Better Growth Stock: Amylyx Pharmaceuticals or Viking Therapeutics?

Biotech growth stocks are inherently risky due to the plethora of competitive, financial, clinical, and regulatory hurdles unique to the industry. Despite these various risk factors, however, most of the best-performing stocks of the last decade-plus have come from the land of developmental-stage biotechs.

Amylyx Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: AMLX) and Viking Therapeutics (NASDAQ: VKTX) are perfect examples of this fundamental trade-off between risk and reward in biotech. Both of these small-cap drugmakers have delivered market-crushing returns for shareholders over the past 12 months. Even so, stakeholders had to hold through scores of risk-laden events to realize these eye-popping gains.