AFL vs. MET, PRU, HUM, CNC, UNM, PRI, LNC, OSCR, AEL, and CNO
Should you be buying Aflac stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of Aflac include MetLife (MET), Prudential Financial (PRU), Humana (HUM), Centene (CNC), Unum Group (UNM), Primerica (PRI), Lincoln National (LNC), Oscar Health (OSCR), American Equity Investment Life (AEL), and CNO Financial Group (CNO).
MetLife (NYSE:MET) and Aflac (NYSE:AFL) are both large-cap finance companies, but which is the better stock? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, earnings, valuation, profitability, risk, media sentiment, dividends and community ranking.
Aflac has a net margin of 27.67% compared to Aflac's net margin of 3.50%. Aflac's return on equity of 20.39% beat MetLife's return on equity.
MetLife has a beta of 1.09, meaning that its share price is 9% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Aflac has a beta of 0.91, meaning that its share price is 9% less volatile than the S&P 500.
Aflac has lower revenue, but higher earnings than MetLife. Aflac is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than MetLife, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
MetLife received 354 more outperform votes than Aflac when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 73.53% of users gave MetLife an outperform vote while only 57.27% of users gave Aflac an outperform vote.
MetLife pays an annual dividend of $2.18 per share and has a dividend yield of 3.0%. Aflac pays an annual dividend of $2.00 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.2%. MetLife pays out 74.9% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Aflac pays out 22.1% 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. MetLife has increased its dividend for 11 consecutive years and Aflac has increased its dividend for 43 consecutive years.
MetLife presently has a consensus price target of $79.08, indicating a potential upside of 9.27%. Aflac has a consensus price target of $82.38, indicating a potential downside of 8.33%. Given Aflac's stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, equities analysts clearly believe MetLife is more favorable than Aflac.
In the previous week, Aflac had 7 more articles in the media than MetLife. MarketBeat recorded 13 mentions for Aflac and 6 mentions for MetLife. MetLife's average media sentiment score of 0.81 beat Aflac's score of 0.55 indicating that Aflac is being referred to more favorably in the news media.
89.8% of MetLife shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 67.4% of Aflac shares are held by institutional investors. 0.3% of MetLife shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 0.9% of Aflac shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.
Summary
MetLife beats Aflac on 11 of the 21 factors compared between the two stocks.
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This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding AFL 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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