Head-To-Head Review: Viasat (NASDAQ:VSAT) vs. Silicom (NASDAQ:SILC)

Silicom (NASDAQ:SILC) and Viasat (NASDAQ:VSAT) are both technology companies, but which is the better stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, profitability, earnings, valuation, risk and dividends.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent ratings and target prices for Silicom and Viasat, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Silicom	1	0	1	0	2.00
Viasat	1	2	7	1	2.73

Silicom currently has a consensus target price of $60.00, indicating a potential upside of 42.55%. Viasat has a consensus target price of $85.78, indicating a potential upside of 6.72%. Given Silicom’s higher probable upside, research analysts plainly believe Silicom is more favorable than Viasat.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Silicom and Viasat”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Silicom	$61.93 million	3.91	-$11.48 million	($1.71)	-24.61
Viasat	$4.64 billion	2.39	-$34.09 million	($0.24)	-334.92

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

Risk & Volatility

Silicom has a beta of 1.55, indicating that its share price is 55% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Viasat has a beta of 1.72, indicating that its share price is 72% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares Silicom and Viasat’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Silicom	-12.98%	-8.37%	-6.26%
Viasat	-0.64%	1.44%	0.45%

Institutional and Insider Ownership

52.8% of Silicom shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 86.0% of Viasat shares are owned by institutional investors. 25.4% of Silicom shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 1.4% of Viasat shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

Viasat beats Silicom on 10 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Silicom

Silicom Ltd., together with its subsidiaries, designs, manufactures, markets, and supports networking and data infrastructure solutions for servers, server-based systems, and communications devices. It offers server network interface cards; and smart cards, such as smart server adapters, which include redirector and switching cards, encryption and data compression hardware acceleration cards, forward error correction acceleration and offloading cards, time synchronization cards, and field programmable gate array-based cards. The company also provides virtualized and universal customer-premises equipment; and edge devices for SD-WAN, secure access service edge, Telco dedicated routers, and NFV deployments. It serves original equipment manufacturing, cloud, telco, mobile, and related service provider markets. The company operates in the United States, North America, Israel, Europe, and the Asia Pacific. Silicom Ltd. was incorporated in 1987 and is headquartered in Kfar Saba, Israel.

About Viasat

Viasat, Inc. provides broadband and communications products and services worldwide. The company's Satellite Services segment offers satellite-based fixed broadband services, including broadband internet access and voice over internet protocol services to consumers and businesses; in-flight entertainment and aviation software services to commercial airlines and private business jets; satellite-based connectivity services; mobile broadband services, including satellite-based internet services to energy offshore vessels, cruise ships, consumer ferries, and yachts; and energy services, which include ultra-secure solutions IP connectivity, bandwidth-optimized over-the-top applications, industrial internet-of-things big data enablement, and industry-leading machine learning analytics. Its Commercial Networks segment offers fixed broadband satellite communication systems comprising satellite network infrastructure and ground terminals; mobile broadband satellite communication systems; antenna systems for terrestrial and satellite applications, such as earth imaging, remote sensing, mobile satellite communication, Ka-band earth stations, and other multi-band antennas; and space systems design and satellite networking development systems. The company's Government Systems segment offers government mobile broadband products and services include mobile broadband modems, and terminals and network access control systems; mesh and hub-and-spoke satellite networking systems; secure networking, cybersecurity, and information assurance products; and tactical data link solutions. It designs and development of satellite and ground communications systems and network function virtualization, as well as ground-based network subsystems, as well as space system design and development products and services include architectures for GEO, MEO, LEO satellites, and other satellite platforms. The company was incorporated in 1986 and is headquartered in Carlsbad, California.