Pliant Therapeutics (NASDAQ:PLRX – Get Free Report) and Intellia Therapeutics (NASDAQ:NTLA – 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 profitability, dividends, risk, analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, valuation and earnings.
Insider and Institutional Ownership
97.3% of Pliant Therapeutics shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 88.8% of Intellia Therapeutics shares are owned by institutional investors. 8.7% of Pliant Therapeutics shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 3.5% of Intellia Therapeutics shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.
Analyst Ratings
This is a breakdown of current recommendations and price targets for Pliant Therapeutics and Intellia Therapeutics, as reported by MarketBeat.
| Sell Ratings | Hold Ratings | Buy Ratings | Strong Buy Ratings | Rating Score | |
| Pliant Therapeutics | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2.00 |
| Intellia Therapeutics | 5 | 7 | 9 | 1 | 2.27 |
Pliant Therapeutics currently has a consensus price target of $3.00, suggesting a potential upside of 249.28%. Intellia Therapeutics has a consensus price target of $20.57, suggesting a potential upside of 64.97%. Given Pliant Therapeutics’ higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Pliant Therapeutics is more favorable than Intellia Therapeutics.
Risk & Volatility
Pliant Therapeutics has a beta of 1.27, suggesting that its stock price is 27% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Intellia Therapeutics has a beta of 1.8, suggesting that its stock price is 80% more volatile than the S&P 500.
Valuation & Earnings
This table compares Pliant Therapeutics and Intellia Therapeutics”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.
| Gross Revenue | Price/Sales Ratio | Net Income | Earnings Per Share | Price/Earnings Ratio | |
| Pliant Therapeutics | $1.58 million | 33.66 | -$149.34 million | ($1.49) | -0.58 |
| Intellia Therapeutics | $59.51 million | 29.36 | -$412.69 million | ($3.36) | -3.71 |
Pliant Therapeutics has higher earnings, but lower revenue than Intellia Therapeutics. Intellia Therapeutics is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Pliant Therapeutics, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Profitability
This table compares Pliant Therapeutics and Intellia Therapeutics’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.
| Net Margins | Return on Equity | Return on Assets | |
| Pliant Therapeutics | N/A | -52.17% | -40.46% |
| Intellia Therapeutics | -672.16% | -57.79% | -47.29% |
Summary
Pliant Therapeutics beats Intellia Therapeutics on 10 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.
About Pliant Therapeutics
Pliant Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company, discovers, develops, and commercializes novel therapies for the treatment of fibrosis and related diseases in the United States. The company's lead candidate is bexotegrast, an oral, small-molecule, dual selective inhibitor of avß6 and avß1 integrins, which is in phase 2b trials for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and in phase 2a trial for primary sclerosing cholangitis. It also develops PLN-1474, an oral, small-molecule selective inhibitor of avß1 for the treatment of liver fibrosis associated with nonalcoholic steatohepatitis; PLN-101095, a dual inhibitor of integrins avß8 and avß1 for the treatment of solid tumors; and PLN-101325 for treatment of muscular dystrophies. Pliant Therapeutics, Inc. was incorporated in 2015 and is based in South San Francisco, California.
About Intellia Therapeutics
Intellia Therapeutics, Inc., a genome editing company, focuses on the development of curative therapeutics. The company's in vivo programs include NTLA-2001, which is in Phase 1 clinical trial for the treatment of transthyretin amyloidosis; NTLA-2002 for the treatment of hereditary angioedema; and NTLA-3001 for alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency associated lung disease. It also focusses on programs comprising hemophilia A and hemophilia B; and research of proprietary programs focused on developing engineered cell therapies to treat various cancers and autoimmune diseases. In addition, the company offers tools comprising of Clustered, Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats/CRISPR associated 9 (CRISPR/Cas9) system. It has license and collaboration agreement with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. to co-develop potential products for the treatment of hemophilia A and hemophilia B; AvenCell Therapeutics, Inc. to develop allogeneic universal CAR-T cell therapies, and co-develop and co-commercialize allogeneic universal CAR-T cell products for an immuno-oncology indication; SparingVision SAS to develop novel genomic medicines utilizing CRISPR/Cas9 technology for the treatment of ocular diseases; Kyverna Therapeutics, Inc. for the development of an allogeneic CD19 CAR-T cell therapy for the treatment of a variety of B cell-mediated autoimmune diseases; and ONK Therapeutics, Ltd. for the development of engineered NK cell therapies to cure patients with cancer. Intellia Therapeutics, Inc. was incorporated in 2014 and is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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