HCA vs. ALC, THC, UHS, EHC, ENSG, ACHC, SEM, USPH, BKD, and WOOF
Should you be buying HCA Healthcare stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of HCA Healthcare include Alcon (ALC), Tenet Healthcare (THC), Universal Health Services (UHS), Encompass Health (EHC), The Ensign Group (ENSG), Acadia Healthcare (ACHC), Select Medical (SEM), U.S. Physical Therapy (USPH), Brookdale Senior Living (BKD), and Petco Health and Wellness (WOOF). These companies are all part of the "health care facilities" industry.
Alcon (NYSE:ALC) and HCA Healthcare (NYSE:HCA) are both large-cap medical companies, but which is the superior investment? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their earnings, analyst recommendations, community ranking, valuation, profitability, dividends, risk, media sentiment and institutional ownership.
Alcon currently has a consensus price target of $94.71, indicating a potential upside of 6.26%. HCA Healthcare has a consensus price target of $325.59, indicating a potential downside of 4.17%. Given HCA Healthcare's higher possible upside, equities analysts clearly believe Alcon is more favorable than HCA Healthcare.
HCA Healthcare received 1021 more outperform votes than Alcon when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 77.32% of users gave HCA Healthcare an outperform vote while only 61.72% of users gave Alcon an outperform vote.
Alcon has a beta of 0.92, indicating that its share price is 8% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, HCA Healthcare has a beta of 1.66, indicating that its share price is 66% more volatile than the S&P 500.
HCA Healthcare has higher revenue and earnings than Alcon. HCA Healthcare is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Alcon, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
53.9% of Alcon shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 62.7% of HCA Healthcare shares are held by institutional investors. 1.5% of Alcon shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 1.6% of HCA Healthcare shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a company is poised for long-term growth.
In the previous week, HCA Healthcare had 22 more articles in the media than Alcon. MarketBeat recorded 24 mentions for HCA Healthcare and 2 mentions for Alcon. Alcon's average media sentiment score of 0.81 beat HCA Healthcare's score of -0.35 indicating that HCA Healthcare is being referred to more favorably in the news media.
Alcon has a net margin of 10.96% compared to Alcon's net margin of 8.20%. Alcon's return on equity of 674.49% beat HCA Healthcare's return on equity.
Summary
HCA Healthcare beats Alcon on 15 of the 19 factors compared between the two stocks.
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This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding HCA and its top 5 competitors to their watchlist. Each company is represented with a line over a 90 day period.
Skip ChartThis 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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