Reviewing LendingTree (NASDAQ:TREE) & UWM (NYSE:UWMC)

LendingTree (NASDAQ:TREE) and UWM (NYSE:UWMC) are both finance companies, but which is the better stock? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their profitability, risk, institutional ownership, valuation, dividends, analyst recommendations and earnings.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent ratings and recommmendations for LendingTree and UWM, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
LendingTree	0	1	6	2	3.11
UWM	0	5	1	0	2.17

LendingTree currently has a consensus price target of $65.38, suggesting a potential downside of 8.97%. UWM has a consensus price target of $5.54, suggesting a potential downside of 19.04%. Given LendingTree’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, equities research analysts plainly believe LendingTree is more favorable than UWM.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

68.3% of LendingTree shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 53.6% of UWM shares are held by institutional investors. 23.1% of LendingTree shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 87.5% of UWM 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.

Risk and Volatility

LendingTree has a beta of 1.69, suggesting that its stock price is 69% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, UWM has a beta of 1.76, suggesting that its stock price is 76% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares LendingTree and UWM”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
LendingTree	$900.22 million	1.09	-$41.70 million	($4.06)	-17.69
UWM	$2.16 billion	5.06	$14.40 million	($0.05)	-136.90

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

Profitability

This table compares LendingTree and UWM’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
LendingTree	-5.33%	25.79%	3.46%
UWM	0.48%	-5.56%	-0.72%

Summary

LendingTree beats UWM on 8 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About LendingTree

LendingTree, Inc., through its subsidiary, operates online consumer platform in the United States. It operates through three segments: Home, Consumer, and Insurance. The Home segment offers purchase mortgage, refinance mortgage, and home equity loans and lines of credit; and real estate brokerage services. The Consumer segment provides credit cards; personal, small business, student, and auto loans; deposit accounts; and other credit products, such as debt settlement services. The Insurance segment includes information, tools, and access to insurance quote products, including home, automobile, and health and Medicare through which consumers are matched with insurance lead aggregators to obtain insurance offers and policies. In addition, the company offers QuoteWizard, a marketplace for insurance comparison; ValuePenguin, a personal finance website that offers consumers objective analysis on various financial topics from insurance to credit cards; and Stash, a consumer investing and banking platform that offers a suite of personal investment accounts, traditional and Roth IRAs, custodial investment accounts, and banking services, including checking accounts and debit cards with a Stock-Back rewards program. The company was formerly known as Tree.com, Inc. and changed its name to LendingTree, Inc. in January 2015. LendingTree, Inc. was incorporated in 1996 and is based in Charlotte, North Carolina.

About UWM

UWM Holdings Corporation engages in the residential mortgage lending business in the United States. The company offers mortgage loans through wholesale channel. It originates primarily conforming and government loans. UWM Holdings Corporation was founded in 1986 and is headquartered in Pontiac, Michigan.