Paylocity Holding Corporation (PCTY) and Gridsum Holding Inc. (NASDAQ:GSUM) Contrasting side by side

Both Paylocity Holding Corporation (NASDAQ:PCTY) 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 profitability, analyst recommendations, risk, dividends, institutional ownership, earnings and valuation.

Earnings and Valuation

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Paylocity Holding Corporation	443.88M	11.88	42.03M	0.96	86.29
Gridsum Holding Inc.	N/A	0.00	N/A	-1.60	0.00

Table 1 showcases the top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation of Paylocity Holding Corporation and Gridsum Holding Inc.

Profitability

Table 2 provides us Paylocity Holding Corporation and Gridsum Holding Inc.’s return on equity, return on assets and net margins.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Paylocity Holding Corporation	9.47%	23.6%	3.5%
Gridsum Holding Inc.	0.00%	-57.2%	-24.6%

Liquidity

Paylocity Holding Corporation’s Current Ratio is 1.1 while its Quick Ratio is 1.1. On the competitive side is, Gridsum Holding Inc. which has a 2 Current Ratio and a 2 Quick Ratio. Gridsum Holding Inc. is better positioned to pay off short and long-term obligations compared to Paylocity Holding Corporation.

Analyst Recommendations

Paylocity Holding Corporation and Gridsum Holding Inc. Recommendations and Ratings are available on the next table.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Paylocity Holding Corporation	0	0	3	3.00
Gridsum Holding Inc.	0	0	0	0.00

Paylocity Holding Corporation’s upside potential currently stands at 3.10% and an $102.67 consensus target price.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

Roughly 66.2% of Paylocity Holding Corporation shares are held by institutional investors while 40.9% of Gridsum Holding Inc. are owned by institutional investors. Paylocity Holding Corporation’s share held by insiders are 33.3%. On the other hand, insiders held about 5.3% of Gridsum Holding Inc.’s shares.

Performance

Here are the Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Half Yearly, Yearly and YTD Performance of both pretenders.

	Performance (W)	Performance (M)	Performance (Q)	Performance (HY)	Performance (Y)	Performance (YTD)
Paylocity Holding Corporation	-4.26%	17.11%	29.95%	5.77%	78.5%	38.15%
Gridsum Holding Inc.	1.29%	79.09%	-6.86%	-33.22%	-61.6%	76.68%

For the past year Paylocity Holding Corporation has weaker performance than Gridsum Holding Inc.

Summary

Paylocity Holding Corporation beats Gridsum Holding Inc. on 9 of the 11 factors.

Paylocity Holding Corporation provides cloud-based payroll and human capital management (HCM) software solutions for medium-sized organizations in the United States. It offers Paylocity Web Pay for enterprise-grade payroll processing and administration; Paylocity Web HR for employee record management and HR compliance and reporting; Talent Management for employee performance appraisal process and performance review; Paylocity Web Time, a time and attendance solution; and Paylocity Web Expense, an expense management tool designed to streamline and automate the expense management process. The company also provides Paylocity Web Benefits and Paylocity Enterprise Benefits, which are benefit management solutions that integrate with insurance carrier systems to provide automated administrative processes and allow users to choose benefit elections and make life event changes online, summarize benefit elections, and perform other benefit-related tasks, as well as enable premium reconciliation, management of voluntary benefits, and reporting. Paylocity Holding Corporation was founded in 1997 and is headquartered in Arlington Heights, Illinois.

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.