MET vs. AFL, PRU, UNM, PRI, LNC, AEL, CNO, NWLI, CIA, and MFC
Should you be buying MetLife stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of MetLife include Aflac (AFL), Prudential Financial (PRU), Unum Group (UNM), Primerica (PRI), Lincoln National (LNC), American Equity Investment Life (AEL), CNO Financial Group (CNO), National Western Life Group (NWLI), Citizens (CIA), and Manulife Financial (MFC). These companies are all part of the "finance" sector.
Aflac (NYSE:AFL) and MetLife (NYSE:MET) are both large-cap finance companies, but which is the superior business? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their earnings, profitability, media sentiment, analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, risk, valuation, community ranking and dividends.
MetLife received 354 more outperform votes than Aflac when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 73.53% of users gave MetLife an outperform vote while only 57.27% of users gave Aflac an outperform vote.
Aflac has higher earnings, but lower revenue than MetLife. Aflac is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than MetLife, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Aflac pays an annual dividend of $2.00 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.2%. MetLife pays an annual dividend of $2.18 per share and has a dividend yield of 3.0%. Aflac pays out 22.1% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. MetLife pays out 74.9% 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. Aflac has raised its dividend for 43 consecutive years and MetLife has raised its dividend for 11 consecutive years.
67.4% of Aflac shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 89.8% of MetLife shares are held by institutional investors. 0.9% of Aflac shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 0.3% of MetLife shares are held by company 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.
Aflac has a beta of 0.91, suggesting that its stock price is 9% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, MetLife has a beta of 1.09, suggesting that its stock price is 9% more volatile than the S&P 500.
Aflac currently has a consensus price target of $82.38, suggesting a potential downside of 8.33%. MetLife has a consensus price target of $79.08, suggesting a potential upside of 9.27%. Given Aflac's stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe MetLife is more favorable than Aflac.
Aflac has a net margin of 27.67% compared to Aflac's net margin of 3.50%. Aflac's return on equity of 20.39% beat MetLife's return on equity.
In the previous week, Aflac had 7 more articles in the media than MetLife. MarketBeat recorded 13 mentions for Aflac and 6 mentions for MetLife. MetLife's average media sentiment score of 0.81 beat Aflac's score of 0.55 indicating that Aflac is being referred to more favorably in the media.
Summary
MetLife beats Aflac on 11 of the 21 factors compared between the two stocks.
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This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding MET 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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