Cars.com (CARS) Competitors

Cars.com (NYSE:CARS) and CarGurus (NASDAQ:CARG) are both retail/wholesale companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their valuation, earnings, profitability, risk, institutional ownership, community ranking, media sentiment, analyst recommendations and dividends.

Do analysts prefer CARS or CARG?

Cars.com currently has a consensus target price of $23.00, suggesting a potential upside of 31.73%. CarGurus has a consensus target price of $37.86, suggesting a potential upside of 5.09%. Given Cars.com's higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Cars.com is more favorable than CarGurus.

Company	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Cars.com	0 Sell rating(s)	2 Hold rating(s)	2 Buy rating(s)	0 Strong Buy rating(s)	2.50
CarGurus	0 Sell rating(s)	2 Hold rating(s)	8 Buy rating(s)	1 Strong Buy rating(s)	2.91

Which has preferable earnings and valuation, CARS or CARG?

Cars.com has higher earnings, but lower revenue than CarGurus. CarGurus is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Cars.com, 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
Cars.com	$718.33M	1.57	$118.44M	$0.58	30.10
CarGurus	$888.97M	4.20	$31.10M	-$0.46	-78.33

Does the MarketBeat Community favor CARS or CARG?

CarGurus received 280 more outperform votes than Cars.com when rated by MarketBeat users. However, 64.67% of users gave Cars.com an outperform vote while only 63.33% of users gave CarGurus an outperform vote.

Company	Underperform	Outperform
Cars.com	Outperform Votes 238 64.67%	Underperform Votes 130 35.33%
CarGurus	Outperform Votes 518 63.33%	Underperform Votes 300 36.67%

Do insiders and institutionals hold more shares of CARS or CARG?

89.2% of Cars.com shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 86.9% of CarGurus shares are held by institutional investors. 2.1% of Cars.com shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 17.2% of CarGurus shares are held by company 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.

Is CARS or CARG more profitable?

Cars.com has a net margin of 5.46% compared to CarGurus' net margin of -5.47%. CarGurus' return on equity of 13.96% beat Cars.com's return on equity.

Company	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Cars.com	5.46%	9.99%	4.33%
CarGurus	-5.47%	13.96%	8.92%

Which has more risk and volatility, CARS or CARG?

Cars.com has a beta of 2.12, meaning that its share price is 112% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, CarGurus has a beta of 1.57, meaning that its share price is 57% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Does the media prefer CARS or CARG?

In the previous week, CarGurus had 8 more articles in the media than Cars.com. MarketBeat recorded 11 mentions for CarGurus and 3 mentions for Cars.com. Cars.com's average media sentiment score of 0.74 beat CarGurus' score of 0.66 indicating that Cars.com is being referred to more favorably in the media.

Company	Very Positive	Positive	Neutral	Negative	Very Negative	Overall Sentiment
Cars.com	2 Very Positive mention(s)	0 Positive mention(s)	1 Neutral mention(s)	0 Negative mention(s)	0 Very Negative mention(s)	Positive
CarGurus	5 Very Positive mention(s)	1 Positive mention(s)	3 Neutral mention(s)	0 Negative mention(s)	0 Very Negative mention(s)	Positive

Summary

CarGurus beats Cars.com on 10 of the 19 factors compared between the two stocks.