ESSA Bancorp (ESSA) Competitors

LendingTree (NASDAQ:TREE) and ESSA Bancorp (NASDAQ:ESSA) are both small-cap finance companies, but which is the better business? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their dividends, analyst recommendations, media sentiment, earnings, community ranking, institutional ownership, risk, profitability and valuation.

Do institutionals and insiders believe in TREE or ESSA?

68.3% of LendingTree shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 54.2% of ESSA Bancorp shares are owned by institutional investors. 23.4% of LendingTree shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 7.5% of ESSA Bancorp shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Which has more volatility and risk, TREE or ESSA?

LendingTree has a beta of 1.9, meaning that its stock price is 90% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, ESSA Bancorp has a beta of 0.32, meaning that its stock price is 68% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Does the MarketBeat Community favor TREE or ESSA?

LendingTree received 486 more outperform votes than ESSA Bancorp when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 68.88% of users gave LendingTree an outperform vote while only 55.89% of users gave ESSA Bancorp an outperform vote.

Company	Underperform	Outperform
LendingTree	Outperform Votes 633 68.88%	Underperform Votes 286 31.12%
ESSA Bancorp	Outperform Votes 147 55.89%	Underperform Votes 116 44.11%

Do analysts rate TREE or ESSA?

LendingTree currently has a consensus price target of $65.75, indicating a potential upside of 45.46%. Given LendingTree's stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, equities research analysts plainly believe LendingTree is more favorable than ESSA Bancorp.

Company	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
LendingTree	0 Sell rating(s)	1 Hold rating(s)	7 Buy rating(s)	1 Strong Buy rating(s)	3.00
ESSA Bancorp	0 Sell rating(s)	0 Hold rating(s)	0 Buy rating(s)	0 Strong Buy rating(s)	0.00

Is TREE or ESSA more profitable?

ESSA Bancorp has a net margin of 14.83% compared to LendingTree's net margin of -4.72%. ESSA Bancorp's return on equity of 7.27% beat LendingTree's return on equity.

Company	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
LendingTree	-4.72%	0.51%	0.08%
ESSA Bancorp	14.83%	7.27%	0.75%

Does the media prefer TREE or ESSA?

In the previous week, LendingTree had 13 more articles in the media than ESSA Bancorp. MarketBeat recorded 15 mentions for LendingTree and 2 mentions for ESSA Bancorp. ESSA Bancorp's average media sentiment score of 0.89 beat LendingTree's score of 0.64 indicating that ESSA Bancorp is being referred to more favorably in the news media.

Company	Very Positive	Positive	Neutral	Negative	Very Negative	Overall Sentiment
LendingTree	6 Very Positive mention(s)	1 Positive mention(s)	7 Neutral mention(s)	1 Negative mention(s)	0 Very Negative mention(s)	Positive
ESSA Bancorp	0 Very Positive mention(s)	1 Positive mention(s)	1 Neutral mention(s)	0 Negative mention(s)	0 Very Negative mention(s)	Positive

Which has better valuation & earnings, TREE or ESSA?

ESSA Bancorp has lower revenue, but higher earnings than LendingTree. LendingTree is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than ESSA Bancorp, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Company	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
LendingTree	$900.22M	0.67	-$122.40M	-$3.13	-14.44
ESSA Bancorp	$65.86M	2.72	$16.99M	$1.74	10.13

Summary

LendingTree beats ESSA Bancorp on 11 of the 19 factors compared between the two stocks.