Head-To-Head Comparison: Intuit (NASDAQ:INTU) and Certara (NASDAQ:CERT)

Intuit (NASDAQ:INTU) and Certara (NASDAQ:CERT) are both computer and technology companies, but which is the better stock? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their institutional ownership, valuation, analyst recommendations, profitability, risk, dividends and earnings.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Intuit and Certara’s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Intuit	$16.29 billion	10.82	$2.96 billion	$10.84	58.14
Certara	$354.34 million	5.56	-$55.36 million	($0.39)	-31.41

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

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of current ratings and recommmendations for Intuit and Certara, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Intuit	0	5	16	0	2.76
Certara	0	7	2	0	2.22

Intuit presently has a consensus target price of $716.35, indicating a potential upside of 13.66%. Certara has a consensus target price of $17.79, indicating a potential upside of 45.19%. Given Certara’s higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Certara is more favorable than Intuit.

Volatility and Risk

Intuit has a beta of 1.23, indicating that its share price is 23% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Certara has a beta of 1.52, indicating that its share price is 52% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares Intuit and Certara’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Intuit	18.19%	18.64%	10.87%
Certara	-21.64%	3.03%	2.06%

Insider & Institutional Ownership

83.7% of Intuit shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 74.0% of Certara shares are held by institutional investors. 2.9% of Intuit shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 2.4% of Certara shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Summary

Intuit beats Certara on 12 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Intuit

Intuit Inc. provides financial management and compliance products and services for consumers, small businesses, self-employed, and accounting professionals in the United States, Canada, and internationally. The company operates in four segments: Small Business & Self-Employed, Consumer, Credit Karma, and ProTax. The Small Business & Self-Employed segment provides QuickBooks services, that includes financial and business management online services and desktop software, payroll solutions, time tracking, merchant payment processing solutions, and financing for small businesses; and Mailchimp services, such as e-commerce, marketing automation, and customer relationship management. This segment also offers QuickBooks online services and desktop software solutions comprising QuickBooks Online Advanced, a cloud-based solution; QuickBooks Enterprise, a hosted solution; and QuickBooks Self-Employed solution; payment-processing solutions, including credit and debit cards, Apple Pay, and ACH payment services; and financial supplies and financing for small businesses, as well as electronic filing of federal and state income tax returns. The Consumer segment provides TurboTax income tax preparation products and services. The Credit Karma segment offers consumers with a personal finance platform that provides personalized recommendations of home, auto, and personal loans, as well as credit cards and insurance products. The ProTax segment provides Lacerte, ProSeries, and ProFile desktop tax-preparation software products; and ProConnect Tax Online tax products, electronic tax filing service, and bank products and related services. It sells products and services through various sales and distribution channels, including multi-channel shop-and-buy experiences, websites and call centers, mobile application stores, and retail and other channels. The company was founded in 1983 and is headquartered in Mountain View, California.

About Certara

Certara, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides software products and technology-enabled services to customers for biosimulation in drug discovery, preclinical and clinical research, regulatory submissions, and market access in the United States and internationally. It offers solutions for model-informed drug development, as well as biosimulation solution used to predict both pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. The company provides Simcyp Simulator, a mechanistic biosimulation platform mechanistic biosimulation investigational new drug and translational stages; Simcyp Biopharmaceutics, used to identify and refine drug formulations; and Simcyp Secondary Intelligence which integrates toxicology with quantitative analysis of networks of molecular and functional biological changes to identify drug toxicity and adverse drug reactions. In addition, it offers Phoenix WinNonlin, a platform for non-compartmental analysis, pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic, and toxicokinetic; phoenix hosted, that provides a secured and validated certara amazon web services workspace; Phoenix NLME, a population modeling and simulation software for nonlinear mixed effects models; and pirana modeling workbench. Further, the company provides pinnacle 21, a cloud-based platform for clinical data automation, standardization, and validation; Pinnacle 21 Data Exchange, used to define data standards and specifications; and Metadata Repository, to enable study design using controlled and standardized data. It serves life sciences companies, biopharmaceutical companies, research organizations, academic institutions, and global regulators, as well as animal health, crop science, bio science, medical devices, and public sector industries. Certara Inc. was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey.