MetLife (NYSE:MET) versus Allstate (NYSE:ALL) Head to Head Contrast

Allstate (NYSE:ALL) and MetLife (NYSE:MET) are both large-cap finance companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their risk, profitability, institutional ownership, earnings, valuation, dividends and analyst recommendations.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings and price targets for Allstate and MetLife, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Allstate	4	8	6	2	2.30
MetLife	0	0	12	0	3.00

Allstate currently has a consensus price target of $262.53, suggesting a potential upside of 17.27%. MetLife has a consensus price target of $106.15, suggesting a potential upside of 10.51%. Given Allstate’s higher probable upside, research analysts clearly believe Allstate is more favorable than MetLife.

Profitability

This table compares Allstate and MetLife’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Allstate	18.97%	41.64%	9.82%
MetLife	4.57%	23.39%	0.89%

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Allstate and MetLife”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Allstate	$67.69 billion	0.84	$10.28 billion	$50.08	4.47
MetLife	$77.08 billion	0.80	$3.38 billion	$5.22	18.40

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

Risk & Volatility

Allstate has a beta of 0.13, indicating that its stock price is 87% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, MetLife has a beta of 0.78, indicating that its stock price is 22% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Dividends

Allstate pays an annual dividend of $4.32 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.9%. MetLife pays an annual dividend of $2.37 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.5%. Allstate pays out 8.6% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. MetLife pays out 45.4% 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. Allstate has raised its dividend for 15 consecutive years and MetLife has raised its dividend for 12 consecutive years.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

76.5% of Allstate shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 95.0% of MetLife shares are held by institutional investors. 1.5% of Allstate shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 0.4% of MetLife shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Summary

Allstate beats MetLife on 11 of the 18 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Allstate

The Allstate Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, provides property and casualty, and other insurance products in the United States and Canada. It operates in five segments: Allstate Protection; Protection Services; Allstate Health and Benefits; Run-off Property-Liability; and Corporate and Other segments. The Allstate Protection segment offers private passenger auto and homeowners insurance; other personal lines products; and commercial lines products through agents, contact centers, and online. The Protection Services segment provides consumer product protection; protection and insurance products, including vehicle service contracts, guaranteed asset protection, road hazard tire and wheel, and paintless dent repair protection; and roadside assistance, device and mobile data collection services, and analytic solutions using automotive telematics information, as well as identity theft protection and remediation services. This segment also offers its products under various brands, including Allstate Protection Plans, Allstate Dealer Services, Allstate Roadside, Arity, Avail, and Allstate Identity Protection. The Allstate Health and Benefits segment provides life, accident, critical illness, short-term disability, and other health insurance products; stop-loss and fully insured group health products to employers; and short-term medical and medicare supplement insurance to individuals. The Run-off Property-Liability segment offers property and casualty insurance coverage that primarily relates to policies written during the 1960s through the mid-1980s. The Corporate and Other segment provides debt services, as well as non-insurance operations. It sells its products through agents, independent agents, call and contact centers, retailers, direct to consumer, wholesale partners, and affinity groups, as well as through online and mobile applications. The Allstate Corporation was founded in 1931 and is headquartered in Northbrook, Illinois.

About MetLife

MetLife, Inc., a financial services company, provides insurance, annuities, employee benefits, and asset management services worldwide. It operates through six segments: Retirement and Income Solutions; Group Benefits; Asia; Latin America; Europe, the Middle East and Africa; and MetLife Holdings. The company offers life, dental, group short-and long-term disability, individual disability, pet insurance, accidental death and dismemberment, vision, and accident and health coverages, as well as prepaid legal plans; administrative services-only arrangements to employers; and general and separate account, and synthetic guaranteed interest contracts, as well as private floating rate funding agreements. It also provides pension risk transfers, institutional income annuities, structured settlements, and capital markets investment products; and other products and services, such as life insurance products and funding agreements for funding postretirement benefits, as well as company, bank, or trust-owned life insurance used to finance nonqualified benefit programs for executives. In addition, it provides fixed, indexed-linked, and variable annuities; pension products; regular savings products; whole and term life, endowments, universal and variable life, and group life products; longevity reinsurance solutions; credit insurance products; and protection against long-term health care services. MetLife, Inc. was incorporated in 1999 and is based in New York, New York.