Critical Contrast: Neogen (NEOG) and Its Peers

Neogen (NASDAQ:NEOG) is one of 511 publicly-traded companies in the “Healthcare Equipment & Supplies” industry, but how does it contrast to its rivals? We will compare Neogen to related companies based on the strength of its institutional ownership, profitability, analyst recommendations, earnings, valuation, dividends and risk.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Neogen and its rivals top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Net Income	Price/Earnings Ratio
Neogen	$870.40 million	-$7.90 million	-47.04
Neogen Competitors	$1.88 billion	$138.79 million	10.35

Neogen’s rivals have higher revenue and earnings than Neogen. Neogen is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than its rivals, indicating that it is currently more affordable than other companies in its industry.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent recommendations for Neogen and its rivals, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Neogen	1	1	3	0	2.40
Neogen Competitors	4279	10550	18327	829	2.46

Neogen currently has a consensus price target of $12.67, indicating a potential upside of 7.71%. As a group, “Healthcare Equipment & Supplies” companies have a potential upside of 21.36%. Given Neogen’s rivals stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Neogen has less favorable growth aspects than its rivals.

Risk and Volatility

Neogen has a beta of 1.86, indicating that its stock price is 86% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Neogen’s rivals have a beta of 2.56, indicating that their average stock price is 156% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

96.7% of Neogen shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 40.5% of shares of all “Healthcare Equipment & Supplies” companies are held by institutional investors. 0.5% of Neogen shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 14.8% of shares of all “Healthcare Equipment & Supplies” companies are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Profitability

This table compares Neogen and its rivals’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Neogen	-6.35%	3.29%	2.06%
Neogen Competitors	-305.24%	-170.58%	-22.05%

Summary

Neogen rivals beat Neogen on 8 of the 13 factors compared.

About Neogen

Neogen Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, engages in the development, manufacture, and marketing of various products and services dedicated to food and animal safety worldwide. It operates through two segments, Food Safety and Animal Safety. The Food Safety segment offers diagnostic test kits and related products to detect dangerous and unintended substances in food and animal feed, including foodborne pathogens, spoilage organisms, natural toxins, food allergens, genetic modifications, ruminant by-products, meat speciation, drug residues, pesticide residues, and general sanitation concerns; and AccuPoint Advanced rapid sanitation test to detect the presence of adenosine triphosphate, a chemical found in living cells, as well as provides genomics-based diagnostic technology and software systems that help testers to objectively analyze and store their results and perform analysis on the results from multiple locations over extended periods. The segment offers its products primarily to milling and grain, meat and poultry, prepared foods and ingredients, fruits and vegetables, seafood, dairy, beverage, water, healthcare, traditional culture media markets, food service, and dietary supplements markets. The Animal Safety segment provides veterinary instruments, pharmaceuticals, vaccines, topicals, parasiticides, diagnostic products, rodent control products, cleaners, disinfectants, insect control products, and genomics testing services marketed through veterinarians, retailers, livestock producers, and animal health product distributors, for the animal safety market. The segment offers its products for companion animal veterinarians; livestock producers, veterinarians, and breed associations; retailers; breeding and genetics companies; diagnostic labs and universities; distributors; and other manufacturers and government agencies. Neogen Corporation was incorporated in 1981 and is headquartered in Lansing, Michigan.