ASH vs. CE, ALB, RPM, NEU, BCPC, FUL, KWR, SXT, IOSP, and MTX
Should you be buying Ashland stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of Ashland include Celanese (CE), Albemarle (ALB), RPM International (RPM), NewMarket (NEU), Balchem (BCPC), H.B. Fuller (FUL), Quaker Chemical (KWR), Sensient Technologies (SXT), Innospec (IOSP), and Minerals Technologies (MTX). These companies are all part of the "specialty chemicals" industry.
Celanese (NYSE:CE) and Ashland (NYSE:ASH) are both basic materials companies, but which is the better investment? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their risk, media sentiment, valuation, community ranking, dividends, analyst recommendations, earnings, profitability and institutional ownership.
Celanese presently has a consensus price target of $156.78, indicating a potential upside of 3.12%. Ashland has a consensus price target of $106.44, indicating a potential upside of 6.26%. Given Celanese's stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Ashland is more favorable than Celanese.
Celanese has a net margin of 18.60% compared to Celanese's net margin of 9.09%. Ashland's return on equity of 14.00% beat Celanese's return on equity.
Celanese pays an annual dividend of $2.80 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.8%. Ashland pays an annual dividend of $1.54 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.5%. Celanese pays out 15.4% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Ashland pays out 40.8% 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. Celanese has raised its dividend for 14 consecutive years and Ashland has raised its dividend for 14 consecutive years. Celanese is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and lower payout ratio.
Celanese has a beta of 1.37, meaning that its share price is 37% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Ashland has a beta of 0.92, meaning that its share price is 8% less volatile than the S&P 500.
Celanese has higher revenue and earnings than Ashland. Celanese is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Ashland, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
In the previous week, Celanese had 6 more articles in the media than Ashland. MarketBeat recorded 17 mentions for Celanese and 11 mentions for Ashland. Ashland's average media sentiment score of 0.71 beat Celanese's score of 0.21 indicating that Celanese is being referred to more favorably in the media.
Celanese received 83 more outperform votes than Ashland when rated by MarketBeat users. However, 68.76% of users gave Ashland an outperform vote while only 63.73% of users gave Celanese an outperform vote.
98.9% of Celanese shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 94.0% of Ashland shares are owned by institutional investors. 0.3% of Celanese shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 0.7% of Ashland shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.
Summary
Celanese beats Ashland on 13 of the 19 factors compared between the two stocks.
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This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding ASH 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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