Reviewing National Research (NASDAQ:NRC) & Iron Mountain (NYSE:IRM)

Iron Mountain (NYSE:IRM) and National Research (NASDAQ:NRC) are both business services companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their valuation, analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, risk, dividends, earnings and profitability.

Institutional & Insider Ownership

80.1% of Iron Mountain shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 47.3% of National Research shares are held by institutional investors. 1.9% of Iron Mountain shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 2.0% of National Research shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Risk & Volatility

Iron Mountain has a beta of 1.08, suggesting that its share price is 8% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, National Research has a beta of 0.45, suggesting that its share price is 55% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current recommendations and price targets for Iron Mountain and National Research, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Iron Mountain	0	0	7	1	3.13
National Research	0	0	0	0	0.00

Iron Mountain presently has a consensus target price of $121.71, indicating a potential upside of 24.22%. Given Iron Mountain’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Iron Mountain is more favorable than National Research.

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Iron Mountain and National Research”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Iron Mountain	$6.15 billion	4.70	$180.16 million	$0.41	238.99
National Research	$143.06 million	2.45	$24.78 million	$1.03	14.93

Iron Mountain has higher revenue and earnings than National Research. National Research is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Iron Mountain, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Dividends

Iron Mountain pays an annual dividend of $3.14 per share and has a dividend yield of 3.2%. National Research pays an annual dividend of $0.48 per share and has a dividend yield of 3.1%. Iron Mountain pays out 765.9% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. National Research pays out 46.6% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Iron Mountain has raised its dividend for 3 consecutive years. Iron Mountain is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and longer track record of dividend growth.

Profitability

This table compares Iron Mountain and National Research’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Iron Mountain	1.97%	-201.62%	2.82%
National Research	17.14%	71.33%	18.67%

Summary

Iron Mountain beats National Research on 12 of the 18 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Iron Mountain

Iron Mountain Incorporated (NYSE: IRM) is a global leader in information management services. Founded in 1951 and trusted by more than 240,000 customers worldwide, Iron Mountain serves to protect and elevate the power of our customers’ work. Through a range of offerings including digital transformation, data centers, secure records storage, information management, asset lifecycle management, secure destruction and art storage and logistics, Iron Mountain helps businesses bring light to their dark data, enabling customers to unlock value and intelligence from their stored digital and physical assets at speed and with security, while helping them meet their environmental goals.

About National Research

National Research Corporation provides analytics and insights that facilitate measurement and enhancement of the patient and employee experience. Its portfolio of subscription-based solutions provides actionable information and analysis to healthcare organizations across a range of mission-critical, constituent-related elements, including patient experience, service recovery, care transitions, employee engagement, reputation management, and brand loyalty. The company also offers marketing solutions that allow the tracking of awareness, perception, and consistency of healthcare brands; assessment of competitive differentiators; and enhanced segmentation tools to evaluate needs, wants, and behaviors of communities through real-time competitive assessments and enhanced segmentation tools. In addition, it provides experience solutions, such as patient experience, employee engagement, health risk assessments, care transition, and improvement tools. Further, the company provides reputation solutions that allow healthcare organizations to share a picture of their organization and ensure that timely and relevant content informs consumer decision-making; and governance solutions for not-for-profit hospital and health system boards of directors, executives, and physician leadership. National Research Corporation was founded in 1981 and is headquartered in Lincoln, Nebraska.