ALC vs. HCA, THC, UHS, EHC, ENSG, ACHC, SEM, BKD, USPH, and WOOF
Should you be buying Alcon stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of Alcon include HCA Healthcare (HCA), Tenet Healthcare (THC), Universal Health Services (UHS), Encompass Health (EHC), The Ensign Group (ENSG), Acadia Healthcare (ACHC), Select Medical (SEM), Brookdale Senior Living (BKD), U.S. Physical Therapy (USPH), and Petco Health and Wellness (WOOF). These companies are all part of the "health care facilities" industry.
Alcon (NYSE:ALC) and HCA Healthcare (NYSE:HCA) are both large-cap medical companies, but which is the better business? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their valuation, media sentiment, risk, analyst recommendations, profitability, institutional ownership, dividends, community ranking and earnings.
HCA Healthcare has higher revenue and earnings than Alcon. HCA Healthcare is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Alcon, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Alcon pays an annual dividend of $0.26 per share and has a dividend yield of 0.3%. HCA Healthcare pays an annual dividend of $2.64 per share and has a dividend yield of 0.7%. Alcon pays out 12.3% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. HCA Healthcare pays out 13.2% 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.
Alcon presently has a consensus target price of $96.71, indicating a potential upside of 3.57%. HCA Healthcare has a consensus target price of $339.72, indicating a potential downside of 4.24%. Given Alcon's higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Alcon is more favorable than HCA Healthcare.
Alcon has a beta of 0.97, indicating that its share price is 3% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, HCA Healthcare has a beta of 1.68, indicating that its share price is 68% more volatile than the S&P 500.
Alcon has a net margin of 10.96% compared to HCA Healthcare's net margin of 8.40%. HCA Healthcare's return on equity of 553.13% beat Alcon's return on equity.
53.9% of Alcon shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 62.7% of HCA Healthcare shares are held by institutional investors. 1.5% of Alcon shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 1.6% of HCA Healthcare shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.
In the previous week, HCA Healthcare had 61 more articles in the media than Alcon. MarketBeat recorded 63 mentions for HCA Healthcare and 2 mentions for Alcon. HCA Healthcare's average media sentiment score of 0.59 beat Alcon's score of 0.08 indicating that HCA Healthcare is being referred to more favorably in the news media.
HCA Healthcare received 1032 more outperform votes than Alcon when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 77.51% of users gave HCA Healthcare an outperform vote while only 61.77% of users gave Alcon an outperform vote.
Summary
HCA Healthcare beats Alcon on 16 of the 21 factors compared between the two stocks.
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This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding ALC 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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