Critical Analysis: Ouster (NASDAQ:OUST) and Identiv (NASDAQ:INVE)

Ouster (NASDAQ:OUST) and Identiv (NASDAQ:INVE) are both technology companies, but which is the superior stock? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, profitability, earnings, institutional ownership, risk, dividends and valuation.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of current ratings for Ouster and Identiv, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Ouster	1	2	6	0	2.56
Identiv	1	2	0	0	1.67

Ouster currently has a consensus price target of $54.67, indicating a potential upside of 21.72%. Identiv has a consensus price target of $3.40, indicating a potential upside of 40.50%. Given Identiv’s higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Identiv is more favorable than Ouster.

Valuation & Earnings

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

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Ouster	$169.38 million	19.12	-$60.38 million	($0.86)	-52.22
Identiv	$24.27 million	2.42	-$18.00 million	($0.66)	-3.67

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

Insider & Institutional Ownership

31.5% of Ouster shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 65.2% of Identiv shares are held by institutional investors. 5.7% of Ouster shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 3.6% of Identiv shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Profitability

This table compares Ouster and Identiv’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Ouster	-26.02%	-17.49%	-12.97%
Identiv	-62.93%	-11.02%	-10.34%

Risk and Volatility

Ouster has a beta of 3.23, meaning that its share price is 223% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Identiv has a beta of 1.32, meaning that its share price is 32% more volatile than the S&P 500.

About Ouster

Ouster, Inc. provides lidar sensors for the automotive, industrial, robotics, and smart infrastructure industries in Americas, the Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Its products include high-resolution scanning and solid-state digital lidar sensors, analog lidar sensors, and software solutions. The company offers Ouster Sensor, a scanning sensor; and Digital Flash, a solid-state flash sensor. It also provides surround-view lidar sensors, which include Ouster Gemini, a perception platform for smart infrastructure deployments; and Blue City, a Gemini-powered solution for traffic operations, planning, and safety. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

About Identiv

Identiv, Inc., a security technology company, that provides secure identification and physical security solutions that secure things, data, and physical places worldwide. It operates in two segments, Identity and Premises. The Identity segment offers products and solutions that enables secure access to information serving the logical access and cyber security markets, as well as protecting connected objects and information using radio-frequency identification embedded security. The Premises segment provides solutions for premises security market, such as access control, video surveillance, analytics, audio, access readers, and identities to government facilities, schools, utilities, hospitals, stores, and apartment buildings. The company sells its products through dealers, systems integrators, value added resellers, and resellers. The company was formerly known as Identive Group, Inc. and changed its name to Identiv, Inc. in May 2014. Identiv, Inc. was founded in 1990 and is headquartered in Fremont, California.