CoStar Group (NASDAQ:CSGP) vs. Accenture (NYSE:ACN) Critical Comparison

CoStar Group (NASDAQ:CSGP) and Accenture (NYSE:ACN) are both large-cap computer and technology companies, but which is the superior business? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their valuation, earnings, risk, analyst recommendations, dividends, institutional ownership and profitability.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares CoStar Group and Accenture”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
CoStar Group	$3.41 billion	3.85	$7.00 million	$0.06	536.67
Accenture	$69.67 billion	1.79	$7.68 billion	$12.21	15.34

Accenture has higher revenue and earnings than CoStar Group. Accenture is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than CoStar Group, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

96.6% of CoStar Group shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 75.1% of Accenture shares are held by institutional investors. 1.1% of CoStar Group shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 0.0% of Accenture 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.

Risk and Volatility

CoStar Group has a beta of 0.75, meaning that its stock price is 25% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Accenture has a beta of 1.08, meaning that its stock price is 8% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares CoStar Group and Accenture’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
CoStar Group	0.74%	2.90%	2.32%
Accenture	10.61%	26.33%	12.94%

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of recent ratings for CoStar Group and Accenture, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
CoStar Group	2	5	12	0	2.53
Accenture	0	10	17	0	2.63

CoStar Group currently has a consensus target price of $55.94, indicating a potential upside of 73.73%. Accenture has a consensus target price of $274.50, indicating a potential upside of 46.54%. Given CoStar Group’s higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe CoStar Group is more favorable than Accenture.

Summary

Accenture beats CoStar Group on 9 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About CoStar Group

CoStar Group, Inc. provides information, analytics, and online marketplace services to the commercial real estate, hospitality, residential, and related professionals industries in the United States, Canada, Europe, the Asia Pacific, and Latin America. The company offers CoStar Property that provides inventory of office, industrial, retail, multifamily, hospitality, and student housing properties and land; CoStar Sales, a robust database of comparable commercial real estate sales transactions; CoStar Market Analytics to view and report on aggregated market and submarket trends; and CoStar Tenant, an online business-to-business prospecting and analytical tool that provides tenant information. It also provides Leasing, a tool to capture, manage, and maintain lease data; CoStar Lease Analysis; Public Record, a searchable database of commercially zoned parcels; CoStar Real Estate Manager, a real estate lease administration, portfolio management, and lease accounting compliance software solution; and CoStar Risk Analytics and CoStar Investment. In addition, it offers apartment marketing sites, such as ApartmentFinder.com, ForRent.com, ApartmentHomeLiving.com, WestsideRentals.com, AFTER55.com, CorporateHousing.com, ForRentUniversity.com, Apartamentos.com, and Off Campus Partners; LoopNet Premium Lister; LoopNet Diamond, Platinum, and Gold Ads; LandsofAmerica.com, LandAndFarm.com, and LandWatch.com for rural land for-sale; BizBuySell.com, BizQuest.com, and FindaFranchise.com for operating businesses and franchises for-sale; Ten-X, an online auction platform for commercial real estate; and HomeSnap, an online and mobile software platform, as well as Homes.com, a homes for sale listings site. The company was founded in 1987 and is headquartered in Washington, the District of Columbia.

About Accenture

Accenture plc, a professional services company, provides strategy and consulting, industry X, song, and technology and operation services worldwide. The company offers application services, including agile transformation, DevOps, application modernization, enterprise architecture, software and quality engineering, data management; intelligent automation comprising robotic process automation, natural language processing, and virtual agents; and application management services, as well as software engineering services; strategy and consulting services; data and analytics strategy, data discovery and augmentation, data management and beyond, data democratization, and industrialized solutions comprising turnkey analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions; metaverse; and sustainability services. It also provides change management, HR transformation and delivery, organization strategy and design, talent strategy and development, and leadership and culture services; digital commerce; infrastructure services, including cloud infrastructure managed, cloud and data center, network, digital workplace, database platforms, service management, and cloud and infrastructure security services; data-enabled operating models; technology consulting and AI services; and technology consulting services. In addition, the company offers engineering and R&D digitization, smart connected products, product as-a-service enablement, capital projects, intelligent asset management, digital industrial workforce, and autonomous robotic systems; business process outsourcing; and services related to technology innovation. Further, it provides cloud, ecosystem, marketing, security, supply chain management, zero-based transformation, customer experience, finance consulting, mergers and acquisitions, and sustainability services. The company has a collaboration with Salesforce, Inc. to develop Salesforce Life Sciences Cloud. The company was founded in 1951 and is based in Dublin, Ireland.