AFL vs. HUM, CNC, PFG, PSA, SPG, TRV, COIN, O, IBKR, and MFC
Should you be buying Aflac stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of Aflac include Humana (HUM), Centene (CNC), Principal Financial Group (PFG), Public Storage (PSA), Simon Property Group (SPG), Travelers Companies (TRV), Coinbase Global (COIN), Realty Income (O), Interactive Brokers Group (IBKR), and Manulife Financial (MFC).
Humana (NYSE:HUM) and Aflac (NYSE:AFL) are both large-cap medical companies, but which is the superior stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their community ranking, earnings, analyst recommendations, valuation, risk, media sentiment, dividends, institutional ownership and profitability.
Humana received 313 more outperform votes than Aflac when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 64.15% of users gave Humana an outperform vote while only 57.27% of users gave Aflac an outperform vote.
Humana pays an annual dividend of $3.54 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.0%. Aflac pays an annual dividend of $2.00 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.3%. Humana pays out 22.0% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Aflac pays out 22.1% 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. Humana has increased its dividend for 7 consecutive years and Aflac has increased its dividend for 43 consecutive years. Aflac is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and longer track record of dividend growth.
Aflac has lower revenue, but higher earnings than Humana. Aflac is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Humana, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Humana presently has a consensus price target of $424.50, suggesting a potential upside of 19.17%. Aflac has a consensus price target of $82.38, suggesting a potential downside of 6.77%. Given Aflac's stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Humana is more favorable than Aflac.
Aflac has a net margin of 27.67% compared to Aflac's net margin of 1.82%. Aflac's return on equity of 17.76% beat Humana's return on equity.
In the previous week, Aflac had 1 more articles in the media than Humana. MarketBeat recorded 22 mentions for Aflac and 21 mentions for Humana. Humana's average media sentiment score of 0.65 beat Aflac's score of 0.28 indicating that Aflac is being referred to more favorably in the news media.
92.4% of Humana shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 67.4% of Aflac shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.3% of Humana shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 0.9% of Aflac shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.
Humana has a beta of 0.5, meaning that its share price is 50% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Aflac has a beta of 0.91, meaning that its share price is 9% less volatile than the S&P 500.
Summary
Humana beats Aflac on 12 of the 21 factors compared between the two stocks.
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This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding AFL 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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