Contrasting Health Catalyst (NASDAQ:HCAT) & Precipio (NASDAQ:PRPO)

Health Catalyst (NASDAQ:HCAT) and Precipio (NASDAQ:PRPO) are both small-cap medical companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their profitability, institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, risk, valuation, earnings and dividends.

Volatility & Risk

Health Catalyst has a beta of 1.72, suggesting that its stock price is 72% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Precipio has a beta of 1.09, suggesting that its stock price is 9% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares Health Catalyst and Precipio’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Health Catalyst	-34.05%	-6.67%	-3.21%
Precipio	-5.50%	-10.07%	-6.71%

Insider & Institutional Ownership

85.0% of Health Catalyst shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 10.5% of Precipio shares are owned by institutional investors. 2.6% of Health Catalyst shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 16.9% of Precipio shares are owned by 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.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Health Catalyst and Precipio”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Health Catalyst	$316.06 million	0.53	-$69.50 million	($1.59)	-1.50
Precipio	$18.53 million	2.25	-$4.29 million	($0.82)	-29.05

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

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of current ratings and recommmendations for Health Catalyst and Precipio, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Health Catalyst	1	8	5	0	2.29
Precipio	1	0	0	0	1.00

Health Catalyst presently has a consensus target price of $4.36, indicating a potential upside of 82.66%. Given Health Catalyst’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Health Catalyst is more favorable than Precipio.

Summary

Health Catalyst beats Precipio on 9 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Health Catalyst

Health Catalyst, Inc. provides data and analytics technology and services to healthcare organizations in the United States. It operates in two segments, Technology and Professional Services. The company provides data operating system data platform which provides clients single comprehensive environment to integrate and organize data from their disparate software systems; and analytics applications, a software analytics applications build for data platform to analyze clients face across clinical and quality, population health, and financial and operational use cases. It offers services expertise solutions comprising data and analytics, domain expertise and education, tech-enabled managed, and implementation services; and opportunity analysis and prioritization, data governance, data modeling and analysis, quality and process improvement strategy, cost accounting, data abstraction, and population health strategies. The company was formerly known as HQC Holdings, Inc. and changed its name to Health Catalyst, Inc. in March 2017. Health Catalyst, Inc. was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in South Jordan, Utah.

About Precipio

Precipio, Inc., a healthcare solutions company, provides diagnostic products, reagents, and services in the United States. It provides diagnostic blood cancer testing services. The company offers IV-Cell, a proprietary cell culture media that enables simultaneous culturing of four hematopoietic cell lineages; and HemeScreen, a suite of robust genetic diagnostic panels. It offers biomarker testing and clinical project services to bio-pharma customers. The company is based in New Haven, Connecticut.