Financial Analysis: Pliant Therapeutics (NASDAQ:PLRX) & Intellia Therapeutics (NASDAQ:NTLA)

Intellia Therapeutics (NASDAQ:NTLA) and Pliant Therapeutics (NASDAQ:PLRX) are both small-cap healthcare companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their valuation, earnings, analyst recommendations, dividends, risk, profitability and institutional ownership.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Intellia Therapeutics and Pliant Therapeutics”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Intellia Therapeutics	$59.51 million	29.36	-$412.69 million	($3.36)	-3.71
Pliant Therapeutics	$1.58 million	33.66	-$149.34 million	($1.49)	-0.58

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

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent recommendations for Intellia Therapeutics and Pliant Therapeutics, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Intellia Therapeutics	5	7	9	1	2.27
Pliant Therapeutics	1	1	1	0	2.00

Intellia Therapeutics currently has a consensus price target of $20.57, suggesting a potential upside of 64.97%. Pliant Therapeutics has a consensus price target of $3.00, suggesting a potential upside of 249.28%. Given Pliant Therapeutics’ higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Pliant Therapeutics is more favorable than Intellia Therapeutics.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

88.8% of Intellia Therapeutics shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 97.3% of Pliant Therapeutics shares are owned by institutional investors. 3.5% of Intellia Therapeutics shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 8.7% of Pliant Therapeutics shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Profitability

This table compares Intellia Therapeutics and Pliant Therapeutics’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Intellia Therapeutics	-672.16%	-57.79%	-47.29%
Pliant Therapeutics	N/A	-52.17%	-40.46%

Risk & Volatility

Intellia Therapeutics has a beta of 1.8, meaning that its share price is 80% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Pliant Therapeutics has a beta of 1.27, meaning that its share price is 27% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Pliant Therapeutics beats Intellia Therapeutics on 10 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Intellia Therapeutics

Intellia Therapeutics, Inc., a genome editing company, focuses on the development of curative therapeutics. The company's in vivo programs include NTLA-2001, which is in Phase 1 clinical trial for the treatment of transthyretin amyloidosis; NTLA-2002 for the treatment of hereditary angioedema; and NTLA-3001 for alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency associated lung disease. It also focusses on programs comprising hemophilia A and hemophilia B; and research of proprietary programs focused on developing engineered cell therapies to treat various cancers and autoimmune diseases. In addition, the company offers tools comprising of Clustered, Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats/CRISPR associated 9 (CRISPR/Cas9) system. It has license and collaboration agreement with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. to co-develop potential products for the treatment of hemophilia A and hemophilia B; AvenCell Therapeutics, Inc. to develop allogeneic universal CAR-T cell therapies, and co-develop and co-commercialize allogeneic universal CAR-T cell products for an immuno-oncology indication; SparingVision SAS to develop novel genomic medicines utilizing CRISPR/Cas9 technology for the treatment of ocular diseases; Kyverna Therapeutics, Inc. for the development of an allogeneic CD19 CAR-T cell therapy for the treatment of a variety of B cell-mediated autoimmune diseases; and ONK Therapeutics, Ltd. for the development of engineered NK cell therapies to cure patients with cancer. Intellia Therapeutics, Inc. was incorporated in 2014 and is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

About Pliant Therapeutics

Pliant Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company, discovers, develops, and commercializes novel therapies for the treatment of fibrosis and related diseases in the United States. The company's lead candidate is bexotegrast, an oral, small-molecule, dual selective inhibitor of avß6 and avß1 integrins, which is in phase 2b trials for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and in phase 2a trial for primary sclerosing cholangitis. It also develops PLN-1474, an oral, small-molecule selective inhibitor of avß1 for the treatment of liver fibrosis associated with nonalcoholic steatohepatitis; PLN-101095, a dual inhibitor of integrins avß8 and avß1 for the treatment of solid tumors; and PLN-101325 for treatment of muscular dystrophies. Pliant Therapeutics, Inc. was incorporated in 2015 and is based in South San Francisco, California.