Head to Head Survey: Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE:TMO) & Azenta (NASDAQ:AZTA)

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

Profitability

This table compares Thermo Fisher Scientific and Azenta’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%
Azenta	-20.63%	1.18%	0.97%

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of current ratings and recommmendations for Thermo Fisher Scientific and Azenta, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Thermo Fisher Scientific	0	6	17	1	2.79
Azenta	1	2	4	0	2.43

Thermo Fisher Scientific presently has a consensus price target of $619.41, suggesting a potential upside of 2.69%. Azenta has a consensus price target of $41.20, suggesting a potential upside of 22.88%. Given Azenta’s higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Azenta is more favorable than Thermo Fisher Scientific.

Risk and 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, Azenta has a beta of 1.37, suggesting that its share price is 37% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

89.2% of Thermo Fisher Scientific shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 99.1% of Azenta shares are held by institutional investors. 0.3% of Thermo Fisher Scientific shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 10.9% of Azenta shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Dividends

Thermo Fisher Scientific pays an annual dividend of $1.88 per share and has a dividend yield of 0.3%. Azenta pays an annual dividend of $0.10 per share and has a dividend yield of 0.3%. Thermo Fisher Scientific pays out 10.1% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Azenta pays out -3.6% 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 increased its dividend for 8 consecutive years. Thermo Fisher Scientific is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and longer track record of dividend growth.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Thermo Fisher Scientific and Azenta”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Thermo Fisher Scientific	$46.34 billion	4.81	$6.70 billion	$18.59	32.45
Azenta	$613.81 million	2.39	-$55.76 million	($2.76)	-12.15

Thermo Fisher Scientific has higher revenue and earnings than Azenta. Azenta 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 Azenta on 13 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 Azenta

Azenta, Inc. provides biological and chemical compound sample exploration and management solutions for the life sciences market in North America, Africa, China, the United Kingdom, rest of Europe, the Asia Pacific, and internationally. The company operates in two reportable segments, Life Sciences Products and Life Sciences Services. The Life Sciences Products segment offers automated cold storage solutions, consumables and instruments, controlled rate thawing devices, and temperature-controlled storage and transportation solutions. This segment also provides sample management solutions, such as consumable vials and tubes, polymerase chain reaction, plates, instruments for supporting workflows, and informatics. The Life Sciences Services segment provides genomic services, that includes gene sequencing and gene synthesis services; and sample repository solutions, such as on-site and off-site sample storage, cold chain logistics, sample transport and collection relocation, bio-processing solutions, disaster recovery and business continuity, and biospecimen procurement services, as well as project management and consulting services for genomic analysis and the management and care of biological samples used in pharmaceutical, biotech, healthcare, clinical, and academic research, and development sectors. It serves a range of life science customers, including pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology companies, biorepositories, and research institutes. The company was formerly known as Brooks Automation, Inc. and changed its name to Azenta, Inc. in December 2021. Azenta, Inc. was founded in 1978 and is headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts.