Financial Contrast: Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) versus KLDiscovery (OTCMKTS:KLDI)

KLDiscovery (OTCMKTS:KLDI) and Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) are both business services companies, but which is the better stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, profitability, earnings, dividends, valuation, risk and institutional ownership.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent ratings and target prices for KLDiscovery and Meta Platforms, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
KLDiscovery	0	0	0	0	0.00
Meta Platforms	2	4	35	2	2.86

Meta Platforms has a consensus target price of $634.10, suggesting a potential upside of 10.85%. Given Meta Platforms’ stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Meta Platforms is more favorable than KLDiscovery.

Risk & Volatility

KLDiscovery has a beta of -0.61, indicating that its share price is 161% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Meta Platforms has a beta of 1.22, indicating that its share price is 22% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares KLDiscovery and Meta Platforms’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
KLDiscovery	-20.91%	-607.40%	-9.45%
Meta Platforms	35.55%	35.60%	23.66%

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares KLDiscovery and Meta Platforms”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
KLDiscovery	$345.80 million	0.00	-$34.81 million	($1.56)	-0.02
Meta Platforms	$156.23 billion	9.26	$39.10 billion	$21.23	26.95

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

Institutional and Insider Ownership

20.4% of KLDiscovery shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 79.9% of Meta Platforms shares are held by institutional investors. 31.6% of KLDiscovery shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 13.7% of Meta Platforms shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Summary

Meta Platforms beats KLDiscovery on 14 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About KLDiscovery

KLDiscovery Inc. provides eDiscovery, information governance, and data recovery solutions to corporations, law firms, insurance companies, and individuals worldwide. The company offers Nebula, an end-to-end eDiscovery solution that facilitates smarter ways to cull, process, review, and manage documents in an intuitive interface; Client Portal for consolidated visualizations and reporting for portfolio intelligence; KLD Processing, a proprietary processing application; ReadySuite to perform extensive QC on a production, normalize inbound submissions, or spot check the work of a colleague or supplier; Relativity for relativity enhancements and state-of-the-art HIVE infrastructure; Nebula Processing to process data with a higher degree of quality; and Nebula AI, a technology assisted review tool combined with a deep bench of experts, as well as managed services, remote document review, and managed document review services. It also provides computer forensics, ransomware data recovery, remote collection manager, data recovery, and data collection services. In addition, the company offers Nebula Archive, an advanced archiving solution for modern enterprise data management needs at scale; Nebula Intelligent Archive, a digital communications compliance platform with machine learning and analytics; and Office 365 Migration and Management, as well as information governance and advisory services. Further, it provides Ontrack EasyRecovery that allows clients to perform precise file recovery of data lost through deletion, reformatting, and various other data loss scenarios; Ontrack PowerControls, a granular restore software product; email extraction, tape solutions, and data destruction solutions; and professional services. KLDiscovery Inc. was founded in 1985 and is headquartered in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.

About Meta Platforms

Meta Platforms, Inc. engages in the development of products that enable people to connect and share with friends and family through mobile devices, personal computers, virtual reality headsets, and wearables worldwide. It operates in two segments, Family of Apps and Reality Labs. The Family of Apps segment offers Facebook, which enables people to share, discuss, discover, and connect with interests; Instagram, a community for sharing photos, videos, and private messages, as well as feed, stories, reels, video, live, and shops; Messenger, a messaging application for people to connect with friends, family, communities, and businesses across platforms and devices through text, audio, and video calls; and WhatsApp, a messaging application that is used by people and businesses to communicate and transact privately. The Reality Labs segment provides augmented and virtual reality related products comprising consumer hardware, software, and content that help people feel connected, anytime, and anywhere. The company was formerly known as Facebook, Inc. and changed its name to Meta Platforms, Inc. in October 2021. The company was incorporated in 2004 and is headquartered in Menlo Park, California