Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) vs. Simulations Plus (NASDAQ:SLP) Head-To-Head Review

Simulations Plus (NASDAQ:SLP) and Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) are both computer and technology companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their dividends, institutional ownership, earnings, valuation, profitability, analyst recommendations and risk.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings and recommmendations for Simulations Plus and Salesforce, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Simulations Plus	1	5	4	1	2.45
Salesforce	1	13	28	0	2.64

Simulations Plus presently has a consensus target price of $24.40, suggesting a potential upside of 27.28%. Salesforce has a consensus target price of $326.46, suggesting a potential upside of 24.44%. Given Simulations Plus’ higher possible upside, equities analysts plainly believe Simulations Plus is more favorable than Salesforce.

Risk and Volatility

Simulations Plus has a beta of 1.16, suggesting that its stock price is 16% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Salesforce has a beta of 1.25, suggesting that its stock price is 25% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares Simulations Plus and Salesforce’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Simulations Plus	-81.74%	13.27%	12.44%
Salesforce	17.91%	14.41%	8.89%

Insider & Institutional Ownership

78.1% of Simulations Plus shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 80.4% of Salesforce shares are owned by institutional investors. 19.4% of Simulations Plus shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 3.0% of Salesforce shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Simulations Plus and Salesforce”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Simulations Plus	$79.18 million	4.88	-$64.72 million	($3.22)	-5.95
Salesforce	$40.32 billion	6.10	$6.20 billion	$7.49	35.03

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

Summary

Salesforce beats Simulations Plus on 11 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Simulations Plus

Simulations Plus, Inc. develops drug discovery and development software for modeling and simulation, and prediction of molecular properties utilizing artificial intelligence and machine learning based technology worldwide. The company operates through two segments, Software and Services. It offers GastroPlus, which simulates the absorption and drug interaction of compounds administered to humans and animals; and DDDPlus and MembranePlus simulation products. The company also provides products based on mechanistic and mathematical models, such as DILIsym, NAFLDsym, ILDsym, RENAsym, IPFsym, and MITOsym products. In addition, it offers Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism, Excretion, and Toxicity Predictor for chemistry-based computer program that takes molecular structures as inputs and predicts their properties; and MedChem Designer, as well as MonolixSuite products for modeling and simulation that allows for population analyses, rapid clinical trial data analyses, and regulatory submissions. Further, the company provides clinical-pharmacology-based consulting services, which includes population pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic modeling, exposure-response analyses, clinical trial simulations, data programming, and technical writing services in support of regulatory submissions; and early drug discovery services. Additionally, it offers creative and insightful consulting services to support its quantitative systems pharmacology/quantitative systems toxicology modelling. The company serves pharmaceutical, biotechnology, agrochemical, cosmetics, and food industry companies, as well as academic and regulatory agencies. Simulations Plus, Inc. was incorporated in 1996 and is headquartered in Lancaster, California.

About Salesforce

Salesforce, Inc. provides Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology that brings companies and customers together worldwide. The company's service includes sales to store data, monitor leads and progress, forecast opportunities, gain insights through analytics and artificial intelligence, and deliver quotes, contracts, and invoices; and service that enables companies to deliver trusted and highly personalized customer support at scale. In addition, its platform offering comprise a flexible platform that enables companies of various sizes, locations, and industries to build business workflow and apps with customer; online learning platform that allows anyone to learn in-demand Salesforce skills; and Slack, an intelligent productivity platform. The company's marketing services enables companies to plan, personalize, automate, and optimize customer marketing journey, connecting interaction, and connected products; and commerce services, which empowers shopping experience across various customer touchpoint, such as mobile, web, social, and stores and provides click-to-code tools that offers customers to build and deploy solutions. Further, its analytics offering includes Tableau, an end-to-end analytics solution for range of enterprise use cases and intelligent analytics with AI models, spot trends, predict outcomes, creates summaries, timely recommendations, and take action from any device; and integration service including MuleSoft, which provides building blocks to deliver end-to-end and connected experiences. Additionally, the company provides data cloud, a hyperscale data engine native to Salesforce; vertical services to meet the needs of customers in industries, such as financial services, healthcare and life sciences, manufacturing and automotive and government; and offers salesforce starter for small and medium-sized businesses. Salesforce, Inc. was incorporated in 1999 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.