Comparing POET Technologies (OTCMKTS:POETF) & GCT Semiconductor (NYSE:GCTS)

GCT Semiconductor (NYSE:GCTS) and POET Technologies (OTCMKTS:POETF) are both small-cap computer and technology companies, but which is the superior investment? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, profitability, earnings, dividends, risk and valuation.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

28.1% of GCT Semiconductor shares are held by institutional investors. 0.2% of GCT Semiconductor shares are held by company 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.

Volatility & Risk

GCT Semiconductor has a beta of 1.24, indicating that its stock price is 24% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, POET Technologies has a beta of 0.81, indicating that its stock price is 19% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent ratings for GCT Semiconductor and POET Technologies, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
GCT Semiconductor	0	0	1	0	3.00
POET Technologies	0	0	0	0	0.00

GCT Semiconductor presently has a consensus price target of $5.00, suggesting a potential upside of 197.62%. Given GCT Semiconductor’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe GCT Semiconductor is more favorable than POET Technologies.

Profitability

This table compares GCT Semiconductor and POET Technologies’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
GCT Semiconductor	N/A	N/A	-27.81%
POET Technologies	N/A	-88.82%	-74.05%

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares GCT Semiconductor and POET Technologies”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
GCT Semiconductor	$9.13 million	8.88	-$2.00 million	($0.26)	-6.46
POET Technologies	$4.43 million	367.44	-$18.17 million	($0.05)	-89.20

GCT Semiconductor has higher revenue and earnings than POET Technologies. POET Technologies is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than GCT Semiconductor, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Summary

GCT Semiconductor beats POET Technologies on 11 of the 13 factors compared between the two stocks.

About GCT Semiconductor

GCT Semiconductor Holding, Inc., operates as a fabless semiconductor company, designs, develops, and markets integrated circuits for the wireless semiconductor industry. The company provides RF and modem chipsets based on 4G LTE technology, including 4G LTE, 4.5G LTE Advanced, and 4.75G LTE Advanced-Pro. It also develops and sells cellular IoT chipsets for low-speed mobile networks such as eMTC/NB-IOT/Sigfox, and other network protocols; and 5G solutions. Its products and solutions are used in smartphones, tablets, hotspots, CPEs, USB dongles, routers, and M2M applications. The company sells its products directly or indirectly through distributors to original equipment manufacturers and original design manufacturers primarily in Taiwan, China, Korea and Japan, Europe, North America and South America. The company was formerly known as Global Communication Technology, Inc. GCT Semiconductor Holding, Inc. was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in San Jose, California.

About POET Technologies

POET Technologies, Inc. engages in the designing, developing, manufacturing and sale of opto-electronic solutions for the sensing, data communications and telecommunications markets. It developed POET Optical Interposer platform, which allows the integration of electronic and photonic devices into a single multi-chip module. The company was founded on November 14, 1985 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.