SR vs. OGS, NJR, NFG, ALE, PNM, OTTR, NWE, BKH, PRMW, and ELP
Should you be buying Spire stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of Spire include ONE Gas (OGS), New Jersey Resources (NJR), National Fuel Gas (NFG), ALLETE (ALE), PNM Resources (PNM), Otter Tail (OTTR), NorthWestern Energy Group (NWE), Black Hills (BKH), Primo Water (PRMW), and Companhia Paranaense de Energia - COPEL (ELP). These companies are all part of the "utilities" sector.
ONE Gas (NYSE:OGS) and Spire (NYSE:SR) are both mid-cap utilities companies, but which is the superior business? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their profitability, institutional ownership, dividends, valuation, media sentiment, analyst recommendations, community ranking, earnings and risk.
ONE Gas presently has a consensus price target of $64.56, indicating a potential downside of 1.28%. Spire has a consensus price target of $61.72, indicating a potential upside of 0.67%. Given ONE Gas' stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Spire is more favorable than ONE Gas.
In the previous week, Spire had 21 more articles in the media than ONE Gas. MarketBeat recorded 31 mentions for Spire and 10 mentions for ONE Gas. Spire's average media sentiment score of 0.53 beat ONE Gas' score of -0.09 indicating that ONE Gas is being referred to more favorably in the media.
Spire received 186 more outperform votes than ONE Gas when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 59.12% of users gave Spire an outperform vote while only 49.55% of users gave ONE Gas an outperform vote.
88.7% of ONE Gas shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 87.4% of Spire shares are held by institutional investors. 1.4% of ONE Gas shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 2.9% of Spire shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.
ONE Gas has a net margin of 9.75% compared to ONE Gas' net margin of 9.05%. Spire's return on equity of 8.63% beat ONE Gas' return on equity.
ONE Gas has higher earnings, but lower revenue than Spire. Spire is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than ONE Gas, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
ONE Gas pays an annual dividend of $2.64 per share and has a dividend yield of 4.0%. Spire pays an annual dividend of $3.02 per share and has a dividend yield of 4.9%. ONE Gas pays out 63.8% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Spire pays out 76.3% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. ONE Gas has raised its dividend for 10 consecutive years and Spire has raised its dividend for 21 consecutive years. Spire is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and longer track record of dividend growth.
ONE Gas has a beta of 0.65, indicating that its share price is 35% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Spire has a beta of 0.5, indicating that its share price is 50% less volatile than the S&P 500.
Summary
ONE Gas beats Spire 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 SR 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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