SON vs. GPK, PKG, ZWS, CWST, ADT, MSM, MLI, TKR, SLGN, and FLS
Should you be buying Sonoco Products stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of Sonoco Products include Graphic Packaging (GPK), Packaging Co. of America (PKG), Zurn Elkay Water Solutions (ZWS), Casella Waste Systems (CWST), ADT (ADT), MSC Industrial Direct (MSM), Mueller Industries (MLI), Timken (TKR), Silgan (SLGN), and Flowserve (FLS). These companies are all part of the "industrial products" sector.
Sonoco Products (NYSE:SON) and Graphic Packaging (NYSE:GPK) are both mid-cap industrial products companies, but which is the better business? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their valuation, risk, earnings, dividends, analyst recommendations, community ranking, institutional ownership, profitability and media sentiment.
Sonoco Products pays an annual dividend of $2.04 per share and has a dividend yield of 3.6%. Graphic Packaging pays an annual dividend of $0.40 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.5%. Sonoco Products pays out 42.5% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Graphic Packaging pays out 17.0% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Both companies have healthy payout ratios and should be able to cover their dividend payments with earnings for the next several years.
Graphic Packaging has a net margin of 7.67% compared to Sonoco Products' net margin of 7.00%. Graphic Packaging's return on equity of 35.66% beat Sonoco Products' return on equity.
77.7% of Sonoco Products shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 99.7% of Graphic Packaging shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.5% of Sonoco Products shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 1.2% of Graphic Packaging shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.
Graphic Packaging has higher revenue and earnings than Sonoco Products. Graphic Packaging is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Sonoco Products, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Sonoco Products has a beta of 0.68, suggesting that its share price is 32% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Graphic Packaging has a beta of 0.84, suggesting that its share price is 16% less volatile than the S&P 500.
Sonoco Products presently has a consensus target price of $63.00, suggesting a potential upside of 11.48%. Graphic Packaging has a consensus target price of $28.44, suggesting a potential upside of 3.32%. Given Sonoco Products' higher possible upside, research analysts clearly believe Sonoco Products is more favorable than Graphic Packaging.
In the previous week, Graphic Packaging had 1 more articles in the media than Sonoco Products. MarketBeat recorded 8 mentions for Graphic Packaging and 7 mentions for Sonoco Products. Graphic Packaging's average media sentiment score of 1.06 beat Sonoco Products' score of 0.82 indicating that Graphic Packaging is being referred to more favorably in the news media.
Sonoco Products received 160 more outperform votes than Graphic Packaging when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 64.31% of users gave Sonoco Products an outperform vote while only 64.08% of users gave Graphic Packaging an outperform vote.
Summary
Graphic Packaging beats Sonoco Products on 14 of the 20 factors compared between the two stocks.
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This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding SON 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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