60 Seconds with Swett: Gloom Prevails at the NIC Conference
As always, it was great to see so many of our industry friends, and plenty of new faces, at the NIC Conference in Chicago last week. And typical of most conferences, many asked us what we thought the mood of the conference was. We wondered if it would be at all better than the grim 2022 Fall conference when the capital markets had fundamentally shifted for the worse. Unfortunately, we cannot say it was better than that. With the 10-year Treasury rate touching 5% at the start of the conference and consistent signals from the Fed that interest rates would be “higher, for longer,” any hope for an improving capital markets environment unleashing a flood of financings and M&A (at higher... Read More »
LTC Properties Comes Out with Q3 Earnings
LTC Properties came out with its third quarter earnings on October 26, and the REIT’s loan origination program, which grew at a time when making acquisitions did not make as much financial sense, is continuing to pay off. Q3 net income was boosted by higher interest income from a variety of sources. There was financing receivables due to the acquisition of 11 assisted living/memory care communities in the first quarter of 2023 and three skilled nursing facilities in the third quarter of 2022. Higher interest income also came from mortgage loan originations in Q1:23 and a $17.0 million mezzanine loan origination in Q3:23. An affiliate of Galerie Living received that loan to recapitalize and... Read More »
Ensign’s Q3:23 Earnings Are Released
The Ensign Group came out with its third quarter earnings on October 25, and the results were mostly positive. GAAP diluted earnings per share rose 12.1% over the previous third quarter to $1.11. However, that was off $0.01 compared with the second quarter. On an adjusted basis, EPS rose to $1.20 in Q3:23, up 15.4% from Q3:22 and up 3.4% from Q2:23. The company’s share price dropped by just 0.7% on a down day for the market. Adjusted EBITDAR also increased to $158.4 million for the third quarter, or $633.6 million on an annualized basis. Revenues soared from $770 million in Q3:22 to $940.8 million in Q3:23 on the back of higher reimbursement, new acquisitions and increased census.... Read More »
All Charges Against Silverado Dropped
In a case that never should have been charged, by an overzealous district attorney in California (of course), all charges against Silverado Memory Care, its employees and its CEO, Loren Shook, have been dismissed. The only thing we wonder is, what took them so long? Other than the fact that this never should have happened. Multiple felony counts of elder endangerment and of violations causing death, and this in the first few months of COVID, when even the CDC was clueless about the disease? This should have been dropped months ago, but we suppose it had to be played out. We hope that this will be a lesson to other, overzealous DAs who want to make a name for themselves, that they should... Read More »
