Head-To-Head Comparison: Crown Castle (CCI) & Its Peers

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

Volatility and Risk

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

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of current recommendations for Crown Castle and its peers, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

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

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Crown Castle and its peers gross 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 peers. Crown Castle 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.

Profitability

This table compares Crown Castle and its peers’ 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.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

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

Summary

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

Crown Castle Company Profile

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.