Head-To-Head Review: Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) vs. Impinj (NASDAQ:PI)

Impinj (NASDAQ:PI) and Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) are both computer and technology companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their dividends, institutional ownership, earnings, valuation, profitability, analyst recommendations and risk.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

76.4% of Broadcom shares are owned by institutional investors. 12.4% of Impinj shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 1.9% of Broadcom shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Risk and Volatility

Impinj has a beta of 1.56, suggesting that its stock price is 56% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Broadcom has a beta of 1.22, suggesting that its stock price is 22% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings and recommmendations for Impinj and Broadcom, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Impinj	2	2	5	0	2.33
Broadcom	0	3	29	1	2.94

Impinj presently has a consensus target price of $167.63, suggesting a potential upside of 70.85%. Broadcom has a consensus target price of $435.30, suggesting a potential upside of 40.19%. Given Impinj’s higher possible upside, equities analysts plainly believe Impinj is more favorable than Broadcom.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Impinj and Broadcom”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Impinj	$361.08 million	8.21	-$10.85 million	($0.39)	-251.56
Broadcom	$63.89 billion	23.01	$23.13 billion	$5.12	60.65

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

Profitability

This table compares Impinj and Broadcom’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Impinj	-3.00%	8.49%	3.11%
Broadcom	36.57%	38.61%	17.49%

Summary

Broadcom beats Impinj on 12 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Impinj

Impinj, Inc. operates a cloud connectivity platform in the Americas, the Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Its platform wirelessly connects items and delivers data about the connected items to business and consumer applications. The company’s platform comprises endpoint ICs, a miniature radios-on-a-chip that attaches to a host item and includes a number to identify the item. Its platform also consists of systems products that consists of reader ICs, readers, and gateways to wirelessly provide power to and communicate bidirectionally with endpoint ICs on host items, as well as to read, write, authenticate, and engage the endpoint ICs on those items; and software and algorithms that enable its partners to solve enterprise business problems, such as retail self-checkout and loss prevention. The company primarily serves retail, supply chain and logistics, automotive, aviation, banking, datacenters, food, healthcare, industrial and manufacturing, linen and uniform tracking, sports, and travel industries through original equipment and device manufacturers, tag service bureaus, systems integrators, value-added resellers, independent software vendors, and other solution partners. Impinj, Inc. was incorporated in 2000 and is headquartered in Seattle, Washington.

About Broadcom

Broadcom Inc. designs, develops, and supplies various semiconductor devices with a focus on complex digital and mixed signal complementary metal oxide semiconductor based devices and analog III-V based products worldwide. The company operates in two segments, Semiconductor Solutions and Infrastructure Software. It provides set-top box system-on-chips (SoCs); cable, digital subscriber line, and passive optical networking central office/consumer premise equipment SoCs; wireless local area network access point SoCs; Ethernet switching and routing custom silicon solutions; serializer/deserializer application specific integrated circuits; optical and copper, and physical layer devices; and fiber optic components and RF semiconductor devices. The company also offers RF front end modules and filter; Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and global positioning system/global navigation satellite system SoCs; custom touch controllers; inductive charging; attached small computer system interface, and redundant array of independent disks controllers and adapters; peripheral component interconnect express; fiber channel host bus adapters; read channel based SoCs; custom flash controllers; preamplifiers; optocouplers, industrial fiber optics, and motion control encoders and subsystems; light emitting diode, ethernet PHYs, switch ICs, and camera microcontrollers. Its products are used in various applications, including enterprise and data center networking, home connectivity, set-top boxes, broadband access, telecommunication equipment, smartphones and base stations, data center servers and storage systems, factory automation, power generation and alternative energy systems, and electronic displays. Broadcom Inc. was founded in 1961 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.