Analyzing Crown Castle (NYSE:CCI) & Chatham Lodging Trust (NYSE:CLDT)

Crown Castle (NYSE:CCI) and Chatham Lodging Trust (NYSE:CLDT) are both finance companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their profitability, risk, dividends, valuation, analyst recommendations, earnings and institutional ownership.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent ratings and price targets for Crown Castle and Chatham Lodging Trust, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Crown Castle	1	6	10	3	2.75
Chatham Lodging Trust	0	1	2	0	2.67

Crown Castle currently has a consensus target price of $113.12, indicating a potential upside of 25.20%. Chatham Lodging Trust has a consensus target price of $10.75, indicating a potential upside of 68.15%. Given Chatham Lodging Trust’s higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Chatham Lodging Trust is more favorable than Crown Castle.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Crown Castle and Chatham Lodging Trust”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Crown Castle	$6.57 billion	5.99	-$3.90 billion	($10.63)	-8.50
Chatham Lodging Trust	$311.22 million	1.01	$4.17 million	$0.03	213.10

Chatham Lodging Trust has lower revenue, but higher earnings than Crown Castle. Crown Castle is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Chatham Lodging Trust, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Dividends

Crown Castle pays an annual dividend of $4.25 per share and has a dividend yield of 4.7%. Chatham Lodging Trust pays an annual dividend of $0.36 per share and has a dividend yield of 5.6%. Crown Castle pays out -40.0% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Chatham Lodging Trust pays out 1,200.0% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Chatham Lodging Trust has raised its dividend for 2 consecutive years. Chatham Lodging Trust is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and longer track record of dividend growth.

Profitability

This table compares Crown Castle and Chatham Lodging Trust’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Crown Castle	-95.37%	-619.62%	-12.35%
Chatham Lodging Trust	3.04%	1.19%	0.76%

Volatility and Risk

Crown Castle has a beta of 0.95, suggesting that its stock price is 5% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Chatham Lodging Trust has a beta of 1.44, suggesting that its stock price is 44% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

90.8% of Crown Castle shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 88.4% of Chatham Lodging Trust shares are held by institutional investors. 0.1% of Crown Castle shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 6.5% of Chatham Lodging Trust shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.

Summary

Chatham Lodging Trust beats Crown Castle on 11 of the 18 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 Chatham Lodging Trust

Chatham Lodging Trust is a self-advised, publicly traded real estate investment trust (REIT) focused primarily on investing in upscale, extended-stay hotels and premium-branded, select-service hotels. The company owns 39 hotels totaling 5,915 rooms/suites in 16 states and the District of Columbia.