Critical Review: BOX (NYSE:BOX) and Twilio (NYSE:TWLO)

BOX (NYSE:BOX) and Twilio (NYSE:TWLO) are both computer and technology companies, but which is the superior stock? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their valuation, institutional ownership, risk, dividends, earnings, profitability and analyst recommendations.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

86.7% of BOX shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 84.3% of Twilio shares are owned by institutional investors. 3.9% of BOX shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 4.5% of Twilio 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.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares BOX and Twilio”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
BOX	$1.09 billion	4.02	$244.62 million	$1.24	24.70
Twilio	$4.46 billion	4.87	-$109.40 million	$0.41	345.11

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

Risk & Volatility

BOX has a beta of 0.79, suggesting that its stock price is 21% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Twilio has a beta of 1.32, suggesting that its stock price is 32% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares BOX and Twilio’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
BOX	19.79%	-20.65%	3.58%
Twilio	1.37%	3.36%	2.73%

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent recommendations for BOX and Twilio, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
BOX	1	3	5	0	2.44
Twilio	2	7	18	2	2.69

BOX presently has a consensus price target of $38.00, indicating a potential upside of 24.05%. Twilio has a consensus price target of $140.33, indicating a potential downside of 0.82%. Given BOX’s higher possible upside, equities analysts clearly believe BOX is more favorable than Twilio.

Summary

Twilio beats BOX on 9 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About BOX

Box, Inc. engages in the provision of an enterprise content platform that enables organizations to securely manage enterprise content while allowing easy, secure access and sharing of this content from anywhere, on any device. Its products include cloud content management, IT and admin controls, Box Governance, Box Zones, Box Relay, Box Shuttle, and Box KeySafe. The company was founded by Aaron Levie, Dylan Smith, Jeff Queisser, and Sam Ghods in March 2005 and is headquartered in Redwood City, CA.

About Twilio

Twilio Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides customer engagement platform solutions in the United States and internationally. It operates through two segments, Twilio Communications and Twilio Segment. The company provides various application programming interfaces and software solutions for communications between customers and end users, including messaging, voice, email, flex, marketing campaigns, and user identity and authentication. It also offers software products to build direct, personalized relationships with their end users, such as segment, a platform that provides tools for first-party data by unifying real-time information collected; and engage, an automation platform for the delivery of omnichannel campaigns. Twilio Inc. was incorporated in 2008 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.