WMT vs. COST, HD, BABA, MCD, LOW, SBUX, AMZN, PSMT, TGT, and DG
Should you be buying Walmart stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of Walmart include Costco Wholesale (COST), Home Depot (HD), Alibaba Group (BABA), McDonald's (MCD), Lowe's Companies (LOW), Starbucks (SBUX), Amazon.com (AMZN), PriceSmart (PSMT), Target (TGT), and Dollar General (DG). These companies are all part of the "retail/wholesale" sector.
Walmart vs.
Costco Wholesale (NASDAQ:COST) and Walmart (NYSE:WMT) are both large-cap retail/wholesale companies, but which is the superior stock? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, earnings, valuation, risk, institutional ownership, profitability, community ranking, media sentiment and dividends.
66.0% of Costco Wholesale shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 31.3% of Walmart shares are held by institutional investors. 0.2% of Costco Wholesale shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 47.1% of Walmart shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.
Costco Wholesale has a beta of 0.79, suggesting that its share price is 21% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Walmart has a beta of 0.48, suggesting that its share price is 52% less volatile than the S&P 500.
Costco Wholesale received 332 more outperform votes than Walmart when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 72.62% of users gave Costco Wholesale an outperform vote while only 60.24% of users gave Walmart an outperform vote.
Walmart has higher revenue and earnings than Costco Wholesale. Walmart is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Costco Wholesale, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Costco Wholesale presently has a consensus price target of $550.16, suggesting a potential upside of 11.94%. Walmart has a consensus price target of $163.06, suggesting a potential upside of 11.94%. Given Walmart's higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Walmart is more favorable than Costco Wholesale.
Costco Wholesale pays an annual dividend of $3.60 per share and has a dividend yield of 0.7%. Walmart pays an annual dividend of $2.28 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.6%. Costco Wholesale pays out 26.5% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Walmart pays out 53.3% 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. Costco Wholesale has raised its dividend for 18 consecutive years and Walmart has raised its dividend for 51 consecutive years. Walmart is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and longer track record of dividend growth.
Costco Wholesale has a net margin of 2.58% compared to Walmart's net margin of 1.91%. Costco Wholesale's return on equity of 28.66% beat Walmart's return on equity.
In the previous week, Walmart had 1 more articles in the media than Costco Wholesale. MarketBeat recorded 35 mentions for Walmart and 34 mentions for Costco Wholesale. Costco Wholesale's average media sentiment score of 0.58 beat Walmart's score of -0.15 indicating that Costco Wholesale is being referred to more favorably in the media.
Summary
Costco Wholesale beats Walmart on 13 of the 21 factors compared between the two stocks.
New MarketBeat Followers Over Time
This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding WMT 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.
