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Key Factors to Impact Alexandria (ARE) This Earnings Season

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Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc. (ARE - Free Report) is scheduled to report first-quarter 2020 results on Apr 27, after market close. The company’s results will likely reflect year-over-year growth in its funds from operations (FFO) per share.

In the last reported quarter, this Pasadena, CA-based urban office real estate investment trust (REIT), which primarily focuses on collaborative life-science and technology campuses, reported a negative surprise with respect to its FFO per share.

Over the trailing four quarters, the company surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate on two occasions, met in another and missed in the other, the average positive surprise being 0.45%. The graph below depicts this surprise history:

Let’s see how things have shaped up prior to this announcement.

Key Factors

Alexandria has been experiencing solid leasing activity and rental rate growth for the past few quarters. Given the company’s portfolio of high-quality and well-located life-science assets in key life-science clusters, this trend is likely to have continued in the first quarter as well.

Moreover, occupancy level in the company’s portfolio is anticipated to have been high in the March-end quarter owing to the elevated demand for Alexandria’s Class A properties in AAA locations, aiding rent spreads. In addition, the company is likely to have benefited from its external growth initiatives in the quarter under consideration.

However, prior to the first-quarter earnings release, there is lack of any solid catalyst for becoming optimistic about the company’s prospects. The Zacks Consensus Estimate of FFO per share for the January-March period witnessed a marginal downward revision to $1.82 over the past 30 days. Nonetheless, it suggests year-over-year growth of 6.4%.

Here is what our quantitative model predicts:

Alexandria does not have the right combination of the two key ingredients — a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) or higher — for increasing the odds of an earnings beat.

You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they’re reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.

Earnings ESP: The Earnings ESP for Alexandria is 0.00%.

Zacks Rank: Alexandria currently carries a Zacks Rank of 3.

Stocks That Warrant a Look

Here are a few stocks in the REIT sector that you may want to consider, as our model shows that these have the right combination of elements to report a positive surprise this quarter:

SBA Communications Corporation (SBAC - Free Report) , set to report quarterly numbers on May 5, has an Earnings ESP of +0.44% and carries a Zacks Rank of 3 currently. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Duke Realty Corporation , slated to release first-quarter earnings on Apr 29, has an Earnings ESP of +2.86% and carries a Zacks Rank of 3 at present.

Americold Realty Trust (COLD - Free Report) , expected to release earnings results on May 7, has an Earnings ESP of +9.74% and currently holds a Zacks Rank #3.

Note: Anything related to earnings presented in this write-up represents funds from operations (FFO) — a widely used metric to gauge the performance of REITs.

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Each was hand-picked by a Zacks expert as the #1 favorite stock to gain +100% or more in 2020. Each comes from a different sector and has unique qualities and catalysts that could fuel exceptional growth.

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