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What You Need To Know Before Investing In Crown Castle International Corp. (REIT) (NYSE:CCI)

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Crown Castle International Corp. (REIT) is a US$51b large-cap, real estate investment trust (REIT) based in Houston, 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 CCI 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 CCI.

View our latest analysis for Crown Castle International (REIT)

Funds from Operations (FFO) is a higher quality measure of CCI'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 CCI, its FFO of US$2.5b makes up 70% of its gross profit, which means the majority of its earnings are high-quality and recurring.

NYSE:CCI Historical Debt, May 2nd 2019
NYSE:CCI Historical Debt, May 2nd 2019

CCI's financial stability can be gauged by seeing how much its FFO generated each year can cover its total amount of debt. The higher the coverage, the less risky CCI is, broadly speaking, to have debt on its books. The metric I'll be using, FFO-to-debt, also estimates the time it will take for the company to repay its debt with its FFO. With a ratio of 15%, the credit rating agency Standard & Poor would consider this as significantly high risk. This would take CCI 6.67 years to pay off using operating income alone. Given that long-term debt is a multi-year commitment this is not unusual, however, the longer it takes for a company to pay back debt, the higher the risk associated with that company.

I also look at CCI's interest coverage ratio, which demonstrates how many times its earnings can cover its yearly interest expense. This is similar to the concept above, but looks at the upcoming obligations. The ratio is typically calculated using EBIT, but for a REIT stock, it's better to use FFO divided by net interest. With an interest coverage ratio of 3.9x, it’s safe to say CCI is generating an appropriate amount of cash from its borrowings.

In terms of valuing CCI, 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. CCI's price-to-FFO is 20.54x, compared to the long-term industry average of 16.5x, meaning that it is overvalued.

Next Steps:

Crown Castle International (REIT) can bring diversification into your portfolio due to its unique REIT characteristics. Before you make a decision on the stock today, keep in mind I've only covered one metric in this article, the FFO, which is by no means comprehensive. I'd strongly recommend continuing your research on the following areas I believe are key fundamentals for CCI:

  1. Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for CCI’s future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for CCI’s outlook.

  2. Valuation: What is CCI 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 CCI is currently mispriced by the market.

  3. 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.

We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.

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.

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