Reviewing Protara Therapeutics (NASDAQ:TARA) & Molecular Partners (NASDAQ:MOLN)

Protara Therapeutics (NASDAQ:TARA) and Molecular Partners (NASDAQ:MOLN) are both small-cap medical companies, but which is the better business? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their dividends, analyst recommendations, risk, institutional ownership, earnings, valuation and profitability.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent recommendations for Protara Therapeutics and Molecular Partners, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Protara Therapeutics	0	0	2	0	3.00
Molecular Partners	0	1	0	0	2.00

Protara Therapeutics currently has a consensus target price of $26.50, suggesting a potential upside of 1,174.04%. Molecular Partners has a consensus target price of $4.50, suggesting a potential downside of 37.76%. Given Protara Therapeutics’ stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, equities analysts plainly believe Protara Therapeutics is more favorable than Molecular Partners.

Volatility and Risk

Protara Therapeutics has a beta of 1.85, meaning that its stock price is 85% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Molecular Partners has a beta of 0.76, meaning that its stock price is 24% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Protara Therapeutics and Molecular Partners’ gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Protara Therapeutics	N/A	N/A	-$40.42 million	($3.74)	-0.56
Molecular Partners	$7.84 million	33.83	-$69.04 million	($2.02)	-3.58

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

Profitability

This table compares Protara Therapeutics and Molecular Partners’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Protara Therapeutics	N/A	-58.80%	-51.37%
Molecular Partners	-864.64%	-31.42%	-28.20%

Institutional and Insider Ownership

38.1% of Protara Therapeutics shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 26.6% of Molecular Partners shares are held by institutional investors. 12.5% of Protara Therapeutics shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 5.9% of Molecular Partners shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

Protara Therapeutics beats Molecular Partners on 9 of the 13 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Protara Therapeutics

Protara Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, engages in advancing transformative therapies for the treatment of cancer and rare diseases. The company's lead program is TARA-002, an investigational cell therapy, which is in Phase II clinical trial for the treatment of non-muscle invasive bladder cancer and lymphatic malformations. It is also developing intravenous choline chloride, an investigational phospholipid substrate replacement therapy that is in Phase II clinical trial for patients receiving parenteral nutrition. The company is headquartered in New York, New York.

About Molecular Partners

Molecular Partners AG, a clinical-stage biotechnology company, develops designed ankyrin repeat proteins therapeutics for the treatment of oncology and virology diseases in Switzerland. The company develops MP0317, a CD40 agonist designed to activate immune cells within the tumor microenvironment by anchoring to fibroblast activation protein that is in Phase I clinical trial; and MP0533, a novel tetra-specific T cell-engaging DARPin for acute myeloid leukemia. It also develops Switch-DARPin platform, a multispecific cKIT x CD16a x CD47 Switch-DARPin program for targeted and conditional immune cell activation; and Radio-DARPin Therapy (RDT) platform, a delivery system for effective and selective delivery of radioactive payloads to solid tumors. It has license and research collaboration agreements with Novartis Pharma AG to develop DARPin-conjugated radioligand therapies; and collaboration agreement with Orano Med SAS to develop novel Radio-DARPin therapeutics. Molecular Partners AG was incorporated in 2004 and is headquartered in Schlieren, Switzerland.