Contrasting Iron Mountain (NYSE:IRM) & Saul Centers (NYSE:BFS)

Saul Centers (NYSE:BFS) and Iron Mountain (NYSE:IRM) are both finance companies, but which is the superior business? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their dividends, profitability, earnings, analyst recommendations, valuation, institutional ownership and risk.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent ratings and price targets for Saul Centers and Iron Mountain, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Saul Centers	0	0	1	0	3.00
Iron Mountain	0	0	6	1	3.14

Saul Centers presently has a consensus price target of $45.50, suggesting a potential upside of 24.66%. Iron Mountain has a consensus price target of $129.17, suggesting a potential upside of 21.64%. Given Saul Centers’ higher probable upside, research analysts plainly believe Saul Centers is more favorable than Iron Mountain.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

50.0% of Saul Centers shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 80.1% of Iron Mountain shares are held by institutional investors. 56.6% of Saul Centers shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 2.1% of Iron Mountain shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Saul Centers and Iron Mountain”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Saul Centers	$257.21 million	3.43	$52.69 million	$1.84	19.84
Iron Mountain	$5.48 billion	5.69	$184.23 million	$0.36	294.97

Iron Mountain has higher revenue and earnings than Saul Centers. Saul Centers is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Iron Mountain, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Risk & Volatility

Saul Centers has a beta of 1.11, meaning that its share price is 11% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Iron Mountain has a beta of 1.01, meaning that its share price is 1% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Dividends

Saul Centers pays an annual dividend of $2.36 per share and has a dividend yield of 6.5%. Iron Mountain pays an annual dividend of $2.86 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.7%. Saul Centers pays out 128.3% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Iron Mountain pays out 794.5% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Saul Centers is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and lower payout ratio.

Profitability

This table compares Saul Centers and Iron Mountain’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Saul Centers	20.84%	17.16%	2.72%
Iron Mountain	1.77%	-44,660.04%	2.94%

Summary

Iron Mountain beats Saul Centers on 9 of the 17 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Saul Centers

Saul Centers is a self-managed, self-administered equity REIT headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland. Saul Centers currently operates and manages a real estate portfolio comprised of 61 properties that includes (a) 57 community and neighborhood Shopping Centers and Mixed-Use properties with approximately 9.8 million square feet of leasable area and (b) four land and development properties. Over 85% of the Company’s property operating income is generated from properties in the metropolitan Washington, DC/Baltimore area.

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.