Ouster (NASDAQ:OUST) & Kopin (NASDAQ:KOPN) Critical Contrast

Ouster (NASDAQ:OUST) and Kopin (NASDAQ:KOPN) are both technology companies, but which is the better stock? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their institutional ownership, risk, valuation, dividends, analyst recommendations, earnings and profitability.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

31.5% of Ouster shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 31.0% of Kopin shares are held by institutional investors. 5.7% of Ouster shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 2.6% of Kopin shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Volatility & Risk

Ouster has a beta of 3.25, suggesting that its stock price is 225% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Kopin has a beta of 3.57, suggesting that its stock price is 257% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares Ouster and Kopin’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Ouster	-26.02%	-17.49%	-12.97%
Kopin	18.26%	14.79%	8.42%

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent ratings for Ouster and Kopin, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Ouster	1	2	6	0	2.56
Kopin	1	1	5	0	2.57

Ouster currently has a consensus target price of $54.67, indicating a potential upside of 54.73%. Kopin has a consensus target price of $7.20, indicating a potential upside of 57.89%. Given Kopin’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Kopin is more favorable than Ouster.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Ouster and Kopin”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Ouster	$204.91 million	12.43	-$60.38 million	($0.86)	-41.08
Kopin	$39.32 million	21.56	$2.61 million	$0.04	114.00

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

Summary

Kopin beats Ouster on 10 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Ouster

Ouster, Inc. provides lidar sensors for the automotive, industrial, robotics, and smart infrastructure industries in Americas, the Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Its products include high-resolution scanning and solid-state digital lidar sensors, analog lidar sensors, and software solutions. The company offers Ouster Sensor, a scanning sensor; and Digital Flash, a solid-state flash sensor. It also provides surround-view lidar sensors, which include Ouster Gemini, a perception platform for smart infrastructure deployments; and Blue City, a Gemini-powered solution for traffic operations, planning, and safety. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

About Kopin

Kopin Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, invents, develops, manufactures, and sells microdisplays, subassemblies, and related components for defense, enterprise, industrial, and consumer products in the United States, the Asia-Pacific, Europe, and internationally. It offers miniature active-matrix liquid crystal displays, liquid crystal on silicon displays/spatial light modulators, organic light emitting diode displays, microLED display technologies, application specific integrated circuits, backlights, and optical lenses; and head-mounted and hand-held VR products. The company’s products are used for soldier thermal weapon rifle sights, avionic fixed and rotary wing pilot helmets, armored vehicle targeting systems, and training and simulation headsets; industrial and medical headsets; 3D optical inspection systems; and consumer augmented reality and virtual reality wearable headsets systems. Kopin Corporation was incorporated in 1984 and is headquartered in Westborough, Massachusetts.