Equity Lifestyle Properties (ELS) reported quarterly cash flow from operations (FFO) of $0.66 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $0.65 per share and comparing to FFO of $0.66 per share a year ago. These figures are adjusted to account for non-recurring items.
This quarterly report represents an FFO surprise of 1.54%. A quarter ago, it was expected that this resort community operator would post an FFO of $0.77 per share when it actually produced an FFO of $0.78, delivering a surprise of 1.30%.
Over the last four quarters, the company has topped consensus FFO estimates two times.
Equity Lifestyle Properties, which belongs to the Zacks REIT and Equity Trust Residential industry, posted sales of $380.02 million for the fiscal year ending June 2024, missing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 0.41% compared to sales of $370.01 million in the same period a year ago. The company has surpassed consensus estimates just once over the last four quarters.
The sustainability of the stock’s near-term price movement based on the recently-released numbers and future FFO expectations will mostly depend on management’s commentary on the earnings call.
Equity Lifestyle Properties shares have fallen about 3.8% since the beginning of the year while the S&P 500 has gained 15.4%.
What’s next for Equity Lifestyle Properties?
While Equity Lifestyle Properties has underperformed the market so far this year, the question that comes to investors’ minds is: “what’s next for the stock?”
There are no easy answers to this key question, but one reliable measure that can help investors address this is the company’s FFO outlook, including not only current consensus FFO expectations for the coming quarter(s), but also how these expectations have changed lately.
Empirical research shows a strong correlation between near-term stock price movements and trends in estimate revisions. Investors can track estimate revisions by themselves or rely on a tried-and-true rating tool like the Zacks Rank, which has an impressive track record of harnessing the power of estimate revisions.
Ahead of this earnings release, estimate revision trends for Equity Lifestyle Properties are favorable. While the magnitude and direction of estimate revisions could change after the company’s just-released earnings report, the current status equates to a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) for the stock. As such, the stock is expected to outperform the market in the near future. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
It will be interesting to see how estimates for the upcoming quarters and current fiscal year change over the next few days. The current consensus FFO estimates are $0.73 on revenues of $406.3 million for the upcoming quarter and $2.90 on revenues of $1.55 billion for the current fiscal year.
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Investors should keep in mind that industry outlook can have a major impact on stock performance as well. In terms of the Zacks Industry Rank, REITs & Equity Trusts – Housing is currently in the top 23% of all 250 Zacks industries. Our research shows that the top 50% of Zacks-ranked industries outperform the bottom 50% by more than 2 to 1.
Peer Broadstone Net Lease (BNL) has yet to report its financial results for the fiscal year ending June 2024. Results are due on July 30.
The company is expected to report quarterly earnings of $0.35 per share in its next report, unchanged from the same period last year. The consensus estimate for quarterly EPS has been revised downward by 0.7% over the past 30 days to the current level.
Broadstone Net Lease, Inc. is expected to report revenue of $105.95 million, down 3.1% from the year-ago quarter.
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