Financial Review: Telos (NASDAQ:TLS) and Serve Robotics (NASDAQ:SERV)

Serve Robotics (NASDAQ:SERV) and Telos (NASDAQ:TLS) are both small-cap computer and technology companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their profitability, institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, risk, valuation, earnings and dividends.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of current ratings and recommmendations for Serve Robotics and Telos, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Serve Robotics	1	0	5	2	3.00
Telos	1	3	2	0	2.17

Serve Robotics presently has a consensus target price of $18.80, indicating a potential upside of 81.82%. Telos has a consensus target price of $7.75, indicating a potential upside of 55.00%. Given Serve Robotics’ stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Serve Robotics is more favorable than Telos.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

62.1% of Telos shares are owned by institutional investors. 21.4% of Serve Robotics shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 14.9% of Telos shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Volatility & Risk

Serve Robotics has a beta of 0.33, suggesting that its stock price is 67% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Telos has a beta of 0.98, suggesting that its stock price is 2% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Serve Robotics and Telos”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Serve Robotics	$1.81 million	425.48	-$39.19 million	($1.49)	-6.94
Telos	$108.27 million	3.41	-$52.52 million	($0.41)	-12.20

Serve Robotics has higher earnings, but lower revenue than Telos. Telos is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Serve Robotics, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Profitability

This table compares Serve Robotics and Telos’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Serve Robotics	-4,121.58%	-38.52%	-36.89%
Telos	-20.47%	-26.12%	-19.88%

Summary

Serve Robotics beats Telos on 8 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Serve Robotics

Serve Robotics Inc. designs, develops, and operates low-emission robots that serve people in public spaces with food delivery in the United States. It builds self-driving delivery robots. The company was formerly known as Patricia Acquisition Corp. and changed its name to Serve Robotics Inc. in July 2023. Serve Robotics Inc. was founded in 2017 and is based in Redwood City, California.

About Telos

Telos Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, provides cyber, cloud, and enterprise security solutions worldwide. The company operates in two segments, Security Solutions and Secure Networks. It provides Xacta, a platform for enterprise cyber risk management and security compliance automation; and consulting, assessment and compliance, engineering and evaluation, operations, and penetration testing services. The company also offers Telos Automated Message Handling System, a web-based organizational message distribution and management for mission-critical communications used by military field operatives; and Telos Advanced Cyber Analytics solution, which is a threat feed source of global Internet Protocol addresses known to engage in potentially malicious activity, including mass scanning and generic opportunistic attacks; and Telos Ghost, a solution to eliminate cyberattack surfaces by obfuscating and encrypting data, masking user identity and location, and hiding network resources, as well as provides security and privacy for intelligence gathering, cyber threat protection, securing critical infrastructure, and protecting communications and applications. In addition, the company provides IDTrust360, an enterprise digital trusted identity risk platform for extending flexible hybrid cloud identity services; and ONYX, a touchless fingerprint biometric solution for mobile devices. Further, it offers secure mobility solutions that enable remote work and minimize operational and security concerns across and beyond the enterprise; and network management and defense services for operating, administrating, and defending complex enterprise networks and services for defensive cyber operations. It serves the United States federal government, large commercial businesses, state and local governments, and international customers. Telos Corporation was founded in 1968 and is headquartered in Ashburn, Virginia.