Comparing Twist Bioscience (NASDAQ:TWST) & BioLife Solutions (NASDAQ:BLFS)

BioLife Solutions (NASDAQ:BLFS) and Twist Bioscience (NASDAQ:TWST) are both healthcare companies, but which is the better investment? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their risk, institutional ownership, profitability, earnings, valuation, analyst recommendations and dividends.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of current recommendations and price targets for BioLife Solutions and Twist Bioscience, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
BioLife Solutions	1	8	1	1	2.18
Twist Bioscience	2	2	8	0	2.50

BioLife Solutions currently has a consensus price target of $31.38, suggesting a potential downside of 10.23%. Twist Bioscience has a consensus price target of $98.45, suggesting a potential downside of 22.61%. Given BioLife Solutions’ higher possible upside, equities analysts clearly believe BioLife Solutions is more favorable than Twist Bioscience.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

93.2% of BioLife Solutions shares are owned by institutional investors. 2.2% of BioLife Solutions shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 3.1% of Twist Bioscience shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Volatility and Risk

BioLife Solutions has a beta of 1.91, suggesting that its stock price is 91% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Twist Bioscience has a beta of 2.22, suggesting that its stock price is 122% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares BioLife Solutions and Twist Bioscience”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
BioLife Solutions	$96.21 million	17.77	-$4.59 million	$1.16	30.13
Twist Bioscience	$376.57 million	21.19	-$77.67 million	($2.22)	-57.31

BioLife Solutions has higher earnings, but lower revenue than Twist Bioscience. Twist Bioscience is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than BioLife Solutions, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Profitability

This table compares BioLife Solutions and Twist Bioscience’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
BioLife Solutions	53.29%	2.70%	2.49%
Twist Bioscience	-31.66%	-28.64%	-19.94%

Summary

BioLife Solutions beats Twist Bioscience on 9 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About BioLife Solutions

BioLife Solutions, Inc. develops, manufactures, and markets bioproduction tools and services for the cell and gene therapy (CGT) industry in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and internationally. The company’s products are used in the basic and applied research, and commercial manufacturing of biologic-based therapies. It offers proprietary biopreservation media products, including HypoThermosol FRS and CryoStor Freeze Media that are formulated to mitigate preservation-induced, delayed-onset cell damage and death; bioproduction tools, such as human platelet lysates for cell expansion and CellSeal closed system vials that are used in CGT; and the ThawSTAR line that comprises of a family of automated thawing devices for frozen cell and gene therapies packaged in cryovials and cryobags. The company also provides cryogenic freezer technology for controlled rate freezing and cryogenic storage of biologic materials; ultra-low temperature mechanical freezers; evo shipping containers that are cloud-connected passive storage and transport containers for temperature-sensitive biologics and pharmaceuticals; liquid nitrogen laboratory freezers, cryogenic equipment, and accessories; and biological and pharmaceutical storage and transport services. It markets and sells its products directly, as well as through third party distributors. The company was incorporated in 1987 and is headquartered in Bothell, Washington.

About Twist Bioscience

Twist Bioscience Corporation engages in the manufacture and sale of synthetic DNA-based products. The company offers synthetic genes and gene fragments used in product development for therapeutics, diagnostics, chemicals/materials, food/agriculture, data storage, and various applications within academic research by biotech, pharma, industrial chemical, and agricultural companies, as well as academic labs; Oligo pools used in targeted NGS, CRISPR gene editing, mutagenesis experiments, DNA origami, DNA computing, data storage in DNA, and other applications; and immunoglobulin G proteins for customers focused on the pursuit of drug discovery and development. It also provides NGS tools comprising library preparation kits, human exome kits, and fixed and custom panels, as well as alliance panels, primarily used within diagnostic tests for various indications, population genetics research and biomarker discovery, translational research, microbiology, and applied markets research; and methylation detection kits for cancer, and rare and inherited disease study, as well as fast hybridization and full RNA sequencing workflow solution. In addition, the company provides synthetic SARS-CoV-2 RNA reference sequences as positive controls for the development of both NGS and reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction assays; synthetic monkeypox controls; and various respiratory viral controls, including for influenzas, respiratory syncytial virus, rhinoviruses, SARS, MERS, and coronaviruses. Further, it offers SARS-CoV-2 Research Panels, such as the Twist Respiratory Virus Panel and the Pan-Viral Research Panel, for the detection of disease in a research setting; precision DNA libraries used for antibody engineering, affinity maturation, and humanization; and antibody optimization solution to enable simultaneous optimization of multiple characteristics of a given antibody. The company was incorporated in 2013 and is headquartered in South San Francisco, California.