MRTN vs. HTLD, WERN, ULH, CVLG, YRCW, YELLQ, ARCB, SNDR, CMRE, and ZIM
Should you be buying Marten Transport stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of Marten Transport include Heartland Express (HTLD), Werner Enterprises (WERN), Universal Logistics (ULH), Covenant Logistics Group (CVLG), YRC Worldwide (YRCW), Yellow (YELLQ), ArcBest (ARCB), Schneider National (SNDR), Costamare (CMRE), and ZIM Integrated Shipping Services (ZIM). These companies are all part of the "transportation" sector.
Heartland Express (NASDAQ:HTLD) and Marten Transport (NASDAQ:MRTN) are both small-cap transportation companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their valuation, analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, media sentiment, earnings, dividends, profitability, community ranking and risk.
Heartland Express has a beta of 0.66, suggesting that its stock price is 34% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Marten Transport has a beta of 0.79, suggesting that its stock price is 21% less volatile than the S&P 500.
Marten Transport has a net margin of 5.31% compared to Marten Transport's net margin of -1.13%. Heartland Express' return on equity of 7.65% beat Marten Transport's return on equity.
Heartland Express received 85 more outperform votes than Marten Transport when rated by MarketBeat users. However, 55.05% of users gave Marten Transport an outperform vote while only 49.03% of users gave Heartland Express an outperform vote.
53.5% of Heartland Express shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 69.1% of Marten Transport shares are owned by institutional investors. 39.8% of Heartland Express shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 22.9% of Marten Transport shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a company is poised for long-term growth.
Heartland Express presently has a consensus price target of $13.25, suggesting a potential upside of 19.58%. Marten Transport has a consensus price target of $23.00, suggesting a potential upside of 31.43%. Given Heartland Express' stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Marten Transport is more favorable than Heartland Express.
Heartland Express pays an annual dividend of $0.08 per share and has a dividend yield of 0.7%. Marten Transport pays an annual dividend of $0.24 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.4%. Heartland Express pays out -47.1% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Marten Transport pays out 33.8% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Both companies have healthy payout ratios and should be able to cover their dividend payments with earnings for the next several years.
Marten Transport has lower revenue, but higher earnings than Heartland Express. Heartland Express is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Marten Transport, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
In the previous week, Heartland Express had 24 more articles in the media than Marten Transport. MarketBeat recorded 26 mentions for Heartland Express and 2 mentions for Marten Transport. Marten Transport's average media sentiment score of 0.90 beat Heartland Express' score of 0.84 indicating that Heartland Express is being referred to more favorably in the media.
Summary
Marten Transport beats Heartland Express 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 MRTN 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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