Financial Survey: Exicure (NASDAQ:XCUR) versus uniQure (NASDAQ:QURE)

Exicure (NASDAQ:XCUR) and uniQure (NASDAQ:QURE) are both small-cap medical companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their profitability, risk, institutional ownership, valuation, dividends, earnings and analyst recommendations.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current recommendations and price targets for Exicure and uniQure, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Exicure	0	0	0	0	0.00
uniQure	0	3	6	1	2.80

uniQure has a consensus price target of $38.89, indicating a potential upside of 192.18%. Given uniQure’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe uniQure is more favorable than Exicure.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

42.8% of Exicure shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 78.8% of uniQure shares are held by institutional investors. 3.9% of Exicure shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 4.7% of uniQure shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Profitability

This table compares Exicure and uniQure’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Exicure	N/A	-190.90%	-36.75%
uniQure	-837.80%	-188.82%	-32.17%

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Exicure and uniQure”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Exicure	$500,000.00	64.63	-$16.91 million	($2.07)	-5.99
uniQure	$27.12 million	26.54	-$308.48 million	($4.93)	-2.70

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

Risk & Volatility

Exicure has a beta of 3.84, suggesting that its share price is 284% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, uniQure has a beta of 0.36, suggesting that its share price is 64% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

uniQure beats Exicure on 10 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Exicure

Exicure, Inc., an early-stage biotechnology company, develops nucleic acid therapies targeting ribonucleic acid against validated targets. The company's preclinical candidate includes SCN9A that is in preclinical studies for the treatment of chronic pain. It also develops immuno-oncology therapeutics based on its proprietary SNA technology. Exicure, Inc. was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.

About uniQure

uniQure N.V. develops treatments for patients suffering from rare and other devastating diseases. It offers HEMGENIX that has completed Phase III HOPE-B pivotal trial for the treatment of hemophilia B. The company also develops AMT-130, a gene therapy that is in Phase I/II clinical study for the treatment of Huntington's disease. In addition, it is developing AMT-162, which is in preclinical trial for the treatment of superoxide dismutase 1- amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; AMT-260 that is in preclinical trial to treat temporal lobe epilepsy; AMT-191, which is in preclinical trial for the treatment of fabry disease; AMT-161 that is in preclinical trial to treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis caused by mutations; AMT-240, which is in preclinical trial to for the treatment of autosomal dominant Alzheimer's disease; and AMT-210 that is in preclinical trial to treat Parkinson's disease. The company was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.