Clint Malin
Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead
Thank you, Pam. Good morning, everyone. As Wendy noted, LTC’s current pipeline is rather active and has grown to $125 million from $50 million at the time of our prior quarters call. Approximately, 70% of our pipeline is represented by private pay assets. Additionally, 70% of the pipeline is represented by assets constructed in the last four years. Growth in our pipeline is exclusively from off-market transactions, we spend most of our time sourcing investment opportunities. Pipeline consists of five transactions with three existing operating partners and the two other transactions with new operator relationships. These two transactions with new relationships began as discussions to provide mezzanine financing and have evolved industry or leaseback opportunities. Both of the transactions proposed with new operating partners will be structured, as joint ventures for real estate ownership, LTC owning 90% and an affiliate of the lessee owning a 10% non-controlling subordinate minority interest. The real estate will be leased under a long-term triple net master leases to affiliates of LTC’s limited partner invested in the real estate. LTC will have the opportunity to acquire 100% of the real estate over time subject to the properties meeting pre-determined financial metrics. If you recall, in the last quarter, Wendy talked about our ability and willingness to explore different types of lease and investment structures, and these two transactions are representative of this approach. In building operator and partner relationships, we are looking at a variety of options to best meet the needs of our partners. The other three transactions in our pipeline, each consisting with a single property, or the existing operating partners to acquire newly constructed private pay assisted living and memory care communities to be added to the respective master leases. Outside of the unique market trend, off-market transactions, such as, the deals in our current pipeline, the landscape has not changed substantially for us since our last call. Although, we are continuing to look at a number of deals, most have not met our investment hurdles. We are seeing continued moderation in sale lease spec flow and the asking price for private pay assets remains high. Given these dynamics, we remain focused on sourcing off-market deals and are comfortable taking the role of patient investor and maintaining clear and rigorous underwriting standards. As I mentioned last quarter, given the amount of capital currently chasing acquisitions and new development projects, we are more than, okay, taking a backseat until market conditions are better suited to a more aggressive investment strategy. During 2017, we will continue to strategically evaluate our portfolio to identify opportunities to recycle capital on assets that are non-strategic and no longer core to our portfolio. We are currently evaluating a few properties for sale, but are not prepared to about provide any additional details today. However, it is possible with few sales could occur within the next few months. Moving now to LTC’s portfolio statistics, Q4 trailing 12-month EBITDARM and EBITDAR coverage on a same-store basis was 2.04 times and 1.51 times, respectively, for our skilled nursing portfolio, and 1.46 times and 1.24 times, respectively, for our assisted living portfolio. These metrics are stable compared with the prior quarter. I remind you that LTC’s EBITDAR rent coverage is calculated using a management fee equal to 5% of revenues. We continue to believe that EBITDARM is a better metric of comparison to our peer group, as different management fee percentages may be used to calculate EBITDAR by different companies. Historically, we had a range of care property type classification, which included properties providing skilled nursing and any combination of assisted living, independent living, and/or memory care services. Since we only have seven properties that would have been included in this category and these properties derive materially all the revenues from skilled nursing services, we elected to reclassify them into the skilled nursing category beginning this quarter. Of the seven properties remained in the range of care classification, skilled nursing coverage for Q4 trailing 12-month EBITDARM and EBITDAR on a same-store basis would have been 2.07 times and 1.53 times. Now, I will turn the call back to Wendy.