Head to Head Comparison: Sohu.com (NASDAQ:SOHU) and Bridgeline Digital (NASDAQ:BLIN)

Bridgeline Digital (NASDAQ:BLIN) and Sohu.com (NASDAQ:SOHU) are both small-cap computer and technology companies, but which is the better stock? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, earnings, dividends, valuation, risk, profitability and institutional ownership.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings and target prices for Bridgeline Digital and Sohu.com, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Bridgeline Digital	1	1	1	0	2.00
Sohu.com	0	1	2	0	2.67

Bridgeline Digital currently has a consensus target price of $4.62, suggesting a potential upside of 364.32%. Sohu.com has a consensus target price of $19.00, suggesting a potential upside of 45.15%. Given Bridgeline Digital’s higher possible upside, equities research analysts plainly believe Bridgeline Digital is more favorable than Sohu.com.

Risk and Volatility

Bridgeline Digital has a beta of 1.06, meaning that its stock price is 6% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Sohu.com has a beta of 0.37, meaning that its stock price is 63% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Bridgeline Digital and Sohu.com”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Bridgeline Digital	$15.38 million	0.82	-$2.52 million	($0.15)	-6.63
Sohu.com	$584.33 million	0.58	$394.10 million	$7.84	1.67

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

Profitability

This table compares Bridgeline Digital and Sohu.com’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Bridgeline Digital	-10.75%	-17.46%	-10.69%
Sohu.com	35.19%	20.92%	14.76%

Institutional and Insider Ownership

15.1% of Bridgeline Digital shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 33.0% of Sohu.com shares are held by institutional investors. 23.5% of Bridgeline Digital shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 21.1% of Sohu.com shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

Sohu.com beats Bridgeline Digital on 10 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Bridgeline Digital

Bridgeline Digital, Inc. operates as a marketing technology company in the United States, Canada, and internationally. The company offers HawkSearch, a site search, recommendation, and personalization application for marketers, merchandisers, and developers; Celebros Search, a commerce-oriented site search product that provides natural language processing with artificial intelligence; and Woorank, a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) audit tool that generates an instant performance audit of the site's technical, on-page, and off-page SEO. It also provides Bridgeline TruPresence, a web content management and eCommerce platform to support the needs of multi-unit organizations and franchises; Bridgeline Unbound, a technology suite that empower marketers to easily manage their digital experiences and create personalized customer journeys; and OrchestraCMS, a digital experience platform that enables development of custom solutions, third-party integrations, and delivery of digital transformation initiatives on the Salesforce platform. In addition, the company offers digital engagement services comprising digital strategy, web design and web development, usability engineering, information architecture, and SEO, as well as hosting services. It serves vertical markets, such as industrial distributors and wholesalers, franchises and enterprises, manufacturers, eCommerce retailers, health services and life sciences, technology, credit unions and banks, and associations and foundations through its direct sales force. The company was formerly known as Bridgeline Software, Inc. Bridgeline Digital, Inc. was incorporated in 2000 and is based in Woburn, Massachusetts.

About Sohu.com

Sohu.com Limited engages in the provision of online media, video, and game products and services on personal computers (PCs) and mobile devices in China. It operates through two segments: Sohu and Changyou. The company offers online news, information, and content services through the mobile phone application Sohu News APP, mobile portal m.sohu.com, and www.sohu.com for PCs; and online video content and services through mobile phone application Sohu Video APP and tv.sohu.com, as well as ifox, a video application for PC. It also operates Focus (www.focus.cn), which provides online real estate information and services; and 17173.com website, which provides news, electronic forums, online videos, and other online game information services to game players, as well as offers mobile game distribution services. In addition, the company offers interactive online games for PCs and mobile devices. Further, it provides paid subscription and interactive broadcasting services. The company was incorporated in 1996 and is headquartered in Beijing, China.