Edgewell Personal Care (NYSE:EPC) & Niagen Bioscience (NASDAQ:NAGE) Head-To-Head Review

Edgewell Personal Care (NYSE:EPC) and Niagen Bioscience (NASDAQ:NAGE) are both small-cap consumer staples companies, but which is the better investment? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their earnings, institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, risk, valuation, dividends and profitability.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of recent ratings for Edgewell Personal Care and Niagen Bioscience, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Edgewell Personal Care	1	4	3	0	2.25
Niagen Bioscience	0	1	4	1	3.00

Edgewell Personal Care presently has a consensus price target of $31.50, suggesting a potential upside of 7.62%. Niagen Bioscience has a consensus price target of $8.50, suggesting a potential upside of 287.24%. Given Niagen Bioscience’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Niagen Bioscience is more favorable than Edgewell Personal Care.

Profitability

This table compares Edgewell Personal Care and Niagen Bioscience’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Edgewell Personal Care	-4.55%	5.76%	2.35%
Niagen Bioscience	8.37%	10.26%	7.57%

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Edgewell Personal Care and Niagen Bioscience”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Edgewell Personal Care	$2.22 billion	0.61	$25.40 million	($2.00)	-14.64
Niagen Bioscience	$129.42 million	1.35	$17.38 million	$0.12	18.29

Edgewell Personal Care has higher revenue and earnings than Niagen Bioscience. Edgewell Personal Care is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Niagen Bioscience, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

91.9% of Edgewell Personal Care shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 15.4% of Niagen Bioscience shares are owned by institutional investors. 3.0% of Edgewell Personal Care shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 10.0% of Niagen Bioscience shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Volatility and Risk

Edgewell Personal Care has a beta of 0.36, meaning that its share price is 64% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Niagen Bioscience has a beta of 2.12, meaning that its share price is 112% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Niagen Bioscience beats Edgewell Personal Care on 12 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Edgewell Personal Care

Edgewell Personal Care Company is a manufacturer and marketer of personal care products in the wet shave, sun and skin care, feminine care and infant care categories. As of September 30, 2016, the Company had a portfolio of over 25 brands. It manages its business in four segments: Wet Shave, Sun and Skin Care, Feminine Care and All Other. Its Wet shave products are sold under the Schick, Wilkinson Sword, Edge, Skintimate, Shave Guard and Personna brand names. Its Sun and Skin Care products are sold under the Banana Boat, Hawaiian Tropic, Wet Ones and Playtex brand names and offers Wet Ones, portable hand wipes category, and Playtex household gloves, the branded household glove in the United States. Its Feminine Care segment markets its products under the Playtex, Stayfree, Carefree and o.b. brands and markets pads and liners. Its All Other segment includes infant care, pet care and miscellaneous other products.

About Niagen Bioscience

Niagen Bioscience, Inc. is a global bioscience company, which engages in acquiring, developing, and commercializing proprietary-based ingredient technologies. It is pioneering research on nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+). The company’s patent portfolio includes Nicotinamide Riboside (NR) and other NAD+ precursors, which are commercialized as the flagship ingredient Niagen. It operates through the following segments: Consumer Products, Ingredients, and Analytical Reference Standards and Services. The Consumer Products segment provides finished dietary supplement products that contain the firm’s proprietary ingredients directly to consumers as well as to distributors. The Ingredients segment supplies ingredients as raw materials to the manufacturers of consumer products. The Analytical Reference Standards and Services segment includes supply of phytochemical reference standards and other research and development services. The company was founded by Mark S. Germain and Frank L. Jaksch, Jr. in 1999 and is headquartered in Los Angeles, CA.