Contrasting Intellicheck (NYSE:IDN) and Skillsoft (NYSE:SKIL)

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

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent recommendations and price targets for Skillsoft and Intellicheck, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Skillsoft	0	1	2	0	2.67
Intellicheck	0	2	1	0	2.33

Skillsoft presently has a consensus price target of $35.00, suggesting a potential upside of 136.17%. Intellicheck has a consensus price target of $3.33, suggesting a potential upside of 7.87%. Given Skillsoft’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, equities analysts plainly believe Skillsoft is more favorable than Intellicheck.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Skillsoft and Intellicheck”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Skillsoft	$536.51 million	0.23	-$349.29 million	($42.09)	-0.35
Intellicheck	$18.91 million	3.23	-$1.98 million	($0.03)	-103.00

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

Profitability

This table compares Skillsoft and Intellicheck’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%
Intellicheck	-3.37%	-1.59%	-1.23%

Insider and Institutional Ownership

87.0% of Skillsoft shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 42.8% of Intellicheck shares are held by institutional investors. 13.5% of Skillsoft shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 8.9% of Intellicheck shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Volatility and Risk

Skillsoft has a beta of 1.31, suggesting that its stock price is 31% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Intellicheck has a beta of 1.87, suggesting that its stock price is 87% more volatile than the S&P 500.

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 Intellicheck

Intellicheck, Inc., a technology company, provides on-demand digital identity validation solutions for KYC, fraud, and age verification needs in North America. The company offers solutions for digital and physical identities for financial services, fintech companies, BNPL providers, e-commerce and retail commerce businesses, law enforcement, and government agencies. It provides identity systems products, including commercial identification products, such as Intellicheck Platform, an identity solution that checks whether an ID is valid, matches the ID to the person presenting it, and provides a risk score to determine the risk of doing business with that person; IDN-Portal, an Intellicheck-branded identity validation application that provides the ability to scan an ID using a mobile phone; IDN-Portal+ that offers document validation, retail POS integration, additional data for analytics and analysis, and online validation, and other features; IDN-Direct that provides access to additional data and the ability to use the platform's Risk Score capability to help with decision-making; and Intellicheck mobile app, which provides the ability to login and scan an ID. The company also offers State Aware Software solution, which provides or restricts information that is electronically scanned from an ID based on the electronic reading laws according to the state in which the ID is scanned; data collection devices that enable its software applications to be used on a variety of commercially available credit card terminals, PDAs, tablets, laptops, desktops, mobile phones, and point-of-sale terminals; and instant credit application kiosk software applications. It serves government, military, and commercial markets. The company was formerly known as Intellicheck Mobilisa, Inc. and changed its name to Intellicheck, Inc. in May 2017. Intellicheck, Inc. was incorporated in 1994 and is headquartered in Melville, New York.