Safehold (NYSE:SAFE – Get Free Report) and Iron Mountain (NYSE:IRM – Get Free Report) are both real estate companies, but which is the superior business? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their profitability, institutional ownership, dividends, valuation, analyst recommendations, earnings and risk.
Analyst Recommendations
This is a summary of recent ratings and target prices for Safehold and Iron Mountain, as reported by MarketBeat.
| Sell Ratings | Hold Ratings | Buy Ratings | Strong Buy Ratings | Rating Score | |
| Safehold | 1 | 7 | 2 | 0 | 2.10 |
| Iron Mountain | 0 | 2 | 5 | 0 | 2.71 |
Safehold presently has a consensus price target of $17.17, suggesting a potential upside of 22.56%. Iron Mountain has a consensus price target of $137.83, suggesting a potential upside of 19.72%. Given Safehold’s higher possible upside, research analysts clearly believe Safehold is more favorable than Iron Mountain.
Insider and Institutional Ownership
Profitability
This table compares Safehold and Iron Mountain’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.
| Net Margins | Return on Equity | Return on Assets | |
| Safehold | 27.70% | 4.76% | 1.62% |
| Iron Mountain | 5.54% | -85.44% | 3.30% |
Earnings & Valuation
This table compares Safehold and Iron Mountain”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.
| Gross Revenue | Price/Sales Ratio | Net Income | Earnings Per Share | Price/Earnings Ratio | |
| Safehold | $385.55 million | 2.57 | $114.47 million | $1.62 | 8.65 |
| Iron Mountain | $7.56 billion | 4.53 | $144.59 million | $1.40 | 82.23 |
Iron Mountain has higher revenue and earnings than Safehold. Safehold is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Iron Mountain, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Dividends
Safehold pays an annual dividend of $0.71 per share and has a dividend yield of 5.1%. Iron Mountain pays an annual dividend of $3.45 per share and has a dividend yield of 3.0%. Safehold pays out 43.8% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Iron Mountain pays out 246.4% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Safehold has raised its dividend for 1 consecutive years and Iron Mountain has raised its dividend for 3 consecutive years. Safehold is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and lower payout ratio.
Risk and Volatility
Safehold has a beta of 1.73, suggesting that its share price is 73% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Iron Mountain has a beta of 1.18, suggesting that its share price is 18% more volatile than the S&P 500.
Summary
Iron Mountain beats Safehold on 9 of the 17 factors compared between the two stocks.
About Safehold
Safehold Inc. (NYSE: SAFE) is revolutionizing real estate ownership by providing a new and better way for owners to unlock the value of the land beneath their buildings. Having created the modern ground lease industry in 2017, Safehold continues to help owners of high quality multifamily, office, industrial, hospitality, student housing, life science and mixed-use properties generate higher returns with less risk. The Company, which is taxed as a real estate investment trust (REIT), seeks to deliver safe, growing income and long-term capital appreciation to its shareholders.
About Iron Mountain
Iron Mountain Incorporated (NYSE: IRM) is a global leader in information management services. Founded in 1951 and trusted by more than 240,000 customers worldwide, Iron Mountain serves to protect and elevate the power of our customers’ work. Through a range of offerings including digital transformation, data centers, secure records storage, information management, asset lifecycle management, secure destruction and art storage and logistics, Iron Mountain helps businesses bring light to their dark data, enabling customers to unlock value and intelligence from their stored digital and physical assets at speed and with security, while helping them meet their environmental goals.
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