Yahoo Finance Investing In Property Through Apartment Investment and Management Company (NYSE:AIV)
Apartment Investment and Management Company is a US$7.4b mid-cap, real estate investment trust (REIT) based in Denver, United States. REIT shares give you ownership of the company than owns and manages various income-producing property, whether it be commercial, industrial or residential. The structure of AIV is unique and it has to adhere to different requirements compared to other non-REIT stocks. In this commentary, I'll take you through some of the things I look at when assessing AIV.
See our latest analysis for Apartment Investment and Management
Funds from Operations (FFO) is a higher quality measure of AIV's earnings compared to net income. This term is very common in the REIT investing world as it provides a cleaner look at its cash flow from daily operations by excluding impact of one-off activities or non-cash items such as depreciation. For AIV, its FFO of US$396m makes up 62% of its gross profit, which means the majority of its earnings are high-quality and recurring.
In order to understand whether AIV has a healthy balance sheet, we have to look at a metric called FFO-to-total debt. This tells us how long it will take AIV to pay off its debt using its income from its main business activities, and gives us an insight into AIV’s ability to service its borrowings. With a ratio of 9.7%, the credit rating agency Standard & Poor would consider this as aggressive risk. This would take AIV 10.28 years to pay off using just operating income, which is a long time, and risk increases with time. But realistically, companies have many levers to pull in order to pay back their debt, beyond operating income alone.
Next, interest coverage ratio shows how many times AIV’s earnings can cover its annual interest payments. Usually the ratio is calculated using EBIT, but for REITs, it’s better to use FFO divided by net interest. This is similar to the above concept, but looks at the nearer-term obligations. With an interest coverage ratio of 1.98x, AIV is not generating an appropriate amount of cash from its borrowings. Typically, a ratio of greater than 3x is seen as safe.
In terms of valuing AIV, FFO can also be used as a form of relative valuation. Instead of the P/E ratio, P/FFO is used instead, which is very common for REIT stocks. AIV's price-to-FFO is 18.84x, compared to the long-term industry average of 16.5x, meaning that it is slightly overvalued.
Next Steps:
As a REIT, Apartment Investment and Management offers some unique characteristics which could help diversify your portfolio. However, before you decide on whether or not to invest in AIV, I highly recommend taking a look at other aspects of the stock to consider:
Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for AIV’s future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for AIV’s outlook.
Valuation: What is AIV worth today? Is the stock undervalued, even when its growth outlook is factored into its intrinsic value? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether AIV is currently mispriced by the market.
Other High-Performing Stocks: Are there other stocks that provide better prospects with proven track records? Explore our free list of these great stocks here.
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If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
