BioXcel Therapeutics (NASDAQ:BTAI) & Nuvalent (NASDAQ:NUVL) Critical Contrast

Nuvalent (NASDAQ:NUVL – Get Rating) and BioXcel Therapeutics (NASDAQ:BTAI – Get Rating) are both small-cap medical companies, but which is the superior stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their institutional ownership, earnings, valuation, analyst recommendations, dividends, profitability and risk.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent recommendations and price targets for Nuvalent and BioXcel Therapeutics, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Nuvalent	0	0	2	0	3.00
BioXcel Therapeutics	0	2	6	0	2.75

Nuvalent presently has a consensus price target of $44.50, indicating a potential upside of 46.33%. BioXcel Therapeutics has a consensus price target of $54.78, indicating a potential upside of 182.07%. Given BioXcel Therapeutics’ higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe BioXcel Therapeutics is more favorable than Nuvalent.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Nuvalent and BioXcel Therapeutics’ top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Nuvalent	N/A	N/A	-$46.34 million	($1.51)	-20.14
BioXcel Therapeutics	$380,000.00	1,431.97	-$165.76 million	($5.91)	-3.29

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

Insider & Institutional Ownership

42.4% of BioXcel Therapeutics shares are held by institutional investors. 15.8% of Nuvalent shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 37.0% of BioXcel Therapeutics shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Profitability

This table compares Nuvalent and BioXcel Therapeutics’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Nuvalent	N/A	-27.99%	-26.96%
BioXcel Therapeutics	N/A	-102.47%	-70.62%

Risk & Volatility

Nuvalent has a beta of 1.53, suggesting that its stock price is 53% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, BioXcel Therapeutics has a beta of 1.21, suggesting that its stock price is 21% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Nuvalent beats BioXcel Therapeutics on 6 of the 11 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Nuvalent

(Get Rating)

Nuvalent, Inc., a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company, develops therapies for patients with cancer. Its lead product candidates are NVL-520, a brain-penetrant ROS1-selective inhibitor to inhibit ROS1 fusions that express the normal ROS1 kinase domain without any drug-resistant mutations and remain active in the presence of mutations conferring resistance to approved and investigational ROS1 inhibitors, which is under Phase I development; and NVL-655, a brain-penetrant ALK-selective inhibitor, to address the clinical challenges of emergent treatment resistance, central nervous system-related adverse events, and brain metastases that might limit the use of first-, second-, and third-generation ALK inhibitors that is under Phase I/II clinical trial. The company was incorporated in 2017 and is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

About BioXcel Therapeutics

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BioXcel Therapeutics, Inc. is a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company, which engages in utilizing artificial intelligence approaches to develop medicines in neuroscience and immuno-oncology. The firm offers IGALMI, a proprietary, sublingual film formulation of dexmedetomidine for the acute treatment of agitation associated with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder in adults. It also develops BXCL701, an investigational, orally administered, systemic innate immunity activator for the treatment of prostate cancer and solid tumors that are refractory to checkpoint inhibitors. The company was founded by Vimal D. Mehta on March 29, 2017 and is headquartered in New Haven, CT.