Airgain (NASDAQ:AIRG) versus Harmonic (NASDAQ:HLIT) Financial Review

Airgain (NASDAQ:AIRG) and Harmonic (NASDAQ:HLIT) are both small-cap technology companies, but which is the better stock? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their profitability, analyst recommendations, valuation, institutional ownership, dividends, earnings and risk.

Risk and Volatility

Airgain has a beta of 1.01, suggesting that its share price is 1% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Harmonic has a beta of 1.37, suggesting that its share price is 37% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Airgain and Harmonic”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Airgain	$51.35 million	1.08	-$6.43 million	($0.56)	-7.55
Harmonic	$570.80 million	1.95	-$43.31 million	($0.42)	-24.31

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

Insider and Institutional Ownership

52.8% of Airgain shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 99.4% of Harmonic shares are owned by institutional investors. 17.5% of Airgain shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 1.7% of Harmonic shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of current ratings and target prices for Airgain and Harmonic, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Airgain	1	0	4	0	2.60
Harmonic	1	3	3	0	2.29

Airgain currently has a consensus price target of $7.70, indicating a potential upside of 82.03%. Harmonic has a consensus price target of $16.83, indicating a potential upside of 64.87%. Given Airgain’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, research analysts clearly believe Airgain is more favorable than Harmonic.

Profitability

This table compares Airgain and Harmonic’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Airgain	-13.65%	-13.72%	-8.74%
Harmonic	-6.27%	14.73%	8.21%

Summary

Harmonic beats Airgain on 9 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Airgain

Airgain, Inc. provides wireless connectivity solutions that creates and delivers embedded components, external antennas, and integrated systems worldwide. The company's products include MaxBeam embedded antennas; profile embedded antennas; profile contour embedded antennas; profile ceramic embedded antenna; ultra embedded antennas; and SmartMax embedded antennas. It offers embedded and NimbeLink embedded moderms; custom cellular solutions; cellular IoT development; cellular IoT development kits; and IoT data plans. In addition, the company provides 5G connectivity, smart repeaters, and fixed wireless access; asset tracking solutions, devices, and partners; and external antennas, fleet antennas, IoT antennas, network antennas, vehicle networking, partner solutions, and accessories. It offers its products under the Antenna Plus brand. It serves industrial, consumer, automotive fleet, enterprise, energy, medical, transportation, agriculture, services, and public safety markets. The company was formerly known as AM Group and changed its name to Airgain, Inc. in 2004. Airgain, Inc. was incorporated in 1995 and is headquartered in San Diego, California.

About Harmonic

Harmonic Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides broadband solutions worldwide. The company operates through Broadband and Video segments. The Broadband segment sells broadband access solutions and related services, including cOS software-based broadband access solutions to broadband operators; and cOS central cloud services, a subscription service for cOS customers. The Video segment sells video processing, production, and playout solutions and services to cable operators, and satellite and telco Pay-TV service providers, as well as to broadcast and media, including streaming media companies. Its video processing appliance solutions include network management and application software, and hardware products, such as encoders, video servers, high-density stream processing systems, and edge processors. This segment also provides VOS360 SaaS platform that provides both streaming and channel origination and distribution services; and software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions, which enables the packaging and delivery of streaming services, including live streaming, VOD, catch-up TV, start-over TV, network-DVR and cloud-DVR services through HTTP streaming to various device along with dynamic and personal ad insertion. The company also provides technical support and professional services, such as maintenance and support, consulting, implementation, integration services, program management, technical design and planning, building and site preparation, integration and equipment installation, end-to-end system testing, and training, as well as SaaS-related support and deployment. It sells its products through its direct sales force, as well as through independent resellers and systems integrators. The company was incorporated in 1988 and is headquartered in San Jose, California.