Why You Shouldn't Look At Abacus Property Group's (ASX:ABP) Bottom Line
Abacus Property Group is a AU$2.5b small-cap, real estate investment trust (REIT) based in Sydney, Australia. REITs own and operate income-generating property and adhere to a different set of regulations. This impacts how ABP’s business operates and also how we should analyse its stock. I’ll take you through some of the key metrics you should use in order to properly assess ABP.
View our latest analysis for Abacus Property Group
Funds from Operations (FFO) is a higher quality measure of ABP'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 ABP, its FFO of AU$109m makes up 52% of its gross profit, which means over a third of its earnings are high-quality and recurring.
ABP'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 ABP 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 ABP 6.82 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 ABP'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 3.81x, it’s safe to say ABP is generating an appropriate amount of cash from its borrowings.
In terms of valuing ABP, 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. ABP's price-to-FFO is 23.49x, compared to the long-term industry average of 16.5x, meaning that it is overvalued.
Next Steps:
In this article, I've taken a look at Funds from Operations using various metrics, but it is certainly not sufficient to derive an investment decision based on this value alone. Abacus Property Group can bring about diversification for your portfolio, but before you decide to invest, take a look at the other aspects you must consider before investing:
Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for ABP’s future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for ABP’s outlook.
Valuation: What is ABP 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 ABP 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.
