LOCO vs. FWRG, PTLO, KRUS, MSC, TH, BALY, PBPB, CVEO, GHG, and GENK
Should you be buying El Pollo Loco stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of El Pollo Loco include First Watch Restaurant Group (FWRG), Portillo's (PTLO), Kura Sushi USA (KRUS), Studio City International (MSC), Target Hospitality (TH), Bally's (BALY), Potbelly (PBPB), Civeo (CVEO), GreenTree Hospitality Group (GHG), and GEN Restaurant Group (GENK). These companies are all part of the "restaurants, hotels, motels" industry.
El Pollo Loco vs.
First Watch Restaurant Group (NASDAQ:FWRG) and El Pollo Loco (NASDAQ:LOCO) are both small-cap retail/wholesale companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, earnings, risk, dividends, media sentiment, profitability, institutional ownership, valuation and community ranking.
First Watch Restaurant Group presently has a consensus price target of $21.36, suggesting a potential upside of 34.28%. El Pollo Loco has a consensus price target of $15.50, suggesting a potential upside of 72.03%. Given El Pollo Loco's higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe El Pollo Loco is more favorable than First Watch Restaurant Group.
El Pollo Loco has a net margin of 5.11% compared to First Watch Restaurant Group's net margin of 2.09%. El Pollo Loco's return on equity of 10.34% beat First Watch Restaurant Group's return on equity.
In the previous week, First Watch Restaurant Group and First Watch Restaurant Group both had 2 articles in the media. First Watch Restaurant Group's average media sentiment score of 1.38 beat El Pollo Loco's score of 0.19 indicating that First Watch Restaurant Group is being referred to more favorably in the media.
El Pollo Loco received 303 more outperform votes than First Watch Restaurant Group when rated by MarketBeat users. However, 61.46% of users gave First Watch Restaurant Group an outperform vote while only 59.25% of users gave El Pollo Loco an outperform vote.
96.1% of First Watch Restaurant Group shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 81.3% of El Pollo Loco shares are owned by institutional investors. 6.0% of First Watch Restaurant Group shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 1.9% of El Pollo Loco shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.
El Pollo Loco has lower revenue, but higher earnings than First Watch Restaurant Group. El Pollo Loco is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than First Watch Restaurant Group, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
First Watch Restaurant Group has a beta of 1.01, suggesting that its stock price is 1% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, El Pollo Loco has a beta of 1.11, suggesting that its stock price is 11% more volatile than the S&P 500.
Summary
First Watch Restaurant Group beats El Pollo Loco on 10 of the 18 factors compared between the two stocks.
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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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This page (NASDAQ:LOCO) was last updated on 5/23/2025 by MarketBeat.com Staff