ETR vs. SO, DUK, EIX, FE, PPL, ES, PNW, OGE, IDA, and POR
Should you be buying Entergy stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of Entergy include Southern (SO), Duke Energy (DUK), Edison International (EIX), FirstEnergy (FE), PPL (PPL), Eversource Energy (ES), Pinnacle West Capital (PNW), OGE Energy (OGE), IDACORP (IDA), and Portland General Electric (POR). These companies are all part of the "electric utilities" industry.
Entergy (NYSE:ETR) and Southern (NYSE:SO) are both large-cap utilities companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their community ranking, risk, valuation, analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, media sentiment, earnings, profitability and dividends.
Southern has higher revenue and earnings than Entergy. Entergy is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Southern, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Entergy has a net margin of 17.75% compared to Southern's net margin of 16.74%. Southern's return on equity of 12.07% beat Entergy's return on equity.
88.1% of Entergy shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 64.1% of Southern shares are held by institutional investors. 0.4% of Entergy shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 0.2% of Southern 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.
Entergy pays an annual dividend of $4.52 per share and has a dividend yield of 4.0%. Southern pays an annual dividend of $2.88 per share and has a dividend yield of 3.6%. Entergy pays out 45.3% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Southern pays out 74.4% 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. Entergy is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and lower payout ratio.
Entergy currently has a consensus target price of $112.09, indicating a potential downside of 0.35%. Southern has a consensus target price of $76.60, indicating a potential downside of 4.42%. Given Entergy's stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, equities research analysts plainly believe Entergy is more favorable than Southern.
Entergy has a beta of 0.69, suggesting that its stock price is 31% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Southern has a beta of 0.48, suggesting that its stock price is 52% less volatile than the S&P 500.
Southern received 92 more outperform votes than Entergy when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 49.95% of users gave Southern an outperform vote while only 49.10% of users gave Entergy an outperform vote.
In the previous week, Southern had 2 more articles in the media than Entergy. MarketBeat recorded 15 mentions for Southern and 13 mentions for Entergy. Southern's average media sentiment score of 1.02 beat Entergy's score of 0.54 indicating that Southern is being referred to more favorably in the news media.
Summary
Southern beats Entergy 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 ETR 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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