Reviewing Iron Mountain (NYSE:IRM) and Bimini Capital Management (OTCMKTS:BMNM)

Bimini Capital Management (OTCMKTS:BMNM) and Iron Mountain (NYSE:IRM) are both finance companies, but which is the better investment? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their profitability, risk, institutional ownership, earnings, analyst recommendations, valuation and dividends.

Dividends

Bimini Capital Management pays an annual dividend of $0.13 per share and has a dividend yield of 14.9%. Iron Mountain pays an annual dividend of $2.86 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.5%. Bimini Capital Management pays out -27.7% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Iron Mountain pays out 433.3% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Bimini Capital Management is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and lower payout ratio.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Bimini Capital Management and Iron Mountain’s gross revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Bimini Capital Management	$13.60 million	0.65	-$3.98 million	($0.47)	-1.86
Iron Mountain	$5.82 billion	5.78	$184.23 million	$0.66	174.00

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

Profitability

This table compares Bimini Capital Management and Iron Mountain’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Bimini Capital Management	-45.47%	-54.34%	-4.32%
Iron Mountain	3.94%	595.44%	3.06%

Insider and Institutional Ownership

80.1% of Iron Mountain shares are held by institutional investors. 42.7% of Bimini Capital Management shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 2.1% of Iron Mountain shares are held by 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.

Risk & Volatility

Bimini Capital Management has a beta of 0.96, meaning that its share price is 4% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Iron Mountain has a beta of 0.98, meaning that its share price is 2% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of current ratings for Bimini Capital Management and Iron Mountain, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Bimini Capital Management	0	0	0	0	N/A
Iron Mountain	1	0	5	0	2.67

Iron Mountain has a consensus price target of $99.83, indicating a potential downside of 13.07%. Given Iron Mountain’s higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Iron Mountain is more favorable than Bimini Capital Management.

Summary

Iron Mountain beats Bimini Capital Management on 12 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Bimini Capital Management

Bimini Capital Management, Inc., through its subsidiaries, operates as a specialty finance company in the United States. The company operates in two segments, Asset Management and Investment Portfolio. The Asset Management segment includes investment advisory services by Bimini Advisors to Orchid Island Capital, Inc. and Royal Palm Capital, LLC. The Investment Portfolio segment engages in investment activities conducted by Royal Palm Capital, LLC. It invests in residential mortgage-backed securities. The company was formerly known as Opteum Inc. and changed its name to Bimini Capital Management, Inc. in September 2007. Bimini Capital Management, Inc. was founded in 2003 and is based in Vero Beach, Florida.

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.