Head-To-Head Comparison: Vaxart (NASDAQ:VXRT) & Iovance Biotherapeutics (NASDAQ:IOVA)

Vaxart (NASDAQ:VXRT) and Iovance Biotherapeutics (NASDAQ:IOVA) are both medical companies, but which is the superior stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, dividends, valuation, institutional ownership, earnings, profitability and risk.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent recommendations and price targets for Vaxart and Iovance Biotherapeutics, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Vaxart	0	0	2	0	3.00
Iovance Biotherapeutics	0	0	10	0	3.00

Vaxart presently has a consensus target price of $3.00, suggesting a potential upside of 201.99%. Iovance Biotherapeutics has a consensus target price of $24.64, suggesting a potential upside of 138.49%. Given Vaxart’s higher possible upside, equities analysts plainly believe Vaxart is more favorable than Iovance Biotherapeutics.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Vaxart and Iovance Biotherapeutics’ top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Vaxart	$7.38 million	23.80	-$82.46 million	($0.53)	-1.87
Iovance Biotherapeutics	$1.19 million	2,429.11	-$444.04 million	($1.80)	-5.74

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

Profitability

This table compares Vaxart and Iovance Biotherapeutics’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Vaxart	-920.00%	-121.06%	-79.98%
Iovance Biotherapeutics	-23,615.70%	-71.45%	-55.17%

Volatility & Risk

Vaxart has a beta of 0.72, indicating that its stock price is 28% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Iovance Biotherapeutics has a beta of 0.66, indicating that its stock price is 34% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

18.1% of Vaxart shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 77.0% of Iovance Biotherapeutics shares are held by institutional investors. 3.0% of Vaxart shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 10.4% of Iovance Biotherapeutics shares are held by 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.

Summary

Vaxart beats Iovance Biotherapeutics on 7 of the 13 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Vaxart

Vaxart, Inc., a clinical-stage biotechnology company, discovers and develops oral recombinant protein vaccines based on its proprietary oral vaccine platform. The company's product pipeline includes norovirus vaccine, a bivalent oral tablet vaccine in Phase 2 clinical trial for the GI.1 and GII.4 norovirus strains; coronavirus vaccine, which is in Phase 2 clinical trial, for the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infection; seasonal influenza vaccine, which is in Phase 2 clinical trial, to treat H1 influenza infection; and human papillomavirus therapeutic vaccine, which is in preclinical stage, that targets HPV-16 and HPV-18 for cervical cancers and precancerous cervical lesions. It has a license agreement with Altesa Biosciences, Inc. to develop and commercialize Vapendavir, a capsid-binding broad-spectrum antiviral. Vaxart, Inc. is headquartered in South San Francisco, California.

About Iovance Biotherapeutics

Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc., a commercial-stage biotechnology company, develops and commercializes cell therapies using autologous tumor infiltrating lymphocyte for the treatment of metastatic melanoma and other solid tumor cancers in the United States. The company offers Amtagvi, a tumor-derived autologous T cell immunotherapy used to treat adult patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma; and Proleukin, an interleukin-2 product for the treatment of patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma. It also develops lifileucel in combination with pembrolizumab to treat frontline advanced melanoma patients; LN-145 for the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and solid tumor cancers; IOV-4001, which is in Phase 1/2 IOV-GM1-201 clinical trial, for the treatment of NSCLC; and lifileucel for gynecological cancers. The company has collaborations and licensing agreements with WuXi Advanced Therapies, Inc.; National Institutes of Health; the National Cancer Institute; H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center; The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center; Cellectis S.A.; Novartis Pharma AG; and Boehringer Ingelheim Biopharmaceuticals GmbH. The company was formerly known as Lion Biotechnologies, Inc. and changed its name to Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc. in June 2017. Iovance Biotherapeutics, Inc. was incorporated in 2007 and is headquartered in San Carlos, California.