Critical Survey: TruBridge (NASDAQ:TBRG) and Aspen Technology (NASDAQ:AZPN)

TruBridge (NASDAQ:TBRG) and Aspen Technology (NASDAQ:AZPN) are both medical companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their profitability, earnings, valuation, risk, institutional ownership, dividends and analyst recommendations.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings for TruBridge and Aspen Technology, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
TruBridge	0	0	2	0	3.00
Aspen Technology	0	2	4	0	2.67

TruBridge presently has a consensus target price of $13.50, suggesting a potential upside of 3.85%. Aspen Technology has a consensus target price of $248.40, suggesting a potential upside of 6.30%. Given Aspen Technology’s higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Aspen Technology is more favorable than TruBridge.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares TruBridge and Aspen Technology”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
TruBridge	$339.43 million	0.57	-$44.76 million	($3.67)	-3.54
Aspen Technology	$1.13 billion	13.11	-$9.77 million	($0.16)	-1,460.35

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

Volatility and Risk

TruBridge has a beta of 0.62, meaning that its stock price is 38% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Aspen Technology has a beta of 0.76, meaning that its stock price is 24% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

88.6% of TruBridge shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 45.7% of Aspen Technology shares are held by institutional investors. 3.6% of TruBridge shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 1.0% of Aspen Technology shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Profitability

This table compares TruBridge and Aspen Technology’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
TruBridge	-15.93%	6.57%	3.03%
Aspen Technology	-0.87%	2.96%	2.68%

Summary

Aspen Technology beats TruBridge on 8 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About TruBridge

TruBridge, Inc. provides healthcare solutions and services for community hospitals, clinics, and other healthcare systems in the United States and internationally. The company operates in three segments: Revenue Cycle Management (RCM), Electronic Health Record (HER), and Patient Engagement. It focuses on providing RCM solutions for care settings, regardless of primary healthcare information solutions provider along with business management, consulting, managed IT services, and analytics and business intelligence. The company provides acute care solutions and related services for community hospitals, and physician clinics; and patient engagement and empowerment technology solutions to improve patient outcomes and engagement strategies with care providers. In addition, it offers patient liability estimates eligibility verification, claim scrubbing and submission, remittance management, denial/audit management, and contract management; and offers RCM services, such as accounts receivable management, private pay service, medical coding, revenue cycle consulting, and other additional insurance and patient billing services. Further, it offers consulting and business management services; managed IT services; encoder solutions; patient management; financial accounting; clinical; patient care; and enterprise applications. Additionally, it offers TruBridge HER platform, including total system support, national client conference, continuing education, software releases, hardware replacement, cloud electronic health record, forms and supplies, and public cloud infrastructure services; post-acute care software systems, and support and maintenance services; and InstantPHR, an interactive portal and CHBase which funnels data from multiple sources into one platform. The company was formerly known as Computer Programs and Systems, Inc. and changed its name to TruBridge, Inc. in March 2024. TruBridge, Inc. was founded in 1979 and is headquartered in Mobile, Alabama.

About Aspen Technology

Aspen Technology, Inc. provides industrial software that focuses on helping customers in asset-intensive industries worldwide. The company’s solutions address complex environments where it is critical to optimize the asset design, operation, and maintenance lifecycle. Its software is used in performance engineering, modeling and design, supply chain management, predictive and prescriptive maintenance, digital grid management, and industrial data management. The company serves a range of asset-intensive industries, including oil and gas exploration and production; oil and gas processing and distribution; and oil and gas refining and marketing, as well as bulk and specialty chemicals, engineering and construction, power and utilities, metals and mining, and pharmaceuticals. Aspen Technology, Inc. was founded in 1981 and is headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts. Aspen Technology, Inc. operates as a subsidiary of Emerson Electric Co.