Comparing Medical Properties Trust (NYSE:MPT) & American Healthcare REIT (NYSE:AHR)

Medical Properties Trust (NYSE:MPT) and American Healthcare REIT (NYSE:AHR) are both real estate companies, but which is the better business? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, risk, dividends, profitability, earnings, valuation and institutional ownership.

Dividends

Medical Properties Trust pays an annual dividend of $0.36 per share and has a dividend yield of 8.7%. American Healthcare REIT pays an annual dividend of $1.00 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.8%. Medical Properties Trust pays out -171.4% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. American Healthcare REIT pays out 147.1% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Medical Properties Trust is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and lower payout ratio.

Volatility and Risk

Medical Properties Trust has a beta of 1.41, indicating that its share price is 41% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, American Healthcare REIT has a beta of 0.76, indicating that its share price is 24% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings for Medical Properties Trust and American Healthcare REIT, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Medical Properties Trust	1	1	0	0	1.50
American Healthcare REIT	0	2	12	0	2.86

Medical Properties Trust currently has a consensus target price of $4.50, suggesting a potential upside of 8.70%. American Healthcare REIT has a consensus target price of $58.83, suggesting a potential upside of 6.18%. Given Medical Properties Trust’s higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Medical Properties Trust is more favorable than American Healthcare REIT.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Medical Properties Trust and American Healthcare REIT”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Medical Properties Trust	$972.02 million	2.55	-$277.05 million	($0.21)	-19.71
American Healthcare REIT	$2.26 billion	4.72	$69.81 million	$0.68	81.49

American Healthcare REIT has higher revenue and earnings than Medical Properties Trust. Medical Properties Trust is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than American Healthcare REIT, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Profitability

This table compares Medical Properties Trust and American Healthcare REIT’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Medical Properties Trust	-12.59%	-2.70%	-0.84%
American Healthcare REIT	4.84%	3.63%	2.25%

Insider and Institutional Ownership

71.8% of Medical Properties Trust shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 16.7% of American Healthcare REIT shares are held by institutional investors. 1.8% of Medical Properties Trust shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 0.7% of American Healthcare REIT shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

American Healthcare REIT beats Medical Properties Trust on 10 of the 16 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Medical Properties Trust

Medical Properties Trust, Inc. is a self-advised real estate investment trust formed to capitalize on the changing trends in healthcare delivery by acquiring and developing net-leased healthcare facilities. MPT’s financing model allows hospitals and other healthcare facilities to unlock the value of their underlying real estate in order to fund facility improvements, technology upgrades, staff additions and new construction. Facilities include acute care hospitals, inpatient rehabilitation hospitals, long-term acute care hospitals, and other medical and surgical facilities.

About American Healthcare REIT

Formed by the successful merger of Griffin-American Healthcare REIT III and Griffin-American Healthcare REIT IV, as well as the acquisition of the business and operations of American Healthcare Investors, American Healthcare REIT is one of the larger healthcare-focused real estate investment trusts globally with assets totaling approximately $4.2 billion in gross investment value. The company benefits from a fully integrated management platform comprised of more than one hundred experienced and skilled professionals, many of whom have worked together since 2006 and have successfully invested in and managed healthcare real estate through multiple market cycles. The management team has a proven track record, deep industry relationships and unparalleled insight into each of the company's assets having built and nurtured the company's international portfolio since its original property acquisition in 2014. The strength of the management team, coupled with the quality of the assets, has American Healthcare REIT poised to capitalize on compelling growth driven by powerful demographic trends. With its 19 million-square-foot, 312-building portfolio of medical office buildings, senior housing communities, skilled nursing facilities and integrated senior health campuses diversified across 36 states and the United Kingdom, the tri-party transaction was a critical step in ideally positioning American Healthcare REIT for a future public listing or IPO on a national stock exchange at the most opportune time. By listing the company's shares on a national exchange, we believe the company will gain greater access to attractive capital that will fuel future growth, broaden our investor base and also provide liquidity to our fellow stockholders. American Healthcare REIT, Inc. operates as a subsidiary of Griffin Capital Company, LLC.