Tucows (NASDAQ:TCX) & The9 (NASDAQ:NCTY) Financial Review

Tucows (NASDAQ:TCX) and The9 (NASDAQ:NCTY) are both small-cap computer and technology companies, but which is the superior stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their institutional ownership, profitability, dividends, earnings, analyst recommendations, valuation and risk.

Risk and Volatility

Tucows has a beta of 1, indicating that its stock price has a similar volatility profile to the S&P 500.Comparatively, The9 has a beta of 2.42, indicating that its stock price is 142% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent recommendations for Tucows and The9, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Tucows	1	0	0	0	1.00
The9	1	0	0	0	1.00

Institutional and Insider Ownership

73.6% of Tucows shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 0.5% of The9 shares are held by institutional investors. 9.4% of Tucows shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 30.8% of The9 shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Profitability

This table compares Tucows and The9’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Tucows	-25.75%	N/A	-8.36%
The9	N/A	N/A	N/A

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Tucows and The9″s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Tucows	$362.27 million	0.54	-$109.86 million	($8.97)	-1.98
The9	$15.31 million	5.58	-$10.06 million	N/A	N/A

The9 has lower revenue, but higher earnings than Tucows.

Summary

The9 beats Tucows on 6 of the 8 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Tucows

Tucows Inc. provides network access, domain name registration, email, mobile telephony, and other Internet services in North America and Europe. It operates in three segments: Ting, Wavelo and Tucows Domains. The Ting segment provides fiber and fixed wireless internet services. The Wavelo segment offers individual developer tools, subscription, billing management, network orchestration, and provisioning services. This segment also provides billing solutions under Platypus brand. The Tucows Domains segment offers name registration, as well as value added services under OpenSRS, eNom, Ascio, EPAG, and Hover brands. The company was formerly known as Infonautics, Inc. and changed its name to Tucows Inc. in August 2001. Tucows Inc. was incorporated in 1992 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.

About The9

The9 Limited operates as a cryptocurrency mining business in China, Eastern Europe, Asia, and North America. The company was formerly known as GameNow.net Limited and changed its name to The9 Limited in February 2004. The9 Limited was incorporated in 1999 and is headquartered in Shanghai, the People’s Republic of China.