UHS vs. ALC, THC, EHC, ENSG, ACHC, SEM, USPH, BKD, WOOF, and CYH
Should you be buying Universal Health Services stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of Universal Health Services include Alcon (ALC), Tenet Healthcare (THC), Encompass Health (EHC), The Ensign Group (ENSG), Acadia Healthcare (ACHC), Select Medical (SEM), U.S. Physical Therapy (USPH), Brookdale Senior Living (BKD), Petco Health and Wellness (WOOF), and Community Health Systems (CYH). These companies are all part of the "health care facilities" industry.
Alcon (NYSE:ALC) and Universal Health Services (NYSE:UHS) are both large-cap medical companies, but which is the superior investment? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their institutional ownership, earnings, valuation, community ranking, media sentiment, risk, profitability, analyst recommendations and dividends.
Universal Health Services received 439 more outperform votes than Alcon when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 65.61% of users gave Universal Health Services an outperform vote while only 61.72% of users gave Alcon an outperform vote.
53.9% of Alcon shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 86.1% of Universal Health Services shares are held by institutional investors. 16.1% of Universal Health Services shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.
Alcon presently has a consensus target price of $94.71, indicating a potential upside of 7.34%. Universal Health Services has a consensus target price of $187.64, indicating a potential upside of 7.11%. Given Universal Health Services' stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Alcon is more favorable than Universal Health Services.
Alcon has higher earnings, but lower revenue than Universal Health Services. Universal Health Services is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Alcon, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Alcon has a net margin of 10.96% compared to Alcon's net margin of 5.57%. Alcon's return on equity of 13.34% beat Universal Health Services' return on equity.
Alcon has a beta of 0.92, indicating that its stock price is 8% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Universal Health Services has a beta of 1.26, indicating that its stock price is 26% more volatile than the S&P 500.
In the previous week, Alcon and Alcon both had 4 articles in the media. Alcon's average media sentiment score of 1.12 beat Universal Health Services' score of 0.43 indicating that Universal Health Services is being referred to more favorably in the news media.
Summary
Universal Health Services beats Alcon on 10 of the 17 factors compared between the two stocks.
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This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding UHS 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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