CVS vs. WBA, GRDN, PETS, YI, CJJD, NVO, UNH, ABT, NVS, and AZN
Should you be buying CVS Health stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of CVS Health include Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA), Guardian Pharmacy Services (GRDN), PetMed Express (PETS), 111 (YI), China Jo-Jo Drugstores (CJJD), Novo Nordisk A/S (NVO), UnitedHealth Group (UNH), Abbott Laboratories (ABT), Novartis (NVS), and AstraZeneca (AZN).
CVS Health vs.
Walgreens Boots Alliance (NASDAQ:WBA) and CVS Health (NYSE:CVS) are both retail/wholesale companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their community ranking, profitability, institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, risk, valuation, earnings, dividends and media sentiment.
Walgreens Boots Alliance currently has a consensus target price of $10.59, indicating a potential downside of 5.27%. CVS Health has a consensus target price of $75.27, indicating a potential upside of 21.15%. Given CVS Health's stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe CVS Health is more favorable than Walgreens Boots Alliance.
CVS Health has a net margin of 1.24% compared to Walgreens Boots Alliance's net margin of -5.87%. Walgreens Boots Alliance's return on equity of 17.61% beat CVS Health's return on equity.
Walgreens Boots Alliance pays an annual dividend of $1.00 per share and has a dividend yield of 8.9%. CVS Health pays an annual dividend of $2.66 per share and has a dividend yield of 4.3%. Walgreens Boots Alliance pays out -14.9% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. CVS Health pays out 63.5% 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. CVS Health has raised its dividend for 4 consecutive years. Walgreens Boots Alliance is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and lower payout ratio.
In the previous week, CVS Health had 21 more articles in the media than Walgreens Boots Alliance. MarketBeat recorded 40 mentions for CVS Health and 19 mentions for Walgreens Boots Alliance. CVS Health's average media sentiment score of 1.23 beat Walgreens Boots Alliance's score of 1.20 indicating that CVS Health is being referred to more favorably in the news media.
CVS Health has higher revenue and earnings than Walgreens Boots Alliance. Walgreens Boots Alliance is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than CVS Health, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
58.6% of Walgreens Boots Alliance shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 80.7% of CVS Health shares are held by institutional investors. 17.5% of Walgreens Boots Alliance shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 1.2% of CVS Health shares are held by 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.
CVS Health received 278 more outperform votes than Walgreens Boots Alliance when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 75.56% of users gave CVS Health an outperform vote while only 64.83% of users gave Walgreens Boots Alliance an outperform vote.
Walgreens Boots Alliance has a beta of 0.77, indicating that its stock price is 23% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, CVS Health has a beta of 0.6, indicating that its stock price is 40% less volatile than the S&P 500.
Summary
CVS Health beats Walgreens Boots Alliance on 16 of the 22 factors compared between the two stocks.
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New MarketBeat Followers Over Time
This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding {thisCompany.Symbol} 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.
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This page (NYSE:CVS) was last updated on 5/21/2025 by MarketBeat.com Staff
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