FTS vs. PPL, CNP, ES, EBR, FE, ETR, DTE, NRG, AGR, and VST
Should you be buying Fortis stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of Fortis include PPL (PPL), CenterPoint Energy (CNP), Eversource Energy (ES), Centrais Elétricas Brasileiras S.A. - Eletrobrás (EBR), FirstEnergy (FE), Entergy (ETR), DTE Energy (DTE), NRG Energy (NRG), Avangrid (AGR), and Vistra (VST). These companies are all part of the "electric services" industry.
Fortis (NYSE:FTS) and PPL (NYSE:PPL) are both large-cap utilities companies, but which is the superior business? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their profitability, dividends, community ranking, analyst recommendations, earnings, risk, valuation, institutional ownership and media sentiment.
57.8% of Fortis shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 77.0% of PPL shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.2% of PPL shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.
PPL received 297 more outperform votes than Fortis when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 60.50% of users gave PPL an outperform vote while only 53.55% of users gave Fortis an outperform vote.
Fortis has higher revenue and earnings than PPL. Fortis is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than PPL, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Fortis has a net margin of 13.66% compared to PPL's net margin of 9.29%. PPL's return on equity of 8.80% beat Fortis' return on equity.
In the previous week, Fortis had 3 more articles in the media than PPL. MarketBeat recorded 7 mentions for Fortis and 4 mentions for PPL. Fortis' average media sentiment score of 0.50 beat PPL's score of 0.14 indicating that Fortis is being referred to more favorably in the media.
Fortis presently has a consensus target price of $55.13, suggesting a potential upside of 34.12%. PPL has a consensus target price of $32.27, suggesting a potential upside of 10.75%. Given Fortis' higher probable upside, equities analysts clearly believe Fortis is more favorable than PPL.
Fortis has a beta of 0.43, meaning that its stock price is 57% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, PPL has a beta of 0.81, meaning that its stock price is 19% less volatile than the S&P 500.
Fortis pays an annual dividend of $1.75 per share and has a dividend yield of 4.3%. PPL pays an annual dividend of $1.03 per share and has a dividend yield of 3.5%. Fortis pays out 75.4% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. PPL pays out 100.0% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Fortis is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and lower payout ratio.
Summary
PPL beats Fortis on 11 of the 20 factors compared between the two stocks.
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This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding FTS and its top 5 competitors to their watchlist. Each company is represented with a line over a 90 day period.
This chart shows the average media sentiment of NYSE and its competitors over the past 90 days as caculated by MarketBeat. The averaged score is equivalent to the following: Very Negative Sentiment <= -1.5, Negative Sentiment > -1.5 and <= -0.5, Neutral Sentiment > -0.5 and < 0.5, Positive Sentiment >= 0.5 and < 1.5, and Very Positive Sentiment >= 1.5.
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