Critical Review: Applied Digital (OTCMKTS:APLD) versus Bitfarms (OTCMKTS:BFARF)

Applied Digital (OTCMKTS:APLD) and Bitfarms (OTCMKTS:BFARF) are both financial services companies, but which is the superior business? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their profitability, dividends, risk, analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, valuation and earnings.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Applied Digital and Bitfarms’ gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Applied Digital	$143.91 million	2.85	-$44.65 million	($0.79)	-4.23
Bitfarms	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

Bitfarms has lower revenue, but higher earnings than Applied Digital.

Profitability

This table compares Applied Digital and Bitfarms’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Applied Digital	-80.60%	-61.59%	-22.75%
Bitfarms	N/A	N/A	N/A

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of current recommendations and price targets for Applied Digital and Bitfarms, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Applied Digital	0	0	2	0	3.00
Bitfarms	0	0	0	0	N/A

Applied Digital currently has a consensus price target of $14.70, suggesting a potential upside of 340.12%. Given Applied Digital’s higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Applied Digital is more favorable than Bitfarms.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

65.7% of Applied Digital shares are owned by institutional investors. 23.7% of Applied Digital shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

Applied Digital beats Bitfarms on 5 of the 8 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Applied Digital

Applied Digital Corporation designs, develops, and operates datacenters in North America. Its datacenters provide digital infrastructure solutions to the high-performance computing industry. The company also provides artificial intelligence cloud services, high performance computing datacenter hosting, and crypto datacenter hosting services. The company was formerly known as Applied Blockchain, Inc. and changed its name to Applied Digital Corporation in November 2022. Applied Digital Corporation is based in Dallas, Texas.

About Bitfarms

Bitfarms Ltd., a blockchain infrastructure company, mines for cryptocurrency coins and tokens in North America. The company owns and operates server farms comprising computers that primarily validates transactions on the Bitcoin Blockchain and earning cryptocurrency from block rewards and transaction fees. It also provides electrician services to commercial and residential customers in Quebec, Canada. It also provides hosting of third-party mining hardware. The company was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.