SCL vs. NEU, ASH, BCPC, FUL, KWR, IOSP, SXT, MTX, FF, and FTK
Should you be buying Stepan stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of Stepan include NewMarket (NEU), Ashland (ASH), Balchem (BCPC), H.B. Fuller (FUL), Quaker Chemical (KWR), Innospec (IOSP), Sensient Technologies (SXT), Minerals Technologies (MTX), FutureFuel (FF), and Flotek Industries (FTK). These companies are all part of the "specialty chemicals" industry.
NewMarket (NYSE:NEU) and Stepan (NYSE:SCL) are both basic materials companies, but which is the superior investment? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their valuation, dividends, community ranking, institutional ownership, profitability, earnings, media sentiment, analyst recommendations and risk.
NewMarket pays an annual dividend of $10.00 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.9%. Stepan pays an annual dividend of $1.50 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.7%. NewMarket pays out 24.1% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Stepan pays out 90.4% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. NewMarket has raised its dividend for 6 consecutive years and Stepan has raised its dividend for 56 consecutive years. NewMarket is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and lower payout ratio.
NewMarket has higher revenue and earnings than Stepan. NewMarket is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Stepan, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
In the previous week, NewMarket had 1 more articles in the media than Stepan. MarketBeat recorded 2 mentions for NewMarket and 1 mentions for Stepan. NewMarket's average media sentiment score of 0.90 beat Stepan's score of 0.89 indicating that Stepan is being referred to more favorably in the news media.
Stepan received 22 more outperform votes than NewMarket when rated by MarketBeat users. However, 63.25% of users gave NewMarket an outperform vote while only 55.45% of users gave Stepan an outperform vote.
NewMarket has a net margin of 14.82% compared to NewMarket's net margin of 1.71%. Stepan's return on equity of 38.99% beat NewMarket's return on equity.
NewMarket has a beta of 0.51, indicating that its share price is 49% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Stepan has a beta of 0.83, indicating that its share price is 17% less volatile than the S&P 500.
Stepan has a consensus target price of $89.00, suggesting a potential upside of 3.62%. Given NewMarket's higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Stepan is more favorable than NewMarket.
61.1% of NewMarket shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 82.7% of Stepan shares are owned by institutional investors. 20.4% of NewMarket shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 6.9% of Stepan shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.
Summary
NewMarket beats Stepan on 12 of the 20 factors compared between the two stocks.
This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding SCL 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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