Maze Therapeutics (NASDAQ:MAZE – Get Free Report) and Nektar Therapeutics (NASDAQ:NKTR – Get Free Report) are both small-cap healthcare companies, but which is the superior business? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their earnings, profitability, analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, risk, valuation and dividends.
Risk & Volatility
Maze Therapeutics has a beta of 2.16, suggesting that its stock price is 116% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Nektar Therapeutics has a beta of 1.26, suggesting that its stock price is 26% more volatile than the S&P 500.
Profitability
This table compares Maze Therapeutics and Nektar Therapeutics’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.
| Net Margins | Return on Equity | Return on Assets | |
| Maze Therapeutics | N/A | -34.94% | -30.18% |
| Nektar Therapeutics | -287.84% | -37.87% | -25.67% |
Earnings and Valuation
| Gross Revenue | Price/Sales Ratio | Net Income | Earnings Per Share | Price/Earnings Ratio | |
| Maze Therapeutics | $167.50 million | 9.19 | -$131.12 million | ($2.52) | -10.99 |
| Nektar Therapeutics | $55.23 million | 24.63 | -$164.08 million | ($6.70) | -5.95 |
Maze Therapeutics has higher revenue and earnings than Nektar Therapeutics. Maze Therapeutics is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Nektar Therapeutics, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Analyst Ratings
This is a summary of current recommendations and price targets for Maze Therapeutics and Nektar Therapeutics, as provided by MarketBeat.com.
| Sell Ratings | Hold Ratings | Buy Ratings | Strong Buy Ratings | Rating Score | |
| Maze Therapeutics | 1 | 0 | 9 | 3 | 3.08 |
| Nektar Therapeutics | 1 | 4 | 10 | 1 | 2.69 |
Maze Therapeutics presently has a consensus price target of $63.40, indicating a potential upside of 128.88%. Nektar Therapeutics has a consensus price target of $130.67, indicating a potential upside of 227.98%. Given Nektar Therapeutics’ higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Nektar Therapeutics is more favorable than Maze Therapeutics.
Insider and Institutional Ownership
75.9% of Nektar Therapeutics shares are held by institutional investors. 5.3% of Maze Therapeutics shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 2.5% of Nektar Therapeutics shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.
Summary
Maze Therapeutics beats Nektar Therapeutics on 9 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.
About Maze Therapeutics
We are a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company harnessing the power of human genetics to develop novel, small molecule precision medicines for patients living with renal, cardiovascular and related metabolic diseases, including obesity. We are advancing a pipeline using our Compass platform, which allows us to identify and characterize genetic variants in disease and then link those variants to the biological pathways that drive disease in specific patient groups through a process we refer to as variant functionalization. Our Compass platform has been purpose-built to inform all phases of our drug discovery and development process through clinical trial design. We are currently advancing two wholly owned lead programs, MZE829 and MZE782, each of which represents a novel precision medicine-based approach for chronic kidney disease, or CKD. Our goal is to bring novel precision medicines to patients to maximize our impact on human health. CKD is a serious, progressive condition that affects approximately 37 million patients in the United States, where it is expected to be the fifth most prevalent chronic disease by 2040. Current treatments for CKD consider patients as falling into clinical categories and focus on slowing the progression of disease, but do not target the underlying genetic drivers of disease. Our lead programs are designed to phenocopy, or mimic, the protective effects of certain genetic variants that are associated with reduced disease burden and improved kidney function in distinct groups of CKD patients. Our most advanced lead program, MZE829, is an oral, small molecule inhibitor of apolipoprotein L1, or APOL1, for the treatment of patients with APOL1 kidney disease, or AKD, which is estimated to affect over one million patients in the United States alone. Although the link between APOL1 variants and renal dysfunction has been known for over a decade, we have identified a new protective variant that underpins our therapeutic approach for MZE829 and may ultimately allow us to address a broader population of AKD than has previously been possible in the clinical setting. In October 2024, we reported results for our Phase 1 clinical trial of MZE829, in which we enrolled 111 healthy patients who received either single or multiple ascending doses of 20 mg to 480 mg of MZE829 administered daily. Treatment was well tolerated with no severe adverse events or serious adverse events reported in patients treated with single doses up to 480 mg and multiple doses of up to 350 mg daily for seven days. Dose-proportional pharmacokinetics, or PK, was observed with low variability (10-40%) across doses. We initiated a Phase 2 trial of MZE829 in November 2024 and expect to dose our first patient in the first quarter of 2025 and to report proof of concept data in the first quarter of 2026. Our second lead program, MZE782, is an oral, small molecule inhibitor of the solute transporter SLC6A19, a novel CKD target, with the potential to address approximately five million of the CKD patients in the United States with inadequate responses to currently available CKD therapies. Beyond its use as a potential standalone therapy, MZE782 may also provide a significant benefit to patients in combination with standard of care, including as a complementary treatment to current approved regimens or as an alternative option for those patients who do not adequately respond to today’s standard of care. We initiated a Phase 1 trial of MZE782 in September 2024 and expect to report initial data from this trial in the second half of 2025. In addition to CKD, we believe MZE782 may provide benefit to patients suffering from the genetically defined metabolic disease, phenylketonuria, or PKU. Following our ongoing Phase 1 trial of MZE782, we plan to conduct a parallel Phase 2 clinical trial to explore MZE782 as a potential treatment of PKU. Our Compass platform supports end-to-end variant identification and functionalization capabilities as well as advanced research tools and methodologies for drug development. We believe the process of variant functionalization, or understanding how genetic variants function to affect the course of disease, is a foundational aspect of precision medicine and one of the core capabilities that sets us apart from others in the field. We were incorporated under the laws of the State of Delaware on August 29, 2017, originally under the name Genetic Modifiers NewCo, Inc. We changed our name on July 5, 2018 to Modulus Therapeutics, Inc. and on September 25, 2018, to Maze Therapeutics, Inc. Our principal executive offices are located at 171 Oyster Point Blvd., Suite 300, South San Francisco, California.
About Nektar Therapeutics
Nektar Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company, focuses on discovering and developing medicines in the field of immunotherapy in the United States and internationally. The company is developing rezpegaldesleukin, a cytokine Treg stimulant that is in phase 2 clinical trial for the treatment of systemic lupus erythematosus and ulcerative colitis, as well as phase 2b clinical trial to treat atopic dermatitis and psoriasis; and NKTR-255, an IL-15 receptor agonist, which is in phase 1 clinical trial to boost the immune system's natural ability to fight cancer. It has collaboration agreements with Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd.; AstraZeneca AB; UCB Pharma S.A.; F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd; Bausch Health Companies Inc.; Pfizer Inc.; Amgen Inc.; UCB Pharma (Biogen); Bristol-Myers Squibb Company; Merck KGaA; and SFJ Pharmaceuticals, Inc. The company was incorporated in 1990 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
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