Head to Head Review: Agilon Health (NYSE:AGL) & Centene (NYSE:CNC)

Centene (NYSE:CNC) and Agilon Health (NYSE:AGL) are both healthcare companies, but which is the better stock? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their valuation, dividends, analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, earnings, risk and profitability.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

93.6% of Centene shares are held by institutional investors. 0.4% of Centene shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 2.5% of Agilon Health shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings and recommmendations for Centene and Agilon Health, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Centene	2	9	8	1	2.40
Agilon Health	2	7	5	0	2.21

Centene currently has a consensus target price of $70.05, indicating a potential upside of 6.71%. Agilon Health has a consensus target price of $97.70, indicating a potential upside of 4.23%. Given Centene’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, equities analysts clearly believe Centene is more favorable than Agilon Health.

Profitability

This table compares Centene and Agilon Health’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Centene	-2.51%	12.12%	3.20%
Agilon Health	-3.92%	-119.38%	-16.85%

Risk & Volatility

Centene has a beta of 1.08, meaning that its share price is 8% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Agilon Health has a beta of 3.01, meaning that its share price is 201% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Centene and Agilon Health”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Centene	$202.94 billion	0.16	-$6.67 billion	($10.44)	-6.29
Agilon Health	$5.93 billion	0.27	-$391.35 million	($14.27)	-6.57

Agilon Health has lower revenue, but higher earnings than Centene. Agilon Health is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Centene, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Summary

Centene beats Agilon Health on 11 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Centene

Centene Corporation operates as a healthcare enterprise that provides programs and services to under-insured and uninsured families, commercial organizations, and military families in the United States. The company operates through Medicaid, Medicare, Commercial, and Other segments. The Medicaid segment offers health plan coverage, including medicaid expansion, aged, blind, disabled, children’s health insurance program, foster care, medicare-medicaid plans, long-term services and support. This segment also provides healthcare products. The Medicare segment offers special needs and medicare supplement, and prescription drug plans. The Commercial segment provides health insurance marketplace product for individual, small, and large group commercials. It also operates clinical healthcare and pharmacies, as well as offers dental and speech therapy services. In addition, the company engages in the government contracts business under the TRICARE program and other healthcare related government contracts. It provides services through primary and specialty care physicians, hospitals, and ancillary providers. Centene Corporation was founded in 1984 and is headquartered in Saint Louis, Missouri.

About Agilon Health

agilon health, inc. provides healthcare services for seniors through primary care physicians in the communities of the United States. It offers a platform that manages the total healthcare needs of the patients by subscription-like per-member per-month. The company was formerly known as Agilon Health Topco, Inc. and changed its name to agilon health, inc. in March 2021. agilon health, inc. was founded in 2016 and is based in Austin, Texas.