Head to Head Comparison: Twist Bioscience (NASDAQ:TWST) vs. Quanterix (NASDAQ:QTRX)

Quanterix (NASDAQ:QTRX) and Twist Bioscience (NASDAQ:TWST) are both healthcare companies, but which is the superior stock? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their profitability, dividends, earnings, risk, valuation, analyst recommendations and institutional ownership.

Profitability

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

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Quanterix	-80.25%	-26.09%	-19.03%
Twist Bioscience	-31.66%	-28.64%	-19.94%

Institutional and Insider Ownership

86.5% of Quanterix shares are owned by institutional investors. 1.5% of Quanterix shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 3.1% of Twist Bioscience shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Volatility & Risk

Quanterix has a beta of 1.02, meaning that its stock price is 2% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Twist Bioscience has a beta of 2.19, meaning that its stock price is 119% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of current ratings and price targets for Quanterix and Twist Bioscience, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Quanterix	1	2	0	0	1.67
Twist Bioscience	2	3	8	0	2.46

Quanterix presently has a consensus price target of $3.00, indicating a potential downside of 8.54%. Twist Bioscience has a consensus price target of $128.17, indicating a potential downside of 19.79%. Given Quanterix’s higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Quanterix is more favorable than Twist Bioscience.

Valuation and Earnings

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

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Quanterix	$138.90 million	1.12	-$107.15 million	($2.63)	-1.25
Twist Bioscience	$376.57 million	26.61	-$77.67 million	($2.22)	-71.97

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

Summary

Twist Bioscience beats Quanterix on 9 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Quanterix

Quanterix Corporation, a life sciences company, engages in development and marketing of digital immunoassay platforms that advances precision health for life sciences research and diagnostics in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific regions. The company offers HD-X instrument, a protein detection platform; and SR-X instrument that enables researchers to apply Simoa detection in an expanded range of applications. It also provides SP-X instrument that is based on Simoa planar array technology for the measurement of multiplex chemiluminescent immunoassays. The company's products include assays include all components required to run enzyme-based immunoassay, such as beads, capture and detector reagents, and enzyme reagents and substrate; and replacement parts, reagents, and antibodies. In addition, it offers contract research services, including sample testing, homebrew assay development, custom assay development, lucent diagnostic, and LDT testing services. The company primarily operates in the areas of neurology, oncology, cardiology, infectious diseases, and inflammation. It sells its products for the life science research sector primarily to laboratories associated with academic and governmental research institutions, as well as pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and contract research companies through a direct field sale, support organizations, and distributors or sales agents. The company was formerly known as Digital Genomics, Inc. and changed its name to Quanterix Corporation in August 2007. Quanterix Corporation was incorporated in 2007 and is headquartered in Billerica, Massachusetts.

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.