Head to Head Comparison: Digital Realty Trust (NYSE:DLR) and Wheeler Real Estate Investment Trust (NASDAQ:WHLR)

Wheeler Real Estate Investment Trust (NASDAQ:WHLR) and Digital Realty Trust (NYSE:DLR) are both finance companies, but which is the superior business? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, profitability, valuation, institutional ownership, earnings, dividends and risk.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings and price targets for Wheeler Real Estate Investment Trust and Digital Realty Trust, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Wheeler Real Estate Investment Trust	0	0	0	0	N/A
Digital Realty Trust	2	7	10	1	2.50

Digital Realty Trust has a consensus price target of $154.28, indicating a potential downside of 1.92%. Given Digital Realty Trust’s higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Digital Realty Trust is more favorable than Wheeler Real Estate Investment Trust.

Risk & Volatility

Wheeler Real Estate Investment Trust has a beta of 1.53, suggesting that its share price is 53% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Digital Realty Trust has a beta of 0.6, suggesting that its share price is 40% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Wheeler Real Estate Investment Trust and Digital Realty Trust”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Wheeler Real Estate Investment Trust	$103.61 million	0.09	-$4.69 million	($4,458.03)	0.00
Digital Realty Trust	$5.46 billion	9.00	$948.84 million	$3.60	43.69

Digital Realty Trust has higher revenue and earnings than Wheeler Real Estate Investment Trust. Wheeler Real Estate Investment Trust is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Digital Realty Trust, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Dividends

Wheeler Real Estate Investment Trust pays an annual dividend of $1.68 per share and has a dividend yield of 10.1%. Digital Realty Trust pays an annual dividend of $4.88 per share and has a dividend yield of 3.1%. Wheeler Real Estate Investment Trust pays out 0.0% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Digital Realty Trust pays out 135.6% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Wheeler Real Estate Investment Trust is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and lower payout ratio.

Profitability

This table compares Wheeler Real Estate Investment Trust and Digital Realty Trust’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Wheeler Real Estate Investment Trust	-10.98%	N/A	-1.70%
Digital Realty Trust	20.58%	5.93%	2.61%

Institutional & Insider Ownership

35.3% of Wheeler Real Estate Investment Trust shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 99.7% of Digital Realty Trust shares are held by institutional investors. 40.6% of Wheeler Real Estate Investment Trust shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 0.2% of Digital Realty Trust shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

Digital Realty Trust beats Wheeler Real Estate Investment Trust on 12 of the 16 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Wheeler Real Estate Investment Trust

Headquartered in Virginia Beach, Virginia, Wheeler Real Estate Investment Trust, Inc. is a fully integrated, self-managed commercial real estate investment trust (REIT) focused on owning and operating income-producing retail properties with a primary focus on grocery-anchored centers.

About Digital Realty Trust

Digital Realty brings companies and data together by delivering the full spectrum of data center, colocation, and interconnection solutions. PlatformDIGITAL, the company's global data center platform, provides customers with a secure data meeting place and a proven Pervasive Datacenter Architecture (PDx) solution methodology for powering innovation and efficiently managing Data Gravity challenges. Digital Realty gives its customers access to the connected data communities that matter to them with a global data center footprint of 300+ facilities in 50+ metros across 25+ countries on six continents.