Critical Comparison: Pathfinder Acquisition (NASDAQ:PFDR) vs. N-able (NYSE:NABL)

Pathfinder Acquisition (NASDAQ:PFDR) and N-able (NYSE:NABL) are both small-cap unclassified companies, but which is the superior business? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their valuation, earnings, risk, analyst recommendations, dividends, institutional ownership and profitability.

Profitability

This table compares Pathfinder Acquisition and N-able’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Pathfinder Acquisition	N/A	-102.69%	4.33%
N-able	8.08%	6.31%	3.90%

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of recent ratings for Pathfinder Acquisition and N-able, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Pathfinder Acquisition	0	0	0	0	0.00
N-able	0	2	2	0	2.50

N-able has a consensus target price of $9.31, indicating a potential upside of 30.89%. Given N-able’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe N-able is more favorable than Pathfinder Acquisition.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

77.8% of Pathfinder Acquisition shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 96.3% of N-able shares are held by institutional investors. 20.0% of Pathfinder Acquisition shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 1.4% of N-able shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Pathfinder Acquisition and N-able”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Pathfinder Acquisition	N/A	N/A	$7.97 million	N/A	N/A
N-able	$466.15 million	2.84	$23.41 million	$0.17	41.85

N-able has higher revenue and earnings than Pathfinder Acquisition.

Risk and Volatility

Pathfinder Acquisition has a beta of -0.02, meaning that its stock price is 102% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, N-able has a beta of 0.41, meaning that its stock price is 59% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

N-able beats Pathfinder Acquisition on 9 of the 11 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Pathfinder Acquisition

Pathfinder Acquisition Corporation does not have significant operations. It intends to effect a merger, share exchange, asset acquisition, share purchase, reorganization, or similar business combination with one or more businesses in the technology or technology-enabled sectors. The company was incorporated in 2020 and is based in Palo Alto, California.

About N-able

N-able, Inc. provides cloud-based software solutions for managed service providers in the United States, the United Kingdom, and internationally. The company's solutions enable MSPs to support digital transformation and growth within small and medium-sized enterprises. It provides software platform designed to be an integrated, enterprise-grade solution that serves as an operating system for its MSP partners and scales as their businesses grow. In addition, the company offers remote monitoring and management solutions provide MSP partners with visibility and insights into the availability and performance of their customers' networks, infrastructure, devices and applications through a centralized dashboard; data protection as-a-service solutions, such as backup and disaster recovery for servers, virtual machines, workstations, files, data, and key cloud-based applications, as well as multi-tenant platform and secure remote delivery architecture. Further, it offers security services through patch management, endpoint security, managed detection and response, web protection, e-mail security, and archiving and vulnerability assessment solutions. Additionally, the company engages in professional services automation, automation and scripting management, password management policies and reporting, and analytics. N-able, Inc. was incorporated in 2020 and is headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts.