UNH vs. ELV, JNJ, NVO, MRK, ABBV, AZN, TMO, LLY, NVS, and ABT
Should you be buying UnitedHealth Group stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of UnitedHealth Group include Elevance Health (ELV), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Novo Nordisk A/S (NVO), Merck & Co., Inc. (MRK), AbbVie (ABBV), AstraZeneca (AZN), Thermo Fisher Scientific (TMO), Eli Lilly and Company (LLY), Novartis (NVS), and Abbott Laboratories (ABT). These companies are all part of the "medical" sector.
Elevance Health (NYSE:ELV) and UnitedHealth Group (NYSE:UNH) are both large-cap medical companies, but which is the better stock? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, valuation, dividends, community ranking, media sentiment, risk, profitability, earnings and institutional ownership.
UnitedHealth Group received 839 more outperform votes than Elevance Health when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 80.51% of users gave UnitedHealth Group an outperform vote while only 66.61% of users gave Elevance Health an outperform vote.
Elevance Health has a beta of 0.79, meaning that its stock price is 21% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, UnitedHealth Group has a beta of 0.55, meaning that its stock price is 45% less volatile than the S&P 500.
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.
Elevance Health currently has a consensus target price of $587.42, suggesting a potential upside of 7.25%. UnitedHealth Group has a consensus target price of $570.05, suggesting a potential upside of 8.65%. Given Elevance Health's higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe UnitedHealth Group is more favorable than Elevance Health.
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 1.4%. 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 raised its dividend for 13 consecutive years and UnitedHealth Group has raised 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.
89.2% of Elevance Health shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 87.9% of UnitedHealth Group shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.4% of Elevance Health shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 0.3% of UnitedHealth Group 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.
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.
In the previous week, UnitedHealth Group had 18 more articles in the media than Elevance Health. MarketBeat recorded 31 mentions for UnitedHealth Group and 13 mentions for Elevance Health. UnitedHealth Group's average media sentiment score of 1.22 beat Elevance Health's score of 0.32 indicating that Elevance Health is being referred to more favorably in the media.
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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