Reviewing TruBridge (NASDAQ:TBRG) & Earlyworks (NASDAQ:ELWS)

Earlyworks (NASDAQ:ELWS) and TruBridge (NASDAQ:TBRG) are both small-cap business services companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their valuation, dividends, institutional ownership, risk, earnings, profitability and analyst recommendations.

Volatility and Risk

Earlyworks has a beta of 1.68, meaning that its stock price is 68% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, TruBridge has a beta of 0.69, meaning that its stock price is 31% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current recommendations for Earlyworks and TruBridge, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Earlyworks	0	0	0	0	0.00
TruBridge	0	2	2	0	2.50

TruBridge has a consensus price target of $14.50, suggesting a potential downside of 21.02%. Given TruBridge’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe TruBridge is more favorable than Earlyworks.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Earlyworks and TruBridge”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Earlyworks	$179.36 million	0.05	-$2.13 million	N/A	N/A
TruBridge	$337.67 million	0.81	-$44.76 million	($4.09)	-4.49

Earlyworks has higher earnings, but lower revenue than TruBridge.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

0.5% of Earlyworks shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 88.6% of TruBridge shares are owned by institutional investors. 3.6% of TruBridge shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Profitability

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

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Earlyworks	N/A	N/A	N/A
TruBridge	-17.72%	1.78%	0.78%

Summary

TruBridge beats Earlyworks on 9 of the 12 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Earlyworks

Earlyworks Co., Ltd operates as a blockchain-based technology company in Japan. The company builds products, deliver services, and develop solutions based on its proprietary Grid Ledger System to leverage blockchain technology in various business settings, including advertisement tracking, online visitor management, and sales of non-fungible tokens. It also provides software and system development services; consulting and solution services; blockchain system solution planning; and proposal, design, and development planning services. The company serves the information technology, shipping, real estate, entertainment, cosmetics, and chemical products sectors. Earlyworks Co., Ltd was incorporated in 2018 and is based in Tokyo, Japan.

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.