Reviewing Medical Properties Trust (MPT) & Its Peers

Medical Properties Trust (NYSE:MPT) is one of 90 public companies in the “Real Estate Investment Trusts” industry, but how does it compare to its competitors? We will compare Medical Properties Trust to related businesses based on the strength of its valuation, earnings, dividends, profitability, institutional ownership, analyst recommendations and risk.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of current ratings and target prices for Medical Properties Trust and its competitors, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Medical Properties Trust	1	0	1	0	2.00
Medical Properties Trust Competitors	2346	4059	2396	22	2.01

Medical Properties Trust presently has a consensus price target of $8.00, suggesting a potential upside of 38.89%. As a group, “Real Estate Investment Trusts” companies have a potential upside of 17.37%. Given Medical Properties Trust’s higher probable upside, equities research analysts plainly believe Medical Properties Trust is more favorable than its competitors.

Profitability

This table compares Medical Properties Trust and its competitors’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Medical Properties Trust	-28.50%	-5.83%	-1.85%
Medical Properties Trust Competitors	-34.14%	-18.20%	-0.23%

Insider and Institutional Ownership

71.8% of Medical Properties Trust shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 63.7% of shares of all “Real Estate Investment Trusts” companies are owned by institutional investors. 1.3% of Medical Properties Trust shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 7.9% of shares of all “Real Estate Investment Trusts” companies are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Dividends

Medical Properties Trust pays an annual dividend of $0.36 per share and has a dividend yield of 6.3%. Medical Properties Trust pays out -78.3% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. As a group, “Real Estate Investment Trusts” companies pay a dividend yield of 4.0% and pay out 102.7% of their earnings in the form of a dividend. Medical Properties Trust is clearly a better dividend stock than its competitors, given its higher yield and lower payout ratio.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Medical Properties Trust and its competitors gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Net Income	Price/Earnings Ratio
Medical Properties Trust	$972.02 million	-$277.05 million	-12.52
Medical Properties Trust Competitors	$463.71 million	$16.35 million	26.54

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

Volatility & Risk

Medical Properties Trust has a beta of 1.43, suggesting that its stock price is 43% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Medical Properties Trust’s competitors have a beta of 1.15, suggesting that their average stock price is 15% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Medical Properties Trust beats its competitors on 9 of the 15 factors compared.

Medical Properties Trust Company Profile

Medical Properties Trust, Inc. is a self-advised real estate investment trust formed to capitalize on the changing trends in healthcare delivery by acquiring and developing net-leased healthcare facilities. MPT’s financing model allows hospitals and other healthcare facilities to unlock the value of their underlying real estate in order to fund facility improvements, technology upgrades, staff additions and new construction. Facilities include acute care hospitals, inpatient rehabilitation hospitals, long-term acute care hospitals, and other medical and surgical facilities.