Both salesforce.com inc. (NYSE:CRM) and Gridsum Holding Inc. (NASDAQ:GSUM) compete on a level playing field in the Application Software industry. We will evaluate their performance with regards to institutional ownership, profitability, risk, dividends, analyst recommendations, earnings and valuation.
Valuation & Earnings
| Gross Revenue | Price/Sales Ratio | Net Income | Earnings Per Share | Price/Earnings Ratio | |
| salesforce.com inc. | 12.48B | 9.66 | 721.48M | 1.34 | 102.21 |
| Gridsum Holding Inc. | N/A | 0.00 | N/A | -1.20 | 0.00 |
We can see in table 1 the earnings per share, top-line revenue and valuation of salesforce.com inc. and Gridsum Holding Inc.
Profitability
Table 2 represents salesforce.com inc. (NYSE:CRM) and Gridsum Holding Inc. (NASDAQ:GSUM)’s return on assets, net margins and return on equity.
| Net Margins | Return on Equity | Return on Assets | |
| salesforce.com inc. | 5.78% | 6.6% | 3.4% |
| Gridsum Holding Inc. | 0.00% | -19.7% | -11.2% |
Liquidity
The current Quick Ratio of salesforce.com inc. is 0.9 while its Current Ratio is 0.9. Meanwhile, Gridsum Holding Inc. has a Current Ratio of 2 while its Quick Ratio is 2. Gridsum Holding Inc. is better positioned to pay off its short-term and long-term debts than salesforce.com inc.
Analyst Recommendations
The table given features the ratings and recommendations for salesforce.com inc. and Gridsum Holding Inc.
| Sell Ratings | Hold Ratings | Buy Ratings | Rating Score | |
| salesforce.com inc. | 0 | 0 | 21 | 3.00 |
| Gridsum Holding Inc. | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.00 |
salesforce.com inc.’s upside potential currently stands at 11.35% and an $175.62 consensus target price.
Insider and Institutional Ownership
Roughly 84.7% of salesforce.com inc. shares are held by institutional investors while 37.7% of Gridsum Holding Inc. are owned by institutional investors. salesforce.com inc.’s share held by insiders are 0.1%. Competitively, insiders own roughly 5.3% of Gridsum Holding Inc.’s shares.
Performance
Here are the Week, Month, Quarter, Half Year, Year and YTD Performance of both pretenders.
| Performance (W) | Performance (M) | Performance (Q) | Performance (HY) | Performance (Y) | Performance (YTD) | |
| salesforce.com inc. | -3.85% | -3.19% | -9.28% | 2.46% | 31.9% | 34.28% |
| Gridsum Holding Inc. | -9.6% | -27.31% | -32.75% | -38.34% | -55.84% | -57.81% |
For the past year salesforce.com inc. had bullish trend while Gridsum Holding Inc. had bearish trend.
Summary
On 10 of the 11 factors salesforce.com inc. beats Gridsum Holding Inc.
Salesforce.com, inc. develops enterprise cloud computing solutions with a focus on customer relationship management. The company offers Sales Cloud to store data, monitor leads and progress, forecast opportunities, gain insights through relationship intelligence, and collaborate around sales on desktop and mobile devices, as well as solutions for partner relationship management. It also provides Service Cloud, which enables companies to deliver personalized customer service and support, as well as connects their service agents with customers on various devices; and Marketing Cloud to plan, personalize, and optimize one-to-one customer interactions. In addition, the company offers Commerce Cloud to deliver a digital commerce experience; Community Cloud to create and manage branded digital destinations for customers, partners, and employees; Internet of Things Cloud that provides insights to companies enabling them to sell, service, and market to their customers in personalized ways, as well as engage with them in real time; and Analytics Cloud that enables employees across an organization to explore business data, uncover new insights, make decisions, and take action from various devices. Further, it provides Salesforce Quip, a next-generation productivity solution for teams with a mobile-first strategy to collaborate without email; and Salesforce Platform for building enterprise apps. Additionally, the company offers professional cloud services, such as consulting, deployment, training, user-centric design, and integration to facilitate the adoption of its solutions; and architects and innovation program teams, as well as various education services comprising introductory online courses and advanced architecture certifications. Salesforce.com, inc. offers its services through direct sales; and through consulting firms, systems integrators, and other partners. The company was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
Gridsum Holding Inc. provides data analysis software for multinational and domestic enterprises, and government agencies in China. Its proprietary distributed data architecture allows its customers to collect and analyze vast amounts of information; and Gridsum Big Data platform performs multi-dimensional correlation analysis and analyzes complex real-time events. The company offers Web Dissector to analyze customer Websites by monitoring and analyzing key performance indicators; Mobile Dissector to understand mobile app user activity; SEM Dissector for search engine marketing; SEO Dissector, a search engine optimization tool; Ad Dissector, an advertisement performance monitoring and optimization product; Contribution Dissector to evaluate the performance of advertising campaigns; Audience Dissector, an audience analysis product; Recommendation Engine, a data driven content recommendation solution. It also provides Government Web Dissector, a digital intelligence solution; Government Website Group Integrated Management Platform, an integrated management platform; Streaming Dissector, a real-time viewership analysis and operational efficiency monitor for digital online video; Video Dissector, an online video content analytics tool; TV Dissector, an analytics tool; Rating Plus, a television viewing data analytics tool; and Media Dissector, a mass, social, and user-generated content media monitoring and analytics tool. In addition, the company offers Law Dissector, a search and statistical analysis tool; Smart Push, a legal research tool; Information Dissector, an insightful analytical system; Social Listening, a could-based social listening solution; Gridsum Dashboard, a data visualization tool; and Gridsum Report Center, an automated report generation and distribution tool. Further, it develops new media analytics and information discovery solutions to address a range of customer needs. The company was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in Beijing, China.
