Financial Review: Azenta (NASDAQ:AZTA) & Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE:TMO)

Azenta (NASDAQ:AZTA) and Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE:TMO) are both healthcare companies, but which is the better stock? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their institutional ownership, risk, analyst recommendations, valuation, profitability, earnings and dividends.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

99.1% of Azenta shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 89.2% of Thermo Fisher Scientific shares are owned by institutional investors. 10.9% of Azenta shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 0.3% of Thermo Fisher Scientific shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of current ratings for Azenta and Thermo Fisher Scientific, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Azenta	1	2	4	0	2.43
Thermo Fisher Scientific	0	6	17	1	2.79

Azenta currently has a consensus price target of $41.20, indicating a potential upside of 23.43%. Thermo Fisher Scientific has a consensus price target of $619.41, indicating a potential upside of 5.31%. Given Azenta’s higher probable upside, equities analysts clearly believe Azenta is more favorable than Thermo Fisher Scientific.

Profitability

This table compares Azenta and Thermo Fisher Scientific’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Azenta	-20.63%	1.18%	0.97%
Thermo Fisher Scientific	15.04%	17.09%	8.12%

Risk & Volatility

Azenta has a beta of 1.37, meaning that its stock price is 37% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Thermo Fisher Scientific has a beta of 0.85, meaning that its stock price is 15% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Azenta and Thermo Fisher Scientific”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Azenta	$593.82 million	2.46	-$55.76 million	($2.76)	-12.09
Thermo Fisher Scientific	$44.56 billion	4.88	$6.70 billion	$18.59	31.64

Thermo Fisher Scientific has higher revenue and earnings than Azenta. Azenta is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Thermo Fisher Scientific, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Summary

Thermo Fisher Scientific beats Azenta on 11 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Azenta

Azenta, Inc. provides biological and chemical compound sample exploration and management solutions for the life sciences market in North America, Africa, China, the United Kingdom, rest of Europe, the Asia Pacific, and internationally. The company operates in two reportable segments, Life Sciences Products and Life Sciences Services. The Life Sciences Products segment offers automated cold storage solutions, consumables and instruments, controlled rate thawing devices, and temperature-controlled storage and transportation solutions. This segment also provides sample management solutions, such as consumable vials and tubes, polymerase chain reaction, plates, instruments for supporting workflows, and informatics. The Life Sciences Services segment provides genomic services, that includes gene sequencing and gene synthesis services; and sample repository solutions, such as on-site and off-site sample storage, cold chain logistics, sample transport and collection relocation, bio-processing solutions, disaster recovery and business continuity, and biospecimen procurement services, as well as project management and consulting services for genomic analysis and the management and care of biological samples used in pharmaceutical, biotech, healthcare, clinical, and academic research, and development sectors. It serves a range of life science customers, including pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, biorepositories, and research institutes. The company was formerly known as Brooks Automation, Inc. and changed its name to Azenta, Inc. in December 2021. Azenta, Inc. was founded in 1978 and is headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts.

About Thermo Fisher Scientific

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. provides life sciences solutions, analytical instruments, specialty diagnostics, and laboratory products and biopharma services in the North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and internationally. The company's Life Sciences Solutions segment offers reagents, instruments, and consumables for biological and medical research, discovery, and production of drugs and vaccines, as well as diagnosis of infections and diseases; and solutions include biosciences, genetic sciences, and bio production to pharmaceutical, biotechnology, agricultural, clinical, healthcare, academic, and government markets. Its Analytical Instruments segment provides instruments, consumables, software, and services for pharmaceutical, biotechnology, academic, government, environmental, and other research and industrial markets, as well as clinical laboratories. The company's Specialty Diagnostics segment offers liquid, ready-to-use, and lyophilized immunodiagnostic reagent kits, as well as calibrators, controls, protein detection assays, and instruments; immunodiagnostics develops, manufactures and markets complete bloodtest systems to support the clinical diagnosis and monitoring of allergy, asthma and autoimmune diseases; dehydrated and prepared culture media, collection and transport systems, instrumentation, and consumables; human leukocyte antigen typing and testing for organ transplant market; and healthcare products. Its Laboratory Products and Biopharma Services segment provides laboratory products, research and safety market channel, and pharma services and clinical research. It offers products and services through a direct sales force, customer-service professionals, electronic commerce, and third-party distributors under Thermo Scientific; Applied Biosystems; Invitrogen; Fisher Scientific; Unity Lab Services; and Patheon and PPD. Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. was founded in 1956 and is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts.