ABBV vs. MRK, JNJ, PFE, BMY, ZTS, MRNA, IDXX, IQV, BNTX, and ILMN
Should you be buying AbbVie stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of AbbVie include Merck & Co., Inc. (MRK), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Pfizer (PFE), Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY), Zoetis (ZTS), Moderna (MRNA), IDEXX Laboratories (IDXX), IQVIA (IQV), BioNTech (BNTX), and Illumina (ILMN). These companies are all part of the "medical" sector.
Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE:MRK) and AbbVie (NYSE:ABBV) are both large-cap medical companies, but which is the superior business? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their media sentiment, earnings, institutional ownership, profitability, community ranking, valuation, analyst recommendations, risk and dividends.
AbbVie has lower revenue, but higher earnings than Merck & Co., Inc.. AbbVie is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Merck & Co., Inc., indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Merck & Co., Inc. has a beta of 0.39, indicating that its stock price is 61% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, AbbVie has a beta of 0.61, indicating that its stock price is 39% less volatile than the S&P 500.
AbbVie has a net margin of 11.02% compared to AbbVie's net margin of 3.76%. Merck & Co., Inc.'s return on equity of 179.47% beat AbbVie's return on equity.
Merck & Co., Inc. presently has a consensus target price of $131.33, indicating a potential upside of 0.11%. AbbVie has a consensus target price of $176.14, indicating a potential upside of 5.84%. Given Merck & Co., Inc.'s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe AbbVie is more favorable than Merck & Co., Inc..
In the previous week, AbbVie had 16 more articles in the media than Merck & Co., Inc.. MarketBeat recorded 42 mentions for AbbVie and 26 mentions for Merck & Co., Inc.. AbbVie's average media sentiment score of 0.84 beat Merck & Co., Inc.'s score of 0.66 indicating that Merck & Co., Inc. is being referred to more favorably in the media.
76.1% of Merck & Co., Inc. shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 70.2% of AbbVie shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.1% of Merck & Co., Inc. shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 0.3% of AbbVie shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, hedge funds and endowments believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.
Merck & Co., Inc. pays an annual dividend of $3.08 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.3%. AbbVie pays an annual dividend of $6.20 per share and has a dividend yield of 3.7%. Merck & Co., Inc. pays out 342.2% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. AbbVie pays out 184.0% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Merck & Co., Inc. has raised its dividend for 13 consecutive years and AbbVie has raised its dividend for 52 consecutive years. AbbVie is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and longer track record of dividend growth.
AbbVie received 335 more outperform votes than Merck & Co., Inc. when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 73.10% of users gave AbbVie an outperform vote while only 66.97% of users gave Merck & Co., Inc. an outperform vote.
Summary
AbbVie beats Merck & Co., Inc. on 16 of the 21 factors compared between the two stocks.
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This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding ABBV 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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