Analyzing Iron Mountain (IRM) and The Competition

Iron Mountain (NYSE:IRM) is one of 35 publicly-traded companies in the “Specialized REITs” industry, but how does it contrast to its peers? We will compare Iron Mountain to related companies based on the strength of its institutional ownership, dividends, analyst recommendations, risk, profitability, valuation and earnings.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

80.1% of Iron Mountain shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 78.0% of shares of all “Specialized REITs” companies are held by institutional investors. 1.7% of Iron Mountain shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 7.6% of shares of all “Specialized REITs” companies are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of current recommendations and price targets for Iron Mountain and its peers, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Iron Mountain	0	1	5	0	2.83
Iron Mountain Competitors	502	2683	3540	187	2.49

Iron Mountain presently has a consensus price target of $135.17, suggesting a potential upside of 4.38%. As a group, “Specialized REITs” companies have a potential upside of 10.10%. Given Iron Mountain’s peers higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Iron Mountain has less favorable growth aspects than its peers.

Profitability

This table compares Iron Mountain and its peers’ 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%
Iron Mountain Competitors	-3.83%	-3.34%	2.14%

Dividends

Iron Mountain pays an annual dividend of $3.46 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.7%. 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. As a group, “Specialized REITs” companies pay a dividend yield of 3.3% and pay out 120.6% of their earnings in the form of a dividend. Iron Mountain has increased its dividend for 3 consecutive years. Iron Mountain lags its peers as a dividend stock, given its lower dividend yield and higher payout ratio.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Iron Mountain and its peers gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Net Income	Price/Earnings Ratio
Iron Mountain	$6.90 billion	$144.59 million	92.49
Iron Mountain Competitors	$2.62 billion	$596.00 million	29.13

Iron Mountain has higher revenue, but lower earnings than its peers. Iron Mountain is trading at a higher price-to-earnings ratio than its peers, indicating that it is currently more expensive than other companies in its industry.

Risk & Volatility

Iron Mountain has a beta of 1.2, indicating that its share price is 20% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Iron Mountain’s peers have a beta of 0.96, indicating that their average share price is 4% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Iron Mountain beats its peers on 8 of the 15 factors compared.

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.