FERG vs. WSO, WSO.B, CAT, ETN, DE, ABBNY, ITW, CTAS, PH, and EMR
Should you be buying Ferguson stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of Ferguson include Watsco (WSO), Watsco (WSO.B), Caterpillar (CAT), Eaton (ETN), Deere & Company (DE), ABB (ABBNY), Illinois Tool Works (ITW), Cintas (CTAS), Parker-Hannifin (PH), and Emerson Electric (EMR).
Watsco (NYSE:WSO) and Ferguson (NASDAQ:FERG) are both large-cap construction companies, but which is the superior business? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, dividends, earnings, profitability, media sentiment, valuation, risk and community ranking.
Watsco has a beta of 0.86, indicating that its stock price is 14% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Ferguson has a beta of 1.27, indicating that its stock price is 27% more volatile than the S&P 500.
89.7% of Watsco shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 82.0% of Ferguson shares are owned by institutional investors. 12.9% of Watsco shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 0.2% of Ferguson shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.
Watsco presently has a consensus price target of $404.25, suggesting a potential downside of 14.88%. Ferguson has a consensus price target of $166.50, suggesting a potential downside of 19.07%. Given Ferguson's higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Watsco is more favorable than Ferguson.
Watsco pays an annual dividend of $10.80 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.3%. Ferguson pays an annual dividend of $3.16 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.5%. Watsco pays out 83.1% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Ferguson pays out 36.7% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Watsco has raised its dividend for 11 consecutive years and Ferguson has raised its dividend for 1 consecutive years. Watsco is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and longer track record of dividend growth.
Watsco received 288 more outperform votes than Ferguson when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 55.46% of users gave Watsco an outperform vote while only 37.84% of users gave Ferguson an outperform vote.
In the previous week, Ferguson had 19 more articles in the media than Watsco. MarketBeat recorded 25 mentions for Ferguson and 6 mentions for Watsco. Ferguson's average media sentiment score of 1.09 beat Watsco's score of 0.54 indicating that Watsco is being referred to more favorably in the media.
Watsco has a net margin of 7.03% compared to Watsco's net margin of 6.00%. Watsco's return on equity of 37.99% beat Ferguson's return on equity.
Ferguson has higher revenue and earnings than Watsco. Ferguson is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Watsco, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Summary
Watsco beats Ferguson on 13 of the 21 factors compared between the two stocks.
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This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding FERG 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 NASDAQ 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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