Head-To-Head Review: Rightscorp (OTCMKTS:RIHT) versus Acacia Research (NASDAQ:ACTG)

Acacia Research (NASDAQ:ACTG) and Rightscorp (OTCMKTS:RIHT) are both small-cap business services companies, but which is the better business? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their dividends, analyst recommendations, earnings, risk, institutional ownership, valuation and profitability.

Volatility and Risk

Acacia Research has a beta of 0.49, meaning that its stock price is 51% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Rightscorp has a beta of -0.03, meaning that its stock price is 103% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of current recommendations for Acacia Research and Rightscorp, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Acacia Research	1	0	0	0	1.00
Rightscorp	0	0	0	0	0.00

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Acacia Research and Rightscorp”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Acacia Research	$283.95 million	1.27	-$36.06 million	$0.05	74.80
Rightscorp	$290,000.00	7.66	-$410,000.00	N/A	N/A

Rightscorp has lower revenue, but higher earnings than Acacia Research.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

86.7% of Acacia Research shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 0.1% of Rightscorp shares are owned by institutional investors. 1.1% of Acacia Research shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Profitability

This table compares Acacia Research and Rightscorp’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Acacia Research	1.70%	2.45%	1.80%
Rightscorp	N/A	N/A	N/A

Summary

Acacia Research beats Rightscorp on 8 of the 10 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Acacia Research

Acacia is a publicly traded (Nasdaq: ACTG) company that is focused on acquiring and operating businesses across the industrial, energy and technology sectors where it believes it can leverage its expertise, significant capital base, and deep industry relationships to drive value. Acacia evaluates opportunities based on the attractiveness of the underlying cash flows, without regard to a specific investment horizon. Acacia operates its businesses based on three key principles of people, process, and performance and has built a management team with demonstrated expertise in research, transactions and execution, and operations and management.

About Rightscorp

Rightscorp, Inc. operates as a technology company that has a patent-pending proprietary method for collecting payments from illegal downloaders of copyrighted content through notifications sent to their Internet service providers (ISP’s). The company’s technology system monitors peer-to-peer file sharing networks and sends through email to ISP’s notifications of copyright infringement by the ISPs’ customers with date, time, copyright title, and other specific technology identifiers worldwide. It primarily serves copyright holders. The company was founded in 2010 and is headquartered in Santa Monica, California.