MET vs. AFL, PRU, UNM, PRI, LNC, AEL, CNO, NWLI, CIA, and MFC
Should you be buying MetLife stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of MetLife include Aflac (AFL), Prudential Financial (PRU), Unum Group (UNM), Primerica (PRI), Lincoln National (LNC), American Equity Investment Life (AEL), CNO Financial Group (CNO), National Western Life Group (NWLI), Citizens (CIA), and Manulife Financial (MFC). These companies are all part of the "finance" sector.
MetLife (NYSE:MET) and Aflac (NYSE:AFL) are both large-cap finance companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, valuation, earnings, community ranking, media sentiment, profitability, dividends, risk and institutional ownership.
89.8% of MetLife shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 67.4% of Aflac shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.3% of MetLife shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 0.8% of Aflac shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.
MetLife has a beta of 1.12, indicating that its stock price is 12% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Aflac has a beta of 0.96, indicating that its stock price is 4% 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.
In the previous week, MetLife and MetLife both had 8 articles in the media. MetLife's average media sentiment score of 1.31 beat Aflac's score of 1.29 indicating that MetLife is being referred to more favorably in the media.
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.
Aflac has a net margin of 27.67% compared to MetLife's net margin of 3.50%. MetLife's return on equity of 20.39% beat Aflac's return on equity.
MetLife pays an annual dividend of $2.18 per share and has a dividend yield of 3.1%. Aflac pays an annual dividend of $2.00 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.3%. 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 presently has a consensus target price of $79.08, suggesting a potential upside of 13.40%. Aflac has a consensus target price of $82.38, suggesting a potential downside of 6.55%. Given MetLife's stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, equities research analysts plainly believe MetLife is more favorable than Aflac.
Summary
MetLife beats Aflac on 12 of the 19 factors compared between the two stocks.
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This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding MET 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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