Critical Survey: Exagen (NASDAQ:XGN) versus Nutex Health (NASDAQ:NUTX)

Nutex Health (NASDAQ:NUTX) and Exagen (NASDAQ:XGN) are both small-cap healthcare companies, but which is the better business? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their valuation, dividends, profitability, earnings, analyst recommendations, risk and institutional ownership.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

5.3% of Nutex Health shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 75.2% of Exagen shares are held by institutional investors. 44.7% of Nutex Health shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 10.4% of Exagen shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Risk and Volatility

Nutex Health has a beta of 0.24, suggesting that its share price is 76% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Exagen has a beta of 2.05, suggesting that its share price is 105% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares Nutex Health and Exagen’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Nutex Health	21.25%	39.74%	18.91%
Exagen	-26.61%	-104.46%	-28.93%

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent ratings and recommmendations for Nutex Health and Exagen, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Nutex Health	0	2	3	0	2.60
Exagen	1	0	7	1	2.89

Nutex Health currently has a consensus price target of $268.33, suggesting a potential upside of 43.17%. Exagen has a consensus price target of $9.62, suggesting a potential upside of 44.52%. Given Exagen’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Exagen is more favorable than Nutex Health.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Nutex Health and Exagen”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Nutex Health	$846.72 million	1.52	$70.79 million	$25.47	7.36
Exagen	$66.57 million	2.42	-$19.95 million	($0.81)	-8.22

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

Summary

Nutex Health beats Exagen on 8 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Nutex Health

Nutex Health Inc. operates as a physician-led, healthcare services, and operations company. It operates through three segments: Hospital, Population Health Management (PHM), and Real Estate. The PHM segment establishes and operates independent physician associations; and offers a cloud-based platform for healthcare organizations to provide value-based care and population health management. The Real Estate segment owns and owns and leases land and hospital building. The Hospital segment develops and operates a network of micro-hospitals, specialty hospitals and hospital outpatient departments which offers 24/7 care. It also provides operational and managerial services, including management, billing, collections, human resources and recruiting, legal, accounting, and marketing. In addition, the company offers healthcare services, including emergency room care, inpatient care, and behavioral health, as well as onsite imaging, such as CT scan, X-ray, MRI, ultrasound, etc.; certified and accredited laboratories; and onsite inpatient pharmacies. The company was founded in 2011 and is based in Houston, Texas.

About Exagen

Exagen Inc. develops and commercializes various testing products under the AVISE brand in the United States. The company enables healthcare providers to care for patients through the diagnosis, prognosis, and monitoring of autoimmune and autoimmune-related diseases, including systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Its lead testing product is AVISE CTD that enables differential diagnosis for patients presenting with symptoms indicative of various connective tissue diseases (CTDs) and other related diseases with overlapping symptoms. The company offers AVISE Lupus that measures activation of the complement system by quantifying the level of B-cell C4d and erythrocyte bound C4d in the patient's blood; and AVISE APS, which consists of a panel of autoantibody tests that aids in the diagnosis and management of APS. In addition, it provides AVISE Vasculitis AAV, which utilizes a testing panel of individual analytes to provide physicians with results in the assessment and monitoring of anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibody associated vasculitis; AVISE SLE Prognostic, a panel of autoantibodies for assessing the potential for complications affecting the kidney, brain, and cardiovascular system; and AVISE Anti-CarP test, which identifies RA patients with severe disease. Further, the company offers AVISE SLE Monitor, a biomarker blood test; AVISE MTX, a patented and validated blood test; and AVISE HCQ, a blood test to monitor levels of hydroxychloroquine. It has a research collaboration and license agreement with Allegheny Health Network (AHN) Research Institute to develop novel patented biomarkers. The company was formerly known as Exagen Diagnostics, Inc. and changed its name to Exagen Inc. in January 2019. Exagen Inc. was incorporated in 2002 and is headquartered in Vista, California.