Contrasting Viant Technology (NASDAQ:DSP) and HealthStream (NASDAQ:HSTM)

Viant Technology (NASDAQ:DSP) and HealthStream (NASDAQ:HSTM) are both small-cap business services companies, but which is the superior stock? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their valuation, earnings, institutional ownership, profitability, risk, dividends and analyst recommendations.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of current ratings and recommmendations for Viant Technology and HealthStream, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Viant Technology	0	0	7	0	3.00
HealthStream	0	1	2	1	3.00

Viant Technology currently has a consensus target price of $20.29, suggesting a potential downside of 7.37%. HealthStream has a consensus target price of $31.50, suggesting a potential downside of 3.93%. Given HealthStream’s higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe HealthStream is more favorable than Viant Technology.

Profitability

This table compares Viant Technology and HealthStream’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Viant Technology	0.47%	-5.67%	-3.78%
HealthStream	6.84%	5.67%	3.91%

Insider and Institutional Ownership

11.4% of Viant Technology shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 69.6% of HealthStream shares are held by institutional investors. 28.8% of Viant Technology shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 20.6% of HealthStream shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Viant Technology and HealthStream”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Viant Technology	$222.93 million	6.17	-$3.44 million	$0.06	365.06
HealthStream	$279.06 million	3.57	$15.21 million	$0.65	50.45

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

Volatility & Risk

Viant Technology has a beta of 1, suggesting that its share price has a similar volatility profile to the S&P 500.Comparatively, HealthStream has a beta of 0.39, suggesting that its share price is 61% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

HealthStream beats Viant Technology on 9 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Viant Technology

Viant Technology Inc. operates as an advertising technology company. It provides Household ID, a people-based innovation that combines digital and personal identifiers into a normalized household profile; AI Bid Optimizer, solution that uses AI to analyze historical bid opportunities to predict the lowest media cost for desired advertisement; and Viant Data Platform, which offers marketers control over their own data with actionable insights into their marketing initiatives within a single platform. The company also offers Holistic, an omnichannel DSP for marketers and their agencies to manage omnichannel campaigns and access metrics from each channel to inform decisions in other channels; Viant Identity Graph, which reduces or eliminates the need for cookies by enabling matching of people-based identifiers that anchor digital identifiers that allows marketers to reach targeted consumers in a privacy-conscious manner; and Direct Access, a path optimization program. In addition, it provides campaign analysis and data intelligence tool that empowers customers with differentiated insights, including conversion lift, multi-touch attribution, foot-traffic data reports, digital-out-of-home lift, sales reporting, and ROAS analytics; and self-service platform that provides customers with transparency and control over their advertising campaigns and underlying data infrastructure. The company sells its platform through a direct sales team focused on business development in various markets. It serves purchasers of programmatic advertising inventory; and large, independent, and mid-market advertising agencies, as well as marketers. The company was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Irvine, California.

About HealthStream

HealthStream, Inc. provides Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) based applications for healthcare organizations in the United States. The company’s solutions help healthcare organizations in meeting their ongoing clinical development, talent management, training, education, assessment, competency management, safety and compliance, and scheduling, as well as provider credentialing, privileging, and enrollment needs. It offers hStream, a technology platform that powers a range of healthcare workforce solutions. The company provides its solutions to customers across a range of entities within the healthcare industry, including private, not-for-profit, and government entities, as well as pharmaceutical and medical device companies through its direct sales teams. The company was incorporated in 1990 and is headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee.