Critical Analysis: Maravai LifeSciences (NASDAQ:MRVI) versus TerrAscend (OTCMKTS:TSNDF)

TerrAscend (OTCMKTS:TSNDF) and Maravai LifeSciences (NASDAQ:MRVI) are both small-cap medical companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their profitability, institutional ownership, risk, dividends, analyst recommendations, earnings and valuation.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings and target prices for TerrAscend and Maravai LifeSciences, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
TerrAscend	0	0	0	2	4.00
Maravai LifeSciences	1	4	4	0	2.33

Maravai LifeSciences has a consensus target price of $5.25, indicating a potential upside of 60.55%. Given Maravai LifeSciences’ higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Maravai LifeSciences is more favorable than TerrAscend.

Risk and Volatility

TerrAscend has a beta of 1.49, meaning that its share price is 49% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Maravai LifeSciences has a beta of 0.32, meaning that its share price is 68% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares TerrAscend and Maravai LifeSciences’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
TerrAscend	-42.72%	-18.32%	-4.36%
Maravai LifeSciences	-62.88%	-22.42%	-12.11%

Insider and Institutional Ownership

5.8% of TerrAscend shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 50.3% of Maravai LifeSciences shares are held by institutional investors. 32.2% of TerrAscend shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 2.1% of Maravai LifeSciences shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares TerrAscend and Maravai LifeSciences”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
TerrAscend	$306.68 million	0.75	-$80.23 million	($0.41)	-1.84
Maravai LifeSciences	$259.18 million	3.23	-$144.85 million	($0.84)	-3.89

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

Summary

TerrAscend beats Maravai LifeSciences on 11 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About TerrAscend

TerrAscend Corp. cultivates, processes, and sells medical and adult use cannabis in Canada and the United States. The company produces and distributes hemp-derived wellness products to retail locations; and manufactures vaporizables, concentrates, topicals, tinctures and edibles. It also operates retail dispensaries under the Apothecarium and State Flower brand names. The company was incorporated in 2017 and is headquartered in Mississauga, Canada.

About Maravai LifeSciences

Maravai LifeSciences Holdings, Inc., a life sciences company, provides products to enable the development of drug therapies, diagnostics, novel vaccines, and support research on human diseases worldwide. The company’s products address the key phases of biopharmaceutical development and include nucleic acids for diagnostic and therapeutic applications, antibody-based products to detect impurities during the production of biopharmaceutical products, and products to detect the expression of proteins in tissues of various species. It operates in two segments, Nucleic Acid Production and Biologics Safety Testing. The Nucleic Acid Production segment manufactures and sells products for use in the fields of gene therapy, vaccines, nucleoside chemistry, oligonucleotide therapy, and molecular diagnostics, including reagents used in the chemical synthesis, modification, labelling, and purification of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA). This segment also offers messenger RNA, oligonucleotides, and oligonucleotide building blocks, as well as custom enzyme development and manufacturing and CleanCap capping technology. The Biologics Safety Testing segment sells analytical products for use in biologic manufacturing process development, including custom product-specific development antibody, and assay development services. This segment also provides HCP ELISA kits, other bioprocess impurity and contaminant ELISA kits, ancillary reagents, viral clearance prediction kits, and custom services. The company serves biopharmaceutical companies, and other biopharmaceutical and life sciences research companies; and academic research institutions and in vitro diagnostics companies. The company was incorporated in 2020 and is headquartered in San Diego, California.