Palantir Technologies (NYSE:PLTR) and Cognyte Software (NASDAQ:CGNT) Head to Head Survey
by Renee Jackson · The Cerbat GemCognyte Software (NASDAQ:CGNT – Get Free Report) and Palantir Technologies (NYSE:PLTR – Get Free Report) are both computer and technology companies, but which is the better investment? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their dividends, profitability, institutional ownership, risk, analyst recommendations, earnings and valuation.
Volatility & Risk
Cognyte Software has a beta of 1.68, indicating that its stock price is 68% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Palantir Technologies has a beta of 2.78, indicating that its stock price is 178% more volatile than the S&P 500.
Institutional and Insider Ownership
72.9% of Cognyte Software shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 45.7% of Palantir Technologies shares are held by institutional investors. 62.7% of Cognyte Software shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 14.0% of Palantir Technologies shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.
Analyst Recommendations
This is a breakdown of current ratings for Cognyte Software and Palantir Technologies, as provided by MarketBeat.com.
| Sell Ratings | Hold Ratings | Buy Ratings | Strong Buy Ratings | Rating Score | |
| Cognyte Software | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 2.00 |
| Palantir Technologies | 4 | 5 | 3 | 0 | 1.92 |
Cognyte Software presently has a consensus target price of $7.75, indicating a potential upside of 15.16%. Palantir Technologies has a consensus target price of $18.35, indicating a potential downside of 19.06%. Given Cognyte Software’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, equities research analysts clearly believe Cognyte Software is more favorable than Palantir Technologies.
Valuation and Earnings
This table compares Cognyte Software and Palantir Technologies’ revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.
| Gross Revenue | Price/Sales Ratio | Net Income | Earnings Per Share | Price/Earnings Ratio | |
| Cognyte Software | $313.40 million | 1.53 | -$114.13 million | ($0.23) | -29.26 |
| Palantir Technologies | $2.23 billion | 22.54 | $209.82 million | $0.09 | 251.83 |
Palantir Technologies has higher revenue and earnings than Cognyte Software. Cognyte Software is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Palantir Technologies, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Profitability
This table compares Cognyte Software and Palantir Technologies’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.
| Net Margins | Return on Equity | Return on Assets | |
| Cognyte Software | -4.97% | -12.06% | -5.57% |
| Palantir Technologies | 9.43% | 6.17% | 4.78% |
Summary
Palantir Technologies beats Cognyte Software on 10 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.
About Cognyte Software
Cognyte Software Ltd. provides an investigative analytics software to governments and enterprises worldwide. Its Actionable Intelligence for a Safer World, an open software designed to help governments and enterprises accelerate and enhance the effectiveness of investigations. The company also offers network intelligence analytics, open source and threat intelligence analytics, and operational intelligence analytics solutions. Its solutions are designed to support various use cases and support a range of users, including data analysts, investigation managers, and security operations center operators, as well as operational field teams. In addition, the company provides customer support, professional, and integration services. Its government customers include national, regional, and local government agencies; and enterprise customers consist of commercial and physical security customers. Cognyte Software Ltd. was incorporated in 2020 and is headquartered in Herzliya, Israel.
About Palantir Technologies
Palantir Technologies Inc. builds and deploys software platforms for the intelligence community to assist in counterterrorism investigations and operations in the United States, the United Kingdom, and internationally. The company provides Palantir Gotham, a software platform which enables users to identify patterns hidden deep within datasets, ranging from signals intelligence sources to reports from confidential informants, as well as facilitates the handoff between analysts and operational users, helping operators plan and execute real-world responses to threats that have been identified within the platform. It also offers Palantir Foundry, a platform that transforms the ways organizations operate by creating a central operating system for their data; and allows individual users to integrate and analyze the data they need in one place. In addition, it provides Palantir Apollo, a software that delivers software and updates across the business, as well as enables customers to deploy their software virtually in any environment; and Palantir Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) that provides unified access to open-source, self-hosted, and commercial large language models (LLM) that can transform structured and unstructured data into LLM-understandable objects and can turn organizations' actions and processes into tools for humans and LLM-driven agents. The company was incorporated in 2003 and is headquartered in Denver, Colorado.