Critical Contrast: Relay Therapeutics (NASDAQ:RLAY) & Valneva (NASDAQ:VALN)

Valneva (NASDAQ:VALN) and Relay Therapeutics (NASDAQ:RLAY) are both small-cap medical companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their dividends, earnings, institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, risk, valuation and profitability.

Profitability

This table compares Valneva and Relay Therapeutics’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Valneva	-4.35%	-3.93%	-1.42%
Relay Therapeutics	N/A	-45.75%	-40.75%

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent ratings and recommmendations for Valneva and Relay Therapeutics, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Valneva	0	0	2	0	3.00
Relay Therapeutics	0	1	9	0	2.90

Valneva currently has a consensus price target of $18.50, indicating a potential upside of 297.85%. Relay Therapeutics has a consensus price target of $21.22, indicating a potential upside of 315.71%. Given Relay Therapeutics’ higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Relay Therapeutics is more favorable than Valneva.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Valneva and Relay Therapeutics”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Valneva	$158.54 million	2.38	-$109.78 million	($0.13)	-35.77
Relay Therapeutics	$25.55 million	26.75	-$341.97 million	($2.61)	-1.96

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

Insider & Institutional Ownership

11.4% of Valneva shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 97.0% of Relay Therapeutics shares are owned by institutional investors. 14.9% of Valneva shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 4.3% of Relay Therapeutics shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Risk & Volatility

Valneva has a beta of 2.17, meaning that its stock price is 117% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Relay Therapeutics has a beta of 1.67, meaning that its stock price is 67% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Valneva beats Relay Therapeutics on 8 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Valneva

Valneva SE, a specialty vaccine company, develops, manufactures, and commercializes prophylactic vaccines for infectious diseases with unmet needs. It offers IXIARO, an inactivated Vero cell culture-derived Japanese encephalitis vaccine indicated for active immunization against Japanese encephalitis; DUKORAL, an oral vaccine for the prevention of diarrhea caused by Vibrio cholera and/or heat-labile toxin producing enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli bacterium; IXCHIQ, a single-dose, live-attenuated vaccine for the prevention of disease caused by chikungunya virus; and VLA2001, an inactivated whole-virus COVID-19 vaccine. The company also develops VLA15, a vaccine candidate, which is in Phase III clinical trial against Borrelia, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease; VLA1553, a vaccine candidate, which is in Phase III clinical trial against the chikungunya virus; VLA1554, a vaccine candidate targeting human metapneumovirus; and VLA2112, a vaccine candidate to treat patients with epstein-barr virus. It sells its products in the United States, Canada, Germany, Austria, Nordics, the United Kingdom, France, rest of European countries, and internationally. Valneva SE has collaborations with Pfizer, Inc. to co-develop and commercialize its Lyme disease vaccine; and Instituto Butantan for the development, manufacturing, and marketing of single-shot chikungunya vaccine. The company was founded in 1998 and is based in Saint-Herblain, France.

About Relay Therapeutics

Relay Therapeutics, Inc. operates as a clinical-stage precision medicines company. It engages in transforming the drug discovery process with an initial focus on enhancing small molecule therapeutic discovery in targeted oncology and genetic disease indications. The company’s lead product candidates include RLY-4008, an oral small molecule inhibitor of fibroblast growth factor receptor 2 (FGFR2), which is in a first-in-human clinical trial for patients with advanced or metastatic FGFR2-altered solid tumors; RLY-2608, a lead mutant-PI3Ka inhibitor program that targets phosphoinostide 3 kinase alpha; and Migoprotafib (GDC-1971), an oral, small molecule, potent and selective inhibitor of the protein tyrosine phosphatase SHP2 that binds and stabilizes Src homology region 2 domain-containing phosphatase-2 (SHP2) as a monotherapy in patients with advanced or metastatic solid tumors. In addition, it has collaboration and license agreements with D. E. Shaw Research, LLC to research certain biological targets through the use of D. E. Shaw Research computational modeling capabilities focused on analysis of protein motion to develop and commercialize compounds and products directed to such targets; and Genentech, Inc. for the development and commercialization of GDC-1971. The company was formerly known as Allostery, Inc. and changed its name to Relay Therapeutics, Inc. in December 2015. Relay Therapeutics, Inc. was incorporated in 2015 and is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.