NuCana (NASDAQ:NCNA) vs. Nuvalent (NASDAQ:NUVL) Critical Analysis

Nuvalent (NASDAQ:NUVL) and NuCana (NASDAQ:NCNA) are both medical companies, but which is the superior business? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their valuation, earnings, profitability, analyst recommendations, risk, institutional ownership and dividends.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent ratings and price targets for Nuvalent and NuCana, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Nuvalent	1	1	10	1	2.85
NuCana	0	1	1	0	2.50

Nuvalent currently has a consensus price target of $112.60, suggesting a potential upside of 29.63%. NuCana has a consensus price target of $25.00, suggesting a potential upside of 1,868.50%. Given NuCana’s higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe NuCana is more favorable than Nuvalent.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Nuvalent and NuCana”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Nuvalent	N/A	N/A	-$126.22 million	($3.47)	-25.03
NuCana	N/A	N/A	-$34.37 million	($10.48)	-0.12

Nuvalent is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than NuCana, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Profitability

This table compares Nuvalent and NuCana’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Nuvalent	N/A	-28.63%	-27.15%
NuCana	N/A	-314.47%	-112.60%

Volatility & Risk

Nuvalent has a beta of 1.31, meaning that its share price is 31% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, NuCana has a beta of 0.94, meaning that its share price is 6% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

97.3% of Nuvalent shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 44.0% of NuCana shares are owned by institutional investors. 12.5% of Nuvalent shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 31.2% of NuCana shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

Nuvalent beats NuCana on 8 of the 12 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Nuvalent

Nuvalent, Inc., a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company, engages in the development of therapies for patients with cancer. Its lead product candidates are NVL-520, a novel ROS1-selective inhibitor to address the clinical challenges of emergent treatment resistance, central nervous system (CNS)-related adverse events, and brain metastases that may limit the use of ROS1 tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) for patients with ROS proto-oncogene 1 (ROS1)-positive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) which is under the phase 2 portion of the ARROS-1 Phase 1/2 clinical trial; NVL-655, a brain-penetrant ALK-selective inhibitor, to address the clinical challenges of emergent treatment resistance, CNS-related adverse events, and brain metastases that might limit the use of first-, second-, and third-generation ALK inhibitors that is under the phase 2 portion of the ALKOVE-1 Phase 1/2 clinical trial; and NVL-330, a brain-penetrant human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-selective inhibitor designed to treat tumors driven by HER2ex20, brain metastases, and avoiding treatment-limiting adverse events including due to off-target inhibition of wild-type EGFR, which is expected to initiate phase 1 trial. The company was incorporated in 2017 and is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

About NuCana

NuCana plc, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, engages in the development of medicines to treat patients with cancer. It applies its ProTide technology to transform prescribed chemotherapy agents and nucleoside analogs into medicines. The company, through its technology, is developing ProTides medicines to overcome the limitations of nucleoside analogs and generate much higher concentrations of anti-cancer metabolites in cancer cells. Its pipeline includes NUC-3373, a chemical entity derived from the nucleoside analog 5-fluorouracil that is in Phase 1b/2 study in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer, Phase 2 clinical trial for the second-line treatment of patients with advanced colorectal cancer, and Phase 1b/2 modular clinical trial for patients with advanced solid tumors and lung cancer. It is also developing NUC-7738, a ProTide transformation of 3'-deoxyadenosine, which is in the Phase 2 part of a Phase 1/2 clinical trial for patients with advanced solid tumors. The company has an assignment, license, and collaboration agreement with Cardiff ProTides Ltd to discover, drug design, and in vitro screen purine and pyrimidine-based nucleosides as potential drug candidates. The company was formerly known as NuCana BioMed Limited and changed its name to NuCana plc in August 2017. NuCana plc was incorporated in 1997 and is headquartered in Edinburgh, the United Kingdom.