Reviewing Lumentum (NASDAQ:LITE) & Corning (NYSE:GLW)

Corning (NYSE:GLW) and Lumentum (NASDAQ:LITE) are both large-cap computer and technology companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their earnings, institutional ownership, dividends, risk, valuation, profitability and analyst recommendations.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Corning and Lumentum”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Corning	$13.12 billion	6.16	$506.00 million	$1.58	59.69
Lumentum	$1.65 billion	15.77	$25.90 million	$1.49	245.64

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

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings and recommmendations for Corning and Lumentum, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Corning	0	3	11	1	2.87
Lumentum	1	5	13	2	2.76

Corning presently has a consensus target price of $91.64, suggesting a potential downside of 2.83%. Lumentum has a consensus target price of $215.00, suggesting a potential downside of 41.26%. Given Corning’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, equities analysts clearly believe Corning is more favorable than Lumentum.

Profitability

This table compares Corning and Lumentum’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Corning	9.16%	18.12%	7.28%
Lumentum	6.11%	4.62%	1.01%

Institutional and Insider Ownership

69.8% of Corning shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 94.1% of Lumentum shares are held by institutional investors. 0.4% of Corning shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 0.4% of Lumentum shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Risk & Volatility

Corning has a beta of 1.11, meaning that its stock price is 11% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Lumentum has a beta of 1.53, meaning that its stock price is 53% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Corning beats Lumentum on 8 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Corning

Corning Incorporated engages in the display technologies, optical communications, environmental technologies, specialty materials, and life sciences businesses in the United States and internationally. The company's Display Technologies segment offers glass substrates for flat panel displays, including liquid crystal displays and organic light-emitting diodes that are used in televisions, notebook computers, desktop monitors, tablets, and handheld devices. Its Optical Communications segment provides optical fibers and cables; and hardware and equipment products, such as cable assemblies, fiber optic hardware and connectors, optical components and couplers, closures, network interface devices, and other accessories for the telecommunications industry, businesses, governments, and individuals. The company's Specialty Materials segment manufactures products that offer material formulations for glass, glass ceramics, crystals, precision metrology instruments, and software, as well as glass wafers and substrates, tinted sunglasses, and radiation shielding products for various markets comprising mobile consumer electronics, semiconductor equipment optics and consumables, aerospace and defense optics, radiation shielding products, sunglasses, and telecommunications components. Its Environmental Technologies segment provides ceramic substrates and filter products for emissions control in mobile, gasoline, and diesel applications. The company's Life Sciences segment offers laboratory products, including consumables, such as plastic vessels, liquid handling plastics, specialty surfaces, cell culture media, and serum, as well as general labware, and glassware and equipment under the Corning, Pyrex, Falcon, and Axygen brands. The company was formerly known as Corning Glass Works and changed its name to Corning Incorporated in April 1989. Corning Incorporated was founded in 1851 and is headquartered in Corning, New York.

About Lumentum

Lumentum Holdings Inc. manufactures and sells optical and photonic products in the Americas, the Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The company operates through two segments: Optical Communications (OpComms) and Commercial Lasers (Lasers). The OpComms segment offers components, modules, and subsystems that enable the transmission and transport of video, audio, and data over high-capacity fiber optic cables. It offers tunable transponders, transceivers, and transmitter modules; tunable lasers, receivers, and modulators; transport products, such as reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers, amplifiers, and optical channel monitors, as well as components, including 980nm, multi-mode, and Raman pumps; and switches, attenuators, photodetectors, gain flattening filters, isolators, wavelength-division multiplexing filters, arrayed waveguide gratings, multiplex/de-multiplexers, and integrated passive modules. This segment also provides Super Transport Blade, which integrates optical transport functions into a single-slot blade; vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers; directly modulated and electro-absorption modulated lasers; and laser illumination sources for 3D sensing systems. It serves customers in telecommunications, data communications, and consumer and industrial markets. The Commercial Lasers segment offers diode-pumped solid-state, fiber, diode, direct-diode, and gas lasers, such as argon-ion and helium-neon lasers for use in original equipment manufacturer applications. It serves customers in markets and applications, such as sheet metal processing, general manufacturing, biotechnology, solar cell processing, graphics and imaging, remote sensing, and precision machining. Lumentum Holdings Inc. was incorporated in 2015 and is headquartered in San Jose, California.