Contrasting Tenable (NASDAQ:TENB) and Zscaler (NASDAQ:ZS)

Zscaler (NASDAQ:ZS) and Tenable (NASDAQ:TENB) are both technology companies, but which is the better investment? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their dividends, profitability, valuation, analyst recommendations, earnings, risk and institutional ownership.

Profitability

This table compares Zscaler and Tenable’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Zscaler	-1.88%	1.23%	0.40%
Tenable	1.48%	28.72%	3.19%

Volatility and Risk

Zscaler has a beta of 0.94, meaning that its stock price is 6% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Tenable has a beta of 1.01, meaning that its stock price is 1% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent ratings for Zscaler and Tenable, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Zscaler	1	8	36	0	2.78
Tenable	1	11	10	0	2.41

Zscaler presently has a consensus price target of $236.65, suggesting a potential downside of 0.50%. Tenable has a consensus price target of $46.25, suggesting a potential downside of 8.87%. Given Zscaler’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, equities research analysts clearly believe Zscaler is more favorable than Tenable.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

46.5% of Zscaler shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 89.1% of Tenable shares are held by institutional investors. 17.2% of Zscaler shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 1.7% of Tenable shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Zscaler and Tenable”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Zscaler	$3.35 billion	11.57	-$63.18 million	($0.39)	-609.82
Tenable	$999.41 million	5.59	-$36.12 million	$0.13	390.38

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

Summary

Tenable beats Zscaler on 8 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Zscaler

Zscaler, Inc. operates as a cloud security company worldwide. The company offers Zscaler Internet Access solution that provides users, workloads, IoT, and OT devices secure access to externally managed applications, including software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications and internet destinations; and Zscaler Private Access solution, which is designed to provide access to managed applications hosted internally in data centers, and private or public clouds. It also provides Zscaler Digital Experience that measures end-to-end user experience across business applications, as well as provides an easy-to-understand digital experience score for each user, application, and location within an enterprise. In addition, the company offers Posture Control solutions comprising Cloud Security Posture Management that identifies and remediates application misconfigurations in SaaS, infrastructure as a service, and PaaS to reduce risk and ensure compliance with industry and organizational benchmarks; Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management that detects and remediates excessive or unused cloud permissions and enforces least privileged access without disrupting productivity; Infrastructure as Code (IaC), which analyzes IaC templates to identify misconfigurations and other security issues prior to deployment to cloud infrastructure; and Vulnerability Scanning and Data Loss Prevention solutions. Its platform modules include Zscaler Central Authority, Zscaler Enforcement Node, and Zscaler Log Servers. The company serves customers in airlines and transportation, conglomerates, consumer goods and retail, financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, media and communications, public sector and education, technology, and telecommunications services industries. The company was formerly known as SafeChannel, Inc., and changed its name to Zscaler, Inc. in August 2008. Zscaler, Inc. was incorporated in 2007 and is headquartered in San Jose, California.

About Tenable

Tenable Holdings, Inc. provides cyber exposure solutions for in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Asia Pacific, and Japan. Its platforms include Tenable Vulnerability Management, a cloud-delivered software as a service that provides organizations with a risk-based view of traditional and modern attack surfaces; Tenable Cloud Security, a cloud-native cloud security solutions for security teams to continuously assess the security posture; Tenable Identity Exposure, a solution to secure Active Directory environments; Tenable Web App Scanning, which provides scanning for modern web applications; Tenable Lumin Exposure View, a measurement tool; Tenable Attack Surface Management, an external attack surface management solution; Tenable Security Center, an on-premises solution that provides a risk-based view of an organization’s IT, security and compliance posture; and Tenable OT Security, an operational technology security solution which provides threat detection, asset tracking, vulnerability management, and configuration control capabilities. The company also offers Nessus, a vulnerability assessment solution for cybersecurity industry and enterprise platform; and Nessus Expert, that enables users to programmatically detect cloud infrastructure misconfigurations and vulnerabilities in the design and build phase. Tenable Holdings, Inc. was founded in 2002 and is headquartered in Columbia, Maryland.