Realty IncomeO
$58.4B market capOwns thousands of single-tenant shops and warehouses, and pays its rent out as a monthly dividend.
A mixed picture - strengths and real weaknesses - 23 of 35 checks passed.
Value
What you pay today for what the business produces, measured against O's own history and its peers, never a universal rule.
Expensive against its own history and its sector - you're paying up for what you get.
Is the price high or low right now, compared to what the market usually pays?
→At 43.0x earnings, the market is paying +14% more than O's own ten-year median of 37.6x. Expectations are elevated, so more has to go right to justify the price.
What has the market paid for O over the years?
→At 43.0x earnings, the market is paying +14% more than O's own ten-year median of 37.6x. Expectations are elevated, so more has to go right to justify the price.
What does “Value” actually mean?
Value asks what you pay for each dollar of earnings, sales or cash the business produces. A high multiple isn't automatically bad - fast growers earn theirs - but a price far above the company's own history means the market expects a lot to go right. We compare each multiple to the company's own past and to its sector, never to a universal rule.
How we scored it · 2 of 5 checks passed
| ✕ | Cheaper than its own history (earnings) | 42.99 vs 37.65 |
| ✕ | Earnings yield beats a long bond (4%) | 2.3% vs 4.0% |
| ✕ | Better cash yield than its own history | 6.9% vs 8.0% |
| ✓ | FFO yield above 5% | 6.3% vs 5.0% |
| ✓ | Cheap on FFO | 15.97 vs 16.00 (peer median) |
| – | Price isn't outrunning growth | no positive 3-year earnings growth to compare against |
Growth
What the company has actually reported - is it selling more, and is more of it becoming profit?
Growing, but with caveats - revenue +10.9% over the last year.
Revenue: is the business selling more than it used to?
◌ TTM = trailing twelve months to the latest filed quarter, not a filed fiscal year
→Revenue reached $5.7B in 2025, compounding +20% a year since 2022 though the pace has cooled. The last twelve months (+11%) ran below that pace, so growth is slowing. The trailing twelve months are already running at $6.1B, ahead of the last full year.
Net income: how much of that revenue becomes profit?
◌ TTM = trailing twelve months to the latest filed quarter, not a filed fiscal year
→Net income was $1.1B in 2025, compounding +7% a year over three years. Earnings per share moved +42% over the last twelve months. Trailing twelve-month profit stands at $1.3B.
How fast is it growing, year by year?
+9%revenue growth, FY 2025
→In 2025 revenue grew +9% while earnings moved +23% - when the earnings line runs above revenue, each new dollar of sales is arriving more profitably.
What does “Growth” actually mean?
Growth here is what the company has actually reported to the SEC - not a forecast. We look at the last year, the three-year pace, whether growth is speeding up or slowing down, and whether it's been consistent rather than one lucky year. Hatched bars are fourth quarters we derived from annual filings (companies file a full-year 10-K rather than a Q4 report).
How we scored it · 4 of 6 checks passed
| ✓ | Outgrew its sector last year | 10.9% vs 7.7% (sector 70th pct, n=179) |
| ✓ | Sustained growth beats its sector (3 years) | 19.8% vs 16.1% (sector 70th pct, n=170) |
| ✓ | Profits grew last year | 42.3% vs 0.0% |
| ✕ | Profit growth beats its peers | -6.4% vs 16.5% (sector 70th pct, n=118) |
| ✕ | Growth is speeding up, not slowing | 1y 10.9% vs 3y 19.8% |
| ✓ | Growth is consistent, not lumpy | revenue up in 5 of the last 5 years |
What matters for Realty Income
What does Realty Income own besides the shops and warehouses?
→The Bellagio preferred stake alone is $650M of $1.4B in joint ventures, 47% of the total - a Las Vegas casino and a data-centre venture sitting inside a shop-and-warehouse landlord.
Source: SEC filings - segment disclosures (XBRL notes) · as at 2026-06-30
How much of the rent is collected outside America?
→America brings in $1.2B of $1.4B in rent, with the United Kingdom at $195M.
Source: SEC filings - segment disclosures (XBRL notes) · as at 2026-06-30
Quality
Whether the growth makes real money - margins, returns on capital, and whether profits turn into cash.
A solidly profitable business, though not exceptional against its sector.
Margins: of every $1 of sales, how much survives each cost layer?
◌ TTM = trailing twelve months to the latest filed quarter, not a filed fiscal year
→Net margin stands at 18% in 2025. O doesn't break out gross or operating margin in its filings, so net is the only layer the data supports.
Earnings quality: do the reported profits turn into real cash?
◌ TTM = trailing twelve months to the latest filed quarter, not a filed fiscal year
→Operating cash flow runs at 320% of reported profit, so the earnings are more than backed by cash - depreciation and other non-cash charges are understating what the business actually collects.
What does it earn on the money it uses?
◌ TTM = trailing twelve months to the latest filed quarter, not a filed fiscal year
→ROE of 3% on shareholders' capital (ROCE isn't meaningful for this business model).
What does O really earn on its properties?
◌ TTM = trailing twelve months to the latest filed quarter, not a filed fiscal year
Net income plus property depreciation, less gains on property sales - the measure REITs are actually valued on, because a building does not lose value on the schedule the accounts assume.
→O generated $3.4B of funds from operations in 2025, growing +12% a year over three years. FFO adds back depreciation because a REIT's buildings do not really wear out the way the accounts assume. Per share that is $3.75, +73% since 2011 - the number REIT investors actually compare.
What does “Quality” actually mean?
Quality asks whether the growth makes real money. Margins show how much of each sale survives costs; return on equity shows what shareholders earn on their capital; and the profit-to-cash comparison catches companies whose accounting profits never turn into actual cash.
How we scored it · 4 of 6 checks passed
| ✓ | Turns more rent into FFO than peers | 60.4% vs 47.1% (sector 70th pct, n=172) |
| ✓ | Keeps more of its rent as profit than peers | 21.5% vs 18.5% (sector 70th pct, n=187) |
| ✓ | Actually profitable | TTM net income $1.3B |
| ✕ | Earns well on shareholders' money | 3.3% vs 6.2% (sector 70th pct, n=197) |
| ✕ | Earns well on all assets | 1.7% vs 2.1% (sector 70th pct, n=220) |
| ✓ | Profits are cash, not accounting | 3.20 vs 0.80 |
Health
The balance sheet stress test: could O survive a bad year?
Financially sound overall, with one or two things worth watching.
Could it handle its debt if things went wrong?
→Debt isn't clearly tagged in O's filings, so treat the balance sheet with extra care rather than assuming zero.
Is the company's own capital growing or shrinking?
→The company's own capital grew from $32.9B in 2023 to $39.5B (+20%). The business is building book value rather than consuming it.
What does “Health” actually mean?
Health asks one question: can the business survive a bad year? We check whether near-term bills are covered, whether debt is modest and shrinking, whether earnings comfortably pay the interest, and - for loss-makers - how many years of cash are left at the current burn rate.
How we scored it · 4 of 6 checks passed
| ✓ | Leverage is under control | 45.1% vs 60.0% |
| ✓ | Less levered than its peers | 0.45 vs 0.48 (sector 30th pct, n=221) |
| ✕ | Debt trending the right way | liabilities are 45.1% of assets vs 41.7% five years ago |
| ✓ | FFO covers the interest | 3.82 vs 2.00 |
| ✓ | Converts sales to cash better than its sector | 68.8% vs 50.1% (sector 70th pct, n=186) |
| ✕ | FFO covers interest and the distribution | FFO covers 0.94x interest plus distributions |
Capital allocation
What management does with the money: what O earns on the capital it employs, whether the share count is growing, and what comes back to you.
O is issuing shares, but the money is buying growth - per-share revenue is still rising.
Does O earn more on its capital than that capital costs?
→O earns 2.7% on the capital it employs, below the 10% most investors treat as the cost of capital. It was 3.0% in 2022, so the trend is down, and the pace is picking up.
O has issued or retired shares - did shareholders end up better off?
Both lines start at 100 in 2011, so the gap between them is what each share gained or lost. Share counts are split-adjusted.
→O's share count rose +620% from 2011 to 2025 while FFO per share grew +73%. Holders are further ahead than before, though the gain per share is smaller than the growth in the business.
Why Capital allocation, and not Future?
This axis used to be Future, scored on analyst forecasts and price targets. We do not license that data, so every check came back n/a for every company - and its questions duplicated Growth anyway. Capital allocation asks something Growth cannot: the business makes money, so what does management do with it? Every check here is computed from the filings, which means it works for a bank, a REIT and a company with two years of history alike.
How we scored it · 3 of 6 checks passed
| ✓ | FFO is a real return on its property | 4.8% vs 4.5% |
| ✓ | Returns are improving, not eroding | return on equity 3.3% vs 2.6% three years ago |
| ✕ | Share count isn't climbing | shares up 48.4% over 3 years |
| ✕ | The share count bought real growth (FFO per share) | -5.8% vs 0.0% |
| ✓ | What it hands back fits inside its FFO | 82.0% vs 100.0% |
| ✕ | Buybacks outpace the stock issued to staff | no buybacks against $37M of stock compensation |
Momentum
What the market is doing about all of the above. This is price behaviour, not a fact about the business, so it sits outside the 35-check fundamental score and colours the snowflake instead: ember for weak, ash for flat, violet for strong.
Mixed signals from the market - some trends up, some rolling over.
How is O's trend actually behaving right now?
Chart by TradingView
→O is in a downtrend. The price is below the band where recent trading settled and that band is still falling, so nothing in the picture has turned yet. Both the last two weeks and the month-ago comparison point down as well, so nothing here disagrees with the downtrend. The band drawn for the coming weeks turns downward partway through, so that support is set to thin out from there.
How the trend above is worked out
The trend read comes from the daily Ichimoku picture, a standard trend indicator, translated out of its jargon. It builds a band from the midpoints of the last 9, 26 and 52 sessions' highs and lows - in effect, the range where recent trading has settled - and draws that band 26 sessions into the future. Price above the band is an uptrend, below it a downtrend, inside it no trend. Because the band is drawn forward, the support for the next few weeks is already fixed and a change of its direction can be seen coming. We also compare the last two weeks against the last month, and today's price against where it stood a month ago. None of this says anything about the business; it describes the price only, and it is not advice.
How we scored it · 4 of 6 checks passed
| ✓ | In an uptrend | 61.69 vs 60.55 |
| ✓ | Trend structure is healthy | 62.87 vs 60.55 |
| ✓ | Rising recently | 2.7% vs 0.0% |
| ✕ | Beating the market (short) | 2.7% vs 5.0% |
| ✕ | Beating the market (long) | 11.6% vs 20.3% |
| ✓ | Not in a deep hole | -6.3% from its 52-week high |
Shareholder returns
How much cash actually flows back to owners - dividends, buybacks, and whether the share count truly falls.
A dependable, growing payout that the business can comfortably afford.
How fast is your ownership being diluted - or concentrated?
→5.2% more shares last year - your stake was diluted by that much.
Is the dividend cheque itself growing?
→Up from $2.79 to $3.22 per share over 5 years - the cheque keeps growing.
What does the payout earn you at each year's prices?
→At today's price the yield is 5.0%.
Can it actually afford the dividend?
◌ TTM = trailing twelve months to the latest filed quarter, not a filed fiscal year
→Stretched: 276% of profits and 76% of free cash flow go out the door - above the comfort lines, a cut gets likelier in a bad year.
Why compare buybacks with stock compensation?
A company can trumpet billions in buybacks while quietly issuing nearly as much stock to employees. What matters to you is the net effect: is the share count actually falling? If not, the 'return' is mostly recycling.
How we scored it · 6 of 6 checks passed
| ✓ | Never cut the dividend | $2.9B paid last year, worst year-on-year change 8.5% |
| ✓ | Meaningful yield | yield 5.0% |
| ✓ | Payout growing ahead of inflation | 61.1% vs 9.0% |
| ✓ | Reliable payer | paid 10/10 years, worst change 8.5% |
| ✓ | Affordable from FFO | 79.9% vs 90.0% |
| ✓ | Covered by the rent it collects | 70.1% vs 90.0% |
Insider activity
What the people running the company do with their own shares - reported to the SEC within two days, classified so pay-plumbing doesn't masquerade as conviction.
Are the people running it buying or selling with their own money?
→No open-market buying, and $664,532 of selling across 2 months. Selling alone is a weak signal - much of it is pre-scheduled - but the absence of buying tells you no insider saw the price as a bargain.
Who did what, exactly?
| Date | Insider | Role | Type | Shares | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-06-27 | Neale Redington | See Remarks | tax | 240 | $15,149 |
| 2026-04-02 | Michelle Bushore | See Remarks | SELL | 7,400 | $461,908 |
| 2026-04-01 | Gregory Mclaughlin | Director | SELL | 3,275 | $202,624 |
| 2026-02-17 | Gregory J. Whyte | EVP, Chief Operating Officer | tax | 6,114 | $406,520 |
| 2026-02-17 | Sumit Roy | President, CEO & Director | tax | 28,002 | $2M |
| 2026-02-17 | Shannon Kehle | EVP, Chief People Officer | tax | 1,311 | $87,168 |
| 2026-02-17 | Mark E Hagan | EVP, Chief Investment Officer | tax | 8,141 | $541,295 |
| 2026-02-17 | Michelle Bushore | See Remarks | tax | 6,551 | $435,576 |
| 2026-02-17 | Neil Abraham | See Remarks | tax | 8,265 | $549,540 |
| 2026-02-15 | Gregory J. Whyte | EVP, Chief Operating Officer | tax | 1,091 | $71,635 |
Why do the transaction types matter so much?
Most insider filings are not trades: stock grants, option exercises and tax withholding are how executives get paid, and gifts are estate planning. The signal lives in open-market transactions - a buy means an insider chose to spend their own cash on the stock. Sells are murkier: many are pre-scheduled 10b5-1 plans set months in advance. That's why the chart counts only open-market activity, and the table labels every row.