SS&C Technologies (NASDAQ:SSNC) & Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) Head to Head Comparison

SS&C Technologies (NASDAQ:SSNC) and Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) are both large-cap computer and technology companies, but which is the better stock? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their dividends, institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, profitability, valuation, earnings and risk.

Profitability

This table compares SS&C Technologies and Salesforce’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
SS&C Technologies	13.86%	19.80%	6.98%
Salesforce	17.91%	14.41%	8.89%

Dividends

SS&C Technologies pays an annual dividend of $1.08 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.5%. Salesforce pays an annual dividend of $1.66 per share and has a dividend yield of 0.8%. SS&C Technologies pays out 32.0% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Salesforce pays out 22.2% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Both companies have healthy payout ratios and should be able to cover their dividend payments with earnings for the next several years. SS&C Technologies has raised its dividend for 9 consecutive years and Salesforce has raised its dividend for 1 consecutive years. SS&C Technologies is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and longer track record of dividend growth.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares SS&C Technologies and Salesforce”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
SS&C Technologies	$5.88 billion	3.06	$760.50 million	$3.37	21.87
Salesforce	$37.90 billion	4.93	$6.20 billion	$7.49	26.61

Salesforce has higher revenue and earnings than SS&C Technologies. SS&C Technologies is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Salesforce, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Risk and Volatility

SS&C Technologies has a beta of 1.17, indicating that its share price is 17% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Salesforce has a beta of 1.27, indicating that its share price is 27% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

96.9% of SS&C Technologies shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 80.4% of Salesforce shares are held by institutional investors. 16.4% of SS&C Technologies shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 3.0% of Salesforce shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of current ratings for SS&C Technologies and Salesforce, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
SS&C Technologies	0	2	6	1	2.89
Salesforce	1	12	29	1	2.70

SS&C Technologies currently has a consensus price target of $102.25, suggesting a potential upside of 38.74%. Salesforce has a consensus price target of $323.57, suggesting a potential upside of 62.35%. Given Salesforce’s higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Salesforce is more favorable than SS&C Technologies.

Summary

Salesforce beats SS&C Technologies on 11 of the 17 factors compared between the two stocks.

About SS&C Technologies

SS&C Technologies Holdings, Inc. engages in the development and provision of software solutions to the financial services and healthcare industries. It operates through the following geographical segments: United States, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific and Japan, Canada, and the Americas, excluding the United States and Canada. Its products include advent genesis, antares, asset allocators, AWD, axys, BANC mall, BRIX, DST vision, evare, lightning, and moxy. The company was founded by William Charles Stone in March 1986 and is headquartered in Windsor, CT.

About Salesforce

Salesforce, Inc. provides Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology that brings companies and customers together worldwide. The company's service includes sales to store data, monitor leads and progress, forecast opportunities, gain insights through analytics and artificial intelligence, and deliver quotes, contracts, and invoices; and service that enables companies to deliver trusted and highly personalized customer support at scale. In addition, its platform offering comprise a flexible platform that enables companies of various sizes, locations, and industries to build business workflow and apps with customer; online learning platform that allows anyone to learn in-demand Salesforce skills; and Slack, an intelligent productivity platform. The company's marketing services enables companies to plan, personalize, automate, and optimize customer marketing journey, connecting interaction, and connected products; and commerce services, which empowers shopping experience across various customer touchpoint, such as mobile, web, social, and stores and provides click-to-code tools that offers customers to build and deploy solutions. Further, its analytics offering includes Tableau, an end-to-end analytics solution for range of enterprise use cases and intelligent analytics with AI models, spot trends, predict outcomes, creates summaries, timely recommendations, and take action from any device; and integration service including MuleSoft, which provides building blocks to deliver end-to-end and connected experiences. Additionally, the company provides data cloud, a hyperscale data engine native to Salesforce; vertical services to meet the needs of customers in industries, such as financial services, healthcare and life sciences, manufacturing and automotive and government; and offers salesforce starter for small and medium-sized businesses. Salesforce, Inc. was incorporated in 1999 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.