Ascendis Pharma A/S (NASDAQ:ASND) and Valneva (NASDAQ:VALN) Financial Survey

Valneva (NASDAQ:VALN) and Ascendis Pharma A/S (NASDAQ:ASND) are both healthcare companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their profitability, dividends, institutional ownership, earnings, analyst recommendations, valuation and risk.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings and price targets for Valneva and Ascendis Pharma A/S, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Valneva	2	0	1	0	1.67
Ascendis Pharma A/S	0	1	19	0	2.95

Valneva currently has a consensus price target of $9.30, suggesting a potential upside of 71.90%. Ascendis Pharma A/S has a consensus price target of $305.95, suggesting a potential upside of 24.80%. Given Valneva’s higher possible upside, research analysts plainly believe Valneva is more favorable than Ascendis Pharma A/S.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Valneva and Ascendis Pharma A/S”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Valneva	$197.56 million	2.60	-$130.33 million	($2.11)	-2.56
Ascendis Pharma A/S	$814.57 million	18.77	-$258.00 million	$12.89	19.02

Valneva has higher earnings, but lower revenue than Ascendis Pharma A/S. Valneva is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Ascendis Pharma A/S, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Profitability

This table compares Valneva and Ascendis Pharma A/S’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Valneva	-110.33%	-153.20%	-39.50%
Ascendis Pharma A/S	70.99%	32.54%	7.71%

Volatility and Risk

Valneva has a beta of 1.53, indicating that its share price is 53% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Ascendis Pharma A/S has a beta of 0.38, indicating that its share price is 62% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

11.4% of Valneva shares are held by institutional investors. 14.9% of Valneva shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 40.0% of Ascendis Pharma A/S shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

Ascendis Pharma A/S beats Valneva on 10 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Valneva

Valneva SE, a specialty vaccine company, develops, manufactures, and commercializes prophylactic vaccines for infectious diseases with unmet needs. It offers IXIARO, an inactivated Vero cell culture-derived Japanese encephalitis vaccine indicated for active immunization against Japanese encephalitis; DUKORAL, an oral vaccine for the prevention of diarrhea caused by Vibrio cholera and/or heat-labile toxin producing enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli bacterium; IXCHIQ, a single-dose, live-attenuated vaccine for the prevention of disease caused by chikungunya virus; and VLA2001, an inactivated whole-virus COVID-19 vaccine. The company also develops VLA15, a vaccine candidate, which is in Phase III clinical trial against Borrelia, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease; VLA1553, a vaccine candidate, which is in Phase III clinical trial against the chikungunya virus; VLA1554, a vaccine candidate targeting human metapneumovirus; and VLA2112, a vaccine candidate to treat patients with epstein-barr virus. It sells its products in the United States, Canada, Germany, Austria, Nordics, the United Kingdom, France, rest of European countries, and internationally. Valneva SE has collaborations with Pfizer, Inc. to co-develop and commercialize its Lyme disease vaccine; and Instituto Butantan for the development, manufacturing, and marketing of single-shot chikungunya vaccine. The company was founded in 1998 and is based in Saint-Herblain, France.

About Ascendis Pharma A/S

Ascendis Pharma A/S, a biopharmaceutical company, focuses on developing therapies for unmet medical needs. It offers SKYTROFA for treating patients with growth hormone deficiency (GHD). The company is also developing a pipeline of three independent endocrinology rare disease product candidates in clinical development, as well as focuses on advancing oncology therapeutic candidates. The company was incorporated in 2006 and is headquartered in Hellerup, Denmark.