Mesa Laboratories (NASDAQ:MLAB – Get Free Report) and Adaptive Biotechnologies (NASDAQ:ADPT – Get Free Report) are both healthcare companies, but which is the better stock? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their institutional ownership, risk, dividends, earnings, valuation, profitability and analyst recommendations.
Profitability
This table compares Mesa Laboratories and Adaptive Biotechnologies’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.
| Net Margins | Return on Equity | Return on Assets | |
| Mesa Laboratories | 1.92% | 22.72% | 9.82% |
| Adaptive Biotechnologies | -20.73% | -36.81% | -13.77% |
Analyst Recommendations
This is a breakdown of recent recommendations and price targets for Mesa Laboratories and Adaptive Biotechnologies, as reported by MarketBeat.
| Sell Ratings | Hold Ratings | Buy Ratings | Strong Buy Ratings | Rating Score | |
| Mesa Laboratories | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 2.00 |
| Adaptive Biotechnologies | 1 | 1 | 6 | 0 | 2.62 |
Mesa Laboratories currently has a consensus target price of $110.00, indicating a potential downside of 18.26%. Adaptive Biotechnologies has a consensus target price of $30.06, indicating a potential upside of 5.70%. Given Adaptive Biotechnologies’ stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Adaptive Biotechnologies is more favorable than Mesa Laboratories.
Insider & Institutional Ownership
90.6% of Mesa Laboratories shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 99.2% of Adaptive Biotechnologies shares are held by institutional investors. 2.8% of Mesa Laboratories shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 5.7% of Adaptive Biotechnologies shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.
Earnings and Valuation
This table compares Mesa Laboratories and Adaptive Biotechnologies”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.
| Gross Revenue | Price/Sales Ratio | Net Income | Earnings Per Share | Price/Earnings Ratio | |
| Mesa Laboratories | $249.13 million | 3.03 | $6.71 million | $0.84 | 160.21 |
| Adaptive Biotechnologies | $276.98 million | 16.39 | -$59.50 million | ($0.41) | -69.37 |
Mesa Laboratories has higher earnings, but lower revenue than Adaptive Biotechnologies. Adaptive Biotechnologies is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Mesa Laboratories, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Risk & Volatility
Mesa Laboratories has a beta of 1.06, indicating that its stock price is 6% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Adaptive Biotechnologies has a beta of 2.09, indicating that its stock price is 109% more volatile than the S&P 500.
Summary
Adaptive Biotechnologies beats Mesa Laboratories on 8 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.
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.
About Adaptive Biotechnologies
Adaptive Biotechnologies Corporation, a commercial-stage company, develops an immune medicine platform for the diagnosis and treatment of various diseases. The company offers immunosequencing platform which combines a suite of proprietary chemistry, computational biology, and machine learning to generate clinical immunomics data to decode the adaptive immune system. It also provides clonoSEQ diagnostic test which detects and monitors the remaining number of cancer cells that are present in a patient’s body during and after treatment, known as Minimal Residual Disease (MRD). The company offers products and services for life sciences research, clinical diagnostics, and drug discovery applications. Adaptive Biotechnologies Corporation has strategic collaborations with Genentech, Inc. for the development, manufacture, and commercialization of neoantigen directed T cell therapies for the treatment of a range of cancers; and Microsoft Corporation to develop diagnostic tests for the early detection of various diseases from a single blood test. The company was formerly known as Adaptive TCR Corporation and changed its name to Adaptive Biotechnologies Corporation in December 2011. Adaptive Biotechnologies Corporation was incorporated in 2009 and is headquartered in Seattle, Washington.
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