CON vs. COR: Which Stock Is the Better Value Option?

Investors interested in stocks from the Medical Services sector have probably already heard of Concentra Group (CON) and Cencora (COR). But which of these two stocks presents investors with the better value opportunity right now? Let's take a closer look.

The best way to find great value stocks is to pair a strong Zacks Rank with an impressive grade in the Value category of our Style Scores system. The Zacks Rank is a proven strategy that targets companies with positive earnings estimate revision trends, while our Style Scores work to grade companies based on specific traits.

Concentra Group has a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy), while Cencora has a Zacks Rank of #4 (Sell) right now. Investors should feel comfortable knowing that CON likely has seen a stronger improvement to its earnings outlook than COR has recently. But this is just one factor that value investors are interested in.

Value investors also try to analyze a wide range of traditional figures and metrics to help determine whether a company is undervalued at its current share price levels.

Our Value category highlights undervalued companies by looking at a variety of key metrics, including the popular P/E ratio, as well as the P/S ratio, earnings yield, cash flow per share, and a variety of other fundamentals that have been used by value investors for years.

CON currently has a forward P/E ratio of 15.29, while COR has a forward P/E of 17.31. We also note that CON has a PEG ratio of 1.15. This popular metric is similar to the widely-known P/E ratio, with the difference being that the PEG ratio also takes into account the company's expected earnings growth rate. COR currently has a PEG ratio of 1.42.

Another notable valuation metric for CON is its P/B ratio of 7.2. The P/B ratio pits a stock's market value against its book value, which is defined as total assets minus total liabilities. For comparison, COR has a P/B of 28.14.

These are just a few of the metrics contributing to CON's Value grade of A and COR's Value grade of C.

CON sticks out from COR in both our Zacks Rank and Style Scores models, so value investors will likely feel that CON is the better option right now.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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