


Brookdale Activists Strike Again
We disclosed last week that activist investor Land & Buildings (L&B) had nominated Jay Flaherty, former CEO of HCP, Inc., and Jonathan Litt (founder of L&B) for board election at the 2019 annual meeting of Brookdale Senior Living. L&B has just sent an open letter to Brookdale shareholders providing more rationale for the election of these two candidates. Apparently, L&B hired Green Street Advisors to value Brookdale and its real estate assets, and to provide an opinion as to the feasibility of a PropCo/OpCo split of the company, something Litt has been pushing for quite a while now to enhance shareholder value. Not surprisingly, preliminarily they determined that... Read More »
Brookdale Activists On The Move
Brookdale Senior Living investor Land & Buildings has nominated Jonathan Litt and Jay Flaherty to Brookdale’s board. Still pushing for a REIT spin-off? He’s baaaack. After his 10-year stint as CEO of HCP, Inc., which included his ill-fated and ill-timed acquisition of the former HCR ManorCare, Jay Flaherty may be back in the senior care mix. That is, if Jonathan Litt of Land & Buildings has his way. Land & Buildings Capital Growth Fund, LP has delivered notice to Brookdale Senior Living that it is nominating Flaherty and Litt for election to the company’s board of directors. We shall see how that flies with the current Brookdale board. Our guess is that they will not go... Read More »
How Have the REIT Stocks Performed in 2019?
Last week, we discussed the stock performance of the seniors housing and healthcare providers. Now, it’s the healthcare REITs’ turn. Overall, it was a good first half of the year, with all of them posting price increases, with the exception of Senior Housing Properties Trust, reflecting its Five Star problems. Its share price tumbled by 29.4%. The top performer was New Senior Investment Group, but it came off a terrible 2018 (down 45%) and still trades below what it did 18 months ago. The star of the year, so far, is CareTrust REIT which is up 28.8% after being the second-best performer last year with a price increase of 10%. And then there is HCVenTower, otherwise known as the Big Three,... Read More »
(Most) Senior Care Provider Stocks Shine in H1:19
[featured in the July issue of The SeniorCare Investor] With the overall stock market posting its best first half of a year since 1997, one would expect that seniors housing and care stocks would also have performed well. The major benchmarks are up 14% to 17% so far this year, and only two of the providers have topped that. Of the larger cap providers, The Ensign Group was the star with a 46.7% price increase in six months, and that was after jumping by 74.7% in calendar 2018. The company just keeps on rockin’, and when it splits into two separate operating companies later this year, one for skilled nursing and one for seniors housing and home health care, the expectation is that the... Read More »