Welltower: Riding Out The Storm
There were no surprises in Welltower’s fourth quarter and full-year 2021 earnings report, which we suppose is a good thing. Could the seniors housing portfolio be performing better? Yes, but so could everyone else’s portfolio. The U.S. seniors housing owned portfolio (SHOP) has seen a slowdown in census increase, with no change in December, which followed a 50-bp rise in November and 30-bp increase in October. That results in 80 basis points of census increase in three months, compared with 260 bp in the third quarter previous and 280 bps in the second quarter. While there is some seasonality in that fourth quarter number, we also may have seen the end of the “post-lockdown” boost, or the... Read More »
Brookdale Reports and Provides Guidance
Not since the pandemic hit has Brookdale Senior Living provided guidance on adjusted EBITDA and RevPAR growth. It is something that has been missing for investors and analysts, but Brookdale was not alone in suspending guidance. It just became too difficult for anyone in the senior care business to predict with any amount of certainty what the next quarter or year would bring. Full year adjusted EBITDA is projected to be between $240 million and $260 million, while RevPAR is expected to grow by 10% to 12% in 2022. Adjusted EBITDA in 2021 was $138.5 million, but $283.6 million in 2020. The good news is that this means management has more confidence with where their operations are going. We... Read More »
LPCs/CCRCs Do It Again
According to a new report from investment banking firm Ziegler, based on information provided by NIC, the LPC/CCRC market is on the rebound. Not that it had too far to rebound from, however. Not-for-profit and entrance-fee LPCs/CCRCs (we will refer to them all as CCRCs) had average occupancy between 90% and 92% in the 99 primary and secondary markets for the 10 years prior to the pandemic. Rental CCRCs were not too far behind but started to diverge (trend lower) between 2014 and 2015, according to the data. With the onset of the pandemic, all forms of CCRCs, whether not-for-profit, for-profit, rental or entrance fee, saw similar drops in census that were seen across the industry and all... Read More »
NHI Reports Drop in December Occupancy
National Health Investors released another business update, and the news was not great. The REIT’s occupancy growth had started to slow in the fall of 2021, but its latest December averages showed declines across its three major operators when compared with November’s average. Senior Living Communities dropped by 10 basis points across the nine properties it operates for NHI from 81.9% in November to 81.8% in December. Bickford Senior Living’s 42 properties, the largest of the portfolios, saw a 90-basis point decline from 81.8% to 80.9%. Then, the 17 properties operated by Holiday Retirement fell by 190 basis points from 79.1% to 77.2% month over month, the lowest monthly average since... Read More »
Welltower Updates Census Progress
Welltower has the largest owned portfolio of seniors housing communities among the healthcare REITs (SHOP) and census has been steadily rising since the bottom early last year. But the rate of growth, like many others, has been slowing. Average U.S. occupancy growth was 30 basis points in October, 50 basis points in November and zero in December. Spot occupancy for the U.S. portfolio ended December at 77.8%, or 90 basis points above September 30. That’s not too bad for a fourth quarter, but December was disappointing and most likely reflected the holiday season as well as the spreading Omicron variant. Up until December they had had nine consecutive months of increased occupancy. The good... Read More »Schedule a demo
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