Organovo Holdings (NASDAQ: ONVO) and Asterias Biotherapeutics (NYSE:AST) are both small-cap medical companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their risk, analyst recommendations, profitabiliy, institutional ownership, valuation, earnings and dividends.
Analyst Recommendations
This is a breakdown of recent ratings and price targets for Organovo Holdings and Asterias Biotherapeutics, as provided by MarketBeat.com.
| Sell Ratings | Hold Ratings | Buy Ratings | Strong Buy Ratings | Rating Score | |
| Organovo Holdings | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 3.00 |
| Asterias Biotherapeutics | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 3.00 |
Organovo Holdings presently has a consensus target price of $6.94, indicating a potential upside of 213.91%. Asterias Biotherapeutics has a consensus target price of $12.00, indicating a potential upside of 263.64%. Given Asterias Biotherapeutics’ higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Asterias Biotherapeutics is more favorable than Organovo Holdings.
Earnings and Valuation
This table compares Organovo Holdings and Asterias Biotherapeutics’ revenue, earnings per share and valuation.
| Gross Revenue | Price/Sales Ratio | EBITDA | Earnings Per Share | Price/Earnings Ratio | |
| Organovo Holdings | N/A | N/A | N/A | ($0.38) | -5.82 |
| Asterias Biotherapeutics | $7.37 million | 22.06 | -$28.30 million | N/A | N/A |
Organovo Holdings has higher revenue, but lower earnings than Asterias Biotherapeutics.
Insider & Institutional Ownership
22.6% of Organovo Holdings shares are held by institutional investors. 10.2% of Organovo Holdings shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a company is poised for long-term growth.
Profitability
This table compares Organovo Holdings and Asterias Biotherapeutics’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.
| Net Margins | Return on Equity | Return on Assets | |
| Organovo Holdings | -908.91% | -63.92% | -58.77% |
| Asterias Biotherapeutics | -312.79% | -58.31% | -42.66% |
Summary
Asterias Biotherapeutics beats Organovo Holdings on 5 of the 8 factors compared between the two stocks.
About Organovo Holdings
Organovo Holdings, Inc. is an early commercial-stage company focused on developing and commercializing functional human tissues. The Company focuses on the generation of three-dimensional (3D) human tissues, by utilizing its platform technology to create human tissue constructs in 3D. It is focused on development of products, including 3D human tissues used for the preclinical assessment of drug effects, including applications in predictive toxicology, absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion (ADME), and drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics (DMPK); customized human tissues as living, dynamic models of human biology or disease, for use in drug discovery and development, and three-dimensional human tissues for clinical applications, such as blood vessels for bypass grafting, nerve grafts for nerve damage repair and functional tissue patches for the repair or replacement of damaged tissues and organs.
About Asterias Biotherapeutics
Asterias Biotherapeutics, Inc. is a biotechnology company. The Company is engaged in developing and commercializing therapies in the fields of cell therapy and regenerative medicine. The Company has over two technology platforms. The first is an immunotherapy platform to teach cancer patients’ immune systems to attack their tumors. The second is pluripotent stem cell platform. Pluripotent cells are a type of stem cell capable of becoming all of the cell types in the human body. From its immunotherapy platform, the Company is developing over two programs. AST-VAC1 (telomerase loaded, autologous dendritic cells), which allows patient’s own cells to recognize and fight cancer cells in acute myelogenous leukemia (AML). Together with Cancer Research United Kingdom (CRUK), it is developing AST-VAC2 (telomerase loaded, -allogeneic dendritic cells), -derived from pluripotent stem cells. From its pluripotent stem cell platform, it is developing AST-OPC1, oligodendrocyte progenitor cells.
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