WAT vs. ILMN, BIO, AVTR, RVTY, BIO.B, ARGX, ALGN, BNTX, MOH, and GMAB
Should you be buying Waters stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of Waters include Illumina (ILMN), Bio-Rad Laboratories (BIO), Avantor (AVTR), Revvity (RVTY), Bio-Rad Laboratories (BIO.B), argenx (ARGX), Align Technology (ALGN), BioNTech (BNTX), Molina Healthcare (MOH), and Genmab A/S (GMAB). These companies are all part of the "medical" sector.
Waters (NYSE:WAT) and Illumina (NASDAQ:ILMN) are both large-cap medical companies, but which is the better stock? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their valuation, dividends, risk, institutional ownership, community ranking, earnings, media sentiment, analyst recommendations and profitability.
Waters has a beta of 0.98, suggesting that its share price is 2% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Illumina has a beta of 1.2, suggesting that its share price is 20% more volatile than the S&P 500.
Waters has a net margin of 20.75% compared to Illumina's net margin of -28.71%. Waters' return on equity of 66.59% beat Illumina's return on equity.
Illumina received 650 more outperform votes than Waters when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 65.71% of users gave Illumina an outperform vote while only 54.30% of users gave Waters an outperform vote.
In the previous week, Waters had 39 more articles in the media than Illumina. MarketBeat recorded 53 mentions for Waters and 14 mentions for Illumina. Illumina's average media sentiment score of 0.83 beat Waters' score of 0.06 indicating that Illumina is being referred to more favorably in the news media.
Waters has higher earnings, but lower revenue than Illumina. Illumina is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Waters, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
94.0% of Waters shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 89.4% of Illumina shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.8% of Waters shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 0.2% of Illumina shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a company is poised for long-term growth.
Waters currently has a consensus target price of $305.78, suggesting a potential downside of 14.10%. Illumina has a consensus target price of $164.65, suggesting a potential upside of 48.24%. Given Illumina's stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Illumina is more favorable than Waters.
Summary
Waters beats Illumina on 10 of the 18 factors compared between the two stocks.
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This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding WAT 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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