Reviewing Public Storage (NYSE:PSA) & Gladstone Land (NASDAQ:LAND)

Gladstone Land (NASDAQ:LAND) and Public Storage (NYSE:PSA) are both finance companies, but which is the superior stock? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their valuation, dividends, earnings, analyst recommendations, profitability, institutional ownership and risk.

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent ratings and price targets for Gladstone Land and Public Storage, as provided by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Gladstone Land	0	3	1	0	2.25
Public Storage	0	12	4	2	2.44

Gladstone Land presently has a consensus target price of $10.00, suggesting a potential downside of 11.97%. Public Storage has a consensus target price of $307.13, suggesting a potential upside of 3.02%. Given Public Storage’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts clearly believe Public Storage is more favorable than Gladstone Land.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

53.6% of Gladstone Land shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 78.8% of Public Storage shares are held by institutional investors. 7.2% of Gladstone Land shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 11.1% of Public Storage shares are held by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Profitability

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

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Gladstone Land	15.31%	2.01%	1.08%
Public Storage	36.99%	34.82%	8.87%

Risk and Volatility

Gladstone Land has a beta of 1.18, indicating that its share price is 18% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Public Storage has a beta of 0.99, indicating that its share price is 1% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Dividends

Gladstone Land pays an annual dividend of $0.56 per share and has a dividend yield of 4.9%. Public Storage pays an annual dividend of $12.00 per share and has a dividend yield of 4.0%. Gladstone Land pays out -466.7% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Public Storage pays out 133.0% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Gladstone Land has increased its dividend for 2 consecutive years. Gladstone Land is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and longer track record of dividend growth.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Gladstone Land and Public Storage”s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Gladstone Land	$88.34 million	5.33	$13.53 million	($0.12)	-94.67
Public Storage	$4.82 billion	10.85	$1.78 billion	$9.02	33.05

Public Storage has higher revenue and earnings than Gladstone Land. Gladstone Land is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Public Storage, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Summary

Public Storage beats Gladstone Land on 14 of the 18 factors compared between the two stocks.

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.

About Public Storage

Public Storage, a member of the S&P 500 and FT Global 500, is a REIT that primarily acquires, develops, owns, and operates self-storage facilities. At December 31, 2023, we had: (i) interests in 3,044 self-storage facilities located in 40 states with approximately 218 million net rentable square feet in the United States and (ii) a 35% common equity interest in Shurgard Self Storage Limited (Euronext Brussels: SHUR), which owned 275 self-storage facilities located in seven Western European nations with approximately 15 million net rentable square feet operated under the Shurgard brand. Our headquarters are located in Glendale, California.