Reviewing Iron Mountain (NYSE:IRM) & Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX)

Iron Mountain (NYSE:IRM) and Equinix (NASDAQ:EQIX) are both large-cap real estate companies, but which is the better business? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, profitability, institutional ownership, risk, dividends, valuation and earnings.

Profitability

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

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Iron Mountain	5.54%	-85.44%	3.30%
Equinix	15.64%	10.76%	3.83%

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent ratings and recommmendations for Iron Mountain and Equinix, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Iron Mountain	0	2	5	0	2.71
Equinix	0	4	21	2	2.93

Iron Mountain currently has a consensus price target of $137.67, indicating a potential upside of 17.86%. Equinix has a consensus price target of $1,203.40, indicating a potential upside of 16.16%. Given Iron Mountain’s higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Iron Mountain is more favorable than Equinix.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Iron Mountain and Equinix”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Iron Mountain	$6.90 billion	5.04	$144.59 million	$1.40	83.44
Equinix	$9.22 billion	11.09	$1.35 billion	$15.53	66.71

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

Dividends

Iron Mountain pays an annual dividend of $3.46 per share and has a dividend yield of 3.0%. Equinix pays an annual dividend of $20.64 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.0%. Iron Mountain pays out 247.1% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Equinix pays out 132.9% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Iron Mountain has raised its dividend for 3 consecutive years and Equinix has raised its dividend for 10 consecutive years.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

80.1% of Iron Mountain shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 94.9% of Equinix shares are owned by institutional investors. 1.7% of Iron Mountain shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 0.3% of Equinix shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Volatility & Risk

Iron Mountain has a beta of 1.18, meaning that its share price is 18% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Equinix has a beta of 0.99, meaning that its share price is 1% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Equinix beats Iron Mountain on 13 of the 18 factors compared between the two stocks.

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.

About Equinix

Equinix (Nasdaq: EQIX) is the world's digital infrastructure company . Digital leaders harness Equinix's trusted platform to bring together and interconnect foundational infrastructure at software speed. Equinix enables organizations to access all the right places, partners and possibilities to scale with agility, speed the launch of digital services, deliver world-class experiences and multiply their value, while supporting their sustainability goals.