No they are not comparable. You need to look at:
-Growth trajectories: Flat or declining vs. Exponential
-Cycle in the business: Mature and not even getting the replacements vs. Disruptive
-New Technologies and products: New handheld, tunnel, etc. All need the tech that TSA wants to use as the platform
-Debt: Has nothing to do with the price, the buyer knows the enterprise value mcap+net debt and that's all matters. This is a company which signed an IDIQ with the globally most challenging institution (TSA) swept its competitors in Europe while being funded by a hedge fund, even that did. It matter for the buyers of the product
-Net Operating Losses: Take a look at the size in the latest K and find an NPV of these benefits. You will be surprised what % of the current mcap they constitute
-Ability to bundle products: EDS is a commodity play, they need ETD and they need that combined into their products to differentiate from the others. Who do you think can offer them the best alternative in this space?
-Mass Spec. Hard to value but they are several yrs ahead of the pack in terms of the time to market
-Other IP: hard to assign value with limited knowledge but given their lead on all of the existing lines, would not be surprising to see a reasonable value attrition to this
-do you want me to continue?
