Head-To-Head Review: Saul Centers (NYSE:BFS) and Iron Mountain (NYSE:IRM)

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

Risk & Volatility

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

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Saul Centers 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
Saul Centers	$257.21 million	3.46	$52.69 million	$1.84	20.02
Iron Mountain	$5.48 billion	5.51	$184.23 million	$0.36	285.70

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.

Analyst Recommendations

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

	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 currently has a consensus target price of $45.50, suggesting a potential upside of 23.51%. Iron Mountain has a consensus target price of $129.17, suggesting a potential upside of 25.59%. Given Iron Mountain’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Iron Mountain is more favorable than Saul Centers.

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%

Insider and Institutional Ownership

50.0% of Saul Centers shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 80.1% of Iron Mountain shares are owned by institutional investors. 56.6% of Saul Centers shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 2.1% of Iron Mountain shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Dividends

Saul Centers pays an annual dividend of $2.36 per share and has a dividend yield of 6.4%. Iron Mountain pays an annual dividend of $2.86 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.8%. 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.

Summary

Iron Mountain beats Saul Centers on 10 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.