How Safe Are Iron Mountain and Its Dividend?
Iron Mountain (NYSE: IRM) is a unique real estate investment trust (REIT) that basically has no direct peers. That can make it hard to analyze the company, but there are some financial truths that can't be ignored, and those metrics show the REIT and its dividend may be riskier than some investors realize.
Iron Mountain's core business is storing physical records. Mostly, that involves bankers boxes full of papers that it puts into safe locations so its customers can clear out space in their own buildings. It's a very sticky business since most companies don't want to touch the boxes they store again until they are so old that the contents can be legally destroyed. For example, the average box that the real estate investment trust gets sits in storage for 15 years, and the company has a 98% customer retention rate.
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Source Fool.com
