Comparing SAP (NYSE:SAP) and Skillsoft (NYSE:SKIL)

Skillsoft (NYSE:SKIL) and SAP (NYSE:SAP) are both business services companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their dividends, institutional ownership, valuation, profitability, earnings, risk and analyst recommendations.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

87.0% of Skillsoft shares are owned by institutional investors. 13.5% of Skillsoft shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 7.4% of SAP shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Skillsoft and SAP”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Skillsoft	$536.51 million	0.21	-$349.29 million	($41.25)	-0.34
SAP	$33.77 billion	N/A	$6.64 billion	$4.61	48.00

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

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent recommendations for Skillsoft and SAP, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Skillsoft	0	1	3	0	2.75
SAP	0	1	8	0	2.89

Skillsoft presently has a consensus price target of $36.67, indicating a potential upside of 163.79%. SAP has a consensus price target of $232.00, indicating a potential upside of 4.84%. Given Skillsoft’s higher possible upside, equities research analysts plainly believe Skillsoft is more favorable than SAP.

Volatility and Risk

Skillsoft has a beta of 1.32, meaning that its share price is 32% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, SAP has a beta of 1.25, meaning that its share price is 25% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares Skillsoft and SAP’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Skillsoft	-63.42%	-41.27%	-7.99%
SAP	7.74%	10.98%	6.75%

Summary

SAP beats Skillsoft on 9 of the 13 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Skillsoft

Skillsoft Corp. provides content and platform and instructor-led training services in the United States and internationally. The company's Content & Platform segment engages in the sale, marketing, and delivery of its content learning solutions in areas, such as leadership and business, technology and developer, and compliance comprising individualized coaching, as well as technical skill areas. This segment also offers Percipio, an AI-driven online learning platform that delivers a learning experience through SaaS solutions. Its Instructor-Led Training segment provides training solutions, including information technology and business skills for corporations and their employees by guiding its customers throughout their lifelong technology learning journey by offering relevant and up-to-date skills training through instructor-led and self-paced, vendor certified, and other proprietary offerings. The company markets and sells their offerings to businesses of many sizes, government agencies, educational institutions, and resellers. Skillsoft Corp. is headquartered in Greenwood Village, Colorado.

About SAP

SAP SE, together with its subsidiaries, provides applications, technology, and services worldwide. It offers SAP S/4HANA that provides software capabilities for finance, risk and project management, procurement, manufacturing, supply chain and asset management, and research and development; SAP SuccessFactors solutions for human resources, including HR and payroll, talent and employee experience management, and people and workforce analytics; and spend management solutions that covers direct and indirect spend, travel and expense, and external workforce management. The company also provides SAP customer experience solutions; SAP Business Technology platform that enables customers and partners to build, integrate, and automate applications; and SAP Business Network, a business-to-business collaboration platform that helps digitalize key business processes across the supply chain and enables communication between trading partners. In addition, it offers SAP Signavio to help customers to discover, analyze, and understand their business process operations; SAP's industry cloud solutions that provides modular solutions addressing industry-specific functions; Taulia solutions for working capital management to help enable customers mitigate the effects of inflation by providing visibility into working capital and access to liquidity; and sustainability solutions and services. SAP SE was founded in 1972 and is headquartered in Walldorf, Germany.