American Campus Communities (ACC) came out with quarterly funds from operations (FFO) of $0.44 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $0.43 per share. This compares to FFO of $0.43 per share a year ago. These figures are adjusted for non-recurring items.
This quarterly report represents an FFO surprise of 2.33%. A quarter ago, it was expected that this real estate investment trust would post FFO of $0.53 per share when it actually produced FFO of $0.52, delivering a surprise of -1.89%.
American Campus Communities, which belongs to the Zacks REIT and Equity Trust - Residential industry, posted revenues of $213.47 million for the quarter ended September 2018, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 3.49%. This compares to year-ago revenues of $196.94 million. The company has topped consensus revenue estimates just once over the last four quarters.
American Campus Communities shares have lost about 1.8% since the beginning of the year versus the S&P 500's gain of 3.5%.
What's Next for American Campus Communities?
While American Campus Communities has underperformed the market so far this year, the question that comes to investors' minds is: what's next for the stock?
Ahead of this earnings release, the estimate revisions trend for American Campus Communities was unfavorable. While the magnitude and direction of estimate revisions could change following the company's just-released earnings report, the current status translates into a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) for the stock. So, the shares are expected to underperform 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 coming quarters and current fiscal year change in the days ahead. The current consensus FFO estimate is $0.73 on $226.64 million in revenues for the coming quarter and $2.32 on $862.63 million in revenues for the current fiscal year.
Investors should be mindful of the fact that the outlook for the industry can have a material impact on the performance of the stock as well. In terms of the Zacks Industry Rank, REIT and Equity Trust - Residential is currently in the bottom 24% of the 250 plus Zacks industries. Our research shows that the top 50% of the Zacks-ranked industries outperform the bottom 50% by a factor of more than 2 to 1.