A vacation is a horrible thing when bad news hits the market.
It is a horrible thing to go on vacation when all sorts of things are happening in the market, but such was the case last week. What I missed was the roll-out of earnings and the very disappointing occupancy numbers. For some, they were worse than the weak results posted for the second quarter by NIC. The ubiquitous villain was the tail of last winter’s flu season. But it seems the seniors housing sector is surviving on a two steps backward, one step forward cycle, and not making up much ground. What still amazes me is that the warning signs were there in abundance well over a year ago, yet too many people ignored them. Leading up to Brookdale Senior Living’s earnings release, its shares plunged by 8.6% this past Monday on reports that a Chinese investment group could not obtain financing for its Brookdale acquisition, then regained nearly all of it back on Tuesday morning after the release. The only thing I can guess is that the results were not any worse than the bad results investors feared, and investors believe management is still pursuing a sale. What I want to know is, when are we going to see results that are better than investors expect? Probably not this year.
