TREE vs. WAFD, BANC, AGM, NWBI, PFS, BHLB, OCFC, BRKL, DCOM, and CFFN
Should you be buying LendingTree stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of LendingTree include WaFd (WAFD), Banc of California (BANC), Federal Agricultural Mortgage (AGM), Northwest Bancshares (NWBI), Provident Financial Services (PFS), Berkshire Hills Bancorp (BHLB), OceanFirst Financial (OCFC), Brookline Bancorp (BRKL), Dime Community Bancshares (DCOM), and Capitol Federal Financial (CFFN). These companies are all part of the "thrifts & mortgage finance" industry.
LendingTree (NASDAQ:TREE) and WaFd (NASDAQ:WAFD) are both finance companies, but which is the better business? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, earnings, dividends, media sentiment, risk, valuation, community ranking and profitability.
LendingTree presently has a consensus target price of $48.50, suggesting a potential upside of 12.82%. WaFd has a consensus target price of $33.25, suggesting a potential upside of 18.71%. Given WaFd's higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe WaFd is more favorable than LendingTree.
68.3% of LendingTree shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 83.7% of WaFd shares are owned by institutional investors. 23.4% of LendingTree shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 2.3% of WaFd shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.
LendingTree has a beta of 2.1, suggesting that its share price is 110% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, WaFd has a beta of 0.84, suggesting that its share price is 16% less volatile than the S&P 500.
LendingTree received 390 more outperform votes than WaFd when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 68.59% of users gave LendingTree an outperform vote while only 49.31% of users gave WaFd an outperform vote.
In the previous week, LendingTree had 20 more articles in the media than WaFd. MarketBeat recorded 23 mentions for LendingTree and 3 mentions for WaFd. WaFd's average media sentiment score of 0.94 beat LendingTree's score of 0.31 indicating that WaFd is being referred to more favorably in the news media.
WaFd has a net margin of 15.33% compared to LendingTree's net margin of -21.07%. WaFd's return on equity of 10.02% beat LendingTree's return on equity.
WaFd has higher revenue and earnings than LendingTree. LendingTree is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than WaFd, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Summary
WaFd beats LendingTree on 11 of the 18 factors compared between the two stocks.
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This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding TREE 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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