BCPC vs. ASH, IOSP, HUN, CC, OLN, NGVT, FMC, HWKN, ALTM, and AMR
Should you be buying Balchem stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of Balchem include Ashland (ASH), Innospec (IOSP), Huntsman (HUN), Chemours (CC), Olin (OLN), Ingevity (NGVT), FMC (FMC), Hawkins (HWKN), Arcadium Lithium (ALTM), and Alpha Metallurgical Resources (AMR). These companies are all part of the "basic materials" sector.
Ashland (NYSE:ASH) and Balchem (NASDAQ:BCPC) are both mid-cap basic materials companies, but which is the superior business? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, earnings, institutional ownership, profitability, dividends, community ranking, media sentiment, valuation and risk.
Ashland has a beta of 0.92, suggesting that its share price is 8% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Balchem has a beta of 0.72, suggesting that its share price is 28% less volatile than the S&P 500.
Ashland received 204 more outperform votes than Balchem when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 68.81% of users gave Ashland an outperform vote while only 66.72% of users gave Balchem an outperform vote.
Ashland has higher revenue and earnings than Balchem. Ashland is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Balchem, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Ashland presently has a consensus price target of $106.44, indicating a potential upside of 9.10%. Balchem has a consensus price target of $170.00, indicating a potential upside of 10.91%. Given Ashland's stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Balchem is more favorable than Ashland.
Balchem has a net margin of 12.35% compared to Balchem's net margin of 9.09%. Ashland's return on equity of 11.03% beat Balchem's return on equity.
In the previous week, Ashland had 22 more articles in the media than Balchem. MarketBeat recorded 44 mentions for Ashland and 22 mentions for Balchem. Ashland's average media sentiment score of 0.68 beat Balchem's score of 0.37 indicating that Balchem is being referred to more favorably in the news media.
94.0% of Ashland shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 87.9% of Balchem shares are held by institutional investors. 0.7% of Ashland shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 1.8% of Balchem shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.
Ashland pays an annual dividend of $1.54 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.6%. Balchem pays an annual dividend of $0.39 per share and has a dividend yield of 0.3%. Ashland pays out 40.8% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Balchem pays out 11.0% 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. Ashland has increased its dividend for 14 consecutive years and Balchem has increased its dividend for 15 consecutive years.
Summary
Balchem beats Ashland on 11 of the 21 factors compared between the two stocks.
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This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding BCPC 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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