PRU vs. MET, AFL, UNM, PRI, LNC, AEL, CNO, NWLI, CIA, and MFC
Should you be buying Prudential Financial stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of Prudential Financial include MetLife (MET), Aflac (AFL), Unum Group (UNM), Primerica (PRI), Lincoln National (LNC), American Equity Investment Life (AEL), CNO Financial Group (CNO), National Western Life Group (NWLI), Citizens (CIA), and Manulife Financial (MFC). These companies are all part of the "finance" sector.
MetLife (NYSE:MET) and Prudential Financial (NYSE:PRU) are both large-cap finance companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their institutional ownership, media sentiment, valuation, earnings, analyst recommendations, profitability, risk, community ranking and dividends.
MetLife pays an annual dividend of $2.18 per share and has a dividend yield of 3.1%. Prudential Financial pays an annual dividend of $5.20 per share and has a dividend yield of 4.4%. MetLife pays out 74.9% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Prudential Financial pays out 88.4% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. MetLife has increased its dividend for 11 consecutive years and Prudential Financial has increased its dividend for 1 consecutive years.
Prudential Financial has lower revenue, but higher earnings than MetLife. Prudential Financial is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than MetLife, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
MetLife currently has a consensus target price of $79.08, indicating a potential upside of 12.89%. Prudential Financial has a consensus target price of $115.25, indicating a potential downside of 2.20%. Given Prudential Financial's stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, equities analysts clearly believe MetLife is more favorable than Prudential Financial.
89.8% of MetLife shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 56.8% of Prudential Financial shares are held by institutional investors. 0.3% of MetLife shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 0.3% of Prudential Financial shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.
MetLife has a beta of 1.12, meaning that its stock price is 12% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Prudential Financial has a beta of 1.35, meaning that its stock price is 35% more volatile than the S&P 500.
MetLife received 77 more outperform votes than Prudential Financial when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 73.53% of users gave MetLife an outperform vote while only 65.03% of users gave Prudential Financial an outperform vote.
Prudential Financial has a net margin of 3.76% compared to Prudential Financial's net margin of 3.50%. Prudential Financial's return on equity of 20.39% beat MetLife's return on equity.
In the previous week, MetLife had 2 more articles in the media than Prudential Financial. MarketBeat recorded 8 mentions for MetLife and 6 mentions for Prudential Financial. Prudential Financial's average media sentiment score of 1.25 beat MetLife's score of 1.03 indicating that MetLife is being referred to more favorably in the media.
Summary
MetLife beats Prudential Financial on 14 of the 20 factors compared between the two stocks.
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This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding PRU 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 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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