Comparing Maze Therapeutics (NASDAQ:MAZE) & Lisata Therapeutics (NASDAQ:LSTA)

Maze Therapeutics (NASDAQ:MAZE) and Lisata Therapeutics (NASDAQ:LSTA) are both small-cap healthcare companies, but which is the superior business? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their dividends, valuation, institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, earnings, risk and profitability.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings and recommmendations for Maze Therapeutics and Lisata Therapeutics, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Maze Therapeutics	1	0	9	3	3.08
Lisata Therapeutics	1	2	0	0	1.67

Maze Therapeutics presently has a consensus price target of $63.40, suggesting a potential upside of 141.71%. Given Maze Therapeutics’ stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Maze Therapeutics is more favorable than Lisata Therapeutics.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

8.9% of Lisata Therapeutics shares are held by institutional investors. 5.3% of Maze Therapeutics shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 9.6% of Lisata Therapeutics shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Volatility & Risk

Maze Therapeutics has a beta of 2.16, suggesting that its stock price is 116% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Lisata Therapeutics has a beta of 0.94, suggesting that its stock price is 6% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Maze Therapeutics and Lisata Therapeutics”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Maze Therapeutics	$167.50 million	8.70	-$131.12 million	($2.52)	-10.41
Lisata Therapeutics	$170,000.00	54.06	-$16.59 million	($1.64)	-0.62

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

Profitability

This table compares Maze Therapeutics and Lisata Therapeutics’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Maze Therapeutics	N/A	-34.94%	-30.18%
Lisata Therapeutics	N/A	-116.08%	-90.55%

Summary

Maze Therapeutics beats Lisata Therapeutics on 8 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Maze Therapeutics

We are a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company harnessing the power of human genetics to develop novel, small molecule precision medicines for patients living with renal, cardiovascular and related metabolic diseases, including obesity. We are advancing a pipeline using our Compass platform, which allows us to identify and characterize genetic variants in disease and then link those variants to the biological pathways that drive disease in specific patient groups through a process we refer to as variant functionalization. Our Compass platform has been purpose-built to inform all phases of our drug discovery and development process through clinical trial design. We are currently advancing two wholly owned lead programs, MZE829 and MZE782, each of which represents a novel precision medicine-based approach for chronic kidney disease, or CKD. Our goal is to bring novel precision medicines to patients to maximize our impact on human health. CKD is a serious, progressive condition that affects approximately 37 million patients in the United States, where it is expected to be the fifth most prevalent chronic disease by 2040. Current treatments for CKD consider patients as falling into clinical categories and focus on slowing the progression of disease, but do not target the underlying genetic drivers of disease. Our lead programs are designed to phenocopy, or mimic, the protective effects of certain genetic variants that are associated with reduced disease burden and improved kidney function in distinct groups of CKD patients. Our most advanced lead program, MZE829, is an oral, small molecule inhibitor of apolipoprotein L1, or APOL1, for the treatment of patients with APOL1 kidney disease, or AKD, which is estimated to affect over one million patients in the United States alone. Although the link between APOL1 variants and renal dysfunction has been known for over a decade, we have identified a new protective variant that underpins our therapeutic approach for MZE829 and may ultimately allow us to address a broader population of AKD than has previously been possible in the clinical setting. In October 2024, we reported results for our Phase 1 clinical trial of MZE829, in which we enrolled 111 healthy patients who received either single or multiple ascending doses of 20 mg to 480 mg of MZE829 administered daily. Treatment was well tolerated with no severe adverse events or serious adverse events reported in patients treated with single doses up to 480 mg and multiple doses of up to 350 mg daily for seven days. Dose-proportional pharmacokinetics, or PK, was observed with low variability (10-40%) across doses. We initiated a Phase 2 trial of MZE829 in November 2024 and expect to dose our first patient in the first quarter of 2025 and to report proof of concept data in the first quarter of 2026. Our second lead program, MZE782, is an oral, small molecule inhibitor of the solute transporter SLC6A19, a novel CKD target, with the potential to address approximately five million of the CKD patients in the United States with inadequate responses to currently available CKD therapies. Beyond its use as a potential standalone therapy, MZE782 may also provide a significant benefit to patients in combination with standard of care, including as a complementary treatment to current approved regimens or as an alternative option for those patients who do not adequately respond to today’s standard of care. We initiated a Phase 1 trial of MZE782 in September 2024 and expect to report initial data from this trial in the second half of 2025. In addition to CKD, we believe MZE782 may provide benefit to patients suffering from the genetically defined metabolic disease, phenylketonuria, or PKU. Following our ongoing Phase 1 trial of MZE782, we plan to conduct a parallel Phase 2 clinical trial to explore MZE782 as a potential treatment of PKU. Our Compass platform supports end-to-end variant identification and functionalization capabilities as well as advanced research tools and methodologies for drug development. We believe the process of variant functionalization, or understanding how genetic variants function to affect the course of disease, is a foundational aspect of precision medicine and one of the core capabilities that sets us apart from others in the field. We were incorporated under the laws of the State of Delaware on August 29, 2017, originally under the name Genetic Modifiers NewCo, Inc. We changed our name on July 5, 2018 to Modulus Therapeutics, Inc. and on September 25, 2018, to Maze Therapeutics, Inc. Our principal executive offices are located at 171 Oyster Point Blvd., Suite 300, South San Francisco, California.

About Lisata Therapeutics

Lisata Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company, focuses on the discovery, development, and commercialization of innovative therapies for the treatment of solid tumors and other diseases. Its product candidates include LSTA1, which is in Phase 2a and 2b clinical studies for the treatment of solid tumor, including metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (mPDAC), in combination with a range of anti-cancer regimens; XOWNA that is in Phase IIa clinical trial for the treatment of coronary microvascular dysfunction; and CD34+ cell therapy for the treatment of chronic kidney disease. Lisata Therapeutics, Inc. was incorporated in 1980 and is headquartered in Basking Ridge, New Jersey.