HCA Healthcare (NYSE:HCA) and Nutex Health (NASDAQ:NUTX) Critical Review

HCA Healthcare (NYSE:HCA) and Nutex Health (NASDAQ:NUTX) are both healthcare companies, but which is the better business? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their valuation, dividends, profitability, institutional ownership, risk, analyst recommendations and earnings.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings for HCA Healthcare and Nutex Health, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
HCA Healthcare	1	8	15	0	2.58
Nutex Health	0	1	2	1	3.00

HCA Healthcare presently has a consensus target price of $463.70, suggesting a potential upside of 8.57%. Nutex Health has a consensus target price of $317.50, suggesting a potential upside of 46.65%. Given Nutex Health’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Nutex Health is more favorable than HCA Healthcare.

Volatility and Risk

HCA Healthcare has a beta of 1.1, meaning that its share price is 10% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Nutex Health has a beta of 0.55, meaning that its share price is 45% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares HCA Healthcare and Nutex Health’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
HCA Healthcare	8.77%	-244.79%	11.10%
Nutex Health	21.25%	39.74%	18.91%

Insider & Institutional Ownership

62.7% of HCA Healthcare shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 5.3% of Nutex Health shares are owned by institutional investors. 1.5% of HCA Healthcare shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 44.7% of Nutex Health 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.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares HCA Healthcare and Nutex Health”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
HCA Healthcare	$75.60 billion	1.22	$6.78 billion	$29.87	14.30
Nutex Health	$875.26 million	1.69	$70.79 million	$25.47	8.50

HCA Healthcare has higher revenue and earnings than Nutex Health. Nutex Health is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than HCA Healthcare, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Summary

Nutex Health beats HCA Healthcare on 8 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About HCA Healthcare

HCA Healthcare, Inc., through its subsidiaries, owns and operates hospitals and related healthcare entities in the United States. It operates general and acute care hospitals that offers medical and surgical services, including inpatient care, intensive care, cardiac care, diagnostic, and emergency services; and outpatient services, such as outpatient surgery, laboratory, radiology, respiratory therapy, cardiology, and physical therapy. The company also operates outpatient health care facilities consisting of freestanding ambulatory surgery centers, freestanding emergency care facilities, urgent care facilities, walk-in clinics, diagnostic and imaging centers, rehabilitation and physical therapy centers, radiation and oncology therapy centers, physician practices, and various other facilities. In addition, it operates behavioral hospitals, which provide therapeutic programs comprising child, adolescent and adult psychiatric care, adolescent and adult alcohol, drug abuse treatment, and counseling services. The company was formerly known as HCA Holdings, Inc. HCA Healthcare, Inc. was founded in 1968 and is headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee.

About Nutex Health

Nutex Health Inc. operates as a physician-led, healthcare services, and operations company. It operates through three segments: Hospital, Population Health Management (PHM), and Real Estate. The PHM segment establishes and operates independent physician associations; and offers a cloud-based platform for healthcare organizations to provide value-based care and population health management. The Real Estate segment owns and owns and leases land and hospital building. The Hospital segment develops and operates a network of micro-hospitals, specialty hospitals and hospital outpatient departments which offers 24/7 care. It also provides operational and managerial services, including management, billing, collections, human resources and recruiting, legal, accounting, and marketing. In addition, the company offers healthcare services, including emergency room care, inpatient care, and behavioral health, as well as onsite imaging, such as CT scan, X-ray, MRI, ultrasound, etc.; certified and accredited laboratories; and onsite inpatient pharmacies. The company was founded in 2011 and is based in Houston, Texas.