Analyzing Impinj (NASDAQ:PI) and NVE (NASDAQ:NVEC)

NVE (NASDAQ:NVEC) and Impinj (NASDAQ:PI) are both technology companies, but which is the better business? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their earnings, institutional ownership, risk, dividends, valuation, profitability and analyst recommendations.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent ratings and target prices for NVE and Impinj, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
NVE	0	0	1	0	3.00
Impinj	1	3	7	0	2.55

Impinj has a consensus target price of $185.70, indicating a potential upside of 5.89%. Given Impinj’s higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Impinj is more favorable than NVE.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

65.9% of NVE shares are held by institutional investors. 2.1% of NVE shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 6.8% of Impinj shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares NVE and Impinj”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
NVE	$26.33 million	18.22	$15.20 million	$3.72	26.65
Impinj	$361.08 million	14.84	-$10.85 million	($0.92)	-190.62

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

Volatility and Risk

NVE has a beta of 1.34, suggesting that its share price is 34% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Impinj has a beta of 1.94, suggesting that its share price is 94% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares NVE and Impinj’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
NVE	57.64%	30.53%	29.54%
Impinj	-7.26%	5.23%	2.09%

Summary

NVE beats Impinj on 9 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About NVE

NVE Corporation develops and sells devices that use spintronics, a nanotechnology that relies on electron spin to acquire, store, and transmit information in the United States and internationally. The company manufactures spintronic products, including sensors and couplers for use in acquiring and transmitting data. Its products comprise standard sensors to detect the presence of a magnetic or metallic material to determine position, rotation, or speed for the factory automation market; and custom and medical sensors for medical devices to replace electromechanical magnetic switches. The company also offers spintronic couplers for power conversion and industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) market; and DC-to-DC convertors for use in power conversion systems and industrial networks for the IIoT. In addition, it undertakes contracts for research and development, and licensing of spintronic magnetoresistive random access memory technology. NVE Corporation was founded in 1989 and is headquartered in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.

About Impinj

Impinj, Inc. operates a cloud connectivity platform in the Americas, the Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Its platform wirelessly connects items and delivers data about the connected items to business and consumer applications. The company’s platform comprises endpoint ICs, a miniature radios-on-a-chip that attaches to a host item and includes a number to identify the item. Its platform also consists of systems products that consists of reader ICs, readers, and gateways to wirelessly provide power to and communicate bidirectionally with endpoint ICs on host items, as well as to read, write, authenticate, and engage the endpoint ICs on those items; and software and algorithms that enable its partners to solve enterprise business problems, such as retail self-checkout and loss prevention. The company primarily serves retail, supply chain and logistics, automotive, aviation, banking, datacenters, food, healthcare, industrial and manufacturing, linen and uniform tracking, sports, and travel industries through original equipment and device manufacturers, tag service bureaus, systems integrators, value-added resellers, independent software vendors, and other solution partners. Impinj, Inc. was incorporated in 2000 and is headquartered in Seattle, Washington.