BlackLine Inc. (NASDAQ:BL) and Marin Software Incorporated (NASDAQ:MRIN) are two firms in the Application Software that compete against each other. Below is a comparison of their dividends, analyst recommendations, profitability, institutional ownership, risk, earnings and valuation.

Valuation & Earnings

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
BlackLine Inc.	227.79M	11.40	27.80M	-0.52	0.00
Marin Software Incorporated	58.63M	0.52	41.24M	-8.02	0.00

In table 1 we can see BlackLine Inc. and Marin Software Incorporated’s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

Profitability

Table 2 provides the return on equity, return on assets and net margins of the two firms.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
BlackLine Inc.	-12.20%	-10%	-6.9%
Marin Software Incorporated	-70.34%	-63%	-46.4%

Liquidity

The Current Ratio and a Quick Ratio of BlackLine Inc. are 1.4 and 1.4. Competitively, Marin Software Incorporated has 2.3 and 2.3 for Current and Quick Ratio. Marin Software Incorporated’s better ability to pay short and long-term obligations than BlackLine Inc.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

Roughly 88.2% of BlackLine Inc. shares are held by institutional investors while 35.6% of Marin Software Incorporated are owned by institutional investors. 0.4% are BlackLine Inc.’s share held by insiders. Competitively, Marin Software Incorporated has 1.2% of it’s share held by insiders.

Performance

In this table we provide the Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Half Yearly, Yearly and YTD Performance of both pretenders.

	Performance (W)	Performance (M)	Performance (Q)	Performance (HY)	Performance (Y)	Performance (YTD)
BlackLine Inc.	-5.12%	4.77%	19.17%	-5.28%	13.79%	21.73%
Marin Software Incorporated	-2.12%	-31.35%	89.08%	24.18%	-46.67%	-21.66%

For the past year BlackLine Inc. had bullish trend while Marin Software Incorporated had bearish trend.

Summary

BlackLine Inc. beats on 9 of the 10 factors Marin Software Incorporated.

BlackLine, Inc. provides financial accounting close solutions delivered as a Software as a Service in the United States and internationally. Its solutions enables its customers to address various aspects of their financial closing process, including account reconciliations, variance analysis of account balances, and journal entry capabilities, as well as a range of data matching capabilities. The companyÂ’s solutions comprise reconciliation management solution that consists of account reconciliations, transaction matching, consolidation integrity manager, and daily reconciliations; and a framework for the reconciliation process, which allows users to build integrity checks and automation into the entire end-to-end work flow. Its solutions also comprise financial close management that includes task management, journal entry, and variance analysis; and allows customers to manage the key steps within the close, applying automation where possible, and ensure that tasks are properly completed and reviewed. In addition, the company provides intercompany hub solution comprising intercompany workflow and processing, and netting and settlement, as well as manages the intercompany transaction lifecycle within its platform. Further, it offers a range of key performance indicators that enable clients to compare metrics across their own operating entities, set goals, and gauge their performance over time; and services, such as implementation, support, customer success, and training services. The company sells its platform, primarily through direct sales force to various industries, including consumer/retail, healthcare, financial services, technology, industrial/energy, and services. BlackLine, Inc. was founded in 2001 and is headquartered in Los Angeles, California.

Marin Software Incorporated operates a cross-channel advertising cloud platform in the United States and internationally. Its platform allows marketing professionals to manage their digital advertising spend across search, social, and display channels. The companyÂ’s platform consists of various modules, including Optimization module that helps advertisers to manage bids across publishers to meet revenue goals and identify opportunities for campaign improvements; Reporting and Analytics module that enables advertisers to report results at a business level and analyze cross-channel performance trends; and Campaign Management module, which provides the digital advertiser with an interface to create, manage, and optimize campaigns across various publishers. It also offers Connect module that enables advertisers to automate and streamline the capture of revenue, cost, and audience data from a range of sources, such as ad servers, analytics systems, CRM platforms, publishers, and third party databases. In addition, the company provides Marin Enterprise and Marin Display, which provide digital advertisers to manage large-scale advertising campaigns; Perfect Audience for rapid deployment, as well as to implement and optimize campaigns across various networks and across devices; and Marin Professional that is designed for rapid deployment and offers customers a workflow, analysis, and optimization solution for managing digital advertising. The company markets and sells its solutions to advertisers directly and through advertising agencies that use its platform on behalf of their customers. Marin Software Incorporated was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.