Critical Review: XTI Aerospace (NASDAQ:XTIA) vs. Spire Global (NYSE:SPIR)

XTI Aerospace (NASDAQ:XTIA) and Spire Global (NYSE:SPIR) are both small-cap aerospace companies, but which is the better business? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their profitability, earnings, risk, dividends, analyst recommendations, institutional ownership and valuation.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings and recommmendations for XTI Aerospace and Spire Global, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
XTI Aerospace	1	0	0	1	2.50
Spire Global	1	1	4	0	2.50

Spire Global has a consensus target price of $18.20, suggesting a potential upside of 67.34%. Given Spire Global’s higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Spire Global is more favorable than XTI Aerospace.

Volatility and Risk

XTI Aerospace has a beta of 4.81, suggesting that its share price is 381% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Spire Global has a beta of 2.41, suggesting that its share price is 141% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares XTI Aerospace and Spire Global”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
XTI Aerospace	$3.04 million	11.61	-$35.60 million	($39.23)	-0.04
Spire Global	$110.45 million	3.06	-$102.82 million	($2.51)	-4.33

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

Profitability

This table compares XTI Aerospace and Spire Global’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
XTI Aerospace	-1,714.04%	-655.07%	-179.15%
Spire Global	-98.42%	-492.01%	-37.32%

Institutional and Insider Ownership

11.7% of XTI Aerospace shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 20.0% of Spire Global shares are held by institutional investors. 7.4% of XTI Aerospace shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 14.7% of Spire Global shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

Spire Global beats XTI Aerospace on 9 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About XTI Aerospace

XTI Aerospace, Inc. engages in the provision of aircraft manufacturing. It primarily focuses on the light and mid-size business aircraft market. The company was founded in April 1999 and is headquartered in Englewood, CO.

About Spire Global

Spire Global, Inc. provides subscription-based data, insights, predictive analytics, and related project-based services worldwide. The company offers satellite-based aircraft tracking data to power applications, drive decision making, and improve cost efficiencies; data, insights, and predictive analytics for highly accurate ship monitoring, real-time and near real-time vessel updates, port operations, ship safety and route optimization; and space-based data, AI-powered insights, and predictive weather analytics for accurate weather forecasting. It serves maritime, weather, aviation, and space services industries. The company was formerly known as Nanosatisfi, Inc. and changed its name to Spire Global, Inc. in July 2014. Spire Global, Inc. is headquartered in Vienna, Virginia.