WAT vs. A, MTD, ILMN, TECH, BRKR, CRL, BIO, PACB, HBIO, and LIFE
Should you be buying Waters stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of Waters include Agilent Technologies (A), Mettler-Toledo International (MTD), Illumina (ILMN), Bio-Techne (TECH), Bruker (BRKR), Charles River Laboratories International (CRL), Bio-Rad Laboratories (BIO), Pacific Biosciences of California (PACB), Harvard Bioscience (HBIO), and aTyr Pharma (LIFE). These companies are all part of the "life sciences tools & services" industry.
Waters (NYSE:WAT) and Agilent Technologies (NYSE:A) are both large-cap medical companies, but which is the better stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their dividends, institutional ownership, risk, valuation, earnings, profitability, community ranking, media sentiment and analyst recommendations.
Agilent Technologies has higher revenue and earnings than Waters. Waters is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Agilent Technologies, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
94.0% of Waters shares are held by institutional investors. 0.8% of Waters 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.
Waters has a net margin of 20.75% compared to Agilent Technologies' net margin of 18.35%. Waters' return on equity of 66.59% beat Agilent Technologies' return on equity.
Agilent Technologies received 421 more outperform votes than Waters when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 71.91% of users gave Agilent Technologies an outperform vote while only 54.30% of users gave Waters an outperform vote.
In the previous week, Waters had 32 more articles in the media than Agilent Technologies. MarketBeat recorded 49 mentions for Waters and 17 mentions for Agilent Technologies. Agilent Technologies' average media sentiment score of 0.62 beat Waters' score of 0.14 indicating that Agilent Technologies is being referred to more favorably in the news media.
Waters presently has a consensus price target of $305.78, indicating a potential downside of 8.65%. Agilent Technologies has a consensus price target of $141.06, indicating a potential downside of 5.16%. Given Agilent Technologies' stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Agilent Technologies is more favorable than Waters.
Waters has a beta of 0.98, meaning that its stock price is 2% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Agilent Technologies has a beta of 1.13, meaning that its stock price is 13% more volatile than the S&P 500.
Summary
Agilent Technologies beats Waters on 10 of the 18 factors compared between the two stocks.
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This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding WAT 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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