Wave Life Sciences Ltd. (NASDAQ:WVE) and Pfenex Inc. (NYSEAMERICAN:PFNX) are two firms in the Biotechnology that compete against each other. Below is a comparison of their dividends, analyst recommendations, profitability, risk, institutional ownership, earnings and valuation.

Earnings & Valuation

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Wave Life Sciences Ltd.	14.41M	89.98	146.65M	-4.86	0.00
Pfenex Inc.	14.86M	13.25	39.59M	-0.99	0.00

Table 1 highlights Wave Life Sciences Ltd. and Pfenex Inc.’s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

Profitability

Table 2 has Wave Life Sciences Ltd. and Pfenex Inc.’s return on assets, return on equity and net margins.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Wave Life Sciences Ltd.	-1,017.70%	-112.2%	-55%
Pfenex Inc.	-266.42%	-43.7%	-32.3%

Liquidity

The Current Ratio and Quick Ratio of Wave Life Sciences Ltd. are 1.9 and 1.9 respectively. Its competitor Pfenex Inc.’s Current Ratio is 3.7 and its Quick Ratio is 3.7. Pfenex Inc. can pay off short and long-term obligations better than Wave Life Sciences Ltd.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

The shares of both Wave Life Sciences Ltd. and Pfenex Inc. are owned by institutional investors at 74.4% and 81.6% respectively. Insiders owned 1.3% of Wave Life Sciences Ltd. shares. Competitively, 0.1% are Pfenex Inc.’s share owned by insiders.

Performance

Here are the Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Half Yearly, Yearly and YTD Performance of both pretenders.

	Performance (W)	Performance (M)	Performance (Q)	Performance (HY)	Performance (Y)	Performance (YTD)
Wave Life Sciences Ltd.	14.43%	19.46%	0.82%	-12.75%	-10.64%	5.85%
Pfenex Inc.	14.08%	19.29%	17.79%	-11.15%	22.72%	47.34%

For the past year Wave Life Sciences Ltd. has weaker performance than Pfenex Inc.

Summary

Pfenex Inc. beats on 9 of the 10 factors Wave Life Sciences Ltd.

WAVE Life Sciences Ltd., a preclinical biopharmaceutical company, designs, develops, and commercializes nucleic acid therapeutic candidates. The company is developing nucleic acid therapeutics that target genetic defects to either reduce the expression of disease-promoting proteins or transform the production of dysfunctional mutant proteins into the production of functional proteins. Its advanced therapeutic programs are in HuntingtonÂ’s disease, Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). In HuntingtonÂ’s disease, it has programs targeting HTT SNP-1 and HTT SNP-2; in DMD, targeting Exon 51; and in IBD, targeting SMAD7. The company also has product candidates in its programs targeting HTT SNP-1 and Exon 51. In addition, it has late-stage discovery programs in epidermolysis bullosa simplex, targeting KRT14 SNP-1 and KRT14 SNP-2, as well as in DMD, focuses on an additional DMD target, AcRIIb. The company has a research, license, and option agreement with Pfizer Inc. for the discovery, development, and commercialization of stereopure oligonucleotide therapeutics; and research collaboration with nLife Therapeutics S.L. exploring cell-specific targeting of nucleic-acid therapeutics in the central nervous system. WAVE Life Sciences Ltd. was founded in 2012 and is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Pfenex Inc., a clinical-stage biotechnology company, develops biosimilar therapeutics in the United States. Its lead product candidates include PF708, a therapeutic equivalent candidate to Forteo (teriparatide) for the treatment of osteoporosis; PF582, a biosimilar to Lucentis (ranibizumab) for the treatment of patients with retinal diseases; and Px563L, a novel anthrax vaccine candidate in Phase 1a trial. The company also engages in developing a pipeline of additional biosimilar candidates, including PF529, a biosimilar candidate to Neulasta; PF688, a biosimilar candidate to Cimzia; PF530, a biosimilar candidate to Betaseron; PF690, a biosimilar candidate to the reference product Oncaspar; PF444-human growth hormone, a biosimilar candidate to Genotropin; and PF688-certolizumab-pegol, a biosimilar candidate to Cimzia. It has collaboration agreements with Hospira, Inc. and Jazz Pharmaceuticals Ireland Limited. Pfenex Inc. is headquartered in San Diego, California.