nLight (LASR) vs. Its Competitors Head to Head Review

nLight (NASDAQ:LASR) is one of 377 publicly-traded companies in the “Electronic Equipment, Instruments & Components” industry, but how does it weigh in compared to its competitors? We will compare nLight to similar businesses based on the strength of its dividends, profitability, risk, institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, valuation and earnings.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of current ratings and price targets for nLight and its competitors, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
nLight	1	1	9	1	2.83
nLight Competitors	2049	7626	10456	667	2.47

nLight currently has a consensus price target of $82.06, indicating a potential upside of 86.49%. As a group, “Electronic Equipment, Instruments & Components” companies have a potential upside of 34.87%. Given nLight’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, equities research analysts plainly believe nLight is more favorable than its competitors.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares nLight and its competitors top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Net Income	Price/Earnings Ratio
nLight	$261.33 million	-$23.47 million	-191.30
nLight Competitors	$4.16 billion	$172.92 million	4.53

nLight’s competitors have higher revenue and earnings than nLight. nLight is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than its competitors, indicating that it is currently more affordable than other companies in its industry.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

83.9% of nLight shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 43.5% of shares of all “Electronic Equipment, Instruments & Components” companies are held by institutional investors. 3.1% of nLight shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 16.1% of shares of all “Electronic Equipment, Instruments & Components” companies are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Profitability

This table compares nLight and its competitors’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
nLight	-4.02%	-1.03%	-0.85%
nLight Competitors	-141.16%	-27.05%	-7.22%

Volatility and Risk

nLight has a beta of 2.46, indicating that its share price is 146% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, nLight’s competitors have a beta of -0.30, indicating that their average share price is 130% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

nLight beats its competitors on 9 of the 13 factors compared.

About nLight

nLIGHT, Inc. develops and manufactures lasers and related photonics products for industrial, aerospace and defense applications. Its offerings include high-power semiconductor lasers, fiber lasers and ultrafast lasers, along with components and systems used to deliver and control laser energy. The company’s products support applications such as materials processing and other industrial tasks, as well as defense technologies including directed-energy systems. nLIGHT serves customers in the United States and international markets.