Not that there is a competition, but since the end of 2020, Capital Senior Living has outperformed Brookdale Senior Living with a price gain of 345% compared with 93% for Brookdale. It helped that Capital Senior was starting from a very low point. But for both companies that is pretty good, and both beat the overall market.
They have both benefitted from the vaccine impact, with increases in leads, tours, move-ins and census. For each of the last three months, Brookdale has posted a 50-basis point increase in month-end occupancy, which is great, but will it be enough?
Investors think they are on the right track, and have pushed the share price up by more than 25% in the past few weeks, while CSU has actually declined by 15% in the past four weeks.
But to get back to their pre-pandemic occupancy of 82.2% at the end of March 2020, it will take Brookdale eight straight quarters of monthly increases of 50 basis points, which is not easy to do.
To achieve stabilized occupancy of 88%, it will take 12 straight quarters, or not until June 2024. The good news is that both companies have divested many of their underperforming communities, which will make it easier to beat these targets. The race is on.
