Comparing UTStarcom (NASDAQ:UTSI) and Airgain (NASDAQ:AIRG)

UTStarcom (NASDAQ:UTSI) and Airgain (NASDAQ:AIRG) are both small-cap computer and technology companies, but which is the better stock? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their profitability, earnings, analyst recommendations, dividends, institutional ownership, valuation and risk.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings for UTStarcom and Airgain, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
UTStarcom	1	0	0	0	1.00
Airgain	1	0	4	0	2.60

Airgain has a consensus target price of $6.20, indicating a potential upside of 20.51%. Given Airgain’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Airgain is more favorable than UTStarcom.

Profitability

This table compares UTStarcom and Airgain’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
UTStarcom	N/A	N/A	N/A
Airgain	-10.87%	-16.03%	-10.43%

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares UTStarcom and Airgain”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
UTStarcom	$10.88 million	2.14	-$4.37 million	N/A	N/A
Airgain	$60.60 million	1.02	-$8.69 million	($0.50)	-10.29

UTStarcom has higher earnings, but lower revenue than Airgain.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

1.8% of UTStarcom shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 52.8% of Airgain shares are owned by institutional investors. 2.7% of UTStarcom shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 17.8% of Airgain shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Volatility and Risk

UTStarcom has a beta of -0.17, meaning that its share price is 117% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Airgain has a beta of 0.94, meaning that its share price is 6% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Airgain beats UTStarcom on 7 of the 12 factors compared between the two stocks.

About UTStarcom

UTStarcom Holdings Corp. operates as a telecom infrastructure provider to develop technology for bandwidth from cloud-based services, mobile, streaming, and other applications in China, India, Japan, and internationally. Its products include converged packet transport, disaggregated router platform, packet transport network, packet aggregation network, multi-services access network, fiber to the X, carrier Wi-Fi solutions, and software defined network controller products. The company also offers packet optical and network synchronization products. It serves telecommunications operators and equipment distributors. The company was founded in 1991 and is based in Hangzhou, the People's Republic of China.

About Airgain

Airgain, Inc. provides wireless connectivity solutions that creates and delivers embedded components, external antennas, and integrated systems worldwide. The company's products include MaxBeam embedded antennas; profile embedded antennas; profile contour embedded antennas; profile ceramic embedded antenna; ultra embedded antennas; and SmartMax embedded antennas. It offers embedded and NimbeLink embedded moderms; custom cellular solutions; cellular IoT development; cellular IoT development kits; and IoT data plans. In addition, the company provides 5G connectivity, smart repeaters, and fixed wireless access; asset tracking solutions, devices, and partners; and external antennas, fleet antennas, IoT antennas, network antennas, vehicle networking, partner solutions, and accessories. It offers its products under the Antenna Plus brand. It serves industrial, consumer, automotive fleet, enterprise, energy, medical, transportation, agriculture, services, and public safety markets. The company was formerly known as AM Group and changed its name to Airgain, Inc. in 2004. Airgain, Inc. was incorporated in 1995 and is headquartered in San Diego, California.