ASH vs. IOSP, HUN, CC, OLN, FMC, NGVT, HWKN, BCPC, CBT, and ALTM
Should you be buying Ashland stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of Ashland include Innospec (IOSP), Huntsman (HUN), Chemours (CC), Olin (OLN), FMC (FMC), Ingevity (NGVT), Hawkins (HWKN), Balchem (BCPC), Cabot (CBT), and Arcadium Lithium (ALTM). These companies are all part of the "basic materials" sector.
Innospec (NASDAQ:IOSP) and Ashland (NYSE:ASH) are both mid-cap basic materials companies, but which is the superior business? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, dividends, earnings, profitability, media sentiment, valuation, risk and community ranking.
Innospec pays an annual dividend of $1.44 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.2%. Ashland pays an annual dividend of $1.54 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.6%. Innospec pays out 25.9% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Ashland pays out 50.5% 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. Innospec has raised its dividend for 3 consecutive years and Ashland has raised its dividend for 1 consecutive years.
Innospec has a beta of 1.1, indicating that its stock price is 10% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Ashland has a beta of 0.92, indicating that its stock price is 8% less volatile than the S&P 500.
Ashland received 260 more outperform votes than Innospec when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 68.90% of users gave Ashland an outperform vote while only 65.79% of users gave Innospec an outperform vote.
Ashland has higher revenue and earnings than Innospec. Innospec is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Ashland, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Ashland has a consensus price target of $101.00, suggesting a potential upside of 5.14%. Given Innospec's higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Ashland is more favorable than Innospec.
In the previous week, Ashland had 29 more articles in the media than Innospec. MarketBeat recorded 30 mentions for Ashland and 1 mentions for Innospec. Ashland's average media sentiment score of 1.35 beat Innospec's score of 0.20 indicating that Innospec is being referred to more favorably in the media.
Ashland has a net margin of 7.62% compared to Ashland's net margin of 7.14%. Ashland's return on equity of 13.69% beat Innospec's return on equity.
96.6% of Innospec shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 94.0% of Ashland shares are owned by institutional investors. 1.5% of Innospec shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 0.7% of Ashland shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.
Summary
Ashland beats Innospec on 11 of the 20 factors compared between the two stocks.
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This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding ASH 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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