Financial Contrast: Ashford Hospitality Trust (NYSE:AHT) and CoreCivic (NYSE:CXW)

CoreCivic (NYSE:CXW) and Ashford Hospitality Trust (NYSE:AHT) are both finance companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their earnings, risk, analyst recommendations, profitability, valuation, dividends and institutional ownership.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent ratings for CoreCivic and Ashford Hospitality Trust, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
CoreCivic	0	0	3	0	3.00
Ashford Hospitality Trust	0	0	0	0	0.00

CoreCivic currently has a consensus price target of $31.00, suggesting a potential upside of 41.68%. Given CoreCivic’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe CoreCivic is more favorable than Ashford Hospitality Trust.

Dividends

CoreCivic pays an annual dividend of $1.76 per share and has a dividend yield of 8.0%. Ashford Hospitality Trust pays an annual dividend of $0.24 per share and has a dividend yield of 4.0%. CoreCivic pays out 288.5% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Ashford Hospitality Trust pays out -0.9% of its earnings in the form of a dividend.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

85.1% of CoreCivic shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 41.0% of Ashford Hospitality Trust shares are owned by institutional investors. 2.3% of CoreCivic shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 2.2% of Ashford Hospitality Trust shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares CoreCivic and Ashford Hospitality Trust”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
CoreCivic	$1.96 billion	1.22	$68.87 million	$0.61	35.87
Ashford Hospitality Trust	$1.17 billion	0.03	-$178.49 million	($27.72)	-0.22

CoreCivic has higher revenue and earnings than Ashford Hospitality Trust. Ashford Hospitality Trust is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than CoreCivic, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Risk & Volatility

CoreCivic has a beta of 0.79, meaning that its stock price is 21% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Ashford Hospitality Trust has a beta of 2.23, meaning that its stock price is 123% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares CoreCivic and Ashford Hospitality Trust’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
CoreCivic	3.51%	5.97%	2.97%
Ashford Hospitality Trust	2.84%	-12.89%	1.01%

Summary

CoreCivic beats Ashford Hospitality Trust on 14 of the 16 factors compared between the two stocks.

About CoreCivic

CoreCivic, Inc. owns and operates partnership correctional, detention, and residential reentry facilities in the United States. It operates through three segments: CoreCivic Safety, CoreCivic Community, and CoreCivic Properties. The company provides a range of solutions to government partners that serve the public good through corrections and detention management, a network of residential reentry centers to help address America’s recidivism crisis, and government real estate solutions. Its correctional, detention, and residential reentry facilities offer rehabilitation and educational programs, including basic education, faith-based services, life skills and employment training, and substance abuse treatment. The company owns and operates correctional and detention facilities, residential reentry centers, and properties for lease. CoreCivic, Inc. was founded in 1983 and is based in Brentwood, Tennessee.

About Ashford Hospitality Trust

Ashford Hospitality Trust, Inc., together with its subsidiaries (Ashford Trust), is a real estate investment trust (REIT). While our portfolio currently consists of upscale hotels and upper upscale full-service hotels, our investment strategy is predominantly focused on investing in upper upscale full-service hotels in the United States that have revenue per available room (RevPAR) generally less than twice the U.S. national average, and in all methods including direct real estate, equity, and debt. We currently anticipate future investments will predominantly be in upper upscale hotels. We own our lodging investments and conduct our business through Ashford Hospitality Limited Partnership (Ashford Trust OP), our operating partnership. Ashford OP General Partner LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Ashford Trust, serves as the sole general partner of our operating partnership.