- If you are wondering whether VICI Properties is a bargain or a value trap at around $28 a share, you are not alone. This breakdown will help you decide whether it still deserves a spot in a long term portfolio.
- The stock is down 2.8% over the last week, 7.2% over the past month, and 3.4% year to date, but it is still up 41.2% over five years, which may suggest that recent weakness is more about shifting sentiment than a broken long term story.
- Recent headlines have focused on VICI expanding its portfolio of experiential properties and continuing to structure long term, inflation linked leases. That helps explain why many investors still see it as an income oriented holding despite the pullback. At the same time, broader considerations around interest rates and REIT valuations have weighed on the sector, which may have created a disconnect between fundamentals and the share price.
- On our framework, VICI scores a perfect 6/6 valuation checks, indicating that it screens as undervalued across multiple lenses. Next, we will unpack those different approaches while hinting at another way to think about VICI's worth by the end of this article.
Approach 1: VICI Properties Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) Analysis
A Discounted Cash Flow model estimates what VICI Properties is worth by projecting its future adjusted funds from operations and discounting those cash flows back to today in dollar terms.
VICI is currently generating about $2.37 billion in free cash flow, and analysts expect this to rise steadily as the portfolio grows. Simply Wall St models a two stage path, using analyst forecasts for the next few years and then extrapolating beyond that, with free cash flow projected to reach around $4.0 billion by 2035 as growth gradually moderates.
When all those future cash flows are discounted back, the DCF model produces an intrinsic value of roughly $54.43 per share. Compared with the current share price near $28, this implies VICI trades at about a 48.6% discount to its estimated fair value, indicating that the market is heavily discounting its long term cash generation.
On this view, VICI currently appears to be a value opportunity based on this DCF model.
Result: UNDERVALUED
Our Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) analysis suggests VICI Properties is undervalued by 48.6%. Track this in your watchlist or portfolio, or discover 908 more undervalued stocks based on cash flows.
Approach 2: VICI Properties Price vs Earnings
For a profitable company like VICI Properties, the price to earnings, or PE, ratio is a useful way to see how much investors are paying for each dollar of current earnings. In general, faster growing and lower risk companies tend to justify higher PE ratios, while slower growth or higher uncertainty usually means a lower, more conservative multiple is appropriate.
VICI currently trades on a PE of about 10.7x. That is well below the Specialized REITs industry average of roughly 16.8x and far under the broader peer group average of about 56.7x, which on the surface makes VICI look cheap. However, Simply Wall St also calculates a Fair Ratio of 31.7x for VICI, a proprietary estimate of what its PE should be once you factor in its earnings growth outlook, risk profile, profit margins, industry positioning and market cap.
This Fair Ratio is more informative than a simple comparison to peers or the sector, because it adjusts for the specific characteristics that make VICI different from other REITs. With the stock at 10.7x versus a Fair Ratio of 31.7x, the shares appear to be trading at a meaningful discount on an earnings basis.
Result: UNDERVALUED
PE ratios tell one story, but what if the real opportunity lies elsewhere? Discover 1442 companies where insiders are betting big on explosive growth.
Upgrade Your Decision Making: Choose your VICI Properties Narrative
Earlier we mentioned that there is an even better way to understand valuation, so let us introduce Narratives, a simple way to connect your view of VICI Properties business story to a concrete financial forecast and a fair value estimate that lives inside Simply Wall St’s Community page, where millions of investors share their assumptions about future revenue, earnings and margins, compare the resulting Fair Value to today’s Price to decide whether to buy, hold or sell, and then see those Narratives update dynamically as new news or earnings arrive, so that, for example, one investor might build a bullish VICI Narrative that assumes earnings near the top of the analyst range, a higher future PE multiple and a fair value closer to the most optimistic target of about $44, while a more cautious investor might anchor on the lower earnings and multiple implied by the least optimistic $34 target, yet both are using the same tool to turn their story about Caesars leases, diversification and rates into numbers they can act on.
Do you think there's more to the story for VICI Properties? Head over to our Community to see what others are saying!
This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
Valuation is complex, but we're here to simplify it.
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