ALC vs. HCA, THC, UHS, EHC, ENSG, ACHC, SEM, USPH, BKD, 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), U.S. Physical Therapy (USPH), Brookdale Senior Living (BKD), and Petco Health and Wellness (WOOF). These companies are all part of the "health care facilities" industry.
HCA Healthcare (NYSE:HCA) and Alcon (NYSE:ALC) are both large-cap medical companies, but which is the superior business? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, profitability, valuation, community ranking, media sentiment, earnings, dividends and risk.
62.7% of HCA Healthcare shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 53.9% of Alcon shares are owned by institutional investors. 1.6% of HCA Healthcare shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 1.5% of Alcon shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.
HCA Healthcare has a beta of 1.66, meaning that its stock price is 66% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Alcon has a beta of 0.92, meaning that its stock price is 8% less volatile than the S&P 500.
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 has a net margin of 10.96% compared to Alcon's net margin of 8.20%. Alcon's return on equity of 674.49% beat HCA Healthcare's return on equity.
HCA Healthcare received 1021 more outperform votes than Alcon when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 77.32% of users gave HCA Healthcare an outperform vote while only 61.72% of users gave Alcon an outperform vote.
In the previous week, HCA Healthcare had 20 more articles in the media than Alcon. MarketBeat recorded 23 mentions for HCA Healthcare and 3 mentions for Alcon. Alcon's average media sentiment score of 0.81 beat HCA Healthcare's score of -0.35 indicating that HCA Healthcare is being referred to more favorably in the media.
HCA Healthcare currently has a consensus price target of $325.59, suggesting a potential downside of 4.17%. Alcon has a consensus price target of $94.71, suggesting a potential upside of 6.26%. Given HCA Healthcare's higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Alcon is more favorable than HCA Healthcare.
Summary
HCA Healthcare beats Alcon on 15 of the 19 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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