WAT vs. A, MTD, ILMN, TECH, CRL, BRKR, BIO, PACB, HBIO, and LIFE
Should you be buying Waters stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of Waters include Agilent Technologies (A), Mettler-Toledo International (MTD), Illumina (ILMN), Bio-Techne (TECH), Charles River Laboratories International (CRL), Bruker (BRKR), Bio-Rad Laboratories (BIO), Pacific Biosciences of California (PACB), Harvard Bioscience (HBIO), and aTyr Pharma (LIFE). These companies are all part of the "life sciences tools & services" industry.
Agilent Technologies (NYSE:A) and Waters (NYSE:WAT) are both large-cap computer and technology companies, but which is the better investment? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their earnings, analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, community ranking, risk, media sentiment, valuation, dividends and profitability.
Agilent Technologies has a beta of 1.13, meaning that its stock price is 13% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Waters has a beta of 0.98, meaning that its stock price is 2% less volatile than the S&P 500.
Agilent Technologies has higher revenue and earnings than Waters. Waters is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Agilent Technologies, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Waters has a net margin of 20.75% compared to Waters' net margin of 18.84%. Agilent Technologies' return on equity of 66.59% beat Waters' return on equity.
94.0% of Waters shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.8% of Waters shares are owned by 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.
Agilent Technologies received 425 more outperform votes than Waters when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 71.70% of users gave Agilent Technologies an outperform vote while only 54.30% of users gave Waters an outperform vote.
In the previous week, Agilent Technologies and Agilent Technologies both had 43 articles in the media. Agilent Technologies' average media sentiment score of 0.35 beat Waters' score of 0.22 indicating that Waters is being referred to more favorably in the news media.
Agilent Technologies currently has a consensus target price of $137.19, suggesting a potential upside of 5.20%. Waters has a consensus target price of $305.78, suggesting a potential downside of 1.01%. Given Waters' stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, equities analysts clearly believe Agilent Technologies is more favorable than Waters.
Summary
Agilent Technologies beats Waters on 9 of the 17 factors compared between the two stocks.
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This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding WAT 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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