Overview

New Relic, Inc. (NYSE: NEWR) and UMeWorld Ltd. (OTCMKTS: UMEWF) are both classified as computer and technology companies, but they operate in very different market segments and at vastly different scales. New Relic is an established, publicly traded SaaS observability platform, while UMeWorld is a small-cap educational technology holding company. This comparison examines the two businesses across seven dimensions: institutional ownership, insider ownership, risk and volatility, analyst recommendations, profitability, valuation, and earnings.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

Institutional ownership is a widely watched signal of long-term confidence from large money managers, hedge funds, and endowments. At the time of this comparison:

• New Relic: 79.3% of shares held by institutional investors; 17.4% held by insiders.
• UMeWorld: Institutional ownership data was not reported; 6.0% of shares held by insiders.

New Relic’s high institutional ownership suggests broad confidence from professional investors. UMeWorld’s comparatively low insider ownership and lack of reported institutional interest reflect its status as a micro-cap OTC-traded company.

Risk and Volatility

Beta measures a stock’s price sensitivity relative to the broader market (S&P 500). A beta of 1.0 means the stock moves in line with the index; values below 1.0 indicate lower volatility, while negative values suggest inverse correlation.

• New Relic: Beta of 0.83 — approximately 17% less volatile than the S&P 500.
• UMeWorld: Beta of -1.21 — indicating an inverse and amplified relationship with the broader market, which is common in very thinly traded OTC stocks.

A negative beta for UMeWorld should be interpreted with caution. For micro-cap OTC stocks with low trading volume, beta calculations can be statistically unreliable due to sparse price data.

Analyst Recommendations

The following ratings summary was reported by MarketBeat.com at the time of the original article’s publication:

New Relic carried a consensus analyst price target of $99.08 at the time, representing a potential upside of approximately 72.3% from its then-current trading price. UMeWorld had no analyst coverage, which is typical for OTC micro-cap stocks and limits the available information for retail investors.

Profitability

Key profitability metrics for both companies at the time of comparison:

New Relic was operating at a net loss at the time, a common characteristic for high-growth SaaS companies that prioritize revenue expansion and customer acquisition over near-term profitability. UMeWorld’s profitability metrics were unavailable, likely due to the company’s minimal reported revenue.

Valuation and Earnings

The revenue gap between these two companies is stark. New Relic reported over $479 million in gross revenue, while UMeWorld reported just $10,000 — a difference of more than 47,000x. Both companies reported net losses. UMeWorld’s extremely high Price/Sales ratio of 731.64 reflects its near-zero revenue base rather than any meaningful market premium.

Summary Scorecard

Across the 11 financial and qualitative factors examined in this comparison, New Relic scored more favorably than UMeWorld on 6 of those factors, primarily driven by its scale, institutional coverage, analyst following, and revenue base.

Company Profiles

New Relic, Inc.

New Relic, Inc. is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) observability company headquartered in San Francisco, California, and founded in 2007. Its cloud-based platform enables organizations to collect, store, and analyze telemetry data across their entire software stack. Key product areas at the time of this article included:

• Application Performance Management (APM): Visibility into server-side application performance, including response times, error rates, and transaction throughput.
• New Relic Mobile: Code-level performance monitoring for iOS and Android applications.
• New Relic Browser: Real-user monitoring for desktop and mobile browser-based applications.
• New Relic Synthetics: Simulated usage testing across the software development lifecycle.
• New Relic Infrastructure: Host-level health and configuration monitoring across cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments.
• New Relic Insights: Real-time analytics for both technical and business users.
• New Relic Applied Intelligence: AIOps capabilities for alert correlation and incident detection.

New Relic distributes its products through direct sales, online channels, and partner integrations.

UMeWorld Ltd.

UMeWorld Ltd. is a holding company incorporated in Hong Kong, operating as an educational technology business in the digital media and digital education segments. Its product portfolio at the time included UMFun, UMTang, UEXiao, and 17Speech. The company was founded by Michael M. Lee on August 8, 1997.

Editorial Note

This article reflects publicly available financial data from August 2019 and is preserved here for historical reference. Both companies’ financial positions, analyst ratings, and market conditions have changed significantly since this comparison was written. This article does not constitute investment advice.

Overview

Carbon Black (NASDAQ: CBLK) and New Relic (NYSE: NEWR) were both publicly traded technology companies operating in overlapping areas of enterprise software — security and observability, respectively. This comparison examines how they stacked up in mid-2019 across revenue, profitability, analyst sentiment, institutional ownership, and market volatility.

Revenue and Valuation

The table below compares gross revenue, net income, earnings per share, and key valuation ratios for both companies.

New Relic generated significantly higher revenue than Carbon Black — more than double — while posting a smaller net loss in absolute terms. Both companies carried similar price-to-sales ratios (approximately 7.7x), reflecting comparable market premium expectations for growth-stage software businesses. Neither company was profitable at the time of this comparison.

The widely divergent price-to-earnings ratios are a consequence of both companies operating at a loss; the P/E figures are negative and not directly comparable in the traditional sense. Investors in this segment typically focus on price-to-sales or price-to-gross-profit multiples rather than P/E when evaluating unprofitable SaaS and security companies.

Analyst Recommendations

The following breakdown reflects analyst ratings and consensus price targets as reported by MarketBeat at the time of publication.

Carbon Black carried a consensus price target of $18.30 at the time, implying a potential downside of approximately 16.54% from its then-current price. New Relic, by contrast, had a consensus price target of $99.08, representing a potential upside of approximately 57.29%. The broader analyst community leaned more bullish on New Relic, driven largely by a higher number of outright buy ratings (10 vs. 2 for Carbon Black).

Insider and Institutional Ownership

Institutional ownership can serve as a proxy for large-fund confidence in a company’s long-term growth prospects.

• Carbon Black: 64.5% of shares held by institutional investors; 21.6% held by insiders.
• New Relic: 78.3% of shares held by institutional investors; 17.4% held by insiders.

New Relic had meaningfully higher institutional ownership, suggesting greater interest from hedge funds, endowments, and large asset managers. Carbon Black had a higher insider ownership percentage, which can indicate management confidence — but also a less liquid float. Neither metric alone is a definitive signal; they are most useful when considered alongside the other factors in this comparison.

Volatility and Risk (Beta)

Beta measures a stock’s price sensitivity relative to the broader market (S&P 500), where a beta of 1.0 means the stock moves in line with the index.

• Carbon Black: Beta of 1.28 — approximately 28% more volatile than the S&P 500.
• New Relic: Beta of 0.83 — approximately 17% less volatile than the S&P 500.

New Relic offered a comparatively smoother ride for investors concerned about short-term price swings. Carbon Black’s higher beta reflected its smaller size, more concentrated product portfolio, and the inherent uncertainty of the cybersecurity growth market at the time.

Profitability Metrics

The table below compares net margins, return on equity (ROE), and return on assets (ROA) — three standard measures of how efficiently a company converts revenue and assets into profit.

Both companies were operating at a loss, but New Relic’s losses were significantly smaller as a percentage of revenue and assets. Carbon Black’s deeply negative margins reflected heavy investment in sales, marketing, and R&D relative to its revenue base — a common pattern for early-stage security vendors scaling aggressively. New Relic’s comparatively tighter losses suggested a more mature cost structure.

Summary

Across the 15 factors examined in the original comparison, New Relic outperformed Carbon Black on 9 of them. New Relic held advantages in revenue scale, profitability metrics, institutional ownership, analyst upside targets, and lower market volatility. Carbon Black was favoured in neither category decisively, though its insider ownership and niche focus in endpoint security were notable differentiators.

It is worth noting that both companies were loss-making growth businesses at the time, and direct stock comparisons in this context carry significant uncertainty. Shortly after this analysis, Carbon Black was acquired by VMware for approximately $2.1 billion in October 2019, rendering the public equity comparison moot.

About Carbon Black

Carbon Black, Inc. (formerly Bit9, Inc., renamed in January 2016) was a cybersecurity company founded in 2002 and headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts. It developed the CB Predictive Security Cloud, a big-data analytics platform for endpoint security. Key products included CB Defense (next-generation antivirus and EDR), CB ThreatHunter (threat hunting and incident response), CB LiveOps (real-time endpoint querying and remediation), and CB Protection (application control for critical infrastructure). The company served enterprises, government agencies, and mid-market organizations globally. Carbon Black was acquired by VMware in 2019 and subsequently rebranded as VMware Carbon Black.

About New Relic

New Relic, Inc. is a software-as-a-service observability company founded in 2007 and headquartered in San Francisco, California. Its cloud-based platform provides application performance monitoring (APM), infrastructure monitoring, browser performance tracking, mobile monitoring, and synthetic testing. New Relic’s tools are used by engineering and operations teams to collect, store, and analyze telemetry data — including metrics, events, logs, and traces — across distributed software environments. The company sells primarily through a direct sales model supplemented by online and self-serve channels. New Relic subsequently transitioned to a consumption-based pricing model and made significant portions of its platform available under a free tier, representing a major strategic shift from its subscription model of the 2019 era.