Kulicke and Soffa Industries (NASDAQ:KLIC) and Veeco Instruments (NASDAQ:VECO) Financial Review

Kulicke and Soffa Industries (NASDAQ:KLIC) and Veeco Instruments (NASDAQ:VECO) are both small-cap computer and technology companies, but which is the superior business? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their profitability, dividends, risk, analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, valuation and earnings.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Kulicke and Soffa Industries and Veeco Instruments”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Kulicke and Soffa Industries	$706.23 million	2.52	-$69.01 million	$0.36	93.81
Veeco Instruments	$717.30 million	1.65	$73.71 million	$1.07	18.43

Veeco Instruments has higher revenue and earnings than Kulicke and Soffa Industries. Veeco Instruments is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Kulicke and Soffa Industries, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of current recommendations and price targets for Kulicke and Soffa Industries and Veeco Instruments, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Kulicke and Soffa Industries	0	1	3	0	2.75
Veeco Instruments	0	2	5	0	2.71

Kulicke and Soffa Industries currently has a consensus price target of $44.50, suggesting a potential upside of 31.77%. Veeco Instruments has a consensus price target of $30.43, suggesting a potential upside of 54.30%. Given Veeco Instruments’ higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Veeco Instruments is more favorable than Kulicke and Soffa Industries.

Profitability

This table compares Kulicke and Soffa Industries and Veeco Instruments’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Kulicke and Soffa Industries	3.11%	0.76%	0.58%
Veeco Instruments	8.99%	8.29%	5.01%

Risk & Volatility

Kulicke and Soffa Industries has a beta of 1.53, suggesting that its stock price is 53% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Veeco Instruments has a beta of 1.11, suggesting that its stock price is 11% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

98.2% of Kulicke and Soffa Industries shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 98.5% of Veeco Instruments shares are owned by institutional investors. 3.4% of Kulicke and Soffa Industries shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 2.3% of Veeco Instruments shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

Veeco Instruments beats Kulicke and Soffa Industries on 9 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Kulicke and Soffa Industries

Kulicke and Soffa Industries, Inc. designs, manufactures, and sells capital equipment and tools used to assemble semiconductor devices. It operates through four segments: Ball Bonding Equipment, Wedge Bonding Equipment, Advanced Solutions, and Aftermarket Products and Services (APS). The company offers ball bonding equipment, wafer level bonding equipment, wedge bonding equipment; and advanced display, die-attach, and thermocompression systems and solutions, as well as tools, spares and services for equipment. It also services, maintains, repairs, and upgrades equipment. The company serves semiconductor device manufacturers, integrated device manufacturers, outsourced semiconductor assembly and test providers, other electronics manufacturers, industrial manufacturers, foundry service providers, and automotive electronics suppliers primarily in the United States and the Asia/Pacific region. The company was founded in 1951 and is headquartered in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania.

About Veeco Instruments

Veeco Instruments Inc., together with its subsidiaries, develops, manufactures, sells, and supports semiconductor and thin film process equipment primarily to make electronic devices in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, China, Rest of the Asia-Pacific, and internationally. The company offers laser annealing, ion beam deposition and etch, metal organic chemical vapor deposition, single wafer wet processing and surface preparation, molecular beam epitaxy, advanced packaging lithography, atomic layer deposition, and other deposition systems. Its process equipment systems are used in the production of a range of microelectronic components, including logic, dynamic random-access memory, photonics devices, power electronics, radio frequency filters and amplifiers, magnetic heads for hard disk drives, and other semiconductor devices. In addition, the company markets and sells its products to integrated device manufacturers and foundries; outsourced semiconductor assembly and test companies; and hard disk drive and photonics manufacturers, as well as research centers and universities. Veeco Instruments Inc. was founded in 1945 and is headquartered in Plainview, New York.