City Office REIT (NYSE:CIO) & BRT Apartments (NYSE:BRT) Financial Survey

City Office REIT (NYSE:CIO) and BRT Apartments (NYSE:BRT) are both small-cap finance companies, but which is the superior business? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their dividends, profitability, risk, valuation, institutional ownership, analyst recommendations and earnings.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of current recommendations and price targets for City Office REIT and BRT Apartments, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
City Office REIT	0	0	0	0	N/A
BRT Apartments	0	0	2	0	3.00

BRT Apartments has a consensus target price of $22.50, indicating a potential upside of 29.16%. Given BRT Apartments’ higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe BRT Apartments is more favorable than City Office REIT.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares City Office REIT and BRT Apartments”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
City Office REIT	$175.37 million	1.31	-$2.68 million	($0.28)	-20.36
BRT Apartments	$94.50 million	3.44	$3.87 million	$0.22	79.18

BRT Apartments has lower revenue, but higher earnings than City Office REIT. City Office REIT is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than BRT Apartments, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Profitability

This table compares City Office REIT and BRT Apartments’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
City Office REIT	-4.02%	-1.07%	-0.47%
BRT Apartments	-9.24%	-3.89%	-1.24%

Insider & Institutional Ownership

67.5% of City Office REIT shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 29.1% of BRT Apartments shares are held by institutional investors. 3.9% of City Office REIT shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 40.2% of BRT Apartments shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Dividends

City Office REIT pays an annual dividend of $0.40 per share and has a dividend yield of 7.0%. BRT Apartments pays an annual dividend of $1.00 per share and has a dividend yield of 5.7%. City Office REIT pays out -142.9% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. BRT Apartments pays out 454.5% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. City Office REIT is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and lower payout ratio.

Risk & Volatility

City Office REIT has a beta of 1.95, suggesting that its stock price is 95% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, BRT Apartments has a beta of 1.06, suggesting that its stock price is 6% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

City Office REIT beats BRT Apartments on 8 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About City Office REIT

City Office REIT is an internally-managed real estate company focused on acquiring, owning and operating high-quality office properties located predominantly in Sun Belt markets. City Office currently owns or has a controlling interest in 5.7 million square feet of office properties. The Company has elected to be taxed as a real estate investment trust for U.S. federal income tax purposes.

About BRT Apartments

BRT is a real estate investment trust that owns, operates and, to a lesser extent, holds interests in joint ventures that own multi-family properties. As of December 31, 2023, BRT owns or has interests in 28 multi-family properties with 7,707 units in 11 states.