Contrasting Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending (NCDL) and Its Competitors

Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending (NYSE:NCDL) is one of 42 publicly-traded companies in the “FIN – SBIC&COMMRL” industry, but how does it weigh in compared to its rivals? We will compare Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending to related businesses based on the strength of its dividends, valuation, institutional ownership, analyst recommendations, earnings, risk and profitability.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of current ratings and target prices for Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending and its rivals, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending	0	3	1	0	2.25
Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending Competitors	252	1329	1308	21	2.38

Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending presently has a consensus price target of $16.31, indicating a potential downside of 2.03%. As a group, “FIN – SBIC&COMMRL” companies have a potential downside of 0.35%. Given Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending’s rivals stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending has less favorable growth aspects than its rivals.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending and its rivals revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Net Income	Price/Earnings Ratio
Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending	$98.95 million	$116.32 million	8.90
Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending Competitors	$335.49 million	$148.50 million	14.30

Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending’s rivals have higher revenue and earnings than Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending. Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than its rivals, indicating that it is currently more affordable than other companies in its industry.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

27.7% of shares of all “FIN – SBIC&COMMRL” companies are owned by institutional investors. 0.6% of Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 4.0% of shares of all “FIN – SBIC&COMMRL” companies are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Risk and Volatility

Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending has a beta of 0.48, meaning that its stock price is 52% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending’s rivals have a beta of -0.62, meaning that their average stock price is 162% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending and its rivals’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending	44.83%	12.42%	5.63%
Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending Competitors	33.24%	11.37%	5.03%

Dividends

Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending pays an annual dividend of $1.80 per share and has a dividend yield of 10.8%. Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending pays out 96.3% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. As a group, “FIN – SBIC&COMMRL” companies pay a dividend yield of 9.5% and pay out 106.5% of their earnings in the form of a dividend. Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending is clearly a better dividend stock than its rivals, given its higher yield and lower payout ratio.

Summary

Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending rivals beat Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending on 9 of the 15 factors compared.

About Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending

Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending Corp. is a specialty finance company focused primarily on investing in senior secured loans to private equity-owned U.S. middle market companies. It has elected to be regulated as a business development company. Nuveen Churchill Direct Lending Corp. is based in NEW YORK.