Harmonic (NASDAQ:HLIT) and u-blox (OTCMKTS:UBLXF) Critical Comparison

u-blox (OTCMKTS:UBLXF) and Harmonic (NASDAQ:HLIT) are both computer and technology companies, but which is the better business? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their dividends, earnings, valuation, analyst recommendations, profitability, institutional ownership and risk.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of current ratings and price targets for u-blox and Harmonic, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
u-blox	0	0	0	0	N/A
Harmonic	0	0	3	1	3.25

Harmonic has a consensus target price of $18.50, indicating a potential upside of 38.89%. Given Harmonic’s higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Harmonic is more favorable than u-blox.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares u-blox and Harmonic’s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
u-blox	N/A	N/A	N/A	$3.99	22.41
Harmonic	$555.10 million	2.69	$83.99 million	$0.60	22.20

Harmonic has higher revenue and earnings than u-blox. Harmonic is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than u-blox, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

32.3% of u-blox shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 99.4% of Harmonic shares are owned by institutional investors. 2.2% of Harmonic shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Profitability

This table compares u-blox and Harmonic’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
u-blox	N/A	N/A	N/A
Harmonic	10.22%	0.27%	0.15%

Summary

Harmonic beats u-blox on 9 of the 11 factors compared between the two stocks.

About u-blox

u-blox Holding AG develops, manufactures, and markets products and services supporting GPS/GNSS satellite positioning systems for the automotive, industrial, and consumer markets in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the United States, and the Asia Pacific. It operates through two segments, Positioning and Wireless Products, and Wireless Services. The company develops and sells chips and modules to locate and connect devices. In addition, it offers a range of GPS/GNSS positioning products, including satellite receiver chips, chips, receiver modules, receiver boards, antennas, and smart antennas for navigation, automatic vehicle location, security, traffic control, location-based services, timing, and agriculture. u-blox Holding AG was founded in 1997 and is based in Thalwil, Switzerland.

About Harmonic

Harmonic Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides broadband solutions worldwide. The company operates through Broadband and Video segments. The Broadband segment sells broadband access solutions and related services, including cOS software-based broadband access solutions to broadband operators; and cOS central cloud services, a subscription service for cOS customers. The Video segment sells video processing, production, and playout solutions and services to cable operators, and satellite and telco Pay-TV service providers, as well as to broadcast and media, including streaming media companies. Its video processing appliance solutions include network management and application software, and hardware products, such as encoders, video servers, high-density stream processing systems, and edge processors. This segment also provides VOS360 SaaS platform that provides both streaming and channel origination and distribution services; and software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions, which enables the packaging and delivery of streaming services, including live streaming, VOD, catch-up TV, start-over TV, network-DVR and cloud-DVR services through HTTP streaming to various device along with dynamic and personal ad insertion. The company also provides technical support and professional services, such as maintenance and support, consulting, implementation, integration services, program management, technical design and planning, building and site preparation, integration and equipment installation, end-to-end system testing, and training, as well as SaaS-related support and deployment. It sells its products through its direct sales force, as well as through independent resellers and systems integrators. The company was incorporated in 1988 and is headquartered in San Jose, California.