Contrasting Repligen (NASDAQ:RGEN) and Avantor (NYSE:AVTR)

Avantor (NYSE:AVTR) and Repligen (NASDAQ:RGEN) are both large-cap healthcare companies, but which is the better stock? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their earnings, institutional ownership, valuation, risk, dividends, profitability and analyst recommendations.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings and recommmendations for Avantor and Repligen, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Avantor	1	15	2	0	2.06
Repligen	0	3	12	3	3.00

Avantor currently has a consensus target price of $12.47, indicating a potential downside of 18.94%. Repligen has a consensus target price of $168.57, indicating a potential downside of 11.58%. Given Repligen’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Repligen is more favorable than Avantor.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Avantor and Repligen”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Avantor	$6.55 billion	1.59	-$530.20 million	($0.84)	-18.32
Repligen	$738.26 million	14.58	$48.89 million	$0.73	261.16

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

Profitability

This table compares Avantor and Repligen’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Avantor	-8.81%	9.92%	4.75%
Repligen	5.29%	5.30%	3.79%

Volatility and Risk

Avantor has a beta of 0.89, suggesting that its share price is 11% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Repligen has a beta of 1.05, suggesting that its share price is 5% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

95.1% of Avantor shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 97.6% of Repligen shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.3% of Avantor shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 0.6% of Repligen shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Summary

Repligen beats Avantor on 12 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Avantor

Avantor, Inc. engages in the provision of mission-critical products and services to customers in the biopharma, healthcare, education and government, advanced technologies, and applied materials industries in the Americas, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. The company offers materials and consumables, such as purity chemicals and reagents, lab products and supplies, formulated silicone materials, customized excipients, customized single-use assemblies, process chromatography resins and columns, analytical sample prep kits, education and microbiology products, clinical trial kits, peristaltic pumps, and fluid handling tips. It also provides equipment and instrumentation products, including filtration systems, virus inactivation systems, incubators, analytical instruments, evaporators, ultra-low-temperature freezers, biological safety cabinets, and critical environment supplies. In addition, the company offers services and specialty procurements comprising onsite lab and production, clinical, equipment, procurement and sourcing, and biopharmaceutical material scale-up and development services. Further, it provides scientific research support services, such as DNA extraction, bioreactor servicing, clinical and biorepository, and compound management services. The company was founded in 1904 and is headquartered in Radnor, Pennsylvania.

About Repligen

Repligen Corporation develops and commercializes bioprocessing technologies and systems for use in biological drug manufacturing process in North America, Europe, the Asia Pacific, and internationally. It offers Protein A ligands that are the binding components of Protein A affinity chromatography resins; and cell culture growth factor products. The company’s chromatography products include OPUS pre-packed chromatography columns, which are used in the purification of biologics; and OPUS smaller-scale columns that are used in the high throughput process development screening, viral clearance validation studies, and scale down validation of chromatography processes. It also offers ELISA test kits; and chromatography resins under the CaptivA brand. In addition, the company provides filtration products, such as XCell Alternating Tangential Flow systems that are filtration devices used in upstream perfusion and cell culture processing; TangenX flat sheet cassettes, which are used in downstream biologic drug concentration, buffer exchange, and formulation processes; KrosFlo tangential flow filtration and tangential flow depth filtration systems; Spectra/Por laboratory and process dialysis products, and ProConnex TFDF flow paths. Further, it provides process analytics products, such as slope spectroscopy systems under the SoloVPE, FlowVPE, and FlowVPX brands. The company sells its products to life sciences, biopharmaceutical, and diagnostics companies; laboratory researchers; and contract manufacturing organizations. Repligen Corporation has collaboration agreements with Navigo Proteins GmbH to develop multiple affinity ligands. The company was incorporated in 1981 and is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts.