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 »
Drinking the Kool-Aid in Washington (State), Again
The people of the state of Washington are getting closer to having to make a decision about a new payroll tax to fund a “long-term” care benefit, that is anything but long term. The 58-cent tax withholding for every $100 of salary and bonus may not seem like much, but the benefit is not much either. This reminds us (sort of) of the Class Act that was part of the Affordable Care Act of 2010, except there does not appear to be any funding deception in this new legislation coming from the West Coast. The Class Act, you may remember, was canceled after even those members of Congress who voted for it realized it was a financial sham. The premiums for those first five years were actually... 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 »
NORC Releases New Study On COVID Mortality
Just after we had wrapped up one of our lead stories in the June issue of The SeniorCare Investor on the nursing home comeback and some COVID myths, NORC at the University of Chicago released its analysis about mortality rates in five states across the senior care spectrum. With funding from NIC, they looked at five states – Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia and Pennsylvania – and 3,817 seniors housing properties in 113 counties in those states. Perhaps the key finding, at least for the independent living and CCRC providers (and their residents) was that 67% of the IL communities never experienced a COVID-related death. Better yet, the COVID mortality rate... Read More »Schedule a demo
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