Contrasting Maxeon Solar Technologies (NASDAQ:MAXN) & Penguin Solutions (NASDAQ:PENG)

Maxeon Solar Technologies (NASDAQ:MAXN) and Penguin Solutions (NASDAQ:PENG) are both technology companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their institutional ownership, dividends, profitability, risk, valuation, earnings and analyst recommendations.

Profitability

This table compares Maxeon Solar Technologies and Penguin Solutions’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Maxeon Solar Technologies	N/A	N/A	N/A
Penguin Solutions	10.43%	36.71%	7.95%

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings for Maxeon Solar Technologies and Penguin Solutions, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Maxeon Solar Technologies	1	0	0	0	1.00
Penguin Solutions	1	2	7	0	2.60

Penguin Solutions has a consensus price target of $87.50, indicating a potential upside of 14.71%. Given Penguin Solutions’ stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Penguin Solutions is more favorable than Maxeon Solar Technologies.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

47.7% of Maxeon Solar Technologies shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.9% of Maxeon Solar Technologies shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 2.9% of Penguin Solutions shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Risk and Volatility

Maxeon Solar Technologies has a beta of 1.26, meaning that its stock price is 26% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Penguin Solutions has a beta of 2.86, meaning that its stock price is 186% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Maxeon Solar Technologies and Penguin Solutions”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Maxeon Solar Technologies	$176.41 million	0.07	-$614.30 million	($163.07)	-0.00
Penguin Solutions	$1.73 billion	2.26	$25.39 million	$2.59	29.45

Penguin Solutions has higher revenue and earnings than Maxeon Solar Technologies. Maxeon Solar Technologies is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Penguin Solutions, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Summary

Penguin Solutions beats Maxeon Solar Technologies on 13 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Maxeon Solar Technologies

Maxeon Solar Technologies, Ltd. designs, manufactures, markets, and sells solar panels and related solar system components worldwide. The company provides interdigitated back contact and shingled solar cells and panels under the SunPower brand. It offers its products to dealers, project developers, system integrators, distributors, resellers, and residential and small-scale commercial customers. The company was incorporated in 2019 and is headquartered in Singapore.

About Penguin Solutions

Penguin Solutions, Inc. engages in the designing and development of enterprise solutions worldwide. It operates through three segments: Advanced Computing, Integrated Memory, and Optimized LED. It offers dynamic random access memory modules, solid-state and flash storage, and other advanced integrated memory solutions for networking and telecom, data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning applications; and supply chain services, including procurement, logistics, inventory management, temporary warehousing, programming, kitting, and packaging services. The company also provides Penguin Computing that focus on technical computing for core and cloud environments through high-performance computing and AI solutions; and Penguin Edge, an edge computing solution for embedded and wireless applications, such as high-performance products for government, health care, manufacturing, and telecommunications applications. In addition, it offers Stratus, which provides simplified, protected, and autonomous fault tolerant computing solutions in the data center and at the Edge through hardware and software services; and solutions to education, energy, financial services, government, hyperscale, and manufacturing markets. Further, the company provides LED chip products comprising blue and green LED chips based on gallium nitride, and related materials under Cree LED brand; and surface mount devices under the Cree LED XLamp and J Series brands. It sells its products directly to original equipment manufacturers, enterprise, government and other end customers through direct sales force, e-commerce, customer service representatives, on-site field application engineers, independent sales representatives, distributors, integrators, and resellers. The company was formerly known as SMART Global Holdings, Inc. and changed its name to Penguin Solutions, Inc. in October 2024. Penguin Solutions, Inc. was founded in 1988 and is based in Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands.