Mounting Troubles For Sonida Senior Living
When we read Sonida Senior Living’s recent fourth quarter earnings report, we had already heard that it contained the dreaded “going concern” caveat. While not surprising, what was surprising was how glowing the highlights were. Management “was thrilled with what our team has accomplished in Q4 and throughout 2022,” but five pages later it is disclosed that the company may run out of cash and fail to meet its obligations. Hmmm. Investors sent the share price tumbling by 40%. We were not surprised because in our November 2022 issue we stated that we thought the company would run out of money by April of this year based on its cash burn rate. We are now at the end of March, and cash... Read More »
More Trouble Brewing in Credit Markets
We had all heard that the first half of this year was going to see a spike in loan defaults, forced sales of properties and other signs of financial distress in the seniors housing and care sector. But we are not sure many people thought there would be one this big. We are talking about the TPG Real Estate and Sabra Health Care REIT joint venture involving 157 assisted living communities in 18 states operated by Enlivant, which is the former Assisted Living Concepts. This was not a great portfolio to begin with, and it consists of mostly small and older properties in secondary markets. Sabra purchased a 49% interest in the portfolio in January 2018, paying a hefty price to help the... Read More »
Some Good News For A Change
There has not been much good news out there, whether on the financing front, the deal volume front, or the census front. But some operators are actually kicking some butt these days, specifically Bloom Senior Living. When the pandemic began, this small operator had an average 83% occupancy across its portfolio of independent living, assisted living and memory care units. One year later it had plunged by 1,600 basis points to 67% and bottomed out in March 2021, like so many other providers. Just 12 months later, however, and not like many others, it had gained back 1,300 basis points to reach 80% in March 2022. Not quite to pre-COVID levels, but certainly a lot better than many other... Read More »Industry Leader Passes Away
I was saddened to learn that my friend George Chapman has just passed away. I had known George since the 1980s when he was working under Bruce Thompson, the co-founder and CEO of Health Care REIT (now Welltower). We started with a very friendly relationship when Bruce found out that he and I both went to the same Connecticut prep school. Bruce never let it drop, and George continued on with the teasing over the years. Back then, I never saw one without the other. Not many people know that Health Care REIT started as the Health Care Fund, and then changed its tax status to a REIT. It was the first healthcare-focused, and really long-term care focused, REIT in existence. And this was when... Read More »
Brookdale Senior Living Census Drops
As you may remember, in October 2020 we did a comprehensive study of seniors housing occupancy for the 10 years leading up to the pandemic. What we found surprised us in many ways. We used assisted living occupancy as a proxy for the entire seniors housing market, mostly because it is the largest segment, using the NIC MAP census numbers. What we found was that for the 11 years prior to the pandemic, occupancy had never increased in the first quarter of any year. In the first quarter of 2022, however, Brookdale Senior Living beat those odds by posting a 50-basis point increase in month-end occupancy after dropping 30 basis points in January. Weighted average occupancy for that quarter was... Read More »Schedule a demo
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