Analyzing Scilex (NASDAQ:SCLX) & Sana Biotechnology (NASDAQ:SANA)

Scilex (NASDAQ:SCLX) and Sana Biotechnology (NASDAQ:SANA) are both small-cap medical companies, but which is the superior stock? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their risk, institutional ownership, dividends, profitability, analyst recommendations, earnings and valuation.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings for Scilex and Sana Biotechnology, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Scilex	0	0	4	0	3.00
Sana Biotechnology	0	1	4	0	2.80

Scilex presently has a consensus target price of $14.00, indicating a potential upside of 3,939.24%. Sana Biotechnology has a consensus target price of $14.00, indicating a potential upside of 442.64%. Given Scilex’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, equities research analysts plainly believe Scilex is more favorable than Sana Biotechnology.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Scilex and Sana Biotechnology”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Scilex	$55.15 million	1.53	-$114.33 million	($0.83)	-0.42
Sana Biotechnology	N/A	N/A	-$283.26 million	($1.40)	-1.84

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

Profitability

This table compares Scilex and Sana Biotechnology’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Scilex	-159.10%	N/A	-93.65%
Sana Biotechnology	N/A	-84.22%	-44.97%

Insider and Institutional Ownership

69.7% of Scilex shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 88.2% of Sana Biotechnology shares are owned by institutional investors. 7.7% of Scilex shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 31.1% of Sana Biotechnology shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Risk and Volatility

Scilex has a beta of 1.15, meaning that its share price is 15% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Sana Biotechnology has a beta of 1.63, meaning that its share price is 63% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Scilex beats Sana Biotechnology on 7 of the 12 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Scilex

Scilex Holding Company focuses on acquiring, developing, and commercializing non-opioid pain management products for the treatment of acute and chronic pain. Its commercial products include ZTlido (lidocaine topical system) 1.8% (ZTlido), a prescription lidocaine topical product for the relief of neuropathic pain associated with postherpetic neuralgia (PHN), which is a form of post-shingles nerve pain; ELYXYB, a ready-to-use oral solution for the acute treatment of migraine with or without aura in adults; and GLOPERBA, a liquid oral version of the anti-gout medicine colchicine indicated for the prophylaxis of painful gout flares in adults. The company is also developing three product candidates, including SP-102 (10 mg dexamethasone sodium phosphate viscous gel) (SEMDEXA), a novel viscous gel formulation of a used corticosteroid for epidural injections, which has completed a Phase 3 study to treat lumbosacral radicular pain or sciatica; SP-103 (lidocaine topical system) 5.4% (SP-103), a formulation of ZTlido for the treatment of chronic neck pain and low back pain (LBP) that has completed a Phase 2 trial; and SP-104 (4.5 mg low-dose naltrexone hydrochloride delayed-release capsules) (SP-104), a novel low-dose delayed-release naltrexone hydrochloride, which has completed Phase 1 trials for the treatment of fibromyalgia. The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.

About Sana Biotechnology

Sana Biotechnology, Inc., a biotechnology company, focuses on utilizing engineered cells as medicines. It develops ex vivo and in vivo cell engineering platforms for various therapeutic areas with unmet treatment needs, including oncology, diabetes, central nervous system disorders, B-cell-mediated autoimmune, and others. The company’s product candidates include SC291 that is used as allogeneic cell therapies for hematologic malignancies; ARDENT for a potential treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and chronic lymphoblastic leukemia; GLEAM, to treat multiple autoimmune disorders that involve production of autoimmune antibodies, including lupus nephritis, extrarenal lupus, antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody -associated vasculitis, and others. It is developing SC262 to treat patients with relapsed and/or refractory B-cell malignancies; SC255 for multiple myeloma treatment; SC379, a therapy for patients with certain central nervous system disorders healthy allogeneic glial progenitor cells; SC451, a product candidate to treat diabetes, with an initial focus on type 1 diabetes mellitus; and UP421 that reduces long-term exogenous insulin dependence. The company has an option and license agreement with Beam Therapeutics Inc. for use of Beam’s proprietary CRISPR Cas12b nuclease editing technology to research, develop, and commercialize engineered cell therapy products; and a license agreement with Harvard College to access certain intellectual property for the development of hypoimmune-modified cells. The company was formerly known as FD Therapeutics, Inc. and changed its name to Sana Biotechnology, Inc. in September 2018. Sana Biotechnology, Inc. was incorporated in 2018 and is headquartered in Seattle, Washington.