Financial Analysis: PepGen (NASDAQ:PEPG) and BridgeBio Pharma (NASDAQ:BBIO)

BridgeBio Pharma (NASDAQ:BBIO) and PepGen (NASDAQ:PEPG) are both medical companies, but which is the superior business? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, risk, profitability, earnings, institutional ownership, valuation and dividends.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

99.9% of BridgeBio Pharma shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 58.0% of PepGen shares are held by institutional investors. 24.7% of BridgeBio Pharma shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 4.6% of PepGen shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent ratings and target prices for BridgeBio Pharma and PepGen, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
BridgeBio Pharma	0	2	10	1	2.92
PepGen	0	0	2	0	3.00

BridgeBio Pharma currently has a consensus price target of $47.21, suggesting a potential upside of 86.40%. PepGen has a consensus price target of $23.00, suggesting a potential upside of 44.11%. Given BridgeBio Pharma’s higher probable upside, research analysts plainly believe BridgeBio Pharma is more favorable than PepGen.

Volatility & Risk

BridgeBio Pharma has a beta of 1.08, meaning that its stock price is 8% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, PepGen has a beta of 1.76, meaning that its stock price is 76% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares BridgeBio Pharma and PepGen’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
BridgeBio Pharma	-246.24%	N/A	-80.12%
PepGen	N/A	-57.32%	-46.14%

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares BridgeBio Pharma and PepGen’s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
BridgeBio Pharma	$9.30 million	509.68	-$643.20 million	($3.22)	-7.87
PepGen	N/A	N/A	-$78.63 million	($3.25)	-4.91

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

Summary

BridgeBio Pharma beats PepGen on 8 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About BridgeBio Pharma

BridgeBio Pharma, Inc., a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company, discovers, creates, tests, and delivers transformative medicines to treat patients who suffer from genetic diseases and cancers. Its products in development programs include AG10, a next-generation oral small molecule near-complete TTR stabilizer that is in Phase 3 clinical trial for the treatment of TTR amyloidosis, or transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy (ATTR-CM); low-dose infigratinib, an oral FGFR1-3 selective tyrosine kinase inhibitor, which is in Phase 3 double-blinded, placebo-controlled pivotal study for the treatment option for children with achondroplasia; and BBP-631, an AAV5 gene transfer product candidate that is in Phase 1/2 clinical trial for the treatment of congenital adrenal hyperplasia, or CAH, driven by 21-hydroxylase deficiency, or 21OHD. The company also develops Encaleret, a small molecule antagonist of the calcium sensing receptor, or CaSR, which is in phase 3 clinical trial for treating autosomal dominant hypocalcemia type 1, or ADH1; and BBP-418, a glycosylation substrate pro-drug that is in Phase 3 clinical trial for treating limb-girdle muscular dystrophy type 2I/R9 (LGMD2I/R9). In addition, it engages in developing products for mendelian, oncology, and gene therapy diseases. BridgeBio Pharma, Inc. has license and collaboration agreements with the Leland Stanford Junior University; and Leidos Biomedical Research, Inc. The company was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.

About PepGen

PepGen Inc., a clinical-stage biotechnology company, focuses on the development of oligonucleotide therapeutics for use in the treatment of severe neuromuscular and neurologic diseases. Its lead product candidate is PGN-EDO51, an EDO peptide that is in Phase 2 clinical trial to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) patients. The company is also developing PGN-EDODM1, an EDO peptide-conjugated PMO, which is in Phase 1 clinical trial for the treatment of myotonic dystrophy type 1, as well as EDO therapeutic candidates, such as PGN-EDO53, PGN-EDO45, and PGN-EDO44 for the treatment of DMD. PepGen Inc. was founded in 2018 and is based in Boston, Massachusetts.