Comparing Veeco Instruments (NASDAQ:VECO) & Atomera (NASDAQ:ATOM)

Atomera (NASDAQ:ATOM) and Veeco Instruments (NASDAQ:VECO) are both technology companies, but which is the better business? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, profitability, dividends, earnings, valuation, institutional ownership and risk.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent ratings and recommmendations for Atomera and Veeco Instruments, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Atomera	1	0	0	0	1.00
Veeco Instruments	0	4	2	0	2.33

Veeco Instruments has a consensus price target of $61.33, indicating a potential upside of 10.17%. Given Veeco Instruments’ stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Veeco Instruments is more favorable than Atomera.

Volatility and Risk

Atomera has a beta of 2.03, indicating that its stock price is 103% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Veeco Instruments has a beta of 1.36, indicating that its stock price is 36% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Atomera and Veeco Instruments”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Atomera	$60,000.00	2,900.49	-$20.17 million	($0.65)	-6.86
Veeco Instruments	$664.29 million	5.12	$35.39 million	$0.36	154.64

Veeco Instruments has higher revenue and earnings than Atomera. Atomera is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Veeco Instruments, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Profitability

This table compares Atomera and Veeco Instruments’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Atomera	-9,742.17%	-77.91%	-70.64%
Veeco Instruments	3.40%	3.52%	2.32%

Insider & Institutional Ownership

30.8% of Atomera shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 98.5% of Veeco Instruments shares are owned by institutional investors. 8.1% of Atomera shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 2.7% of Veeco Instruments shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Summary

Veeco Instruments beats Atomera on 11 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Atomera

Atomera Incorporated engages in the developing, commercializing, and licensing proprietary processes and technologies for the semiconductor industry in North America and the Asia Pacific. The company's lead technology is the Mears Silicon Technology, a thin film of reengineered silicon that can be applied as a transistor channel enhancement to CMOS-type transistors. Its customers include foundries, integrated device manufacturers, fabless semiconductor manufacturers, original equipment manufacturers, and electronic design automation companies. The company was formerly known as Mears Technologies, Inc. and changed its name to Atomera Incorporated in January 2016. Atomera Incorporated was founded in 2001 and is headquartered in Los Gatos, California.

About Veeco Instruments

Veeco Instruments Inc., together with its subsidiaries, develops, manufactures, sells, and supports semiconductor and thin film process equipment primarily to make electronic devices in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, China, Rest of the Asia-Pacific, and internationally. The company offers laser annealing, ion beam deposition and etch, metal organic chemical vapor deposition, single wafer wet processing and surface preparation, molecular beam epitaxy, advanced packaging lithography, atomic layer deposition, and other deposition systems. Its process equipment systems are used in the production of a range of microelectronic components, including logic, dynamic random-access memory, photonics devices, power electronics, radio frequency filters and amplifiers, magnetic heads for hard disk drives, and other semiconductor devices. In addition, the company markets and sells its products to integrated device manufacturers and foundries; outsourced semiconductor assembly and test companies; and hard disk drive and photonics manufacturers, as well as research centers and universities. Veeco Instruments Inc. was founded in 1945 and is headquartered in Plainview, New York.