AZN vs. NVS, ABT, ABBV, PFE, MRK, SNY, JNJ, VRTX, REGN, and BMY
Should you be buying AstraZeneca stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of AstraZeneca include Novartis (NVS), Abbott Laboratories (ABT), AbbVie (ABBV), Pfizer (PFE), Merck & Co., Inc. (MRK), Sanofi (SNY), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Vertex Pharmaceuticals (VRTX), Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (REGN), and Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY). These companies are all part of the "pharmaceutical preparations" industry.
Novartis (NYSE:NVS) and AstraZeneca (NASDAQ:AZN) 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, analyst recommendations, earnings, risk, profitability, institutional ownership, dividends, valuation and community ranking.
Novartis currently has a consensus price target of $115.00, suggesting a potential upside of 18.23%. AstraZeneca has a consensus price target of $81.00, suggesting a potential upside of 6.09%. Given AstraZeneca's higher probable upside, equities analysts clearly believe Novartis is more favorable than AstraZeneca.
Novartis has a beta of 0.53, indicating that its stock price is 47% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, AstraZeneca has a beta of 0.47, indicating that its stock price is 53% less volatile than the S&P 500.
13.1% of Novartis shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 20.4% of AstraZeneca shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.0% of Novartis shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.
Novartis pays an annual dividend of $2.43 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.5%. AstraZeneca pays an annual dividend of $1.93 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.5%. Novartis pays out 32.8% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. AstraZeneca pays out 94.6% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Novartis has raised its dividend for 4 consecutive years and AstraZeneca has raised its dividend for 1 consecutive years.
Novartis has higher earnings, but lower revenue than AstraZeneca. Novartis is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than AstraZeneca, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Novartis received 473 more outperform votes than AstraZeneca when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 61.42% of users gave Novartis an outperform vote while only 58.06% of users gave AstraZeneca an outperform vote.
Novartis has a net margin of 31.33% compared to Novartis' net margin of 13.30%. AstraZeneca's return on equity of 32.15% beat Novartis' return on equity.
In the previous week, AstraZeneca had 9 more articles in the media than Novartis. MarketBeat recorded 24 mentions for AstraZeneca and 15 mentions for Novartis. AstraZeneca's average media sentiment score of 0.71 beat Novartis' score of 0.36 indicating that Novartis is being referred to more favorably in the media.
Summary
Novartis beats AstraZeneca on 13 of the 21 factors compared between the two stocks.
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This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding AZN 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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