ASH vs. BCPC, IOSP, HUN, UNVR, CC, LTHM, OLN, NGVT, FMC, and KGC
Should you be buying Ashland stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of Ashland include Balchem (BCPC), Innospec (IOSP), Huntsman (HUN), Univar Solutions (UNVR), Chemours (CC), Livent (LTHM), Olin (OLN), Ingevity (NGVT), FMC (FMC), and Kinross Gold (KGC). These companies are all part of the "basic materials" sector.
Ashland vs.
Ashland (NYSE:ASH) and Balchem (NASDAQ:BCPC) are both mid-cap basic materials companies, but which is the superior stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their risk, community ranking, dividends, institutional ownership, valuation, analyst recommendations, media sentiment, profitability and earnings.
92.2% of Ashland shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 89.3% of Balchem shares are held by institutional investors. 7.8% of Ashland shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 1.6% of Balchem shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.
Ashland has a net margin of 38.23% compared to Balchem's net margin of 11.18%. Balchem's return on equity of 11.68% beat Ashland's return on equity.
Ashland has higher revenue and earnings than Balchem. Ashland is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Balchem, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Ashland received 196 more outperform votes than Balchem when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 70.66% of users gave Ashland an outperform vote while only 67.25% of users gave Balchem an outperform vote.
Ashland presently has a consensus price target of $128.13, suggesting a potential upside of 27.82%. Balchem has a consensus price target of $140.00, suggesting a potential upside of 12.22%. Given Ashland's higher possible upside, research analysts clearly believe Ashland is more favorable than Balchem.
Ashland pays an annual dividend of $1.34 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.3%. Balchem pays an annual dividend of $0.71 per share and has a dividend yield of 0.6%. Ashland pays out 8.3% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Balchem pays out 21.8% 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. Ashland is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and lower payout ratio.
Ashland has a beta of 1, suggesting that its share price has a similar volatility profile to the S&P 500.Comparatively, Balchem has a beta of 0.69, suggesting that its share price is 31% less volatile than the S&P 500.
In the previous week, Balchem had 4 more articles in the media than Ashland. MarketBeat recorded 7 mentions for Balchem and 3 mentions for Ashland. Balchem's average media sentiment score of 0.46 beat Ashland's score of 0.08 indicating that Balchem is being referred to more favorably in the news media.
Summary
Ashland beats Balchem on 13 of the 20 factors compared between the two stocks.
New MarketBeat Followers Over Time
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.
Media Sentiment Over Time
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.
