Jennifer Francis
Analyst · Baird. Please go ahead
Thank you, Brad, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us on SNH’s first quarter 2018 earnings call. Before we begin, I would like to take a moment to thank David Hegarty for his many years of service at SNH since it’s founding in 1999. His expertise and contributions helped develop SNH into a premier healthcare REIT. I can speak for everyone in saying that we will miss him. Yesterday, we reported normalized FFO per share of $0.45 which was $0.01 less than the normalized FFO per share for the first quarter 2017. The joint venture transaction we completed in late March of last year reduced our quarterly FFO by $0.03 per share for quarter prior to reinvest in the proceeds. We essentially deployed a third of the total proceeds and in the first quarter have made up two of the $0.03 lost in FFO per share through these investments. We have been able to do this by acquiring approximately $300 million in assets over the last year with an average cap rate of over 8.5%. We've been very active on the investment front in the first quarter. We acquired two senior living properties, two life science buildings, and two medical office buildings for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $155 million. This first quarter’s acquisition total surpassed our acquisition volume for all of 2017, yet we were still able to achieve an average cap rate of over 8% for these high quality assets located in attractive markets, such as San Jose and St. Louis. By taking advantage of RMR’s national footprint by buying assets outside of Gateway market and by not limiting ourselves on transaction side, we continue to avoid competition from larger institutional investors and to find excellent returns on quality, healthcare, and real estate. We expect the run rate of these first quarter acquisitions to produce incremental NOI of $1 million in the second quarter which means that we have replaced the FFO loss from the joint venture transactions in a little over a year by redeploying only a third of the total proceeds. This demonstrates the efficacy of our strategy of being patient and selected with our recycling of capital. On the topic of recycling capital, in January we announced that we entered into agreements to sell four senior living assets leased to Sunrise Senior Living for $368 million with expected gain of approximately $308 million. To date, we have sold three of the four communities for $272 million and recognized book gains of $227 million with the final community expected to close in the coming weeks. These properties were sold at a 4% cap rate, so we expect to receive a significant spread on the reinvestment of the proceeds based on our recent acquisition yields. Moving on to our operating results for the quarter. Our total portfolio same-store cash NOI was down less than 20 basis points in the first quarter were essentially flat when compared to the first quarter of last year. Our medical office building and life science portfolios same-store cash NOI decreased 1.9% in the first quarter. Tenant retention was 80% and overall occupancy at the end of the quarter was 95.1%. The 80 basis points decrease year-over-year in the life science portion of our MOB portfolio is the result of the vacancy of the single tenant building that we've mentioned on our last two earnings calls, which is located in the Southwest suburb of Boston. In April, we executed a new 55,000 square foot lease for approximately two thirds of this building for the subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson. We have strong activity on the balance of the building. In our traditional medical office building portfolio, half of the 3% same-store cash NOI decreased as a result of an early termination fee we received from a tenant in the first quarter of 2017. This was a positive story and that we not only received the termination fee last year, but we also released the space to a new tenant for just three days of downtime a below market tenant improvement allowance and a roll up in rent. The majority of the remainder of the decrease is related to one building in Pennsylvania recently vacated by a single tenant where we are planning to reposition the asset. Our triple net lease senior living portfolio continues to produce consistent growth with same-store cash NOI increasing 1.9% in the quarter compared to the first quarter last year. The triple net lease senior living portfolio had rent coverage of 1.2 times for the 12 months ended December 31, 2017 which was down only slightly from the 1.21 times recorded in the prior quarter. Our managed senior living portfolio same-store cash NOI which accounts for only 15% of our portfolio decreased 1.6% in the quarter. As it indicates in recent quarters, our managed portfolios performance was negatively impacted by two of our largest managed properties. Last quarter, we mentioned that our CCRC, Laguna Hills, California was our largest year-over-year decrease and that was the case again this first quarter. The property is currently undergoing a significant multi-million dollar renovation, which of course tenders new moving activity. The work there is not expected to be completed for several months. Our large CCRC in Fort Myers, Florida where a multi-million dollar renovation has recently been completed is once again position to compete in that market. However, it may take some time due to the amount of new supply nearby including a 300 plus unit ILAL community that opened last October just two blocks away. The cash NOI at these two properties decreased a total of $1 billion year-over-year, if we excluded them from our results, our managed portfolio same-store cash NOI would have been close to 3% as we are starting to see grow from communities where we completed significant renovation such as Yonkers and Dallas. I just mentioned a number of properties both in our MOB portfolio and our managed senior living portfolio, where we completed are in the middle off or are about to begin strategically positioning work. We will continue to evaluate our assets to determine where we can improve our returns by strategically investing capital and properties where we believe will grow revenue, grow occupancy and maximize shareholder value. Finally, I'm pleased to be joining the leadership team in SNH in its 19 year as we look to find new ways to build and improve upon companies sold and diverse portfolio of healthcare real estate. While it's well known that the REIT and senior living industries are facing headwinds, I believe that we are poised to come out of this current environment with the portfolio of assets and company that is stronger than before. As I said a number of times to my colleagues and to many of you on this call, SNH is not getting the credit it deserves for our high quality well occupied portfolio, diverse tenant mix in geographic footprint, investment grade rated balance sheet and our track record of delivering shareholder returns. I plan to work in the coming months to emphasize the many positive attributes of our portfolio. I’d like to turn the call over to Rick to provide a more detailed discussion of our financial results for the quarter.