Assured Guaranty (NYSE:AGO) versus M?nchener R?ckversicherungs-Gesellschaft (OTCMKTS:MURGY) Critical Comparison

Assured Guaranty (NYSE:AGO) and M?nchener R?ckversicherungs-Gesellschaft (OTCMKTS:MURGY) are both finance companies, but which is the better stock? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their dividends, earnings, analyst recommendations, risk, profitability, valuation and institutional ownership.

Risk & Volatility

Assured Guaranty has a beta of 0.93, meaning that its share price is 7% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, M?nchener R?ckversicherungs-Gesellschaft has a beta of 0.48, meaning that its share price is 52% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent recommendations and price targets for Assured Guaranty and M?nchener R?ckversicherungs-Gesellschaft, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Assured Guaranty	0	2	2	0	2.50
M?nchener R?ckversicherungs-Gesellschaft	0	2	1	1	2.75

Assured Guaranty presently has a consensus target price of $98.50, suggesting a potential upside of 21.41%. Given Assured Guaranty’s higher possible upside, equities research analysts clearly believe Assured Guaranty is more favorable than M?nchener R?ckversicherungs-Gesellschaft.

Dividends

Assured Guaranty pays an annual dividend of $1.52 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.9%. M?nchener R?ckversicherungs-Gesellschaft pays an annual dividend of $0.26 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.1%. Assured Guaranty pays out 14.8% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. M?nchener R?ckversicherungs-Gesellschaft pays out 14.7% 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. Assured Guaranty has increased its dividend for 7 consecutive years. M?nchener R?ckversicherungs-Gesellschaft is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and lower payout ratio.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Assured Guaranty and M?nchener R?ckversicherungs-Gesellschaft”s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Assured Guaranty	$1.11 billion	3.28	$503.00 million	$10.24	7.92
M?nchener R?ckversicherungs-Gesellschaft	$68.33 billion	1.20	$6.92 billion	$1.77	7.12

M?nchener R?ckversicherungs-Gesellschaft has higher revenue and earnings than Assured Guaranty. M?nchener R?ckversicherungs-Gesellschaft is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Assured Guaranty, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Profitability

This table compares Assured Guaranty and M?nchener R?ckversicherungs-Gesellschaft’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Assured Guaranty	45.31%	7.77%	3.68%
M?nchener R?ckversicherungs-Gesellschaft	10.19%	19.90%	2.22%

Institutional and Insider Ownership

92.2% of Assured Guaranty shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 0.2% of M?nchener R?ckversicherungs-Gesellschaft shares are held by institutional investors. 5.1% of Assured Guaranty shares are held 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.

Summary

Assured Guaranty beats M?nchener R?ckversicherungs-Gesellschaft on 11 of the 18 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Assured Guaranty

Assured Guaranty Ltd., together with its subsidiaries, provides credit protection products to public finance, infrastructure, and structured finance markets in the United States and internationally. It operates through two segments: Insurance and Asset Management. The company offers financial guaranty insurance that protects holders of debt instruments and other monetary obligations from defaults in scheduled payments. It insures and reinsures various debt obligations, including bonds issued by the United States state governmental authorities; and notes issued to finance infrastructure projects. In addition, the company insures and reinsures various the U.S. public finance obligations, such as general obligation, tax-backed, municipal utility, transportation, healthcare, higher education, infrastructure, housing revenue, investor-owned utility, renewable energy, and other public finance bonds. Further, the company involved in insuring and reinsuring of non-U.S. public finance obligations comprising regulated utilities, infrastructure finance, sovereign and sub-sovereign, renewable energy bonds, pooled infrastructure, and other public finance obligations; and the U.S. and non-U.S. Structured finance obligations, including residential mortgage-backed securities, life insurance transactions, consumer receivables securities, subscription finance facilities, pooled corporate obligations, and financial products. Additionally, it offers specialty business, such as real estate properties, insurance securitizations, and aircraft residual value insurance (RVI) transactions; and asset management services comprising investment advisory services. It markets its financial guaranty insurance directly to issuers and underwriters of public finance and structured finance securities, as well as to investors in such obligations. Assured Guaranty Ltd. was incorporated in 2003 and is headquartered in Hamilton, Bermuda.

About M?nchener R?ckversicherungs-Gesellschaft

Münchener Rückversicherungs-Gesellschaft Aktiengesellschaft in München engages in the insurance and reinsurance businesses worldwide. It also offers life and health reinsurance solutions, such as digital underwriting and advanced analytics solutions, health insurance management system, financial market risks, financing, portfolio risk management, digitalized investment-linked solution, MIRA digital suite, MIRA POS, MIRApply insured and physician, claims risk adjustment, CLARA plus, data analytics, underwriting and claims, medical research, capital management, and health market. The company also provides property and casualty reinsurance solutions, including agricultural risk, data analytics, infrastructure risk profiler, property insurance, retroactive reinsurance, insurance linked securities, location risk, risk transfer, and cyber, NatCatSERVICE for natural catastrophe loss database, REALYTIX ZERO, IMPROVEX, and cert2go, as well as consulting services for reinsurance, business advisory, portfolio performance and management, claims management, commercial motor, telematics, and electric vehicles. In addition, the company provides solutions for industry clients, such as IoT cover, earnings quality insurance protection, captive insurance and risk transfer, liability, weather risks, space and satellite insurance, solar and biomass insurance, wind insurance, digital asset, mining risks cover, construction projects covers and services, aviation insurance, power and utilities, industrial cyber insurance, risk suite, location risk intelligence, digital risks, PV warranty insurance, parametric, Insure AI, e-mobility, circular economy, liquidation damage cover, and natural catastrophes solutions. Further, it offers life, property-casualty, health, legal protection, and travel insurance products under the ERGO brand name; and insurance solutions for agriculture, captive, epidemic, cyber, and renewable energy. The company was founded in 1880 and is based in Munich, Germany.