Financial Review: Crown Castle (NYSE:CCI) vs. Gladstone Land (NASDAQ:LANDP)

Crown Castle (NYSE:CCI) and Gladstone Land (NASDAQ:LANDP) are both real estate companies, but which is the superior stock? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their earnings, risk, institutional ownership, profitability, analyst recommendations, valuation and dividends.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

90.8% of Crown Castle shares are held by institutional investors. 0.4% of Crown Castle shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of current recommendations and price targets for Crown Castle and Gladstone Land, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Crown Castle	0	10	4	0	2.29
Gladstone Land	0	0	0	0	N/A

Crown Castle currently has a consensus price target of $113.29, indicating a potential upside of 18.35%. Given Crown Castle’s higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Crown Castle is more favorable than Gladstone Land.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Crown Castle and Gladstone Land’s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Crown Castle	$6.98 billion	5.95	$1.50 billion	$3.20	29.89
Gladstone Land	$90.40 million	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

Crown Castle has higher revenue and earnings than Gladstone Land.

Profitability

This table compares Crown Castle and Gladstone Land’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Crown Castle	20.32%	21.30%	3.60%
Gladstone Land	N/A	N/A	N/A

Dividends

Crown Castle pays an annual dividend of $6.26 per share and has a dividend yield of 6.5%. Gladstone Land pays an annual dividend of $1.50 per share and has a dividend yield of 7.7%. Crown Castle pays out 195.6% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Gladstone Land has increased its dividend for 1 consecutive years. Gladstone Land is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and longer track record of dividend growth.

Summary

Crown Castle beats Gladstone Land on 8 of the 11 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Crown Castle

Crown Castle owns, operates and leases more than 40,000 cell towers and approximately 90,000 route miles of fiber supporting small cells and fiber solutions across every major U.S. market. This nationwide portfolio of communications infrastructure connects cities and communities to essential data, technology and wireless service – bringing information, ideas and innovations to the people and businesses that need them.

About Gladstone Land

Founded in 1997, Gladstone Land is a publicly traded real estate investment trust that acquires and owns farmland and farm-related properties located in major agricultural markets in the U.S. and leases its properties to unrelated third-party farmers. The Company, which reports the aggregate fair value of its farmland holdings on a quarterly basis, currently owns 169 farms, comprised of approximately 116,000 acres in 15 different states and over 45,000 acre-feet of banked water in California, valued at a total of approximately $1.6 billion. Gladstone Land's farms are predominantly located in regions where its tenants are able to grow fresh produce annual row crops, such as berries and vegetables, which are generally planted and harvested annually. The Company also owns farms growing permanent crops, such as almonds, apples, cherries, figs, lemons, olives, pistachios, and other orchards, as well as blueberry groves and vineyards, which are generally planted every 20-plus years and harvested annually. Approximately 40% of the Company's fresh produce acreage is either organic or in transition to become organic, and over 10% of its permanent crop acreage falls into this category. The Company may also acquire property related to farming, such as cooling facilities, processing buildings, packaging facilities, and distribution centers. Gladstone Land pays monthly distributions to its stockholders and has paid 129 consecutive monthly cash distributions on its common stock since its initial public offering in January 2013. The Company has increased its common distributions 32 times over the prior 35 quarters, and the current per-share distribution on its common stock is $0.0464 per month, or $0.5568 per year.