


Brookdale’s Occupancy Continues to Lag Industry
Brookdale Senior Living reported its June occupancy levels this week, and while there were increases, those increases lag the increases for the overall industry, and absolute levels of occupancy also continue to lag behind the industry. Weighted average June occupancy was 76.8%, 20 basis points above May but 10 basis points below the occupancy rate last September. That is not progress, even acknowledging that the first half of the year is usually bad for census. Management observed that this was a 160-basis point increase over June 2022. While looking back a year is nice, let’s hope when they do it again in October that they are not showing a small 50-basis point increase year over year.... Read More »
60 Seconds with Monroe: SNF Industry Needs To Police Itself
As many of you would suspect, I am no fan of New York’s Attorney General, Letitia James. She politicizes too many things and definitely has a partisan agenda, and one which I do not favor. But after reading through the 300-page court filing against Centers Health Care and related companies, as well as its owners, well, I found myself agreeing with her. The cases involve the poor “care” of residents in a few New York nursing homes, as well as the alleged misuse of $83 million of Medicaid and Medicare funds for other purposes, including, allegedly, the purchase of a large stake in the Israeli airline, EL AL. Money is fungible, and one cannot distinguish between cash from private... Read More »
Sonida Senior Living Gets New Life
It is well known that the recovery from the pandemic is taking longer than many had expected, and that after the initial surge in occupancies starting in the second quarter of 2021 the rate of growth has slowed, even with the recent suppression of new construction and openings. All of this is impacting the capital markets, especially as interest rates keep rising. We have repeatedly stated that the industry needs to fix its capital structure. The logjam of borrowers and creditors fighting and not coming to terms that are workable for both sides needs to burst. TPG Capital and Sabra Health Care REIT could not come to any agreement with Fannie Mae over $485 million in debt on their Enlivant... Read More »
60 Seconds with Swett: Q2:23 M&A Activity Rebounds Above 100 Transactions
The M&A market rebounded, sort of, in the second quarter of 2023, rising to 110 publicly announced transactions, compared with 99 in the first quarter. Considering the economic shock of fast-rising interest rates, and how many deals died in all stages of the transaction pipeline last fall, the volume was actually impressive. Most of the dealmakers we talk to say that their pipelines are healthy, albeit moving slower and with more difficulty than before. We are still way down from the 147 transactions recorded in the second quarter of 2022, which annualized would have resulted in nearly 600 deals for the year. But a lot has changed in a year, clearly. We are missing the larger... Read More »