ProKidney (NASDAQ:PROK) & NKGen Biotech (NYSE:NKGN) Critical Review

NKGen Biotech (NYSE:NKGN) and ProKidney (NASDAQ:PROK) are both small-cap medical companies, but which is the better business? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their risk, institutional ownership, earnings, dividends, valuation, analyst recommendations and profitability.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of current ratings and recommmendations for NKGen Biotech and ProKidney, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
NKGen Biotech	0	0	0	0	0.00
ProKidney	0	3	2	0	2.40

ProKidney has a consensus target price of $4.50, suggesting a potential upside of 125.00%. Given ProKidney’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe ProKidney is more favorable than NKGen Biotech.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares NKGen Biotech and ProKidney”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
NKGen Biotech	$80,000.00	176.80	-$82.94 million	($5.08)	-0.08
ProKidney	N/A	N/A	-$35.47 million	($0.55)	-3.64

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

Institutional and Insider Ownership

76.2% of NKGen Biotech shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 51.6% of ProKidney shares are owned by institutional investors. 74.7% of NKGen Biotech shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 41.5% of ProKidney shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Volatility & Risk

NKGen Biotech has a beta of 0.53, meaning that its share price is 47% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, ProKidney has a beta of 1.11, meaning that its share price is 11% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares NKGen Biotech and ProKidney’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
NKGen Biotech	N/A	N/A	-479.36%
ProKidney	N/A	N/A	-10.24%

Summary

ProKidney beats NKGen Biotech on 7 of the 10 factors compared between the two stocks.

About NKGen Biotech

NKGen Biotech, Inc. operates as a clinical-stage biotechnology company that focuses on the development and commercialization of autologous, allogeneic, and CAR-NK natural killer cell therapies. It develops SNK01, an autologous NK cell therapy; and SNK02, an allogeneic NK cell therapy, which are in Phase 1 clinical trials. The company was founded in 2017 and is based in Santa Ana, California.

About ProKidney

ProKidney Corp., a clinical-stage biotechnology company, provides transformative proprietary cell therapy platform for treating various chronic kidney diseases in the United States. The company's lead product is Renal Autologous Cell Therapy (REACT), an autologous homologous cell admixture, which has completed Phase I clinical trial for REACT in patients with congenital anomalies of the Kidney and Urinary Tract (CAKUT), as well as in Phase III and Phase II clinical trials for the treatment of moderate to severe diabetic kidney disease. ProKidney Corp. founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.