Contrasting Wheaton Precious Metals (WPM) and Its Rivals

Wheaton Precious Metals (NYSE:WPM) is one of 1,984 publicly-traded companies in the “Metals & Mining” industry, but how does it compare to its competitors? We will compare Wheaton Precious Metals to related businesses based on the strength of its institutional ownership, risk, valuation, earnings, profitability, dividends and analyst recommendations.

Profitability

This table compares Wheaton Precious Metals and its competitors’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Wheaton Precious Metals	60.39%	22.20%	19.28%
Wheaton Precious Metals Competitors	-1,161,736,352,322,426,600.00%	-52.89%	-2.06%

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent ratings for Wheaton Precious Metals and its competitors, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Wheaton Precious Metals	0	1	12	0	2.92
Wheaton Precious Metals Competitors	6424	22627	32348	1801	2.47

Wheaton Precious Metals currently has a consensus price target of $172.90, suggesting a potential upside of 30.80%. As a group, “Metals & Mining” companies have a potential upside of 33.49%. Given Wheaton Precious Metals’ competitors higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Wheaton Precious Metals has less favorable growth aspects than its competitors.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Wheaton Precious Metals and its competitors top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Net Income	Price/Earnings Ratio
Wheaton Precious Metals	$2.31 billion	$1.47 billion	28.74
Wheaton Precious Metals Competitors	$4.65 billion	$278.26 million	-26.31

Wheaton Precious Metals’ competitors have higher revenue, but lower earnings than Wheaton Precious Metals. Wheaton Precious Metals is trading at a higher price-to-earnings ratio than its competitors, indicating that it is currently more expensive than other companies in its industry.

Volatility and Risk

Wheaton Precious Metals has a beta of 0.56, suggesting that its share price is 44% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Wheaton Precious Metals’ competitors have a beta of 0.96, suggesting that their average share price is 4% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

70.3% of Wheaton Precious Metals shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 16.1% of shares of all “Metals & Mining” companies are owned by institutional investors. 17.6% of shares of all “Metals & Mining” companies are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Dividends

Wheaton Precious Metals pays an annual dividend of $0.78 per share and has a dividend yield of 0.6%. Wheaton Precious Metals pays out 17.0% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. As a group, “Metals & Mining” companies pay a dividend yield of 10.4% and pay out 10.8% of their earnings in the form of a dividend. Wheaton Precious Metals has increased its dividend for 2 consecutive years. Wheaton Precious Metals lags its competitors as a dividend stock, given its lower dividend yield and higher payout ratio.

Summary

Wheaton Precious Metals beats its competitors on 8 of the 15 factors compared.

About Wheaton Precious Metals

Wheaton Precious Metals is a precious metals streaming company that provides mining companies with upfront financing in exchange for the right to purchase a portion of the metals produced by their mines. Its streams cover gold and silver, as well as smaller amounts of palladium and cobalt. Rather than operating mines itself, Wheaton works with mining companies around the world. Under its agreements, it typically makes an initial payment and additional payments for metals delivered, giving it exposure to mine production without directly managing mining operations.