Financial Contrast: Qiagen (NYSE:QGEN) vs. Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE:TMO)

Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE:TMO) and Qiagen (NYSE:QGEN) are both healthcare companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, earnings, dividends, profitability, valuation and risk.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of current ratings and price targets for Thermo Fisher Scientific and Qiagen, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Thermo Fisher Scientific	2	5	17	2	2.73
Qiagen	0	9	4	1	2.43

Thermo Fisher Scientific currently has a consensus price target of $624.64, indicating a potential upside of 2.87%. Qiagen has a consensus price target of $43.51, indicating a potential upside of 2.43%. Given Thermo Fisher Scientific’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Thermo Fisher Scientific is more favorable than Qiagen.

Dividends

Thermo Fisher Scientific pays an annual dividend of $1.88 per share and has a dividend yield of 0.3%. Qiagen pays an annual dividend of $0.35 per share and has a dividend yield of 0.8%. Thermo Fisher Scientific pays out 10.1% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Qiagen pays out 17.9% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Both companies have healthy payout ratios and should be able to cover their dividend payments with earnings for the next several years. Thermo Fisher Scientific has raised its dividend for 8 consecutive years.

Risk & Volatility

Thermo Fisher Scientific has a beta of 0.85, suggesting that its share price is 15% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Qiagen has a beta of 0.63, suggesting that its share price is 37% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

89.2% of Thermo Fisher Scientific shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 70.0% of Qiagen shares are held by institutional investors. 0.3% of Thermo Fisher Scientific shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 9.0% of Qiagen shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Profitability

This table compares Thermo Fisher Scientific and Qiagen’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Thermo Fisher Scientific	15.04%	17.09%	8.12%
Qiagen	19.49%	14.47%	8.34%

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Thermo Fisher Scientific and Qiagen”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Thermo Fisher Scientific	$44.56 billion	5.04	$6.70 billion	$18.59	32.66
Qiagen	$2.09 billion	4.19	$424.88 million	$1.95	21.78

Thermo Fisher Scientific has higher revenue and earnings than Qiagen. Qiagen is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Thermo Fisher Scientific, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Summary

Thermo Fisher Scientific beats Qiagen on 14 of the 18 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Thermo Fisher Scientific

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. provides life sciences solutions, analytical instruments, specialty diagnostics, and laboratory products and biopharma services in the North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and internationally. The company's Life Sciences Solutions segment offers reagents, instruments, and consumables for biological and medical research, discovery, and production of drugs and vaccines, as well as diagnosis of infections and diseases; and solutions include biosciences, genetic sciences, and bio production to pharmaceutical, biotechnology, agricultural, clinical, healthcare, academic, and government markets. Its Analytical Instruments segment provides instruments, consumables, software, and services for pharmaceutical, biotechnology, academic, government, environmental, and other research and industrial markets, as well as clinical laboratories. The company's Specialty Diagnostics segment offers liquid, ready-to-use, and lyophilized immunodiagnostic reagent kits, as well as calibrators, controls, protein detection assays, and instruments; immunodiagnostics develops, manufactures and markets complete bloodtest systems to support the clinical diagnosis and monitoring of allergy, asthma and autoimmune diseases; dehydrated and prepared culture media, collection and transport systems, instrumentation, and consumables; human leukocyte antigen typing and testing for organ transplant market; and healthcare products. Its Laboratory Products and Biopharma Services segment provides laboratory products, research and safety market channel, and pharma services and clinical research. It offers products and services through a direct sales force, customer-service professionals, electronic commerce, and third-party distributors under Thermo Scientific; Applied Biosystems; Invitrogen; Fisher Scientific; Unity Lab Services; and Patheon and PPD. Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. was founded in 1956 and is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts.

About Qiagen

QIAGEN NV is a holding company, which engages in the provision of Sample to Insight solutions that enable customers to gain valuable molecular insights from samples containing the building blocks of life. The company sample technologies isolate and process DNA, RNA, and proteins from blood, tissue, and other materials. The firm assay technologies make these biomolecules visible and ready for analysis. Its bioinformatics software and knowledge bases interpret data to report relevant, actionable insights. The company was founded by Detlev H. Riesner and Metin Colpan on April 29, 1996, and is headquartered in Venlo, the Netherlands.