Contrasting Nautilus Biotechnology (NASDAQ:NAUT) & Maravai LifeSciences (NASDAQ:MRVI)

Maravai LifeSciences (NASDAQ:MRVI) and Nautilus Biotechnology (NASDAQ:NAUT) are both small-cap healthcare companies, but which is the better investment? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their earnings, analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, risk, valuation, dividends and profitability.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent recommendations for Maravai LifeSciences and Nautilus Biotechnology, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Maravai LifeSciences	2	0	2	0	2.00
Nautilus Biotechnology	1	0	1	0	2.00

Maravai LifeSciences currently has a consensus price target of $6.25, indicating a potential downside of 18.62%. Nautilus Biotechnology has a consensus price target of $4.00, indicating a potential upside of 351.62%. Given Nautilus Biotechnology’s higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Nautilus Biotechnology is more favorable than Maravai LifeSciences.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

50.2% of Maravai LifeSciences shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 50.7% of Nautilus Biotechnology shares are held by institutional investors. 2.5% of Maravai LifeSciences shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 41.1% of Nautilus Biotechnology shares are held 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.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Maravai LifeSciences and Nautilus Biotechnology”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Maravai LifeSciences	$208.78 million	9.55	-$130.77 million	($0.52)	-14.77
Nautilus Biotechnology	N/A	N/A	-$59.00 million	($0.45)	-1.97

Nautilus Biotechnology has lower revenue, but higher earnings than Maravai LifeSciences. Maravai LifeSciences is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Nautilus Biotechnology, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Volatility & Risk

Maravai LifeSciences has a beta of 0.63, suggesting that its stock price is 37% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Nautilus Biotechnology has a beta of 0.87, suggesting that its stock price is 13% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares Maravai LifeSciences and Nautilus Biotechnology’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Maravai LifeSciences	-37.07%	-15.70%	-8.17%
Nautilus Biotechnology	N/A	-37.58%	-30.83%

Summary

Nautilus Biotechnology beats Maravai LifeSciences on 8 of the 12 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Maravai LifeSciences

Maravai LifeSciences Holdings, Inc., a life sciences company, provides products to enable the development of drug therapies, diagnostics, novel vaccines, and support research on human diseases worldwide. The company’s products address the key phases of biopharmaceutical development and include nucleic acids for diagnostic and therapeutic applications, antibody-based products to detect impurities during the production of biopharmaceutical products, and products to detect the expression of proteins in tissues of various species. It operates in two segments, Nucleic Acid Production and Biologics Safety Testing. The Nucleic Acid Production segment manufactures and sells products for use in the fields of gene therapy, vaccines, nucleoside chemistry, oligonucleotide therapy, and molecular diagnostics, including reagents used in the chemical synthesis, modification, labelling, and purification of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA). This segment also offers messenger RNA, oligonucleotides, and oligonucleotide building blocks, as well as custom enzyme development and manufacturing and CleanCap capping technology. The Biologics Safety Testing segment sells analytical products for use in biologic manufacturing process development, including custom product-specific development antibody, and assay development services. This segment also provides HCP ELISA kits, other bioprocess impurity and contaminant ELISA kits, ancillary reagents, viral clearance prediction kits, and custom services. The company serves biopharmaceutical companies, and other biopharmaceutical and life sciences research companies; and academic research institutions and in vitro diagnostics companies. The company was incorporated in 2020 and is headquartered in San Diego, California.

About Nautilus Biotechnology

Nautilus Biotechnology, Inc., a development stage life sciences company, engages in creating a platform technology for quantifying and unlocking the complexity of the proteome. The company develops Nautilus Platform, a proteomics platform that includes end-to-end solution comprised of instruments, consumables, and software analysis. It also offers proteome analysis system, a high-resolution optical imaging system for integrated fluidics and liquid handling sub-system. In addition, the company provides sample preparation, flow cells, multi-affinity probe reagents, and instrument buffers system to perform multi-cycle analysis runs. Nautilus Biotechnology, Inc. was incorporated in 2016 and is headquartered in Seattle, Washington.