Reviewing Achieve Life Sciences (NASDAQ:ACHV) and Recursion Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:RXRX)

Achieve Life Sciences (NASDAQ:ACHV) and Recursion Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:RXRX) are both small-cap medical companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their institutional ownership, dividends, earnings, risk, analyst recommendations, valuation and profitability.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings and recommmendations for Achieve Life Sciences and Recursion Pharmaceuticals, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Achieve Life Sciences	1	0	3	2	3.00
Recursion Pharmaceuticals	1	2	2	0	2.20

Achieve Life Sciences currently has a consensus target price of $14.67, suggesting a potential upside of 234.86%. Recursion Pharmaceuticals has a consensus target price of $9.20, suggesting a potential upside of 171.39%. Given Achieve Life Sciences’ stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, equities analysts clearly believe Achieve Life Sciences is more favorable than Recursion Pharmaceuticals.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Achieve Life Sciences and Recursion Pharmaceuticals”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Achieve Life Sciences	N/A	N/A	-$54.65 million	($1.30)	-3.37
Recursion Pharmaceuticals	$74.26 million	24.08	-$644.76 million	($1.48)	-2.29

Achieve Life Sciences has higher earnings, but lower revenue than Recursion Pharmaceuticals. Achieve Life Sciences is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Recursion Pharmaceuticals, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Profitability

This table compares Achieve Life Sciences and Recursion Pharmaceuticals’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Achieve Life Sciences	N/A	-204.14%	-121.36%
Recursion Pharmaceuticals	-863.37%	-63.98%	-47.05%

Volatility & Risk

Achieve Life Sciences has a beta of 2.25, meaning that its stock price is 125% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Recursion Pharmaceuticals has a beta of 1.05, meaning that its stock price is 5% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

33.5% of Achieve Life Sciences shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 89.1% of Recursion Pharmaceuticals shares are owned by institutional investors. 3.0% of Achieve Life Sciences shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 8.4% of Recursion Pharmaceuticals shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

Achieve Life Sciences beats Recursion Pharmaceuticals on 8 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Achieve Life Sciences

Achieve Life Sciences, Inc., a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company, develops and commercializes cytisinicline for smoking cessation and nicotine addiction. The company offers cytisinicline, a plant-based alkaloid that interacts with nicotine receptors in the brain that reduce the severity of nicotine withdrawal symptoms. It has license and supply agreement with Sopharma AD and University of Bristol Achieve Life Sciences, Inc. is based in Vancouver, Canada.

About Recursion Pharmaceuticals

Recursion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. operates as a clinical-stage biotechnology company, engages in the decoding biology by integrating technological innovations across biology, chemistry, automation, data science, and engineering to industrialize drug discovery. The company develops REC-994, which is in Phase 2 clinical trial to treat cerebral cavernous malformation; REC-2282, which is in Phase 2/3 clinical trial for the treatment of neurofibromatosis type 2; REC-4881, which is in Phase 1b/2 clinical trial to treat familial adenomatous polyposis; REC-3964, which is in Phase 1 clinical trial to treat Clostridioides difficile infection; and REC-4881, which is in Phase 2 clinical trial to treat AXIN1 or APC mutant cancers. Its preclinical stage product includes RBM39 to treat HR-proficient ovarian cancer. The company has collaboration and agreement with Bayer AG; the University of Utah Research Foundation; Ohio State Innovation Foundation; Roche & Genentech; and Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited. Recursion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. was incorporated in 2013 and is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.