Contrasting Mesa Laboratories (NASDAQ:MLAB) & Spectral AI (NASDAQ:MDAI)

Spectral AI (NASDAQ:MDAI) and Mesa Laboratories (NASDAQ:MLAB) are both small-cap medical companies, but which is the superior investment? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their profitability, valuation, analyst recommendations, dividends, institutional ownership, risk and earnings.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of recent ratings and price targets for Spectral AI and Mesa Laboratories, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Spectral AI	1	0	2	0	2.33
Mesa Laboratories	1	2	0	0	1.67

Spectral AI currently has a consensus target price of $3.25, indicating a potential upside of 109.68%. Mesa Laboratories has a consensus target price of $94.00, indicating a potential upside of 3.76%. Given Spectral AI’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, equities analysts plainly believe Spectral AI is more favorable than Mesa Laboratories.

Volatility & Risk

Spectral AI has a beta of 0.95, meaning that its share price is 5% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Mesa Laboratories has a beta of 0.89, meaning that its share price is 11% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

67.1% of Spectral AI shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 90.6% of Mesa Laboratories shares are held by institutional investors. 30.7% of Spectral AI shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 4.9% of Mesa Laboratories shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Spectral AI and Mesa Laboratories”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Spectral AI	$29.58 million	1.61	-$15.31 million	($0.74)	-2.09
Mesa Laboratories	$247.54 million	2.02	-$1.97 million	$0.64	141.55

Mesa Laboratories has higher revenue and earnings than Spectral AI. Spectral AI is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Mesa Laboratories, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Profitability

This table compares Spectral AI and Mesa Laboratories’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Spectral AI	-70.64%	N/A	-27.57%
Mesa Laboratories	1.51%	22.02%	8.86%

Summary

Mesa Laboratories beats Spectral AI on 9 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Spectral AI

Spectral AI, Inc., an artificial intelligence (AI) company, focuses on developing predictive medical diagnostics in the United States. The company develops medical diagnostics for faster and accurate treatment decisions in wound care with applications involving patients with burns and diabetic foot ulcers. Its products include DeepView System, a predictive analytics platform integrated with the predictive AI-Burn, which combines AI algorithms and multispectral imaging (MSI) imaging for an assessment of wound healing potential and offers clinicians an objective and immediate assessment of a wound’s healing potential prior to treatment or other medical intervention; and DeepView SnapShot M, a handheld, portable, and wireless diagnostic tool, that provides a potential enhanced and expanded use for the government and emergency care, first responders, and potentially home health care professionals. The company is headquartered in Dallas, Texas.

About Mesa Laboratories

Mesa Laboratories, Inc. develops, designs, manufactures, sells, and services life sciences tools and quality control products and services in North America, Europe, the Asia Pacific, and internationally. The Sterilization and Disinfection Control segment offers biological, chemical, and cleaning indicators, used to assess the effectiveness of sterilization decontamination, disinfection, and cleaning processes in the pharmaceutical, medical device, and healthcare industries. This segment also provides testing and laboratory services to the dental and pharmaceutical industries. The Clinical Genomics segment offers MassARRAY, a genetic analysis tool system, and related consumables, including chips, panels, and chemical reagent solutions used by clinical labs to analyze DNA samples for inherited genetic disease testing, pharmacogenetics, oncology testing, infectious disease testing, doping and toxicology testing, and other differentiated applications for use in research. The Biopharmaceutical Development segment provides automated systems, such as Gyrolab xPand and Gyrolab xPlore hardware and software, Gyrolab Bioaffy consumable microfluidic disks, Gyrolab kits and Rexxip buffers for protein analysis; PurePep Chorus and Symphony instruments for peptide synthesis; and PurePep EasyClean products for purifying peptides. The Calibration Solutions segment offers quality control products to measure and calibrate critical parameters in applications, such as environmental and process monitoring, dialysis, gas flow, air quality, and torque testing in medical device and pharmaceutical manufacturing, laboratory, and hospital environments. This segment’s products include continuous monitoring systems, dialysate meters and consumables, data loggers, gas flow calibration and air sampling equipment, and torque testing systems, offered under DialyGuard, ViewPoint, DataTrace, DryCal, and BGI brands. The company was incorporated in 1982 and is headquartered in Lakewood, Colorado.