BAC vs. WFC, C, JPM, AXP, HSBC, MS, RY, MUFG, GS, and PLD
Should you be buying Bank of America stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of Bank of America include Wells Fargo & Company (WFC), Citigroup (C), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), American Express (AXP), HSBC (HSBC), Morgan Stanley (MS), Royal Bank of Canada (RY), Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), The Goldman Sachs Group (GS), and Prologis (PLD). These companies are all part of the "finance" sector.
Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE:WFC) and Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) are both large-cap finance companies, but which is the superior business? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their community ranking, dividends, valuation, profitability, institutional ownership, media sentiment, earnings, risk and analyst recommendations.
Wells Fargo & Company has a beta of 1.19, suggesting that its share price is 19% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Bank of America has a beta of 1.38, suggesting that its share price is 38% more volatile than the S&P 500.
In the previous week, Bank of America had 7 more articles in the media than Wells Fargo & Company. MarketBeat recorded 19 mentions for Bank of America and 12 mentions for Wells Fargo & Company. Wells Fargo & Company's average media sentiment score of 0.75 beat Bank of America's score of 0.73 indicating that Bank of America is being referred to more favorably in the news media.
Wells Fargo & Company has a net margin of 16.60% compared to Wells Fargo & Company's net margin of 15.42%. Bank of America's return on equity of 12.40% beat Wells Fargo & Company's return on equity.
72.5% of Wells Fargo & Company shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 68.1% of Bank of America shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.1% of Wells Fargo & Company shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 0.3% of Bank of America shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.
Bank of America has higher revenue and earnings than Wells Fargo & Company. Bank of America is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Wells Fargo & Company, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Wells Fargo & Company pays an annual dividend of $1.40 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.4%. Bank of America pays an annual dividend of $0.96 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.7%. Wells Fargo & Company pays out 29.0% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Bank of America pays out 31.3% 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. Wells Fargo & Company has increased its dividend for 3 consecutive years and Bank of America has increased its dividend for 3 consecutive years.
Wells Fargo & Company presently has a consensus price target of $52.13, indicating a potential downside of 9.76%. Bank of America has a consensus price target of $35.53, indicating a potential downside of 1.36%. Given Wells Fargo & Company's stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Bank of America is more favorable than Wells Fargo & Company.
Bank of America received 451 more outperform votes than Wells Fargo & Company when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 66.02% of users gave Bank of America an outperform vote while only 63.57% of users gave Wells Fargo & Company an outperform vote.
Summary
Bank of America beats Wells Fargo & Company on 12 of the 21 factors compared between the two stocks.
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This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding BAC and its top 5 competitors to their watchlist. Each company is represented with a line over a 90 day period.
Skip ChartThis 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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