Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE:TMO) versus Glaukos (NYSE:GKOS) Financial Contrast

Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE:TMO) and Glaukos (NYSE:GKOS) are both medical companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their profitability, dividends, risk, earnings, institutional ownership, analyst recommendations and valuation.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of current ratings and recommmendations for Thermo Fisher Scientific and Glaukos, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Thermo Fisher Scientific	0	5	18	2	2.88
Glaukos	1	1	12	0	2.79

Thermo Fisher Scientific presently has a consensus price target of $608.95, suggesting a potential upside of 29.90%. Glaukos has a consensus price target of $148.00, suggesting a potential upside of 16.76%. Given Thermo Fisher Scientific’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, equities analysts plainly believe Thermo Fisher Scientific is more favorable than Glaukos.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Thermo Fisher Scientific and Glaukos”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Thermo Fisher Scientific	$44.56 billion	3.91	$6.70 billion	$18.19	25.77
Glaukos	$507.44 million	14.67	-$187.69 million	($3.28)	-38.65

Thermo Fisher Scientific has higher revenue and earnings than Glaukos. Glaukos is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Thermo Fisher Scientific, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Profitability

This table compares Thermo Fisher Scientific and Glaukos’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Thermo Fisher Scientific	15.15%	16.86%	8.15%
Glaukos	-34.34%	-6.92%	-5.25%

Risk & Volatility

Thermo Fisher Scientific has a beta of 0.88, meaning that its share price is 12% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Glaukos has a beta of 0.83, meaning that its share price is 17% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

89.2% of Thermo Fisher Scientific shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 99.0% of Glaukos shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.3% of Thermo Fisher Scientific shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 5.9% of Glaukos shares are owned by company 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.

Summary

Thermo Fisher Scientific beats Glaukos on 12 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Thermo Fisher Scientific

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. provides life sciences solutions, analytical instruments, specialty diagnostics, and laboratory products and biopharma services in the North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and internationally. The company's Life Sciences Solutions segment offers reagents, instruments, and consumables for biological and medical research, discovery, and production of drugs and vaccines, as well as diagnosis of infections and diseases; and solutions include biosciences, genetic sciences, and bio production to pharmaceutical, biotechnology, agricultural, clinical, healthcare, academic, and government markets. Its Analytical Instruments segment provides instruments, consumables, software, and services for pharmaceutical, biotechnology, academic, government, environmental, and other research and industrial markets, as well as clinical laboratories. The company's Specialty Diagnostics segment offers liquid, ready-to-use, and lyophilized immunodiagnostic reagent kits, as well as calibrators, controls, protein detection assays, and instruments; immunodiagnostics develops, manufactures and markets complete bloodtest systems to support the clinical diagnosis and monitoring of allergy, asthma and autoimmune diseases; dehydrated and prepared culture media, collection and transport systems, instrumentation, and consumables; human leukocyte antigen typing and testing for organ transplant market; and healthcare products. Its Laboratory Products and Biopharma Services segment provides laboratory products, research and safety market channel, and pharma services and clinical research. It offers products and services through a direct sales force, customer-service professionals, electronic commerce, and third-party distributors under Thermo Scientific; Applied Biosystems; Invitrogen; Fisher Scientific; Unity Lab Services; and Patheon and PPD. Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. was founded in 1956 and is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts.

About Glaukos

Glaukos Corporation, an ophthalmic pharmaceutical and medical technology company, focuses on the development of novel therapies for the treatment of glaucoma, corneal disorders, and retinal diseases. It offers iStent and iStent inject W micro-bypass stents that enhance aqueous humor outflow inserted in cataract surgery to treat mild-to-moderate open-angle glaucoma. The company's product pipeline includes iStent Infinite indicated for use in the treatment of patients with glaucoma uncontrolled by prior medical and surgical therapy; and iDose TR, an intracameral procedural pharmaceutical therapy indicated for the reduction of intraocular pressure in patients with open-angle glaucoma or ocular hypertension. The company markets its products through direct sales organization, as well as through distributors in the United States and internationally. Glaukos Corporation was incorporated in 1998 and is headquartered in Aliso Viejo, California.