Alexandria (ARE) Q3 FFO & Revenues Beat Estimates, Up Y/Y

Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. (NYSE:ARE) reported third-quarter 2017 adjusted FFO of $1.51 per share. The figure surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by a penny. Moreover, adjusted FFO per share compares favorably with the prior-year quarter tally of $1.39.

Results reflect continued growth in rental rate and net operating income (NOI), driven by higher internal and external growth.

Total revenues for the quarter jumped 23.9% year over year to $285.4 million. In addition, the figure comfortably surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $210.9 million.

Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise

Behind the Headline Numbers

Alexandria’s total leasing activity aggregated around 786,925 million rentable square feet (RSF) of space during the quarter. The company carried out lease renewals and re-leasing of space at a rental rate increase of 24.2% and 10% (cash basis) in the reported quarter. In addition, key leases executed in the reported quarter included 130,803 RSF leased to Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), Inc. and 17,620 RSF leased to ClubCorp Holdings, Inc.

On a year-over-year basis, same-property NOI grew 2.2%. It climbed 7.8% on a cash basis. As of third-quarter 2017, occupancy for operating properties in North America expanded 40 basis points (bps) sequentially to 96.1%.

As of third-quarter 2017, investment-grade tenants accounted for 50% of annual rental revenues in effect. Furthermore, 78% of the annual rental revenues are from Class A properties in AAA locations.

Liquidity

Alexandria exited the third quarter with cash and cash equivalents of $118.6 million, down from $124.9 million recorded at the end of the prior quarter. The company ended the reported quarter with $1.7 billion of liquidity.

Our Viewpoint

Urban office real estate investment trust (REIT), Alexandria, enjoys high occupancy stemmed by high demand for its Class A properties in premium locations. Prudent capital allocation to strategic development projects has enabled the company to create a high leased value-creating pipeline. Recently, Alexandria announced that it has 100% pre-leased 100 Binney Street, a ground-up development project spanning 431,000 RSF of space. Also, the company has adequate financial flexibility to enhance its market position.

Nevertheless, the company is disposing non-core operating assets and non-strategic land parcels to finance its development and redevelopment projects.

Alexandria currently carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

The stock has climbed 9.5% year to date, outperforming 2.5% growth recorded by the industry it belongs to.

We now look forward to the earnings releases of other REITs like HCP, Inc. (NYSE:HCP) , Federal Realty Investment Trust (NYSE:FRT) and Extra Space Storage Inc (NYSE:EXR) . HCP, Inc. is slated to report results on Nov 2, while Federal Realty Investment Trust and Extra Space Storage are scheduled to release its numbers on Nov 1.

Note: FFO, a widely used metric to gauge the performance of REITs, is obtained after adding depreciation and amortization and other non-cash expenses to net income.

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