AZN vs. NVS, ABBV, ABT, PFE, MRK, SNY, JNJ, VRTX, REGN, and GSK
Should you be buying AstraZeneca stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of AstraZeneca include Novartis (NVS), AbbVie (ABBV), Abbott Laboratories (ABT), Pfizer (PFE), Merck & Co., Inc. (MRK), Sanofi (SNY), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Vertex Pharmaceuticals (VRTX), Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (REGN), and GSK (GSK). These companies are all part of the "pharmaceutical preparations" industry.
AstraZeneca (NASDAQ:AZN) and Novartis (NYSE:NVS) are both large-cap medical companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their earnings, profitability, dividends, community ranking, institutional ownership, valuation, analyst recommendations, risk and media sentiment.
AstraZeneca presently has a consensus target price of $81.00, indicating a potential upside of 5.33%. Novartis has a consensus target price of $115.00, indicating a potential upside of 12.14%. Given Novartis' higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Novartis is more favorable than AstraZeneca.
20.4% of AstraZeneca shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 13.1% of Novartis shares are held by institutional investors. 0.0% of Novartis shares are held by company 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.
Novartis has a net margin of 31.33% compared to AstraZeneca's net margin of 13.30%. Novartis' return on equity of 32.15% beat AstraZeneca's return on equity.
In the previous week, AstraZeneca had 10 more articles in the media than Novartis. MarketBeat recorded 20 mentions for AstraZeneca and 10 mentions for Novartis. AstraZeneca's average media sentiment score of 0.72 beat Novartis' score of 0.67 indicating that AstraZeneca is being referred to more favorably in the media.
Novartis received 473 more outperform votes than AstraZeneca when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 61.42% of users gave Novartis an outperform vote while only 58.06% of users gave AstraZeneca an outperform vote.
AstraZeneca has a beta of 0.47, suggesting that its share price is 53% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Novartis has a beta of 0.53, suggesting that its share price is 47% less volatile than the S&P 500.
AstraZeneca pays an annual dividend of $1.93 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.5%. Novartis pays an annual dividend of $2.43 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.4%. AstraZeneca pays out 94.6% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Novartis pays out 32.8% of its earnings in the form of a dividend.
Novartis has lower revenue, but higher earnings than AstraZeneca. Novartis is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than AstraZeneca, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Summary
Novartis beats AstraZeneca 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 AZN 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 NASDAQ 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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