Iron Mountain (NYSE:IRM) versus Gladstone Land (NASDAQ:LAND) Critical Review

Gladstone Land (NASDAQ:LAND) and Iron Mountain (NYSE:IRM) are both real estate companies, but which is the superior investment? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their dividends, valuation, institutional ownership, risk, profitability, earnings and analyst recommendations.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of recent recommendations for Gladstone Land and Iron Mountain, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Gladstone Land	0	0	3	0	3.00
Iron Mountain	0	0	4	0	3.00

Gladstone Land presently has a consensus target price of $22.67, indicating a potential upside of 43.01%. Iron Mountain has a consensus target price of $65.75, indicating a potential upside of 3.36%. Given Gladstone Land’s higher possible upside, equities research analysts clearly believe Gladstone Land is more favorable than Iron Mountain.

Dividends

Gladstone Land pays an annual dividend of $0.55 per share and has a dividend yield of 3.5%. Iron Mountain pays an annual dividend of $2.47 per share and has a dividend yield of 3.9%. Gladstone Land pays out -177.4% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Iron Mountain pays out 190.0% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Gladstone Land has increased its dividend for 9 consecutive years and Iron Mountain has increased its dividend for 1 consecutive years.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Gladstone Land 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
Gladstone Land	$91.41 million	6.21	$4.71 million	($0.31)	-51.13
Iron Mountain	$5.10 billion	3.64	$556.98 million	$1.30	48.93

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

Volatility & Risk

Gladstone Land has a beta of 1.02, suggesting that its stock price is 2% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Iron Mountain has a beta of 0.93, suggesting that its stock price is 7% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

45.4% of Gladstone Land shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 76.9% of Iron Mountain shares are owned by institutional investors. 7.2% of Gladstone Land shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 2.2% of Iron Mountain shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Profitability

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

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Gladstone Land	13.69%	1.72%	0.87%
Iron Mountain	9.42%	116.19%	3.81%

Summary

Iron Mountain beats Gladstone Land on 9 of the 16 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Gladstone Land

Founded in 1997, Gladstone Land is a publicly traded real estate investment trust that acquires and owns farmland and farm-related properties located in major agricultural markets in the U.S. and leases its properties to unrelated third-party farmers. The Company, which reports the aggregate fair value of its farmland holdings on a quarterly basis, currently owns 169 farms, comprised of approximately 116,000 acres in 15 different states and over 45,000 acre-feet of banked water in California, valued at a total of approximately $1.6 billion. Gladstone Land's farms are predominantly located in regions where its tenants are able to grow fresh produce annual row crops, such as berries and vegetables, which are generally planted and harvested annually. The Company also owns farms growing permanent crops, such as almonds, apples, cherries, figs, lemons, olives, pistachios, and other orchards, as well as blueberry groves and vineyards, which are generally planted every 20-plus years and harvested annually. Approximately 40% of the Company's fresh produce acreage is either organic or in transition to become organic, and over 10% of its permanent crop acreage falls into this category. The Company may also acquire property related to farming, such as cooling facilities, processing buildings, packaging facilities, and distribution centers. Gladstone Land pays monthly distributions to its stockholders and has paid 126 consecutive monthly cash distributions on its common stock since its initial public offering in January 2013. The Company has increased its common distributions 31 times over the prior 34 quarters, and the current per-share distribution on its common stock is $0.0462 per month, or $0.5544 per year.

About Iron Mountain

Iron Mountain Incorporated (NYSE: IRM) is a global leader in innovative storage, data center infrastructure, asset lifecycle management and information management services. Founded in 1951 and trusted by more than 225,000 customers worldwide, Iron Mountain helps customers CLIMB HIGHER to transform their businesses. 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.