UNH vs. ELV, CI, HUM, CNC, MOH, OSCR, ALHC, TRUP, CLOV, and NEUE
Should you be buying UnitedHealth Group stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of UnitedHealth Group include Elevance Health (ELV), The Cigna Group (CI), Humana (HUM), Centene (CNC), Molina Healthcare (MOH), Oscar Health (OSCR), Alignment Healthcare (ALHC), Trupanion (TRUP), Clover Health Investments (CLOV), and NeueHealth (NEUE). These companies are all part of the "hospital & medical service plans" industry.
Elevance Health (NYSE:ELV) and UnitedHealth Group (NYSE:UNH) 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, valuation, profitability, risk, media sentiment, community ranking, dividends and earnings.
Elevance Health presently has a consensus price target of $598.23, indicating a potential upside of 11.10%. UnitedHealth Group has a consensus price target of $572.75, indicating a potential upside of 15.62%. Given Elevance Health's higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe UnitedHealth Group is more favorable than Elevance Health.
89.2% of Elevance Health shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 87.9% of UnitedHealth Group shares are held by institutional investors. 0.4% of Elevance Health shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 0.3% of UnitedHealth Group shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.
UnitedHealth Group has a net margin of 4.05% compared to UnitedHealth Group's net margin of 3.64%. Elevance Health's return on equity of 26.50% beat UnitedHealth Group's return on equity.
Elevance Health has a beta of 0.79, indicating that its stock price is 21% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, UnitedHealth Group has a beta of 0.55, indicating that its stock price is 45% less volatile than the S&P 500.
Elevance Health pays an annual dividend of $6.52 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.2%. UnitedHealth Group pays an annual dividend of $7.52 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.5%. Elevance Health pays out 24.6% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. UnitedHealth Group pays out 46.0% 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. Elevance Health has increased its dividend for 13 consecutive years and UnitedHealth Group has increased its dividend for 14 consecutive years. UnitedHealth Group is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and longer track record of dividend growth.
UnitedHealth Group has higher revenue and earnings than Elevance Health. Elevance Health is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than UnitedHealth Group, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
In the previous week, UnitedHealth Group had 18 more articles in the media than Elevance Health. MarketBeat recorded 42 mentions for UnitedHealth Group and 24 mentions for Elevance Health. UnitedHealth Group's average media sentiment score of 0.88 beat Elevance Health's score of 0.30 indicating that Elevance Health is being referred to more favorably in the media.
UnitedHealth Group received 837 more outperform votes than Elevance Health when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 80.50% of users gave UnitedHealth Group an outperform vote while only 66.75% of users gave Elevance Health an outperform vote.
Summary
UnitedHealth Group beats Elevance Health on 14 of the 21 factors compared between the two stocks.
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This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding UNH 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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