60 Seconds with Ben Swett: M&A Hits a High in 2021
When it rains, it pours in senior care M&A. First, we noticed a significant uptick in deal activity this month, with over 30 transactions announced since June 1st. Not December’s level of activity, but we’ll take it. Then, Harrison Street announced the largest purchase in the industry in two years, spending $1.2 billion on 24 Oakmont communities. But yesterday, when we were still digesting the sale of former SNF giant Kindred Healthcare to LifePoint, Welltower made the biggest splash of all, buying Holiday Retirement’s owned portfolio of 86 independent living properties for $1.58 billion. Not only that, but Atria Senior Living will acquire the operating business of Holiday for an... Read More »
Brookdale vs Capital Senior Living
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... Read More »
More Good News from Welltower and Ventas
Census is on the rise at the SHOP portfolios of the biggest healthcare REITs. After more than a year of mostly depressing news, it is nice to see that more good news keeps on coming. With a year of canceled earnings forecasts by most public companies and REITs, Welltower announced that it raised the low end of its second quarter earnings per share estimate by nearly 10%, and its normalized FFO by just over 4%. Now that’s some good news! In addition, they had forecast a 130-basis point increase in their SHOP portfolio for the full second quarter, and by June 4th they had already reached 120 basis points. Spot occupancy is now 150 basis points higher than the pandemic low. Ventas is also... Read More »
What A Feeling!
One big benefit of the country opening up is in-person conferences. It does feel good. Last week, I attended my first conference, in person, since March of 2020. And boy did it feel great! Shaking hands again, hugging people I haven’t seen in person in 15 months, or more, was like a celebration for everyone there. All because we were vaccinated. Thank you, Senior Living 100. I was invited to moderate a panel on, what else, the M&A market. Two weeks earlier, I was a panelist at their sister conference, The LTC 100, but I was virtual, as was one other panelist in my session, and it just was not the same. My two takeaways were that people are pretty optimistic about the comeback for... Read More »
The 55+ Market Builds Momentum
Coming out of the pandemic, investors are enamored with the 55+ or active adult market, but we will see if that enthusiasm turns into overexuberance. Perhaps the brightest star in seniors housing coming out of the pandemic has been the active adult market, and investors took notice. Census stayed strong relative to the other sectors, and owners tout their lower average move-in age, more approachable rents for residents, lower labor costs and higher operating margins. As a percentage of seniors housing deals announced, according to our deal database, active adult has grown its share from a paltry 2% in 2019 to 6.4% in 2020 and 8.2% so far in 2021. Plenty of firms have also announced... Read More »Schedule a demo
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