TREE vs. WAFD, BANC, AGM, NWBI, PFS, BHLB, OCFC, BRKL, DCOM, and CFFN
Should you be buying LendingTree stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of LendingTree include WaFd (WAFD), Banc of California (BANC), Federal Agricultural Mortgage (AGM), Northwest Bancshares (NWBI), Provident Financial Services (PFS), Berkshire Hills Bancorp (BHLB), OceanFirst Financial (OCFC), Brookline Bancorp (BRKL), Dime Community Bancshares (DCOM), and Capitol Federal Financial (CFFN). These companies are all part of the "thrifts & mortgage finance" industry.
LendingTree (NASDAQ:TREE) and WaFd (NASDAQ:WAFD) are both finance companies, but which is the better business? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their valuation, profitability, risk, community ranking, media sentiment, analyst recommendations, dividends, earnings and institutional ownership.
68.3% of LendingTree shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 83.7% of WaFd shares are held by institutional investors. 23.4% of LendingTree shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 2.3% of WaFd shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a company is poised for long-term growth.
WaFd has higher revenue and earnings than LendingTree. LendingTree is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than WaFd, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
LendingTree currently has a consensus price target of $48.50, indicating a potential upside of 4.53%. WaFd has a consensus price target of $33.25, indicating a potential upside of 22.06%. Given WaFd's higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe WaFd is more favorable than LendingTree.
LendingTree has a beta of 2.1, suggesting that its share price is 110% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, WaFd has a beta of 0.84, suggesting that its share price is 16% less volatile than the S&P 500.
In the previous week, LendingTree had 13 more articles in the media than WaFd. MarketBeat recorded 18 mentions for LendingTree and 5 mentions for WaFd. WaFd's average media sentiment score of 1.05 beat LendingTree's score of 0.50 indicating that WaFd is being referred to more favorably in the news media.
WaFd has a net margin of 15.33% compared to LendingTree's net margin of -21.07%. WaFd's return on equity of 10.02% beat LendingTree's return on equity.
LendingTree received 390 more outperform votes than WaFd when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 68.59% of users gave LendingTree an outperform vote while only 49.31% of users gave WaFd an outperform vote.
Summary
WaFd beats LendingTree on 11 of the 18 factors compared between the two stocks.
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This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding TREE 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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