Financial Analysis: Dole (NYSE:DOLE) & Moolec Science (NASDAQ:MLEC)

Moolec Science (NASDAQ:MLEC) and Dole (NYSE:DOLE) are both small-cap consumer staples companies, but which is the better investment? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, risk, profitability, earnings, valuation and dividends.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

0.1% of Moolec Science shares are owned by institutional investors. 19.9% of Moolec Science shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 41.8% of Dole shares are owned by company 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.

Risk & Volatility

Moolec Science has a beta of -0.65, meaning that its share price is 165% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Dole has a beta of 0.64, meaning that its share price is 36% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent ratings and recommmendations for Moolec Science and Dole, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Moolec Science	0	0	0	0	0.00
Dole	0	2	0	0	2.00

Dole has a consensus price target of $16.00, indicating a potential upside of 8.77%. Given Dole’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Dole is more favorable than Moolec Science.

Profitability

This table compares Moolec Science and Dole’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Moolec Science	N/A	N/A	N/A
Dole	0.56%	7.81%	2.55%

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Moolec Science and Dole”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Moolec Science	$333.61 million	0.02	-$111.46 million	($32.98)	-0.21
Dole	$9.17 billion	0.15	$51.32 million	$0.53	27.75

Dole has higher revenue and earnings than Moolec Science. Moolec Science is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Dole, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Summary

Dole beats Moolec Science on 12 of the 13 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Moolec Science

Moolec Science SA, a science-based food ingredient company, focuses on developing real animal proteins in plants using molecular farming. It offers Chymosin SPC, a dairy ingredient; GLA SONOVA, a nutritional oil; POORK+, a plant-based, animal meat free ingredient with porcine proteins in soybeans; and BEEF+, a meat replacement product. It operates in the United States, Europe, and South America. The company was founded in 2020 and is based in Luxembourg.

About Dole

Dole Food Company, Inc. (Dole) is a producer, marketer and distributor of fresh fruit and fresh vegetables. The Company is a producer of bananas and pineapples, and packaged fruit products, packaged salads and fresh-packed vegetables. The Company has three business segments: fresh fruit, fresh vegetables and packaged foods. The fresh fruit segment contains operating divisions that produce and market fresh fruit to wholesale, retail and institutional customers worldwide. The fresh vegetables segment produces and markets fresh-packed and value-added vegetables and salads to wholesale, retail and institutional customers, primarily in North America and Europe. The packaged foods segment contains several operating divisions that produce and market packaged foods, including fruit, juices, frozen fruit and healthy snack foods. In November 2013, Dole Food Company, Inc announced that an investor group acquired the remaining 60.43% interest in the Company.