Contrasting Acacia Research (ACTG) and Its Rivals

Acacia Research (NASDAQ:ACTG) is one of 341 public companies in the “Financial Services” industry, but how does it contrast to its competitors? We will compare Acacia Research to related businesses based on the strength of its analyst recommendations, earnings, valuation, risk, profitability, dividends and institutional ownership.

Volatility & Risk

Acacia Research has a beta of 0.6, indicating that its stock price is 40% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Acacia Research’s competitors have a beta of 2.51, indicating that their average stock price is 151% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

86.7% of Acacia Research shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 43.0% of shares of all “Financial Services” companies are held by institutional investors. 1.7% of Acacia Research shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 21.9% of shares of all “Financial Services” companies are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent ratings and price targets for Acacia Research and its competitors, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Acacia Research	1	0	1	0	2.00
Acacia Research Competitors	1988	6946	11713	446	2.50

Acacia Research currently has a consensus target price of $6.00, indicating a potential upside of 41.18%. As a group, “Financial Services” companies have a potential downside of 6.28%. Given Acacia Research’s higher possible upside, equities analysts clearly believe Acacia Research is more favorable than its competitors.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Acacia Research and its competitors top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Net Income	Price/Earnings Ratio
Acacia Research	$285.23 million	$21.68 million	-28.33
Acacia Research Competitors	$6.50 billion	$1.09 billion	10.52

Acacia Research’s competitors have higher revenue and earnings than Acacia Research. Acacia Research is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than its competitors, indicating that it is currently more affordable than other companies in its industry.

Profitability

This table compares Acacia Research and its competitors’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Acacia Research	-6.52%	1.67%	1.23%
Acacia Research Competitors	-409.12%	-40.47%	-6.29%

Summary

Acacia Research competitors beat Acacia Research on 8 of the 13 factors compared.

About Acacia Research

Acacia is a publicly traded (Nasdaq: ACTG) company that is focused on acquiring and operating businesses across the industrial, energy and technology sectors where it believes it can leverage its expertise, significant capital base, and deep industry relationships to drive value. Acacia evaluates opportunities based on the attractiveness of the underlying cash flows, without regard to a specific investment horizon. Acacia operates its businesses based on three key principles of people, process, and performance and has built a management team with demonstrated expertise in research, transactions and execution, and operations and management.