Critical Contrast: Matson (NYSE:MATX) & Global Ship Lease (NYSE:GSL)

Matson (NYSE:MATX) and Global Ship Lease (NYSE:GSL) are both industrials companies, but which is the better business? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their risk, valuation, dividends, institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, earnings and profitability.

Dividends

Matson pays an annual dividend of $1.52 per share and has a dividend yield of 0.6%. Global Ship Lease pays an annual dividend of $2.50 per share and has a dividend yield of 6.1%. Matson pays out 10.2% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Global Ship Lease pays out 24.0% 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. Matson has increased its dividend for 13 consecutive years and Global Ship Lease has increased its dividend for 2 consecutive years.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent ratings and target prices for Matson and Global Ship Lease, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Matson	0	1	5	0	2.83
Global Ship Lease	0	1	3	1	3.00

Matson presently has a consensus target price of $249.25, indicating a potential upside of 4.84%. Global Ship Lease has a consensus target price of $51.00, indicating a potential upside of 24.44%. Given Global Ship Lease’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Global Ship Lease is more favorable than Matson.

Risk and Volatility

Matson has a beta of 1.3, indicating that its stock price is 30% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Global Ship Lease has a beta of 0.98, indicating that its stock price is 2% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Matson and Global Ship Lease”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Matson	$3.34 billion	2.13	$444.80 million	$14.96	15.89
Global Ship Lease	$766.45 million	1.92	$416.45 million	$10.40	3.94

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

Profitability

This table compares Matson and Global Ship Lease’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Matson	13.41%	16.94%	10.01%
Global Ship Lease	49.10%	19.92%	12.81%

Insider and Institutional Ownership

84.8% of Matson shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 50.1% of Global Ship Lease shares are owned by institutional investors. 2.5% of Matson shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

Matson beats Global Ship Lease on 11 of the 18 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Matson

Matson, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in the provision of ocean transportation and logistics services. It operates through two segments, Ocean Transportation and Logistics. The Ocean Transportation segment offers ocean freight transportation services to the domestic non-contiguous economies of Hawaii, Japan, Alaska, and Guam, as well as to other island economies in Micronesia. It primarily transports dry containers of mixed commodities, refrigerated commodities, food products, beverages, building materials, automobiles, and household goods; livestock; seafood; general sustenance cargo; and garments, footwear, e-commerce, and other retail merchandise. This segment also operates an expedited service from China to Long Beach, California, and various islands in the South Pacific, as well as Okinawa, Japan; and provides stevedoring, refrigerated cargo services, inland transportation, container equipment maintenance, and other terminal services to ocean carriers on the Hawaiian islands of Oahu, Hawaii, Maui, and Kauai, as well as in the Alaska locations of Anchorage, Kodiak, and Dutch Harbor. In addition, it offers vessel management and container transshipment services. The Logistics segment provides multimodal transportation brokerage services, including domestic and international rail intermodal, long-haul and regional highway trucking, specialized hauling, flat-bed and project, less-than-truckload, and expedited freight services; less-than-container load consolidation and freight forwarding services; warehousing and distribution services; supply chain management services, and non-vessel operating common carrier freight forwarding services. It serves the U.S. military, freight forwarders, retailers, consumer goods, automobile manufacturers, and other customers. The company was formerly known as Alexander & Baldwin Holdings, Inc. and changed its name to Matson, Inc. in June 2012. Matson, Inc. was founded in 1882 and is headquartered in Honolulu, Hawaii.

About Global Ship Lease

Global Ship Lease, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in owning and chartering of containerships under fixed-rate charters to container shipping companies worldwide. As of March 11, 2024, it owned 68 mid-sized and smaller containerships, ranging from 2,207 to 11,040 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU), with an aggregate capacity of 375,406 TEU. The company was founded in 2007 and is based in Athens, Greece.