Financial Comparison: Arvinas (NASDAQ:ARVN) & Geron (NASDAQ:GERN)

Geron (NASDAQ:GERN) and Arvinas (NASDAQ:ARVN) are both small-cap healthcare companies, but which is the better stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their profitability, earnings, analyst recommendations, dividends, risk, institutional ownership and valuation.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

73.7% of Geron shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 95.2% of Arvinas shares are held by institutional investors. 1.7% of Geron shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 7.3% of Arvinas shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Profitability

This table compares Geron and Arvinas’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Geron	-34.17%	-24.48%	-10.30%
Arvinas	2.94%	1.91%	1.29%

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current recommendations and price targets for Geron and Arvinas, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Geron	1	2	2	0	2.20
Arvinas	1	2	5	1	2.67

Geron currently has a consensus price target of $4.00, suggesting a potential upside of 226.53%. Arvinas has a consensus price target of $15.40, suggesting a potential upside of 103.81%. Given Geron’s higher probable upside, equities research analysts clearly believe Geron is more favorable than Arvinas.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Geron and Arvinas”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Geron	$183.88 million	4.28	-$83.50 million	($0.11)	-11.14
Arvinas	$262.60 million	1.86	-$80.80 million	$0.10	75.56

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

Volatility & Risk

Geron has a beta of 0.61, indicating that its stock price is 39% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Arvinas has a beta of 1.8, indicating that its stock price is 80% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Arvinas beats Geron on 13 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Geron

Geron Corporation, a late-stage clinical biopharmaceutical company, focuses on the development and commercialization of therapeutics for myeloid hematologic malignancies. It develops imetelstat, a telomerase inhibitor that is in Phase 3 clinical trials, which inhibits the uncontrolled proliferation of malignant stem and progenitor cells in myeloid hematologic malignancies for the treatment of low or intermediate-1 risk myelodysplastic syndromes and intermediate-2 or high-risk myelofibrosis. The company was incorporated in 1990 and is headquartered in Foster City, California.

About Arvinas

Arvinas, Inc., a clinical-stage biotechnology company, engages in the discovery, development, and commercialization of therapies to degrade disease-causing proteins. The company engineers proteolysis targeting chimeras (PROTAC) targeted protein degraders that are designed to harness the body’s own natural protein disposal system to degrade and remove disease-causing proteins. Its product pipeline includes Bavdegalutamide and ARV-766, investigational orally bioavailable PROTAC protein degraders for the treatment of men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, which are in Phase 1/2 clinical trials; and ARV-471, an orally bioavailable estrogen receptor degrading PROTAC targeted protein degrader for the treatment of patients with locally advanced or metastatic estrogen receptor+/human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-breast cancer, which is Phase 3 clinical trial. Arvinas, Inc. has collaborations with Pfizer Inc., Genentech, Inc., F. Hoffman-La Roche Ltd., Carrick Therapeutics Limited, and Bayer AG. The company was founded in 2013 and is based in New Haven, Connecticut.