Analyzing Accolade (NASDAQ:ACCD) & QuoteMedia (OTCMKTS:QMCI)

Accolade (NASDAQ:ACCD) and QuoteMedia (OTCMKTS:QMCI) are both small-cap business services companies, but which is the better stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their risk, earnings, valuation, profitability, dividends, institutional ownership and analyst recommendations.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings and price targets for Accolade and QuoteMedia, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Accolade	0	13	1	0	2.07
QuoteMedia	0	0	0	0	0.00

Accolade currently has a consensus target price of $6.51, suggesting a potential downside of 7.18%. Given Accolade’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, equities research analysts plainly believe Accolade is more favorable than QuoteMedia.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

85.0% of Accolade shares are owned by institutional investors. 8.2% of Accolade shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 47.1% of QuoteMedia shares are owned by company 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 Accolade and QuoteMedia”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Accolade	$446.72 million	1.29	-$99.81 million	($2.25)	-3.12
QuoteMedia	$18.91 million	0.77	$370,000.00	N/A	N/A

QuoteMedia has lower revenue, but higher earnings than Accolade.

Profitability

This table compares Accolade and QuoteMedia’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Accolade	-40.36%	-20.74%	-11.33%
QuoteMedia	-3.58%	N/A	-9.15%

Risk and Volatility

Accolade has a beta of 2.18, suggesting that its share price is 118% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, QuoteMedia has a beta of 0.57, suggesting that its share price is 43% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Accolade beats QuoteMedia on 7 of the 12 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Accolade

Accolade, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in the development and provision of personalized and technology-enabled solutions that help people to understand, navigate, and utilize the healthcare system and their workplace benefits in the United States. The company offers a platform with cloud-based intelligent technology and multimodal support from a team of advocates and clinicians, including registered nurses, physician medical directors, pharmacists, behavioral health specialists, women’s health specialists, case management specialists, expert medical opinion providers, and primary care physicians. It also provides medical opinion services to commercial customers; and navigation, care, and advocacy solutions. In addition, the company offers medical consultations that connect patients to qualified condition-specific specialists for adult and pediatric care; and primary care and mental health support solutions. It serves employers who provide employees and their families a single place to turn for their health, healthcare, and benefits needs. The company was incorporated in 2007 and is headquartered in Seattle, Washington.

About QuoteMedia

QuoteMedia, Inc. provides financial data, market research information, analytics, news feeds, and financial software solutions to online brokerages, banks, clearing firms, financial service companies, media portals, and public corporations worldwide. It collects, aggregates, and delivers delayed and real-time financial data content through the Internet. The company also offers market information and services, including streaming stock market data feeds, research and analysis information, content applications, portfolio management systems, software products, corporate investor relations provisioning, news services, mobile apps, and custom development. In addition, its data feeds coverage includes equities, options, futures, commodities, currencies, mutual funds, ETFs, and indices. Further, the company provides financial data delivery application products and components comprising quote modules, charts, market movers, news, watch lists, tickers, market summaries, option chains, filings, fundamentals, investor relations solutions, stock and fund screeners, and others; and QMod, a web delivery system for delivering market data content to Web platforms. Additionally, it offers portfolio managements systems, including Quotestream Desktop, We, and Mobile, a Web-delivered, embedded application providing real-time, tick-by-tick, streaming market quotes and research information; Quotestream Professional that offers low-latency tick-by-tick data, customizable screens, advanced charting, comprehensive technical analysis, news, and research data for financial services professionals; Web Portfolio Manager, which provides immediate web access to detailed quote data, market and company news, charting, depth/level II, filings, historical data, snap quotes, and others; and Quotestream Connect that delivers real time data feeds to individual users to power third party applications. The company was incorporated in 1992 and is headquartered in Fountain Hills, Arizona.