Reviewing Mesa Laboratories (NASDAQ:MLAB) & OPKO Health (NASDAQ:OPK)

Mesa Laboratories (NASDAQ:MLAB) and OPKO Health (NASDAQ:OPK) are both small-cap medical companies, but which is the better stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their dividends, earnings, profitability, institutional ownership, risk, valuation and analyst recommendations.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent ratings and target prices for Mesa Laboratories and OPKO Health, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Mesa Laboratories	1	2	0	0	1.67
OPKO Health	1	4	0	1	2.17

Mesa Laboratories presently has a consensus target price of $94.00, indicating a potential downside of 5.84%. OPKO Health has a consensus target price of $1.55, indicating a potential upside of 34.78%. Given OPKO Health’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe OPKO Health is more favorable than Mesa Laboratories.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Mesa Laboratories and OPKO Health”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Mesa Laboratories	$247.54 million	2.23	-$1.97 million	$0.64	155.98
OPKO Health	$581.12 million	1.49	-$225.68 million	($0.27)	-4.26

Mesa Laboratories has higher earnings, but lower revenue than OPKO Health. OPKO Health is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Mesa Laboratories, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

90.6% of Mesa Laboratories shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 64.6% of OPKO Health shares are held by institutional investors. 4.9% of Mesa Laboratories shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 49.7% of OPKO Health shares are held 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.

Volatility & Risk

Mesa Laboratories has a beta of 0.94, indicating that its stock price is 6% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, OPKO Health has a beta of 1.42, indicating that its stock price is 42% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares Mesa Laboratories and OPKO Health’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Mesa Laboratories	1.51%	22.02%	8.86%
OPKO Health	-36.63%	-16.78%	-10.98%

Summary

Mesa Laboratories beats OPKO Health on 8 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Mesa Laboratories

Mesa Laboratories, Inc. develops, designs, manufactures, sells, and services life sciences tools and quality control products and services in North America, Europe, the Asia Pacific, and internationally. The Sterilization and Disinfection Control segment offers biological, chemical, and cleaning indicators, used to assess the effectiveness of sterilization decontamination, disinfection, and cleaning processes in the pharmaceutical, medical device, and healthcare industries. This segment also provides testing and laboratory services to the dental and pharmaceutical industries. The Clinical Genomics segment offers MassARRAY, a genetic analysis tool system, and related consumables, including chips, panels, and chemical reagent solutions used by clinical labs to analyze DNA samples for inherited genetic disease testing, pharmacogenetics, oncology testing, infectious disease testing, doping and toxicology testing, and other differentiated applications for use in research. The Biopharmaceutical Development segment provides automated systems, such as Gyrolab xPand and Gyrolab xPlore hardware and software, Gyrolab Bioaffy consumable microfluidic disks, Gyrolab kits and Rexxip buffers for protein analysis; PurePep Chorus and Symphony instruments for peptide synthesis; and PurePep EasyClean products for purifying peptides. The Calibration Solutions segment offers quality control products to measure and calibrate critical parameters in applications, such as environmental and process monitoring, dialysis, gas flow, air quality, and torque testing in medical device and pharmaceutical manufacturing, laboratory, and hospital environments. This segment’s products include continuous monitoring systems, dialysate meters and consumables, data loggers, gas flow calibration and air sampling equipment, and torque testing systems, offered under DialyGuard, ViewPoint, DataTrace, DryCal, and BGI brands. The company was incorporated in 1982 and is headquartered in Lakewood, Colorado.

About OPKO Health

OPKO Health, Inc., a healthcare company, engages in the diagnostics and pharmaceuticals businesses in the United States, Ireland, Chile, Spain, Israel, Mexico, and internationally. The company's Diagnostics segment operates BioReference Laboratories that offers laboratory testing services for the detection, diagnosis, evaluation, monitoring, and treatment of diseases, including esoteric testing, molecular diagnostics, anatomical pathology, genetics, women's health, and correctional healthcare to physician offices, clinics, hospitals, employers, and governmental units; and 4Kscore prostate cancer test. Its Pharmaceutical segment offers Rayaldee to treat secondary hyperparathyroidism in adults with stage 3 or 4 chronic kidney disease, and vitamin D insufficiency. This segment also develops multi-specific immune therapies focused on oncology, infectious diseases, vaccines, and immunology; OPK88004, an orally administered selective androgen receptor modulator; OPK88003, a once-weekly administered peptide for the treatment of type 2 diabetes and related obesity; Somatrogon (hGH-CTP), a once-weekly human growth hormone injection; and Factor VIIa-CTP, a novel long-acting coagulation factor being developed to treat hemophilia. In addition, it develops and commercializes longer-acting proprietary versions of already approved therapeutic proteins; develops and produces specialty APIs; develops, manufactures, markets, and sells pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, veterinary, and ophthalmic products; commercializes food supplements and over the counter products; manufactures and sells products primarily in the generics market; and markets, distributes, and sells pharmaceutical products in a range of indications, including cardiovascular products, vaccines, antibiotics, gastro-intestinal products, hormones, and others. The company also operates pharmaceutical platforms in Ireland, Chile, Spain, and Mexico. The company was founded in 1991 and is headquartered in Miami, Florida.