Qiagen (NYSE:QGEN) & Prime Medicine (NYSE:PRME) Critical Review

Prime Medicine (NYSE:PRME) and Qiagen (NYSE:QGEN) are both medical companies, but which is the superior investment? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, dividends, earnings, risk, valuation and profitability.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

70.4% of Prime Medicine shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 70.0% of Qiagen shares are held by institutional investors. 23.5% of Prime Medicine shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 9.0% of Qiagen shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Volatility and Risk

Prime Medicine has a beta of 1.86, indicating that its share price is 86% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Qiagen has a beta of 0.36, indicating that its share price is 64% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of current recommendations for Prime Medicine and Qiagen, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Prime Medicine	0	0	9	1	3.10
Qiagen	0	5	4	0	2.44

Prime Medicine presently has a consensus target price of $13.13, indicating a potential upside of 362.15%. Qiagen has a consensus target price of $48.78, indicating a potential upside of 22.39%. Given Prime Medicine’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, equities research analysts plainly believe Prime Medicine is more favorable than Qiagen.

Profitability

This table compares Prime Medicine and Qiagen’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Prime Medicine	N/A	-107.87%	-74.97%
Qiagen	4.23%	13.97%	8.33%

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Prime Medicine and Qiagen”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Prime Medicine	N/A	N/A	-$198.13 million	($2.05)	-1.39
Qiagen	$1.98 billion	4.47	$341.30 million	$0.36	110.97

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

About Prime Medicine

Prime Medicine, Inc., a biotechnology company, delivers genetic therapies to address the spectrum of diseases by deploying gene editing technology. The company offers Prime Editors with a Prime Editor protein, comprising a fusion between a Cas protein and a reverse transcriptase enzyme; and a pegRNA, which targets the Prime Editor to a specific genomic location and provides a template for making the desired edit to the target DNA sequence. It has a research collaboration with Cimeio Therapeutics to develop Prime Edited Shielded-Cell & Immunotherapy Pairs for genetic diseases, acute myeloid leukemia, and myelodysplastic syndrome. The company was incorporated in 2019 and is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

About Qiagen

QIAGEN NV is a holding company, which engages in the provision of Sample to Insight solutions that enable customers to gain valuable molecular insights from samples containing the building blocks of life. The company sample technologies isolate and process DNA, RNA, and proteins from blood, tissue, and other materials. The firm assay technologies make these biomolecules visible and ready for analysis. Its bioinformatics software and knowledge bases interpret data to report relevant, actionable insights. The company was founded by Detlev H. Riesner and Metin Colpan on April 29, 1996, and is headquartered in Venlo, the Netherlands.