Critical Survey: Mesa Laboratories (NASDAQ:MLAB) versus enVVeno Medical (NASDAQ:NVNO)

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

Insider and Institutional Ownership

34.7% of enVVeno Medical shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 90.6% of Mesa Laboratories shares are held by institutional investors. 15.0% of enVVeno Medical shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 4.9% of Mesa Laboratories shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Volatility & Risk

enVVeno Medical has a beta of 1.07, indicating that its share price is 7% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Mesa Laboratories has a beta of 0.89, indicating that its share price is 11% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of recent recommendations and price targets for enVVeno Medical and Mesa Laboratories, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
enVVeno Medical	1	1	0	0	1.50
Mesa Laboratories	1	2	0	0	1.67

Mesa Laboratories has a consensus target price of $94.00, indicating a potential upside of 0.69%. Given Mesa Laboratories’ stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Mesa Laboratories is more favorable than enVVeno Medical.

Valuation & Earnings

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

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
enVVeno Medical	N/A	N/A	-$21.82 million	($37.89)	-0.31
Mesa Laboratories	$247.54 million	2.08	-$1.97 million	$0.64	145.88

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

Profitability

This table compares enVVeno Medical and Mesa Laboratories’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
enVVeno Medical	N/A	-61.45%	-56.88%
Mesa Laboratories	1.51%	22.02%	8.86%

Summary

Mesa Laboratories beats enVVeno Medical on 10 of the 12 factors compared between the two stocks.

About enVVeno Medical

enVVeno Medical Corporation (Nasdaq: NVNO) is an medical device company focused on the development of innovative bioprosthetic (tissue-based) devices to improve the standard of care in the treatment of venous disease. The company’s lead product, the VenoValve®️, is a first-in-class, surgical implant being developed for the treatment of severe deep venous Chronic Venous Insufficiency (CVI). Deep venous CVI occurs when valves inside of the deep veins of the leg become damaged, resulting in insufficient blood being returned to the heart. The malfunctioning vein valves cause blood to flow backwards (reflux) and pool in the lower leg, increasing the pressure within the veins of the leg (venous hypertension). In the most severe cases, CVI can lead to venous ulcers (open skin sores) that become chronic and difficult to heal. The VenoValve is implanted in the femoral vein and works as a replacement venous valve, designed to reduce reflux and venous hypertension, and to restore proper directional blood flow back to the heart. With severe deep venous CVI impacting an estimated 2.4 million people in the U.S., who have no effective treatment options, the VenoValve has received Breakthrough Device Designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and is currently being evaluated in the SAVVE U.S. clinical trial.

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.