Comparing Acacia Research (NASDAQ:ACTG) and BGSF (NYSE:BGSF)

Acacia Research (NASDAQ:ACTG) and BGSF (NYSE:BGSF) are both small-cap business services companies, but which is the better stock? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, valuation, institutional ownership, dividends, earnings, profitability and risk.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

86.7% of Acacia Research shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 37.2% of BGSF shares are held by institutional investors. 1.7% of Acacia Research shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 8.0% of BGSF shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Volatility and Risk

Acacia Research has a beta of 0.52, meaning that its share price is 48% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, BGSF has a beta of 0.71, meaning that its share price is 29% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Acacia Research and BGSF”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Acacia Research	$122.31 million	3.29	-$36.06 million	$0.05	83.40
BGSF	$272.50 million	0.26	-$3.34 million	($1.03)	-6.12

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

Profitability

This table compares Acacia Research and BGSF’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Acacia Research	1.70%	2.45%	1.80%
BGSF	-6.32%	-13.16%	-7.20%

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of recent recommendations for Acacia Research and BGSF, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Acacia Research	1	0	0	0	1.00
BGSF	1	1	1	1	2.50

BGSF has a consensus price target of $9.00, suggesting a potential upside of 42.86%. Given BGSF’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe BGSF is more favorable than Acacia Research.

Summary

BGSF beats Acacia Research on 8 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Acacia Research

Acacia is a publicly traded (Nasdaq: ACTG) company that is focused on acquiring and operating businesses across the industrial, energy and technology sectors where it believes it can leverage its expertise, significant capital base, and deep industry relationships to drive value. Acacia evaluates opportunities based on the attractiveness of the underlying cash flows, without regard to a specific investment horizon. Acacia operates its businesses based on three key principles of people, process, and performance and has built a management team with demonstrated expertise in research, transactions and execution, and operations and management.

About BGSF

BGSF, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides consulting, managed services, and professional workforce solutions in the United States. It operates in two segments, Property Management and Professional. The Property Management segment offers office and maintenance field talent to various apartment communities and commercial buildings. The Professional segment provides skilled IT professionals in SAP, Workday, Peoplesoft, Hyperion, Oracle, One Stream, cyber, project management, management services, and other IT workforce solutions. This segment also offers finance, accounting, legal, human resource, and related support personnel. It serves its products to fortune 500 companies, and medium and small companies, as well as consulting companies. The company was formerly known as BG Staffing, Inc. and changed its name to BGSF, Inc. in February 2021. BGSF, Inc. was incorporated in 2007 and is based in Plano, Texas.