60 Seconds with Ben Swett: Competition For Deals in an Active M&A Market
We’re not sure we have ever seen a month like this when it seemed that institutional buyers were racing to see who could announce the biggest deal. First was Welltower’s acquisition of 22 Pathway to Living communities, then came Harrison Street’s $1.2 billion purchase of 24 Oakmont communities, then Atria Senior Living acquired Holiday Retirement and Welltower jumped back in again, acquiring Holiday’s owned portfolio of 86 properties. Next, we had the Griffin American REITs 3 and 4 merging, and finally, at least of this filming, Ventas will pay $2.3 billion to purchase New Senior Investment Group. It has been a dizzying display of strength from these institutional buyers, and we are... Read More »
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 »
