Realty Income (O -0.54%) and Agree Realty (ADC -0.50%) are competitors in the net lease niche of real estate investment trust (REIT) arena. Realty Income is still down around 25% from its pre-coronavirus pandemic highs, while Agree Realty has rallied back some and is now just 10% below its peak.
That performance difference actually makes logical sense and it highlights that Agree is appropriate for some investors while Realty Income will likely be better for others.
Here's why.
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What is a net lease?
Both Realty Income and Agree Realty own single-tenant properties for which the tenant is responsible for most property-level operating costs. That's a net lease. Net leases are usually created when a company with property sells it and then instantly leases that property back. That allows the company to raise capital while also retaining effective control of the property, which is often an important part of its business.
Essentially, for the seller, a net lease is a financing transaction. REITs like Realty Income and Agree are happy to make such deals because they get a loyal tenant, a low-maintenance property (at least for the REIT), and, usually, regular rent escalators built into the lease. Net lease REITs can make these deals profitable if their cost of capital is less than the returns they generate from the properties they buy.
Realty Income and Agree are both heavily focused on owning retail properties. Retail assets tend to be very similar, which makes them easy to buy, sell, and re-tenant as needed. Agree is 100% focused on the U.S. retail market. Realty Income gets around 75% of its rents from retail, with the rest from industrial assets and a broad "other" category. Realty Income's portfolio is also spread across the United States and Europe.
There are big differences between Realty Income and Agree
Diversification is the first notable difference between these two net lease REITs. In fact, Realty Income is probably one of the most diversified REITs you can buy. If diversification is important to you, it will probably be a better choice than Agree for your portfolio.
The second notable difference is size. Agree has a market cap of roughly $8 billion and owns around 2,500 properties. Realty Income has a market cap of nearly $53 billion and owns 15,600 properties. If you want to own the biggest and best-run companies in a sector, Realty Income will probably be the better selection.
That said, size is both a positive and negative for Realty Income. On the plus side it gives the REIT easier access to capital markets, especially when coupled with its investment grade rated balance sheet. However, being so large, the company has to do a lot of transactions to grow. That's not always easy, so it is something of a slow-and-steady tortoise. Slow and steady has worked well for investors who like reliable dividend stocks, however, noting that Realty Income has increased its dividend annually for three decades.
If you have more of a growth bias, though, you'll probably prefer Agree Realty. Its smaller size has allowed it to grow its business more quickly. The best example of that is on the dividend front. Agree's dividend has grown by roughly 65% over the past decade while Realty Income's dividend has increased by a lower 45%. That may not sound like a huge difference, but it is a full 20 percentage points and nearly 50% more than Realty Income's dividend growth. If you favor growth, Agree will likely be the better option for you.
The final call could come down to the yield
Given the different growth opportunities, it makes some sense that Realty Income hasn't rebounded as quickly as Agree from their pandemic-era lows. That has resulted in a material yield divergence, with Realty Income offering a nearly 5.6% dividend yield and Agree's yield a far lower 4.3% or so. If income is your goal, Realty Income is probably the best option. But the growth pick here, from both a business and dividend perspective, is clearly Agree.
There is another other option. You could buy both Realty Income and Agree Realty, adding a reliable income foundation to your portfolio in Realty Income and a dividend growth engine in Agree. That's not a bad choice if you find it hard to pick between these two leading net lease REITs.
