Ensign Exceeds Expectations, Yet Again
What’s in the water in San Juan Capistrano? The Ensign Group, which is based in the California town, just reported another impressive quarter with GAAP diluted record earnings per share of $0.86. That is an increase of 17.8% over the prior-year quarter. That excludes any revenues from the CARES Act Provider Relief Funds as well, so that improvement is the real deal. Given the success of the company’s decentralized structure, maybe we should be asking what’s in the water at each of Ensign’s properties. Starting with occupancy, Ensign reported a 0.4% increase in its same store occupancy and a 1.6% increase in its transitional occupancy, both sequentially over the fourth quarter of 2020. For... Read More »
LTC Properties’ Quarter of Flux
With its most recent earnings results out, LTC Properties reported a quarter of flux, transition and ongoing rent relief for its tenants. These can all certainly be good things for the company going forward, but we’re sure they would have liked to report some good operating news as well. To start off, the REIT transitioned 11 assisted living communities previously leased to Senior Lifestyle to two new operators: Randall Residences, which is taking over six of them, and Encore Senior Living which took over the remaining five. This was not new news, as LTC announced the change in its fourth quarter earnings report in February. And the release of the other 12 properties could not come soon... Read More »
Welltower Sees Light at End of Tunnel
Welltower was the first REIT out of the gate with its first quarter earnings release, something the market has been waiting for to see if there are any signs that a turnaround is on the way. The answer is…sort of. First the bad news. Average first quarter 2021 occupancy in its seniors housing owned portfolio declined by about 310 basis points from the fourth quarter, which was near the middle of management’s forecast, so totally expected. The occupancy at the end of March was 73.6%, or 1,210 basis points lower than at the end of January 2020. That’s a big hole their operators have to dig out of. Assisted living and independent living revenue per occupied room... Read More »
Waiting To Sell, Or Buy, Or Lend
If census has indeed bottomed in the senior care industry, investors may still want to wait for several months of sustained growth before buying again. Although “consensus” on anything is dangerous to rely on, it does seem that either we have hit that bottom of the occupancy plunge, and if not, we are very close to it. After a year of turmoil and uncertainty, a rising national occupancy level for seniors housing will be quite a relief. What we are hearing is that some lenders want to see at least three months of consistent, increasing census for their new loans, and we suspect some buyers will want to see that as well. I guess you could say they want to see it before they will believe it.... Read More »
And The Audience Says…
Last week, we hosted a webinar tackling the differences between two classes of seniors housing communities: “A” quality versus “B” quality. Often, buyers and investors of one group do not do much business in the other, so it is worth breaking out the differences in valuation, operations and investment strategies. So, for the last several years in our annual Senior Care Acquisition Report, we have divided seniors housing properties into these categories based on a combination of their age, size and location. Leading up to the pandemic, prices paid for “A” quality properties were surging as labor and occupancy headwinds seemed to be affecting “B” (and “C”)... Read More »Schedule a demo
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