 million	$1.21	42.83
BlackLine	$639.61 million	6.09	$58.17 million	$0.98	63.56

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

Risk and Volatility

Trend Micro has a beta of 0.65, meaning that its stock price is 35% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, BlackLine has a beta of 0.9, meaning that its stock price is 10% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

BlackLine beats Trend Micro on 10 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Trend Micro

Trend Micro Incorporated develops and sells security-related software for computers and related services in Japan and internationally. The company offers platforms, such as vision one platform, attack surface management, extended detection and response (XDR), cloud security, endpoint security, network security, email security, OT/ICS security, and threat intelligence. It also provides services packages, managed XDR, incident response, and support services. Additionally, the company serves 5G networks, healthcare, manufacturing, oil and gas, electric utility, and automotive industries. The company was incorporated in 1965 and is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.

About BlackLine

BlackLine, Inc. provides cloud-based solutions to automate and streamline accounting and finance operations worldwide. It offers financial close management solutions, such as account reconciliations that provides a centralized workspace for users to collaborate on account reconciliations; transaction matching that analyzes and reconciles individual transactions; task management to create and manage processes and task lists; and financial reporting analytics that enables analysis and validation of financial data. The company's also provides journal entry that allows users to generate, review, and post manual journal entries; variance analysis that monitors and identifies anomalous fluctuations in balance sheet and income statement account balances; consolidation integrity manager that manages the automated system-to-system tie-out process; compliance, an integrated solution that facilitates compliance-related initiatives, consolidates project management, and provides visibility over control self-assessments and testing; and smart close for SAP solution. In addition, it offers blackline cash application, and credit and risk, collections, disputes and deductions, and team and task management, as well as AR intelligence solutions and electronic invoicing and compliance. Further, the company provides intercompany create functionality that stores permissions and business logic exceptions by entity, service, and transaction type; intercompany balance and resolve, which records an organization's intercompany transactions; and netting and settlement that enables open intercompany transactions, which integrate with treasury systems. The company sells its solutions primarily through direct sales force to multinational corporations, large domestic enterprises, and mid-market companies across various industries. BlackLine, Inc. was incorporated in 2001 and is headquartered in Woodland Hills, California.