Analyzing Crown Castle (CCI) & The Competition

Crown Castle (NYSE:CCI) is one of 35 public companies in the “Specialized REITs” industry, but how does it contrast to its competitors? We will compare Crown Castle to similar companies based on the strength of its analyst recommendations, valuation, profitability, risk, earnings, dividends and institutional ownership.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

90.8% of Crown Castle shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 78.0% of shares of all “Specialized REITs” companies are held by institutional investors. 0.1% of Crown Castle shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 7.5% of shares of all “Specialized REITs” companies are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Crown Castle and its competitors revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Net Income	Price/Earnings Ratio
Crown Castle	$4.08 billion	$444.00 million	46.26
Crown Castle Competitors	$2.75 billion	$596.00 million	31.88

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

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of recent recommendations for Crown Castle and its competitors, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Crown Castle	1	10	8	2	2.52
Crown Castle Competitors	519	2787	3668	191	2.49

Crown Castle presently has a consensus price target of $94.27, suggesting a potential upside of 7.25%. As a group, “Specialized REITs” companies have a potential upside of 12.87%. Given Crown Castle’s competitors higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe Crown Castle has less favorable growth aspects than its competitors.

Risk & Volatility

Crown Castle has a beta of 0.88, suggesting that its share price is 12% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Crown Castle’s competitors have a beta of 0.92, suggesting that their average share price is 8% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares Crown Castle and its competitors’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Crown Castle	20.12%	-42.11%	4.11%
Crown Castle Competitors	-5.29%	-3.21%	2.00%

Dividends

Crown Castle pays an annual dividend of $4.25 per share and has a dividend yield of 4.8%. Crown Castle pays out 223.7% 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 120.4% of their earnings in the form of a dividend.

Summary

Crown Castle beats its competitors on 8 of the 15 factors compared.

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.