BAC vs. WFC, C, JPM, AXP, HSBC, MS, GS, RY, SCHW, and MUFG
Should you be buying Bank of America stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of Bank of America include Wells Fargo & Company (WFC), Citigroup (C), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), American Express (AXP), HSBC (HSBC), Morgan Stanley (MS), The Goldman Sachs Group (GS), Royal Bank of Canada (RY), Charles Schwab (SCHW), and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG). These companies are all part of the "finance" sector.
Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE:WFC) and Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) are both large-cap finance companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their earnings, community ranking, valuation, institutional ownership, risk, profitability, dividends, analyst recommendations and media sentiment.
Bank of America received 457 more outperform votes than Wells Fargo & Company when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 65.85% of users gave Bank of America an outperform vote while only 63.23% of users gave Wells Fargo & Company an outperform vote.
Wells Fargo & Company currently has a consensus price target of $58.99, suggesting a potential downside of 1.59%. Bank of America has a consensus price target of $38.70, suggesting a potential upside of 3.89%. Given Wells Fargo & Company's stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Bank of America is more favorable than Wells Fargo & Company.
Wells Fargo & Company has a net margin of 15.63% compared to Wells Fargo & Company's net margin of 13.94%. Bank of America's return on equity of 12.30% beat Wells Fargo & Company's return on equity.
75.9% of Wells Fargo & Company shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 70.7% of Bank of America shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.1% of Wells Fargo & Company shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 0.3% of Bank of America shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.
Bank of America has higher revenue and earnings than Wells Fargo & Company. Wells Fargo & Company is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Bank of America, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Wells Fargo & Company has a beta of 1.18, meaning that its share price is 18% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Bank of America has a beta of 1.37, meaning that its share price is 37% more volatile than the S&P 500.
In the previous week, Bank of America had 9 more articles in the media than Wells Fargo & Company. MarketBeat recorded 42 mentions for Bank of America and 33 mentions for Wells Fargo & Company. Bank of America's average media sentiment score of 0.62 beat Wells Fargo & Company's score of 0.61 indicating that Wells Fargo & Company is being referred to more favorably in the media.
Wells Fargo & Company pays an annual dividend of $1.40 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.3%. Bank of America pays an annual dividend of $0.96 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.6%. Wells Fargo & Company pays out 29.2% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Bank of America pays out 33.2% 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. Wells Fargo & Company has raised its dividend for 3 consecutive years and Bank of America has raised its dividend for 3 consecutive years.
Summary
Bank of America beats Wells Fargo & Company on 12 of the 21 factors compared between the two stocks.
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This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding BAC 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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