SAH vs. LAD, AN, ABG, GPI, AAP, MNRO, CRMT, ORLY, AZO, and KMX
Should you be buying Sonic Automotive stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of Sonic Automotive include Lithia Motors (LAD), AutoNation (AN), Asbury Automotive Group (ABG), Group 1 Automotive (GPI), Advance Auto Parts (AAP), Monro (MNRO), America's Car-Mart (CRMT), O'Reilly Automotive (ORLY), AutoZone (AZO), and CarMax (KMX). These companies are all part of the "automotive retail" industry.
Lithia Motors (NYSE:LAD) and Sonic Automotive (NYSE:SAH) are both retail/wholesale companies, but which is the better business? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, profitability, media sentiment, risk, valuation, community ranking, dividends and earnings.
Lithia Motors currently has a consensus target price of $318.55, suggesting a potential upside of 25.84%. Sonic Automotive has a consensus target price of $56.60, suggesting a potential downside of 0.12%. Given Sonic Automotive's stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Lithia Motors is more favorable than Sonic Automotive.
Lithia Motors has a net margin of 2.87% compared to Lithia Motors' net margin of 1.21%. Lithia Motors' return on equity of 27.46% beat Sonic Automotive's return on equity.
Lithia Motors has a beta of 1.59, suggesting that its stock price is 59% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Sonic Automotive has a beta of 1.75, suggesting that its stock price is 75% more volatile than the S&P 500.
Lithia Motors received 237 more outperform votes than Sonic Automotive when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 67.13% of users gave Lithia Motors an outperform vote while only 51.81% of users gave Sonic Automotive an outperform vote.
46.9% of Sonic Automotive shares are owned by institutional investors. 1.8% of Lithia Motors shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 41.0% of Sonic Automotive shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.
Lithia Motors has higher revenue and earnings than Sonic Automotive. Lithia Motors is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Sonic Automotive, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
In the previous week, Sonic Automotive had 1 more articles in the media than Lithia Motors. MarketBeat recorded 3 mentions for Sonic Automotive and 2 mentions for Lithia Motors. Lithia Motors' average media sentiment score of 0.57 beat Sonic Automotive's score of 0.23 indicating that Sonic Automotive is being referred to more favorably in the news media.
Lithia Motors pays an annual dividend of $2.12 per share and has a dividend yield of 0.8%. Sonic Automotive pays an annual dividend of $1.20 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.1%. Lithia Motors pays out 6.3% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Sonic Automotive pays out 24.6% 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. Lithia Motors has increased its dividend for 15 consecutive years and Sonic Automotive has increased its dividend for 3 consecutive years.
Summary
Lithia Motors beats Sonic Automotive on 13 of the 21 factors compared between the two stocks.
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This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding SAH 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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