CG Oncology (NASDAQ:CGON) and Geron (NASDAQ:GERN) Head-To-Head Comparison

Geron (NASDAQ:GERN) and CG Oncology (NASDAQ:CGON) are both medical companies, but which is the superior investment? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their profitability, risk, institutional ownership, earnings, dividends, analyst recommendations and valuation.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of current recommendations and price targets for Geron and CG Oncology, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Geron	2	4	4	0	2.20
CG Oncology	1	2	11	0	2.71

Geron currently has a consensus target price of $2.75, suggesting a potential upside of 70.81%. CG Oncology has a consensus target price of $67.83, suggesting a potential upside of 32.80%. Given Geron’s higher possible upside, research analysts clearly believe Geron is more favorable than CG Oncology.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Geron and CG Oncology”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Geron	$76.99 million	13.35	-$174.57 million	($0.12)	-13.42
CG Oncology	$1.14 million	3,614.58	-$88.04 million	($2.04)	-25.04

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

Profitability

This table compares Geron and CG Oncology’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Geron	-43.61%	-29.63%	-13.74%
CG Oncology	N/A	-21.67%	-20.79%

Risk and Volatility

Geron has a beta of 0.62, meaning that its share price is 38% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, CG Oncology has a beta of 1.31, meaning that its share price is 31% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

73.7% of Geron shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 26.6% of CG Oncology shares are owned by institutional investors. 7.4% of Geron shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

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 CG Oncology

CG Oncology, Inc., an oncolytic immunotherapy company, focuses on developing and commercializing backbone bladder-sparing therapeutics for patients with bladder cancer. The company develops BOND-003 for the treatment of high-risk bacillus calmette guerin (BCG)-unresponsive non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) patients; CORE-001 to treat cretostimogene in combination with pembrolizumab in high-risk BCG-unresponsive NMIBC patients; and CORE-002 for the treatment of cretostimogene in combination with the checkpoint inhibitor nivolumab in muscle invasive bladder cancer patients. It also develops PIVOT-006, a cretostimogene monotherapy for intermediate-risk NMIBC following transurethral resection of the bladder tumor; and CORE-008 for treating patients with high-risk NMIBC, including BCG-exposed and BCG-naïve NMIBC patients. CG Oncology, Inc. was formerly known as Cold Genesys, Inc. and changed its name to CG Oncology, Inc. in June 2020. The company was founded in 2010 and is based in Irvine, California.