ACO.X vs. CU, CPX, BLX, TA, NPI, SPB, AQN, BIPC, INE, and BEPC
Should you be buying ATCO stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of ATCO include Canadian Utilities (CU), Capital Power (CPX), Boralex (BLX), TransAlta (TA), Northland Power (NPI), Superior Plus (SPB), Algonquin Power & Utilities (AQN), Brookfield Infrastructure (BIPC), Innergex Renewable Energy (INE), and Brookfield Renewable (BEPC). These companies are all part of the "utilities" sector.
ATCO (TSE:ACO.X) and Canadian Utilities (TSE:CU) are both mid-cap utilities companies, but which is the superior business? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their institutional ownership, profitability, analyst recommendations, media sentiment, earnings, community ranking, risk, valuation and dividends.
ATCO presently has a consensus target price of C$45.92, suggesting a potential upside of 12.93%. Canadian Utilities has a consensus target price of C$35.43, suggesting a potential upside of 11.27%. Given ATCO's stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, equities research analysts plainly believe ATCO is more favorable than Canadian Utilities.
Canadian Utilities has lower revenue, but higher earnings than ATCO. ATCO is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Canadian Utilities, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
ATCO has a beta of 0.67, meaning that its share price is 33% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Canadian Utilities has a beta of 0.6, meaning that its share price is 40% less volatile than the S&P 500.
In the previous week, Canadian Utilities had 2 more articles in the media than ATCO. MarketBeat recorded 5 mentions for Canadian Utilities and 3 mentions for ATCO. ATCO's average media sentiment score of 0.61 beat Canadian Utilities' score of 0.05 indicating that ATCO is being referred to more favorably in the media.
28.7% of ATCO shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 15.1% of Canadian Utilities shares are held by institutional investors. 0.6% of ATCO shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 38.0% of Canadian Utilities shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.
Canadian Utilities received 218 more outperform votes than ATCO when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 59.72% of users gave Canadian Utilities an outperform vote while only 46.39% of users gave ATCO an outperform vote.
Canadian Utilities has a net margin of 18.63% compared to ATCO's net margin of 8.75%. Canadian Utilities' return on equity of 10.08% beat ATCO's return on equity.
ATCO pays an annual dividend of C$1.96 per share and has a dividend yield of 4.8%. Canadian Utilities pays an annual dividend of C$1.81 per share and has a dividend yield of 5.7%. ATCO pays out 53.6% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Canadian Utilities pays out 77.7% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future.
Summary
ATCO and Canadian Utilities tied by winning 10 of the 20 factors compared between the two stocks.
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This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding ACO.X and its top 5 competitors to their watchlist. Each company is represented with a line over a 90 day period.
Skip ChartThis chart shows the average media sentiment of TSE 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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ACO.X vs. The Competition
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