SBA Communications (NASDAQ:SBAC) & American Tower (NYSE:AMT) Head-To-Head Survey

SBA Communications (NASDAQ:SBAC) and American Tower (NYSE:AMT) are both large-cap finance companies, but which is the superior stock? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their dividends, institutional ownership, profitability, risk, earnings, analyst recommendations and valuation.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current recommendations and price targets for SBA Communications and American Tower, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
SBA Communications	0	10	8	1	2.53
American Tower	0	6	14	1	2.76

SBA Communications presently has a consensus price target of $237.26, suggesting a potential upside of 7.26%. American Tower has a consensus price target of $218.05, suggesting a potential upside of 19.22%. Given American Tower’s stronger consensus rating and higher possible upside, analysts plainly believe American Tower is more favorable than SBA Communications.

Insider and Institutional Ownership

97.4% of SBA Communications shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 92.7% of American Tower shares are held by institutional investors. 9.5% of SBA Communications shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 0.1% of American Tower shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Volatility & Risk

SBA Communications has a beta of 0.88, meaning that its share price is 12% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, American Tower has a beta of 0.92, meaning that its share price is 8% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares SBA Communications and American Tower’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
SBA Communications	35.66%	-20.73%	9.09%
American Tower	26.81%	27.79%	4.57%

Dividends

SBA Communications pays an annual dividend of $5.00 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.3%. American Tower pays an annual dividend of $7.16 per share and has a dividend yield of 3.9%. SBA Communications pays out 52.5% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. American Tower pays out 115.7% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. SBA Communications has raised its dividend for 6 consecutive years and American Tower has raised its dividend for 1 consecutive years.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares SBA Communications and American Tower”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
SBA Communications	$2.82 billion	8.31	$1.05 billion	$9.53	23.21
American Tower	$10.64 billion	8.01	$2.53 billion	$6.19	29.55

American Tower has higher revenue and earnings than SBA Communications. SBA Communications is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than American Tower, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Summary

American Tower beats SBA Communications on 9 of the 17 factors compared between the two stocks.

About SBA Communications

SBA Communications Corporation is a leading independent owner and operator of wireless communications infrastructure including towers, buildings, rooftops, distributed antenna systems (DAS) and small cells. With a portfolio of more than 39,000 communications sites throughout the Americas, Africa and in Asia, SBA is listed on NASDAQ under the symbol SBAC. Our organization is part of the S&P 500 and is one of the top Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) by market capitalization.

About American Tower

American Tower, one of the largest global REITs, is a leading independent owner, operator and developer of multitenant communications real estate with a portfolio of over 224,000 communications sites and a highly interconnected footprint of U.S. data center facilities.