Reviewing Global Self Storage (NASDAQ:SELF) & Digital Realty Trust (NYSE:DLR)

Global Self Storage (NASDAQ:SELF) and Digital Realty Trust (NYSE:DLR) are both real estate companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their earnings, valuation, dividends, profitability, risk, analyst recommendations and institutional ownership.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent ratings and target prices for Global Self Storage and Digital Realty Trust, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Global Self Storage	0	0	1	0	3.00
Digital Realty Trust	0	6	25	1	2.84

Digital Realty Trust has a consensus price target of $219.45, indicating a potential upside of 20.45%. Given Digital Realty Trust’s higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Digital Realty Trust is more favorable than Global Self Storage.

Dividends

Global Self Storage pays an annual dividend of $0.29 per share and has a dividend yield of 5.5%. Digital Realty Trust pays an annual dividend of $4.88 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.7%. Global Self Storage pays out 161.1% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Digital Realty Trust pays out 236.9% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Global Self Storage is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and lower payout ratio.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

28.9% of Global Self Storage shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 99.7% of Digital Realty Trust shares are held by institutional investors. 10.7% of Global Self Storage shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 0.2% of Digital Realty Trust shares are held by company 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.

Profitability

This table compares Global Self Storage and Digital Realty Trust’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Global Self Storage	16.64%	4.57%	3.32%
Digital Realty Trust	11.80%	3.34%	1.59%

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Global Self Storage and Digital Realty Trust”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Global Self Storage	$12.70 million	4.72	$2.04 million	$0.18	29.17
Digital Realty Trust	$6.11 billion	11.06	$1.31 billion	$2.06	88.45

Digital Realty Trust has higher revenue and earnings than Global Self Storage. Global Self Storage is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Digital Realty Trust, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Summary

Digital Realty Trust beats Global Self Storage on 9 of the 16 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Global Self Storage

Global Self Storage is a self-administered and self-managed REIT that owns, operates, manages, acquires, and redevelops self-storage properties. The company's self-storage properties are designed to offer affordable, easily accessible and secure storage space for residential and commercial customers. Through its wholly owned subsidiaries, the company owns and/or manages 13 self-storage properties in Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Oklahoma.

About Digital Realty Trust

Digital Realty Trust, Inc. operates as a real estate investment trust, which engages in the provision of data center, colocation and interconnection solutions. It serves the following industries: artificial intelligence (AI), networks, cloud, digital media, mobile, financial services, healthcare, and gaming. The company was founded on March 9, 2004, and is headquartered in Dallas, TX.