Head to Head Comparison: T. Rowe Price Group (NASDAQ:TROW) versus Sound Point Meridian Capital (NYSE:SPMC)

T. Rowe Price Group (NASDAQ:TROW) and Sound Point Meridian Capital (NYSE:SPMC) are both finance companies, but which is the better business? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, earnings, dividends, valuation, institutional ownership, profitability and risk.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of current ratings for T. Rowe Price Group and Sound Point Meridian Capital, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
T. Rowe Price Group	4	8	1	0	1.77
Sound Point Meridian Capital	0	1	1	1	3.00

T. Rowe Price Group currently has a consensus price target of $102.64, indicating a potential upside of 0.91%. Sound Point Meridian Capital has a consensus price target of $20.83, indicating a potential upside of 17.44%. Given Sound Point Meridian Capital’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Sound Point Meridian Capital is more favorable than T. Rowe Price Group.

Risk & Volatility

T. Rowe Price Group has a beta of 1.5, suggesting that its stock price is 50% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Sound Point Meridian Capital has a beta of 0.22, suggesting that its stock price is 78% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Dividends

T. Rowe Price Group pays an annual dividend of $5.08 per share and has a dividend yield of 5.0%. Sound Point Meridian Capital pays an annual dividend of $3.00 per share and has a dividend yield of 16.9%. T. Rowe Price Group pays out 56.8% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Sound Point Meridian Capital pays out 211.3% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. T. Rowe Price Group has increased its dividend for 39 consecutive years.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

73.4% of T. Rowe Price Group shares are owned by institutional investors. 2.0% of T. Rowe Price Group shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Profitability

This table compares T. Rowe Price Group and Sound Point Meridian Capital’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
T. Rowe Price Group	28.72%	19.77%	15.04%
Sound Point Meridian Capital	N/A	N/A	N/A

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares T. Rowe Price Group and Sound Point Meridian Capital”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
T. Rowe Price Group	$7.09 billion	3.15	$2.10 billion	$8.95	11.36
Sound Point Meridian Capital	N/A	N/A	N/A	$1.42	12.49

T. Rowe Price Group has higher revenue and earnings than Sound Point Meridian Capital. T. Rowe Price Group is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Sound Point Meridian Capital, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Summary

T. Rowe Price Group beats Sound Point Meridian Capital on 10 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About T. Rowe Price Group

T. Rowe Price Group, Inc. is a publicly owned investment manager. The firm provides its services to individuals, institutional investors, retirement plans, financial intermediaries, and institutions. It launches and manages equity and fixed income mutual funds. The firm invests in the public equity and fixed income markets across the globe. It employs fundamental and quantitative analysis with a bottom-up approach. The firm utilizes in-house and external research to make its investments. It employs socially responsible investing with a focus on environmental, social, and governance issues. It makes investment in late-stage venture capital transactions and usually invests between $3 million and $5 million. The firm was previously known as T. Rowe Group, Inc. and T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. T. Rowe Price Group, Inc. was founded in 1937 and is based in Baltimore, Maryland, with additional offices in Colorado Springs, Colorado; Owings Mills, Maryland; San Francisco, California; New York, New York; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Tampa, Florida; Toronto, Ontario; Hellerup, Denmark; Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Luxembourg; Zurich, Switzerland; Dubai, United Arab Emirates; London, United Kingdom; Sydney, New South Wales; Hong Kong; Tokyo, Japan; Singapore; Frankfurt, Shanghai, China; Germany, Madrid, Spain, Milan, Italy, Stockholm, Sweden, Melbourne, Australia, Amsterdam, Netherlands and Washington, DC.

About Sound Point Meridian Capital

Sound Point Meridian Capital Inc. is an externally managed, non-diversified closed-end management investment company. Its investment objective is to generate high current income, with a secondary objective to generate capital appreciation, by investing primarily in third-party collateralized loan obligation equity and mezzanine tranches. Sound Point Meridian Capital Inc. is based in NEW YORK.