David Hegarty
Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead
Thank you, Brad, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us on our second quarter 2017 earnings call. Today, we reported normalized funds from operations or normalized FFO of $0.44 per share, which was $0.03 lower than second quarter of 2016. This quarter was the first quarter we recognize the full effect of the joint venture of the Boston Seaport medical office building. As we have pointed out on our last call, on a temporary basis, the joint venture will reduce our quarterly FFO by up to $0.03 per share until we can accretively reinvest the proceeds. However, this transaction, together with the changes we made to our balance sheet this quarter, and subsequent to quarter-end, has strengthened our balance sheet and has positioned us to grow. That being said, we remain disciplined with our capital allocation and continue to believe that the most attractive return on investment for us in this competitive environment is in our current portfolio. Specific highlights to the second quarter were that we improved our already industry-leading high occupancy to 96.5% in the MOB portfolio, continued to generate 97% of our revenues from private pay properties, prepaid secured debt of almost $300 million with the weighted average interest rate of 6.7%. Subsequent to the quarter end, we amended our $1 billion revolving credit facility, extending its maturity to 2022 and lowering the interest rate. We amended our $200 million unsecured term loan due in 2022, lowering that interest rate, acquired one life science medical office building located in Maryland for $16.4 million and entered an agreement to acquire another medical office building located in Minnesota for $16.7 million. Approximately 42% of our NOI in the second quarter was attributable to triple net leased senior living communities, 14% to managed senior living communities, 41% to medical office buildings and the remaining 3% triple net leased to wellness center operators. In the second quarter, our total portfolio of cash NOI decreased compared to the second quarter last year by approximately $400,000 or 20 basis points. This decrease was driven mainly by a decrease in same-store NOI at our managed senior living community portfolio. Our triple net leased senior living portfolio continues to produce consistent, steady growth with same-store cash NOI increasing 1.7% in the quarter compared to the second quarter last year. This increase is the result of the $48 million we funded to five different tenants for capital improvements at our communities since the beginning of the second quarter of last year. The triple net leasing living portfolio had occupancy of 84.6% for the 12 months ended March 31, 2017, which was down 30 basis points from the 12 months ended December 31, 2016. Rent coverage was 1.27x for the 12 months ended March 31, 2017, just a slight decrease from 1.3x coverage we reported last quarter, and it was expected. Similar to recent quarters, the decline in coverage sequentially was heavily influenced by weaker performance in the skilled nursing operations at our leased continuing care retirement communities or CCRCs and our standalone skilled nursing communities. The 10 communities with the largest decrease in rent coverage over sequential quarters included 7 CCRCs and 3 skilled nursing facilities. These 10 properties accounted for approximately 60% of the rent coverage decline from the fourth quarter to the first quarter. This is a direct result of the challenges our tenants are seeing in the skilled nursing industry. Government reimbursement rates continue to be under pressure and margins continue to shrink. Efforts being led by accountable care organizations and managed Medicare programs are resulting in decreased lengths of stay, and in many cases, are requiring people to bypass the stay at a skilled nursing facility instead go home for care at a lower cost alternative. In addition, during the early part of the quarter, our operators were still feeling the impact of a late flu season and experienced a high level of move outs. A few things do encourage us going forward though. Yesterday, Five Star reported that 80% of their skilled nursing units are rated 3 stars or above by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services or CMS. These ratings are a key qualifier for participation in most managed and accountable care organizations, and 80% is a high percentage that compares favorably among operators. This percentage of high ratings illustrates Five Star's focus on quality of care, and together with the widespread implementation of electronic medical records, which is well underway, should create some positive momentum in the skilled nursing operations. Another positive development is that we prepaid the mortgage debt on the CCRCs, which will allow our operator to make significant capital improvements to these properties. As Rick will discuss later, in the second quarter, we prepaid $278 million in secured debt related to these properties, and our operator has already begun the capital improvements for many of them. As a reminder, we do not remove properties in transition, while properties are undergoing large renovations that may be disruptive to operations from our calculations. So, our occupancy and coverage statistics, we believe, are very conservative. We continue to be supportive of our operators' investing capital in our leased properties during this period of increased supply. We currently have over a dozen additions, expansions or renovation projects ongoing with five of our tenants throughout the lease portfolio. Investing in our properties now to remain relevant and competitive earns us an attractive return immediately upon funding, but will benefit our tenants in the future by positioning them to take advantage of the promising demographic trends. We have and will continue to partner with them to identify growth opportunities and fund the capital necessary to achieve it, knowing that rent coverage in the near term may dip for the benefit of their future growth. We expect this coverage to continue to be under pressure for the remainder of this year. Our managed senior living portfolio same-store cash NOI decreased approximately $2 million year-over-year. Occupancy decreased 90 basis points over the prior year and only 10 basis points sequentially, which compares favorably to the NIC MAP 100 MSA statistics. We saw an increase in average monthly rates of 1.3% resulting in total revenue going up slightly year-over-year. The increase in average monthly rates this quarter was modest because the highest rates are paid by the skilled nursing residents in our CCRCs, which was down in both census and reimbursement rate this quarter. In addition to this, Five Star's dynamic pricing model allowed them to compete better for additional demand as evidenced by our smaller reduction in occupancy year-over-year and sequentially as compared to the industry. This increase in revenue was offset by a 3.2% increase in total same-store senior living operating expenses. Almost half of this operating expense increase was due to an increase in real estate taxes in the managed portfolio compared to prior year. Three properties, in particular, accounted for the majority of this increase, and we will continue to work through our appeals process, where we believe we can be successful. Other operating expenses increased more or less with inflation, but we were not able to increase rates sufficiently in this competitive environment to offset these expense increases. Out of the 60 properties that make our same-store managed portfolio, five properties accounted for a decline in cash NOI of about $2 million or 100% of the decrease in same-store cash NOI compared to last year. This is similar to Q1 where there was a handful of challenged properties accounted for the majority of the decline year-over-year and highlights the relatively small size of our managed portfolio. For the past year, we've been emphasizing that we are investing extensively in our existing portfolio to be a competitor for new competition and changing demand in our markets. Much of this investment has been through renovations, which disrupts operations, but ultimately better positions the properties in respective markets upon completion. Two of the five properties with the largest declines in NOI recently completed multi-phased, multimillion dollar refurbishment projects to redesign and enhance the experiences for their residence. Numerous upgrades were made to existing spaces, including new common areas and new amenities were added such as a pub, café or a movie theater. One of these properties located outside of Chicago had a grand reopening just two weeks ago that was very well attended. If we had removed what we considered non-stabilized communities from our same-store results, we would've reported 4.7% growth in same-store NOI. This swing in quarterly operating results demonstrates how disruptive major construction projects can be to community operations. Another challenge our managed communities continue to face is a byproduct of the high inventory growth. The new supply has caused the shortage of highly qualified executive directors and sales personnel. Our manager has been successfully recruiting new executive directors as well as developing them internally. However, a loss of an existing Executive Director is very disruptive to a community. Now let's turn to our medical office building portfolio. The medical office building portfolio same-store cash NOI decreased 20 basis points year-over-year or only $131,000 on a cash NOI of $61 million. And overall, occupancy at the end of the quarter was 96.5%. This is the 13th consecutive quarter that our medical office portfolio has reported occupancy north of 95%, which is indicative of the quality and stability of this portfolio. Tenant retention for the second quarter was a solid 91%, and approximately 75% of our tenants are investment-grade rated, publicly traded companies or major health care system. The decrease in cash NOI year-over-year was mostly created by timing of real estate tax expenses and the corresponding reimbursement of those taxes, lower parking revenues or increase in uncertain non-escalatable costs. Similar to our managed senior living portfolio, we will continue to appeal tax increases where we believe we can be successful. Additionally, in the second quarter, we anticipate a lease up of space in one of our larger multitenant medical office buildings in Washington, D.C. However, the tenant experience was slower-than-expected process for obtaining a certificate of need. This is a surgical suite and has been vacant since last November, and we are pleased to have this new tenant sign a long 10-year lease that began in July. And finally, I'd like to mention that we've added a detailed property list to our website that can be downloaded into Excel. This list contains location, size and property type and is intended to give the investment community a better appreciation of the quality of our portfolio. One of the more significant attributes of this list is the identification of the types of medical office buildings in our portfolio highlighting our significant concentration of life science properties. I'd now like to turn it over to Rick to provide a more detailed discussion of our financial results for the quarter.