Critical Contrast: Cross Country Healthcare (NASDAQ:CCRN) & SeqLL (NASDAQ:SQL)

Cross Country Healthcare (NASDAQ:CCRN) and SeqLL (NASDAQ:SQL) are both small-cap business services companies, but which is the better business? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their risk, valuation, dividends, institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, earnings and profitability.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Cross Country Healthcare and SeqLL’s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Cross Country Healthcare	$2.81 billion	0.27	$188.46 million	$2.82	7.59
SeqLL	$80,000.00	21.91	-$4.09 million	($16.40)	-0.28

Cross Country Healthcare has higher revenue and earnings than SeqLL. SeqLL is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Cross Country Healthcare, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Profitability

This table compares Cross Country Healthcare and SeqLL’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Cross Country Healthcare	4.58%	23.60%	13.04%
SeqLL	N/A	-124.09%	-64.18%

Risk & Volatility

Cross Country Healthcare has a beta of 1.03, suggesting that its stock price is 3% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, SeqLL has a beta of 1.34, suggesting that its stock price is 34% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent ratings and target prices for Cross Country Healthcare and SeqLL, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Cross Country Healthcare	0	3	4	0	2.57
SeqLL	0	0	0	0	N/A

Cross Country Healthcare presently has a consensus target price of $28.00, indicating a potential upside of 30.90%. Given Cross Country Healthcare’s higher probable upside, research analysts clearly believe Cross Country Healthcare is more favorable than SeqLL.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

96.0% of Cross Country Healthcare shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 1.8% of SeqLL shares are held by institutional investors. 5.5% of Cross Country Healthcare shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 22.3% of SeqLL shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Summary

Cross Country Healthcare beats SeqLL on 10 of the 13 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Cross Country Healthcare

Cross Country Healthcare, Inc. provides talent management and other consultative services for healthcare clients in the United States. The company operates in two segments, Nurse and Allied Staffing, and Physician Staffing. The Nurse and Allied Staffing segment provides workforce solutions and traditional staffing, recruiting, and value-added total talent solutions, including temporary and permanent placement of travel and local nurse and, allied professionals; temporary placement of healthcare leaders within nursing, allied, physician, and human resources; managed services programs services; education healthcare services; in-home care services; and outsourcing services. It also offers staffing solutions for registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, certified nurse assistants, practitioners, pharmacists, and other allied professionals on per diem and short-term assignments; and clinical and non-clinical professionals on long-term contract assignments, as well as workforce solutions, including MSP, RPO, and consulting services. This segment provides retained search services for healthcare professionals, as well as contingent search and recruitment process outsourcing services. It serves public and private acute care and non-acute care hospitals, government facilities, local and national healthcare plans, managed care providers, public and charter schools, outpatient clinics, ambulatory care facilities, physician practice groups, and other healthcare providers under the Cross Country brand. The Physician Staffing segment provides physicians in various specialties, certified registered nurse anesthetists, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants under the Cross Country Locums brand on temporary assignments. It serves various healthcare facilities, such as acute and non-acute care facilities, medical group practices, government facilities, and managed care organizations. The company was founded in 1986 and is headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida.

About SeqLL

SeqLL Inc. operates as a life sciences instrumentation and research services company worldwide. It focus on development of scientific assets and novel intellectual property across multiple omics fields. The company's True Single Molecule Sequencing technology (tSMS) platform offers a single molecule solution for DNA and RNA sequencing through detection of nucleic acids to researchers for analyzing many billions of single molecules in a single experiment and generate accurate and reproducible data. It provide solutions for various applications, such as biomarker discovery and diagnostic assay developments including laboratories associated with universities, scientific research centers, government institutions, and biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. In addition, the company has research and development agreement with U.S. Department of Justice's Federal Bureau of Investigation to evaluate and determine the forensic capabilities of direct RNA sequencing using tSMS platform; and research collaboration with True Bearing Diagnostics, Inc. performing tSMS on whole-blood RNA to identify transcripts associated with coronary artery disease. Further, it has collaboration agreement with The Bernstein Laboratory to address fundamental questions in chromatin biology and epigenetic regulation; The Ting Laboratory; The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine assisting in the development of new methods for chromatin interaction analysis in single nuclei, with single-molecule resolution; Weizmann Institute of Science for developed and applied innovative single-molecule technologies; and Tetracore, Inc. to provide with tSMS systems and onsite support. The company was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in Billerica, Massachusetts.