Reviewing Peakstone Realty Trust (NYSE:PKST) and CTO Realty Growth (NYSE:CTO)

CTO Realty Growth (NYSE:CTO) and Peakstone Realty Trust (NYSE:PKST) are both small-cap finance companies, but which is the better stock? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, valuation, dividends, risk, profitability, earnings and institutional ownership.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current ratings and recommmendations for CTO Realty Growth and Peakstone Realty Trust, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
CTO Realty Growth	0	0	2	2	3.50
Peakstone Realty Trust	0	1	0	1	3.00

CTO Realty Growth currently has a consensus price target of $21.00, indicating a potential upside of 6.46%. Peakstone Realty Trust has a consensus price target of $15.00, indicating a potential upside of 33.42%. Given Peakstone Realty Trust’s higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Peakstone Realty Trust is more favorable than CTO Realty Growth.

Profitability

This table compares CTO Realty Growth and Peakstone Realty Trust’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
CTO Realty Growth	17.10%	4.04%	1.92%
Peakstone Realty Trust	-18.26%	-3.61%	-1.59%

Volatility & Risk

CTO Realty Growth has a beta of 0.78, suggesting that its stock price is 22% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Peakstone Realty Trust has a beta of 2.59, suggesting that its stock price is 159% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares CTO Realty Growth and Peakstone Realty Trust”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
CTO Realty Growth	$118.66 million	4.98	$5.53 million	$0.59	33.43
Peakstone Realty Trust	$254.28 million	1.61	-$550.58 million	($1.18)	-9.53

CTO Realty Growth has higher earnings, but lower revenue than Peakstone Realty Trust. Peakstone Realty Trust is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than CTO Realty Growth, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

67.2% of CTO Realty Growth shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 39.0% of Peakstone Realty Trust shares are held by institutional investors. 5.3% of CTO Realty Growth shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 0.5% of Peakstone Realty Trust shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Dividends

CTO Realty Growth pays an annual dividend of $1.52 per share and has a dividend yield of 7.7%. Peakstone Realty Trust pays an annual dividend of $0.90 per share and has a dividend yield of 8.0%. CTO Realty Growth pays out 257.6% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Peakstone Realty Trust pays out -76.3% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Peakstone Realty Trust is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and lower payout ratio.

Summary

CTO Realty Growth beats Peakstone Realty Trust on 12 of the 17 factors compared between the two stocks.

About CTO Realty Growth

CTO Realty Growth, Inc. is a publicly traded real estate investment trust that owns and operates a portfolio of high-quality, retail-based properties located primarily in higher growth markets in the United States. CTO also externally manages and owns a meaningful interest in Alpine Income Property Trust, Inc. (NYSE: PINE), a publicly traded net lease REIT.

About Peakstone Realty Trust

Peakstone Realty Trust (NYSE: PKST) is an internally managed, real estate investment trust (REIT) that owns and operates a high-quality, newer-vintage portfolio of predominantly single-tenant industrial and office properties. These assets are generally leased to creditworthy tenants under long-term net lease agreements with contractual rent escalations. As of March 31, 2023, Peakstone's wholly-owned portfolio consists of 19 million square feet across 24 states in primarily high-growth, strategic coastal and sunbelt markets.