Critical Analysis: MetLife (NYSE:MET) and Kingstone Companies (NASDAQ:KINS)

Kingstone Companies (NASDAQ:KINS) and MetLife (NYSE:MET) are both finance companies, but which is the superior business? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their risk, profitability, dividends, institutional ownership, valuation, earnings and analyst recommendations.

Profitability

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

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Kingstone Companies	14.85%	30.78%	7.99%
MetLife	4.57%	23.39%	0.89%

Insider & Institutional Ownership

14.9% of Kingstone Companies shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 95.0% of MetLife shares are held by institutional investors. 4.3% of Kingstone Companies shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 0.4% of MetLife shares are held by 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

Kingstone Companies has a beta of 0.41, meaning that its share price is 59% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, MetLife has a beta of 0.78, meaning that its share price is 22% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent ratings and price targets for Kingstone Companies and MetLife, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Kingstone Companies	0	1	1	0	2.50
MetLife	0	0	12	0	3.00

MetLife has a consensus target price of $104.31, indicating a potential upside of 10.43%. Given MetLife’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe MetLife is more favorable than Kingstone Companies.

Dividends

Kingstone Companies pays an annual dividend of $0.24 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.3%. MetLife pays an annual dividend of $2.37 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.5%. Kingstone Companies pays out 9.9% 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. MetLife has raised its dividend for 12 consecutive years. MetLife is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and longer track record of dividend growth.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Kingstone Companies and MetLife”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Kingstone Companies	$214.87 million	1.25	$40.77 million	$2.42	7.64
MetLife	$77.08 billion	0.79	$3.38 billion	$5.22	18.09

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

Summary

MetLife beats Kingstone Companies on 11 of the 17 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Kingstone Companies

Kingstone Companies, Inc., through its subsidiary, provides property and casualty insurance products to individuals in the United States. It offers personal line of insurance products, such as homeowners and dwelling fire, cooperative/condominiums, renters, and personal umbrella policies. The company also provides for-hire vehicle physical damage only policies for livery and car service vehicles and taxicabs; and canine legal liability policies. In addition, it offers reinsurance products. The company underwrites its products through retail and wholesale agents and brokers. The company was formerly known as DCAP Group, Inc. and changed its name to Kingstone Companies, Inc. in July 2009. Kingstone Companies, Inc. was founded in 1886 and is headquartered in Kingston, New York.

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.