Maravai LifeSciences (NASDAQ:MRVI) & MBX Biosciences (NYSE:MBX) Critical Comparison

Maravai LifeSciences (NASDAQ:MRVI) and MBX Biosciences (NYSE:MBX) are both small-cap medical companies, but which is the superior stock? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their dividends, earnings, valuation, risk, profitability, institutional ownership and analyst recommendations.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent recommendations and price targets for Maravai LifeSciences and MBX Biosciences, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Maravai LifeSciences	1	5	5	0	2.36
MBX Biosciences	0	0	4	0	3.00

Maravai LifeSciences presently has a consensus price target of $10.28, suggesting a potential upside of 124.48%. MBX Biosciences has a consensus price target of $37.25, suggesting a potential upside of 201.86%. Given MBX Biosciences’ stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe MBX Biosciences is more favorable than Maravai LifeSciences.

Profitability

This table compares Maravai LifeSciences and MBX Biosciences’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Maravai LifeSciences	-81.13%	-6.61%	-3.45%
MBX Biosciences	N/A	N/A	N/A

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Maravai LifeSciences and MBX Biosciences”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Maravai LifeSciences	$288.95 million	4.00	-$119.03 million	($1.64)	-2.79
MBX Biosciences	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

MBX Biosciences has lower revenue, but higher earnings than Maravai LifeSciences.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

50.3% of Maravai LifeSciences shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.6% of Maravai LifeSciences shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

MBX Biosciences beats Maravai LifeSciences on 5 of the 9 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Maravai LifeSciences

Maravai LifeSciences Holdings, Inc., a life sciences company, provides products to enable the development of drug therapies, diagnostics, novel vaccines, and support research on human diseases worldwide. The company’s products address the key phases of biopharmaceutical development and include nucleic acids for diagnostic and therapeutic applications, antibody-based products to detect impurities during the production of biopharmaceutical products, and products to detect the expression of proteins in tissues of various species. It operates in two segments, Nucleic Acid Production and Biologics Safety Testing. The Nucleic Acid Production segment manufactures and sells products for use in the fields of gene therapy, vaccines, nucleoside chemistry, oligonucleotide therapy, and molecular diagnostics, including reagents used in the chemical synthesis, modification, labelling, and purification of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA). This segment also offers messenger RNA, oligonucleotides, and oligonucleotide building blocks, as well as custom enzyme development and manufacturing and CleanCap capping technology. The Biologics Safety Testing segment sells analytical products for use in biologic manufacturing process development, including custom product-specific development antibody, and assay development services. This segment also provides HCP ELISA kits, other bioprocess impurity and contaminant ELISA kits, ancillary reagents, viral clearance prediction kits, and custom services. The company serves biopharmaceutical companies, and other biopharmaceutical and life sciences research companies; and academic research institutions and in vitro diagnostics companies. The company was incorporated in 2020 and is headquartered in San Diego, California.

About MBX Biosciences

MBX Biosciences, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, focuses on the discovery and development of precision peptide therapies for the treatment of endocrine and metabolic disorders. Its lead product candidate is MBX 2109, a parathyroid hormone peptide prodrug, which is in Phase 2 clinical trial designed as a potential long-acting hormone replacement therapy for the treatment of chronic hypoparathyroidism. The company is also developing MBX 1416, a long-acting glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor antagonist that is in Phase 1 clinical trial designed as a potential therapy for post-bariatric hypoglycemia, a chronic complication of bariatric surgery. In addition, it is developing MBX 4291, a lead obesity product candidate, which is in investigational new drug-enabling studies designed as a long-acting and highly potent GLP-1 and glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide receptor co-agonist prodrug for treating obesity and co-morbidities. The company was founded in 2018 and is based in Carmel, Indiana.