AZN vs. NVS, ABT, PFE, ABBV, SNY, MRK, VRTX, BMY, REGN, and GSK
Should you be buying AstraZeneca stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of AstraZeneca include Novartis (NVS), Abbott Laboratories (ABT), Pfizer (PFE), AbbVie (ABBV), Sanofi (SNY), Merck & Co., Inc. (MRK), Vertex Pharmaceuticals (VRTX), Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY), Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (REGN), and GSK (GSK). These companies are all part of the "pharmaceutical preparations" industry.
AstraZeneca (NASDAQ:AZN) and Novartis (NYSE:NVS) are both large-cap medical companies, but which is the better investment? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their profitability, institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, dividends, risk, earnings, community ranking, valuation and media sentiment.
Novartis has a net margin of 31.33% compared to AstraZeneca's net margin of 13.00%. Novartis' return on equity of 31.12% beat AstraZeneca's return on equity.
AstraZeneca presently has a consensus price target of $80.00, suggesting a potential upside of 6.62%. Novartis has a consensus price target of $115.00, suggesting a potential upside of 16.09%. Given Novartis' higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Novartis is more favorable than AstraZeneca.
In the previous week, Novartis had 7 more articles in the media than AstraZeneca. MarketBeat recorded 41 mentions for Novartis and 34 mentions for AstraZeneca. AstraZeneca's average media sentiment score of 0.55 beat Novartis' score of 0.42 indicating that AstraZeneca is being referred to more favorably in the media.
AstraZeneca has a beta of 0.5, suggesting that its share price is 50% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Novartis has a beta of 0.54, suggesting that its share price is 46% less volatile than the S&P 500.
Novartis received 474 more outperform votes than AstraZeneca when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 61.42% of users gave Novartis an outperform vote while only 57.61% of users gave AstraZeneca an outperform vote.
20.4% of AstraZeneca shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 13.1% of Novartis 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 is poised for long-term growth.
Novartis has lower revenue, but higher earnings 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.
AstraZeneca pays an annual dividend of $1.93 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.6%. Novartis pays an annual dividend of $2.43 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.5%. AstraZeneca pays out 100.5% 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 pays out 32.8% of its earnings in the form of a dividend.
Summary
Novartis beats AstraZeneca on 12 of the 20 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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