Financial Analysis: Nuvalent (NASDAQ:NUVL) vs. Aligos Therapeutics (NASDAQ:ALGS)

Nuvalent (NASDAQ:NUVL) and Aligos Therapeutics (NASDAQ:ALGS) are both medical companies, but which is the better business? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their profitability, earnings, valuation, institutional ownership, dividends, analyst recommendations and risk.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings and target prices for Nuvalent and Aligos Therapeutics, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Nuvalent	1	0	16	0	2.88
Aligos Therapeutics	1	0	3	1	2.80

Nuvalent presently has a consensus target price of $137.25, indicating a potential upside of 27.54%. Aligos Therapeutics has a consensus target price of $41.50, indicating a potential upside of 521.26%. Given Aligos Therapeutics’ higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Aligos Therapeutics is more favorable than Nuvalent.

Profitability

This table compares Nuvalent and Aligos Therapeutics’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Nuvalent	N/A	-39.29%	-35.01%
Aligos Therapeutics	-1,106.72%	-28.16%	-20.01%

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Nuvalent and Aligos Therapeutics”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Nuvalent	N/A	N/A	-$425.38 million	($5.85)	-18.39
Aligos Therapeutics	$2.19 million	18.88	-$24.19 million	($8.59)	-0.78

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

Risk & Volatility

Nuvalent has a beta of 1.31, indicating that its stock price is 31% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Aligos Therapeutics has a beta of 2.62, indicating that its stock price is 162% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

97.3% of Nuvalent shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 60.4% of Aligos Therapeutics shares are held by institutional investors. 10.2% of Nuvalent shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 4.8% of Aligos Therapeutics shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

Aligos Therapeutics beats Nuvalent on 8 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Nuvalent

Nuvalent, Inc., a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company, engages in the development of therapies for patients with cancer. Its lead product candidates are NVL-520, a novel ROS1-selective inhibitor to address the clinical challenges of emergent treatment resistance, central nervous system (CNS)-related adverse events, and brain metastases that may limit the use of ROS1 tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) for patients with ROS proto-oncogene 1 (ROS1)-positive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) which is under the phase 2 portion of the ARROS-1 Phase 1/2 clinical trial; NVL-655, a brain-penetrant ALK-selective inhibitor, to address the clinical challenges of emergent treatment resistance, CNS-related adverse events, and brain metastases that might limit the use of first-, second-, and third-generation ALK inhibitors that is under the phase 2 portion of the ALKOVE-1 Phase 1/2 clinical trial; and NVL-330, a brain-penetrant human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-selective inhibitor designed to treat tumors driven by HER2ex20, brain metastases, and avoiding treatment-limiting adverse events including due to off-target inhibition of wild-type EGFR, which is expected to initiate phase 1 trial. The company was incorporated in 2017 and is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

About Aligos Therapeutics

Aligos Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, focuses on the development of novel therapeutics to address unmet medical needs in viral and liver diseases. Its drug candidate, ALG-055009, a small molecule THR-ß agonist that is in the Phase 2a clinical trial for the treatment of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). The company also develops ALG-000184, a capsid assembly modulator, which is completed Phase 1b clinical trial to treat chronic hepatitis B (CHB); and ALG-125755, a siRNA drug candidate, which is in Phase I clinical trial for the treatment of CHB. In addition, it develops ALG-097558, which is in Phase 2 clinical trial for the treatment of coronavirus. The company has entered into license and research collaboration agreement with Merck to discover, research, optimize, and develop oligonucleotides directed against a NASH; license agreement with Emory University to provide hepatitis B virus capsid assembly modulator technology; license agreement with Luxna Biotech Co., Ltd. to develop and commercialize products containing oligonucleotides targeting hepatitis B virus genome; and research, licensing, and commercialization agreement with Katholieke Universiteit Leuven to develop coronavirus protease inhibitors. Aligos Therapeutics, Inc. was incorporated in 2018 and is headquartered in South San Francisco, California.