Equity Residential FFO Misses Estimate; Lifts Lower End Of FY Guidance

(RTTNews) - Equity Residential (EQR) on Tuesday reported first-quarter funds from operations of $299.3 million or $0.79 per share compared with $265.6 million or $0.71 per share last year.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters estimated FFO of $0.80 per share for the quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.

Net earnings for the quarter were $185.9 million or $0.49 per share compared with $81.2 million or $0.22 per share last year.

Revenues for the quarter were $666.4 million compared with $633.4 million in the prior year.

Analysts estimated revenues of $665.6 million for the quarter.

For the second quarter, Equity Residential expects normalized FFO of $0.82 to $0.86 per share, while analysts expect $0.85 per share.

For the full year 2015, the company now expects normalized FFO of $3.37 to $3.45 per share, from prior guidance of $3.35 to $3.45 per share. Analysts expect FFO of $3.43 per share.

"Apartment fundamentals remain very strong across our markets and 2015 should be another terrific year for Equity Residential," said CEO David Neithercut.

"As we head into our primary leasing season, we continue to experience less turnover, better occupancy and higher rental rates than original expectations and are therefore pleased to raise our guidance range for same store revenue growth to 4.3% to 4.7%."