Critical Review: Braze (NASDAQ:BRZE) & nCino (NASDAQ:NCNO)

nCino (NASDAQ:NCNO) and Braze (NASDAQ:BRZE) are both mid-cap computer and technology companies, but which is the superior business? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their institutional ownership, earnings, valuation, dividends, profitability, risk and analyst recommendations.

Volatility and Risk

nCino has a beta of 0.65, indicating that its share price is 35% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Braze has a beta of 1.13, indicating that its share price is 13% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares nCino and Braze”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
nCino	$476.54 million	8.19	-$42.35 million	($0.17)	-198.28
Braze	$471.80 million	9.00	-$129.17 million	($1.14)	-35.98

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

Profitability

This table compares nCino and Braze’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
nCino	-3.46%	1.62%	1.22%
Braze	-20.41%	-24.88%	-13.53%

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of current ratings and price targets for nCino and Braze, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
nCino	0	4	11	0	2.73
Braze	0	1	19	0	2.95

nCino currently has a consensus target price of $42.50, suggesting a potential upside of 26.08%. Braze has a consensus target price of $53.74, suggesting a potential upside of 31.00%. Given Braze’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Braze is more favorable than nCino.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

94.8% of nCino shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 90.5% of Braze shares are owned by institutional investors. 28.4% of nCino shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 24.0% of Braze shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

nCino beats Braze on 8 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About nCino

nCino, Inc., a software-as-a-service company, provides cloud-based software applications to financial institutions in the United States and internationally. Its nCino Bank Operating System connects financial institution employees, clients and third parties on a single cloud-based platform which include client onboarding, deposit account opening, loan origination, end-to-end mortgage suite, and powerful ecosystem. The company's nIQ, an application suite that utilizes data analytics and artificial intelligence and machine learning to provide its customers with automation and insights into their operations, such as tools for analyzing, measuring, and managing credit risk, as well as to enhance their ability to comply with regulatory requirements. It also offers SimpleNexus, a cloud-based mobile-first homeownership software solution. The company serves financial institution customers, including global financial institutions, enterprise banks, regional banks, community banks, credit unions, new market entrants, and independent mortgage banks through business development representatives, account executives, field sales engineers, and customer success managers. nCino, Inc. was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in Wilmington, North Carolina.

About Braze

Braze, Inc. operates a customer engagement platform that provides interactions between consumers and brands worldwide. The company offers Braze software development kits that automatically manage data ingestion and deliver mobile and web notifications, in-application/in-browser interstitial messages, and content cards; REST API that can be used to import or export data or to trigger workflows between Braze and brands' existing technology stacks; Partner Data Integrations, which allow brands to sync user cohorts from partners; Data Transformation, in which brands can programmatically sync and transform user data; and Braze Cloud Data Ingestion that enables brands to harness their customer data. It also offers classification products, including segmentation that can define reusable segments of consumers based upon attributes, events, or predictive propensity scores; segment insights, which allows customers to analyze how segments are performing relative to each other across a set of pre-selected key performance indicators; and predictive suite that allows customers to identify groups of consumers that are of critical business value. In addition, the company provides Canvas, an orchestration tool that allows customers to create journeys, mapping out multi-steps, and cross-channel messaging experiences; campaigns, which allows customers to send one set of single-channel or multi-channel messages to be delivered to customers in a particular user segment; event and API triggering; marketing pressure management; and reporting and analytics. Further, it offers personalization products, such as liquid templating platform, connected content platform, content blocks, intelligent timing and channel, personalized variant, and AI item recommendations, and catalogs; and action products. The company was formerly known as Appboy, Inc. and changed its name to Braze, Inc. in November 2017. Braze, Inc. was incorporated in 2011 and is headquartered in New York, New York.