AFL vs. CNC, HUM, PFG, PSA, SPG, O, TRV, MFG, MET, and IBKR
Should you be buying Aflac stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of Aflac include Centene (CNC), Humana (HUM), Principal Financial Group (PFG), Public Storage (PSA), Simon Property Group (SPG), Realty Income (O), Travelers Companies (TRV), Mizuho Financial Group (MFG), MetLife (MET), and Interactive Brokers Group (IBKR).
Centene (NYSE:CNC) and Aflac (NYSE:AFL) are both large-cap medical companies, but which is the better business? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their earnings, profitability, community ranking, analyst recommendations, valuation, risk, dividends, media sentiment and institutional ownership.
Centene received 442 more outperform votes than Aflac when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 73.25% of users gave Centene an outperform vote while only 57.33% of users gave Aflac an outperform vote.
Aflac has a net margin of 27.67% compared to Aflac's net margin of 1.76%. Centene's return on equity of 16.88% beat Aflac's return on equity.
Centene currently has a consensus target price of $85.23, indicating a potential upside of 12.35%. Aflac has a consensus target price of $82.31, indicating a potential downside of 2.97%. Given Aflac's stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Centene is more favorable than Aflac.
In the previous week, Aflac had 5 more articles in the media than Centene. MarketBeat recorded 23 mentions for Aflac and 18 mentions for Centene. Centene's average media sentiment score of 0.90 beat Aflac's score of 0.73 indicating that Aflac is being referred to more favorably in the news media.
93.6% of Centene shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 67.4% of Aflac shares are held by institutional investors. 0.3% of Centene shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 0.8% of Aflac shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.
Aflac has lower revenue, but higher earnings than Centene. Aflac is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Centene, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Centene has a beta of 0.41, meaning that its stock price is 59% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Aflac has a beta of 0.91, meaning that its stock price is 9% less volatile than the S&P 500.
Summary
Centene and Aflac tied by winning 9 of the 18 factors compared between the two stocks.
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This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding AFL 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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