Investors with an interest in Medical - Outpatient and Home Healthcare stocks have likely encountered both Option Care (OPCH) and Chemed (CHE). But which of these two stocks presents investors with the better value opportunity right now? Let's take a closer look.
Everyone has their own methods for finding great value opportunities, but our model includes pairing an impressive grade in the Value category of our Style Scores system with a strong Zacks Rank. The Zacks Rank favors stocks with strong earnings estimate revision trends, and our Style Scores highlight companies with specific traits.
Currently, Option Care has a Zacks Rank of #1 (Strong Buy), while Chemed has a Zacks Rank of #4 (Sell). This means that OPCH's earnings estimate revision activity has been more impressive, so investors should feel comfortable with its improving analyst outlook. But this is only part of the picture for value investors.
Value investors also tend to look at a number of traditional, tried-and-true figures to help them find stocks that they believe are undervalued at their current share price levels.
Our Value category highlights undervalued companies by looking at a variety of key metrics, including the popular P/E ratio, as well as the P/S ratio, earnings yield, cash flow per share, and a variety of other fundamentals that have been used by value investors for years.
OPCH currently has a forward P/E ratio of 20.38, while CHE has a forward P/E of 24.24. We also note that OPCH has a PEG ratio of 1.82. This figure is similar to the commonly-used P/E ratio, with the PEG ratio also factoring in a company's expected earnings growth rate. CHE currently has a PEG ratio of 2.37.
Another notable valuation metric for OPCH is its P/B ratio of 4.18. Investors use the P/B ratio to look at a stock's market value versus its book value, which is defined as total assets minus total liabilities. By comparison, CHE has a P/B of 8.12.
These are just a few of the metrics contributing to OPCH's Value grade of B and CHE's Value grade of C.
OPCH has seen stronger estimate revision activity and sports more attractive valuation metrics than CHE, so it seems like value investors will conclude that OPCH is the superior option right now.
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Option Care Health, Inc. (OPCH) : Free Stock Analysis Report
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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).
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