Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Sabra Health Care REIT Second Quarter 2018 Earnings Conference Call. This call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Michael Costa, EVP, Finance. Please go ahead, Mr. Costa.
Thank you. Before we begin, I want to remind you that we will be making forward looking statements in our comments and in response to your questions concerning our expectations regarding our acquisition, disposition and investment plans and our expectations regarding our future financial position and results of operations. These forward looking statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, including the risks listed in our Form 10 ks for the year ended December 31, 2017, and in our Form 10 Q that was filed with the SEC yesterday as well as in our earnings press release included as Exhibit 99.1 to the Form 8 ks we furnished to the SEC yesterday. We undertake no obligation to update our forward looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances, and you should not assume later in the quarter that the comments we make today are still valid. In addition, references will be made during this call to non GAAP financial results.
Investors are encouraged to review these non GAAP financial measures as well as the explanation and reconciliation of these measures to the comparable GAAP results included in the Financials page of the Investors section of our website at www dot sabrahealth.com. Our Form 10 Q, earnings release and supplement can also be accessed in the Investors section of our website. And with that, let me turn the call over to Rick Matros, Chairman and CEO of Sabra Health Care REIT.
Thanks, Mike, and thanks for joining us, everybody. After I make my comments, I'll turn the call over to Talia Niebuhr Cohen, our CIO and she'll turn it over to Harold Andrews, our CFO and then we'll go to Q and A after that. So to kick the call off, I just want to note that our guidance is affirmed. We'll likely be adjusting it probably in the Q3 call as we have a little bit more clarity, which we should have at that point on the timing of the Senior Care Centers sales process and I'll update everybody on that a little bit more a little bit further into the call. CMS issued their final rule affirming the October 1, 2.4% market basket increase and the implementation of PDPM in October of 2019.
The final rule was consistent with the proposed rules, so both obviously good news for the skilled nursing space. Moving on to our acquisition pipeline, it's lighter than usual at this point, a little bit over $200,000,000 almost all of it is senior housing. And a lot of product that we're seeing on the senior housing side is not stabilized product. We're also seeing deals come back because they're being re traded, none of which at this point is leading to an expansion in cap rates. But hopefully, that will happen as these trends continue to continue, which we expect to see.
In terms of skilled nursing, we're not seeing much in the way of skilled nursing deals. While operators are obviously buying all the assets at Sabra and some of our peers are selling, they seem to be holding on to the good assets that they currently operate in. I think everybody in the space is seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and want to hold on to these assets to get some upside. The assets that we do see in the skilled nursing space, we dismiss out of hand. And the way we work our pipeline is if we're willing to do any level of work on it, if it all goes into the pipeline, we see where it takes us.
But the skilled nursing deals that we've seen to date have been pretty unattractive, even from a reimbursement model, we're going to I think with all the changes in the reimbursement model, we're going to start to see the smaller traditional long term care providers determine that it's in their best interest to get out of the business and that will provide some opportunities for our operating partners to grow and for us to grow with them. We also continue to see private equity, despite the retrading that we're seeing in some of the recycle deals, we continue to see private equity bid on senior housing properties, the prices that we think are just much too high with forecasts that we think are not achievable. So that's sort of the environment that we see today. Moving on to operating metrics. Our skilled nursing occupancy has now moved up 2 quarters in a row.
So that's obviously a good thing. It's ticked up only incrementally, obviously. But I think given the decline over the last few years, having 2 sequential quarters where occupancy has increased is obviously a good thing. Our skill mix moved up much more dramatically, 70 basis points to 39.1%. Also, we think a good sign that we're getting closer to the bottom here.
Our EBITDA coverage was slightly down to 1.27 percent, but other than senior care centers, we don't see any trends with our operators that cause us any concern and we've been very consistent, I think, all along over these past few quarters, talking about the fact that at least from our perspective that we may not be at bottom, but we're close to bottom. And I think the some of the decline in coverage, which is pretty minimal in almost every case, and the minimal increase in occupancy go to that. I'll make a couple of comments about some of our operators. In terms of Signature Health, we're seeing an upward trend over the last couple of months in coverage and performance. And I think that's to be expected.
It's been a rough couple of years for those guys and getting to the conclusion of the restructuring really was a huge diversion for the management team. So these past 6 to 8 weeks is really the first opportunity they've had a long time to focus on nothing but the business. So we feel good about that. In terms of Avamere, Avamere's performance actually has been very consistent. Their problem is the buildings that they have in Washington State, which has exceedingly low Medicaid rates and as much as 25% of the operators or the facilities in the State of Washington are in some real trouble.
Avamere's strategic focus is given the size of the company and the strength of the company, they're very healthy company, but they're going to basically wait this out and hopefully benefit from some of the fallout that some of that will occur with some of the other operators. And they were expecting or hoping that there was going to be an increase in Washington State Medicaid rates as a result of the struggle the operators are having, but that didn't occur. However, they also have a presence in Oregon and Oregon unexpectedly is increasing Medicaid rates by 5%, both this year and next year. So that's going to help Piaverma portfolio overall, even though they'll continue to have some issues in Washington for a while. In terms of Cadia, we're pleased with the progress that they're making transitioning the other facilities that they've taken over for us, but they are still going through a transition.
So we expect it to be another several quarters before their coverage starts to improve. But that said, it's pretty strong as it is. So there are some event driven things with some of our operators, but there are no sort of consistent trends that cause us any concern. In the case of Enlivant, they've recovered very nicely off of the Q1 flu season. The last couple of months have been their 2 best months that they've had, not just since we've owned them, but their 2 best sequential months since they acquired that portfolio.
We don't think that over the course of the whole year, regardless of the uptake that they'll completely compensate for the hit they took with the flu in Q1, but on a run rate basis, they look really good in a right on plan in terms of meeting our expectations. Our own managed portfolio is performing well overall with occupancy at 92.1 percent and Talia will provide some more detail on that as when I turn the call over to her. We're going to talk about senior care centers just for a minute. So we've moved on to another buyer. We started losing confidence in the buyer that we have been talking to, to close the deal.
And we have the construct of an offer with a buyer that we have a relationship with. This is the buyer who was our largest buyer of Genesis assets. We've closed 2 tranches of Genesis assets with them. So we feel much better about going down the path with this particular buyer rather than the previous buyer. That said, we've been talking about this for quite some time.
So now we're getting some other offers logged in as well. And there are offers outside of the Genesis buyer, who is a private equity buyer and we've never disclosed their name at their request. The other interested parties or all parties that everybody on this call would know, but at this point, our bet is to really try to work through this with the buyer of the private equity buyback and pull the Genesis assets with us. So there seems to be very good interest in the portfolio. We still expect this to be a 20 18 event, although clearly there'll be more towards the end of the year than before then.
And one other comment I just want to make about Genesis, they had a good earnings call, so we're pleased to see that for them. On a pro form a basis, their fixed charge coverage is actually 122 and that's a pro form a for the restructuring, not the 120 that we report. We report their actual fixed charge coverage. And one final comment and that's on holiday. I think you saw the coverage there with the new senior deal and the restructuring there that pulled new senior out of the guarantor sub and that we are in and some of our peers are in and so that improved their coverage to 1.15.
And with that, I will turn the call over to Talia.
Thank you, Rick. I will provide some color about the operating results and statistics for our managed portfolio. First, I'll address the properties in Canada than those in the United States, breaking out the wholly owned properties from the 172 joint venture properties managed by Enlivant and co owned by Sabra with TPG. Sabra owns 10 homes in Canada, 8 of which are independent living and 2 of which are assisted living and memory care communities. Sienna Senior Living manages 8 independent living properties in Ontario and British Columbia and 1 assisted living community in Ontario.
Tiana's focus has been on building and retaining occupancy and engaging with a local community in each location to solidify the property's position in the community. In the Q2 of 2018, the 9 properties managed by Sienna saw a 90.3% occupancy compared to 91.9 percent occupancy in the preceding quarter, with a decline attributable primarily to fluctuation in occupancy in one building, which was not fully offset by occupancy pickups at the other 8 communities. However, traffic is strong coming out of the winter months and has increased in the spring summer months due to special events and focused marketing efforts. We achieved Ciena achieved a 37.7 percent cash net operating income margin compared to 40.6 percent in the preceding quarter, but slightly higher than budgeted for the quarter, reflecting Sienna's ability to manage expenses. Moving to the U.
S. Where we have 14 wholly owned properties for 2 operators, Enlivant and Pathway to Senior Living. Results at the wholly owned Enlivant portfolio, 11 communities located in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Delaware surpassed expectations in the Q2 of 2018. We are seeing robust increases in occupancy with a strong pull through to net operating income. Average occupancy rose 140 basis points to 94.1% compared with 92.7% in the preceding quarter, which was itself a 110 basis point increase over the prior quarter.
This is 600 basis points higher occupancy and was forecast for the portfolio to achieve through 2021. Revenue per occupied unit increased to $5,090 a month, which is 2% higher than the preceding quarter and cash NOI margin was 29%, which is 2.2% higher than the prior quarter and more than 4% higher than budgeted. In January 2018, Sabra also acquired a 49% interest in a joint venture with TPG, which owns 172 properties in 18 states across the United States, all managed by Enlivant. The Enlivant JV properties had a solid quarter with higher rates driving revenue. Average occupancy for the quarter was 80.5 percent essentially flat compared to the preceding quarter, but what has happened subsequent to quarter end is important to note.
As of the end of July, spot occupancy was 82%, which is a pickup of 150 basis points. Importantly, after a tough flu season that drove move outs, move ins have increased by 3 75 percent creating leasing momentum heading into the second half of twenty eighteen. Revenue per occupied unit was $4,051 per month, rebounding from the slight dip in the prior quarter and nearly back to Q4 pre flu season revenue. Cash NOI margin was 23.8% compared to 25.8% in the preceding quarter, driven by increased medical and workman's comp claims and a cost associated with new leadership position. We continue to see positive trends in the Aliven portfolio, which has exposure across the country.
The 172 communities include resulted communities in stronger markets as well as more challenging markets experiencing wage pressures or oversupply. In sum, we believe that the Enlivant team has the talent and the tactics to improve the operations of this portfolio as a whole. I will now turn over the call to Harold Andrew, Sabra's Chief Financial Officer.
Thanks, Talia. For the 3 months ended June 30, 2018, we recorded revenues and NOI of $166,300,000
$162,700,000
respectively, compared to $64,700,000 $60,300,000 for the Q2 of 2017. These increases are due predominantly to revenues and NOI generated from the properties acquired in the CCP merger and the Enlivant transactions. FFO for the quarter was $104,500,000 and on a normalized basis was $109,700,000 or $0.61 per share. FFO was normalized to exclude $5,500,000 of capitalized costs related to our preferred stock issuance that we wrote off in connection with the June 1, 2018 preferred equity redemption. This write off was reflected as additional preferred stock dividends in our current quarter statement of income.
Additional normalizing items during the quarter included 0 point $4,000,000 of CCT merger and transition related costs and a net $800,000 recovery of doubtful accounts and loan losses. This normalized FFO compares to $36,400,000 or $0.55 per share in the Q2 of 2017, a per share increase of 10.9%. AFFO, which excludes the methopal merger and acquisition costs and certain non cash revenues and expenses was $98,000,000 and on a normalized basis after the exclusion of similar items as normalized FFO was $102,800,000 or $0.57 per share. This compares to normalized AFFO of $35,200,000 or $0.53 per share in the Q2 of 2017, a per share increase of 7.5%. For the quarter, we recorded net income attributable to common stockholders of $193,600,000 compared to $18,000,000 for the Q2 of 2017.
G and A costs for the quarter totaled $9,300,000 and includes the following, dollars 300,000 of CCP related transition costs and 2 point $7,000,000 of stock based compensation expense. Recurring cash G and A costs were 3.4% of NOI for the quarter. We expect our quarterly recurring cash G and A run rate to be approximately $5,400,000 per quarter through the end of 2018. During the quarter, we recognized a $700,000 recovery of doubtful accounts and loan losses, which were primarily related to the collection of $1,000,000 of previously reserved receivables from the guarantors of our former Forest Park Frisco Hospital investment. This was offset by $300,000 of general reserves related to straight line rental income and loan losses.
The $1,000,000 collection of Forest Park Frisco Receivables is excluded from our normalized FFO and normalized AFFO. To date, we have collected $2,200,000 all of which was excluded from normalized FFO and AFFO. We expect to collect an additional $4,000,000 to $5,000,000 over the next several quarters. Our interest expense for the quarter totaled 36 $800,000 compared to $15,900,000 in the Q2 of 2017. Included in interest expense is 2 point $5,000,000 of non cash interest expense compared to $1,700,000 in the Q2 of 2017.
As of June 30, 2018, our weighted average interest rate, excluding borrowings under the unsecured revolving credit facility and including our share of the Enlighten joint venture debt was 4.18%. Borrowings under the unsecured revolving credit facility bear interest at 3.34 percent at June 30, 2018, an increase of 21 basis points over the Q1 of 2018. We recognized an aggregate net gain on sale of real estate of 142,900,000 dollars during the Q2 of 2018 as a result of the sale of 32 skilled nursing facilities and 4 senior housing communities. During the quarter, we made investments of $57,200,000 with a weighted average initial cash yield of 7.59 percent, including $41,900,000 invested in 4 senior housing communities with an average cash lease of 7.7%. These investments were funded with cash held and borrowings under our revolving credit facility.
As of June 30, 2018, we had total liquidity of 360 $2,600,000 comprised of currently available funds under our revolving credit facility of $324,000,000 and cash and cash equivalents of $38,600,000 In addition, restricted cash as of June 30, 2018 included $174,400,000 held by exchange accommodation title holders, which may be used to fund future real estate acquisitions. We were in compliance with all of our debt covenants as of June 30, 2018 and continue to maintain a strong balance sheet with the following pro form a credit metrics, which incorporate among other items aggregate CCP rent reductions of $28,200,000 and the $19,000,000 Genesis rent reduction. Net debt to adjusted EBITDA of 5.53 times. Net debt to adjusted EBITDA including unconsolidated joint venture debt 5.99x. Interest coverage of 4.14x.
Fixed charge coverage of 3.88x. Total debt to asset value 50%, secured debt to asset value 8% and unencumbered asset value to unsecured debt of 2 16%. On June 1, 2018, we redeemed all 5,750,000 shares of our Series A preferred stock and a redemption price of $25 per share plus accrued and unpaid dividends for an aggregate payment of $146,300,000 As a result of the redemption, the company incurred a charge of $5,500,000 relating to the write off of the original issuance cost of this Series A preferred stock. On August 8, 2018, the company announced that its Board of Directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.45 per share of common stock. Dividend will be paid on August 31, 2018 to common stockholders of record and through the close of business on August 18, 2018.
Finally, a quick update on the Genesis asset sales. We made great progress toward completing Genesis asset sales this quarter, closing on 27 property sales and generating gross proceeds of $235,900,000 Currently, Genesis represents 5.4 percent of our annualized cash NOI. This is down from 8.5% in the Q1. Of the remaining 19 facilities we are selling, 5 are currently under a contract for sale with expected total gross sales proceeds of $40,400,000 and 14 are under letter of intent with expected total gross sales proceeds of $75,800,000 These anticipated sales together with the previously completed Genesis sales are expected to trigger residual rents to us of $10,400,000 per year. Our agreement with Genesis provides for additional loans to be paid to Sabra for 4.28 years following the sale of each facility.
We expect all but one of these sales will occur over the remainder of 2018. The expected delay of 1 being due to a potentially longer HUD approval process. Ultimately, we expect to have total continuing cash rents from Genesis, including residual rents generated from the sold assets of approximately $20,800,000 or 3.7 percent of our current annualized cash NOI. And with that, I will open it up to Q and A.
Our first question comes from the line of Juan Santander from Bank of America. Your question please.
Hi, good morning. Good morning. Just hoping you could talk a little bit about Senior Care. I saw that you switched the disclosure to corporate guarantees. So I was hoping maybe if you can provide the facility level coverage and if you have the best count as well?
Yes. So you're right, we did we are now presenting the fixed charge coverage versus the individual facility level coverage. And as you can imagine, with fixed charge coverage at around 1.02, I think is where we're at right now. The facility level coverage is now a little bit below one times.
And Juan, just to give you a little bit more color in terms of sort of our take on the company, even though coverage has been low for quite some time, it was consistent. So in other words, it wasn't getting better, it wasn't getting worse. They were just sort of plodding along and but it's clearly the instability and lack of management that's been going on for months now. They just finally hired a CEO 5 weeks ago has clearly impacted the business. And even though they had added a senior operator last fall, the execution wasn't happening.
And so what we saw in the last couple of months in terms of the performance just further strengthened our resolve, if you will, to move the portfolio out. Hopefully, the new CEO will be able to turn things around. But I think given all the instability in the company and how it's impacting their performance and typically when new CEOs come into situations like that, there's going to be further shake up, At least that's always been my experience. And so, while we certainly hope that he'll get things turned around, we're just not willing to wait it out at this point. There are ways many advantages to us to move the Senior Care portfolio out as we've talked about reducing our exposure in Texas, getting our skilled exposure and along with the Genesis sales to a point where it will actually be lower than it was before the CCP merger.
So for us, it doesn't change. It doesn't change our path. It just reinforces that we were on the right path to begin with. Okay.
And are you still contemplating financing the purchase for a potential acquirer
for that? Yes. So that was the construct that we were looking at the previous buyer and it's a construct that we're still looking at. We like the idea of providing some seller financing for a couple of reasons. 1, it will still reduce our exposure dramatically, but give us much better debt coverage than the operational coverage that we see today.
It buys the new owner time to take the portfolio to HUD, otherwise the sales process would be a lot longer. And then obviously it allows us to manage the impact on earnings and also manage the rate at which proceeds come in. We've got so many proceeds coming from Genesis to be able to space this out since we obviously need to redeploy all these proceeds that allows us to manage that process as well.
Okay. And just curious on your comments about stabilization in skilled nursing, But at the same time, you juxtapose that saying you expect to shake out with the change to PDPM from some existing long term owners. How do we how are those 2 kind of statements in line with seemingly some distress coming with some long term owners, but being positive on the long term implications at PDPM?
Well, I think most of the tenants that we have and our peers have aren't just the traditional mom and pop tenants. So I think most of the tenants that we all have and then if you look at Enfin and a couple of the other guys out there, these are smart operators that have been preparing for the future, have been moving up the acuity scale, have strong skilled mix. So you all don't have very much visibility to the traditional mom and pops, which is still a pretty decent percentage of the overall skill sector. So you just don't have that much visibility there. So in terms of what you do have visibility to which are the tenants that all REITs have, and Ensign and Genesis, there's a separation there.
So you shouldn't see that fallout with the tenants that we all have. And again, there's going to be a tenant here or there that's still working through stuff. As I said, we're not quite all the way there yet. But in terms of the opportunities that our guys will have to acquire some of these older traditional facilities that they'll then modernize, both from a physical plant perspective and modernize from an operational perspective, I think that'll be a good opportunity. Does that make sense?
It does. And if you would mind one last quick one, do you have the EBITDAR coverage for Avamere facility level?
It's slightly below. I don't have it off the top of my head, but it's just slightly below the fixed charge coverage.
Thank you.
It's still pretty solid. There's no issues with those guys on the list.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jonathan Hughes from Raymond James. Your question please.
Hey, good afternoon or I guess good morning out there, but thanks for taking my questions. So Rick, you did touch on the investment landscape at the start of the call and mentioned the senior care potential buyer. Would that be a single portfolio deal or piecemeal over the next several quarters? And would you be open to selling those 38 properties to multiple parties if that one single buyer didn't take them all?
Yes. No, that's a great question. So it's a single portfolio deal. The reason we haven't chose yet to run a process is because there just seems to be a lot of interest in the single portfolio. If for some reason we started believing that we wouldn't get a single portfolio deal done, the reason to run a process would be exactly that.
Running a process would allow us much more easily to break the portfolio up in say 3 or 4 pieces, whatever it happens to be, similar to what we did with Genesis. So if you think about Genesis, that's exactly what would happen with senior care. Clearly, if we can sell the entire portfolio 1 piece, we can get that done more quickly than with a greater certainty of closing than if we're selling it in multiple tranches.
Okay. And then so just looking at coverage at senior care, it's about 1x. So say if you sold that on some implied market level, say, 1.3x or 1.4x coverage that would suggest, say, like $400,000,000 to $500,000,000 of potential proceeds. Is that the right way to think about it or in the ballpark of of reasonable expectations? If you can comment on that.
Sure. I mean, I think as we had talked about before, we were seeing offers at prices that were very attractive given where assets trade in Texas. And we still feel like the offers that we're looking at are also very positive. I think part of the challenge that we've had and we're continuing to work through is identifying where those operations should ultimately be relative to a stabilized management team in order to determine an appropriate value. So your thinking is right in that analysis.
The question is, given that the performance that they've had in their operations to date, identifying where the proper run rate is going forward. And that's part of what we're working through with the new buyers we're talking to.
Yes. Okay.
Thanks for that color. And then just one for Talia on Enlivant. And I'm sorry, I didn't get all the numbers taken down that you mentioned, but it sounded like you were saying occupancy within that JV is 3 years ahead of underwriting. Did I hear that correctly?
Occupancy in the wholly owned properties is well ahead of what was budgeted for now and for several years as you just said. Not the joint venture. So the joint venture is basically had a dip with the flu season and has emerged from that blip and has actually recovered healthily. So subsequent to the close of the quarter, they've actually moved up an additional 150 basis points to 82% occupancy there.
So the JV is basically where we expect them to be. It just took a little bit longer because of the flu season and the owned portfolio is ahead of where we thought it would be.
Okay, got it. Thanks for clarifying that. And then sticking with the JV, just one more and then I'll hop off. But I know there's a path to 100 percent ownership there over the next couple of years. Could that timeline move up, obviously, as you've got these proceeds coming in from Genesis and potential senior care center sale.
And I mean, if your views on that industry are that we're kind of bottoming and bouncing along wouldn't maybe gaining full ownership earlier and catching more of that upside makes sense given you're going to have all these proceeds coming in?
It's certainly a possibility.
One thing I would add to that, Donovan, is that if you remember there is a floor and what we can and what we'll pay for that. And so to some extent, if you were to trigger it really early, you're not going to be you're going to be having a lower yield until you achieve that higher level. So there's that piece to consider. It's not like we're immediately going to capture every bit of upside based on performance today,
if that makes sense.
Yes. Okay. All right. Thanks for the color. I look forward to hearing more next quarter.
I'll jump off.
Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Chad Vanacore from Stifel. Your question please.
All right. I've just got one for you there, Rick. So you've come out, you've shown some relative enthusiasm for skilled nursing, but maybe a little less a little more cautious on the senior housing side, we'll say. Now are you expecting senior nursing operators or skilled, sorry, skilled nursing operators to improve performance in the second half of twenty eighteen versus the first half this year? And then where do you see the largest gains?
Is it occupancy rate, managing costs or something else that we're not considering? What do you think is really going to drive the improvement?
So I don't think we're going to see it in 2018. It's been consistent I think all along saying that this is a 2019 event and it could be a couple of quarters into 2019. I mean there'll be some incremental improvement because of the market basket. We always love October in that business because it's a 31 day with no months and it's the 1 month the first month you get the market basket, so you cash it all. So that's our favorite month of the year.
But other than that, I think it's more an event or an improvement that we'll see next year, plus you're going to have all the operators preparing for the transition to PDPM. So I think it's a latter part, the second half of twenty nineteen is that the improvement is going to be, I think, primarily in occupancy. I think the industry by and large does a really good job and always has done a good job controlling costs. Obviously, labor has been an issue, but labor has always been an issue. It's exacerbated by the fact that you don't have a business that's at 90% occupancy.
It's dropped down to the low 80s. And so there's sort of nowhere to hide when your occupancy is that low. So as occupancy starts to improve next year, then that will make it easier to manage labor expenses, just because you'll have more of that revenue to work with. And in terms of rate, that's probably more of a 2020 event, simply because PDPM is going into effect October 1, 2019. So in the Q4 of 2019, we should start to see some changes in mix and rate as a result of that, but you're really not going to have a full impact of that obviously until you get to 2020 because it's only 1 quarter in 2019.
So to recap, we see improvement coming in 2019, probably a couple of quarters into 2019 or we think things will continue to stabilize as we've been seeing up to that point. The initial improvement will come from occupancy. The secondary improvement after PDPM goes into place will be on mix and rate.
All right. That's great answer. Thanks.
Yes.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Rich Anderson from Mizuho Securities. Your question please.
Thanks. Good morning.
Is this a 16 question, Rich?
That's fun. Yes, it's good music. I enjoyed it for closing our earnings. So if I can maybe draw another comparison between what you've done with Genesis and what you're thinking about doing with senior care. The sentiment towards skilled nursing has at least that has gotten better over the past 6 to 12 months.
How would you describe your conversations for Genesis assets that have yet to close that you're still negotiating relative to those that happened in 2017? And how is that playing into your process with senior care? Do you find that people are a bit more sanguine towards the space and that's helping pricing to some degree?
Yes. I think it's fair to say that because most of the buyers are buyers that already in the business, They're either operators on the ground or they're finance sources like the one that we referred to that we're working with that are affiliated with other operating entities. So they understand the business really well. And compared to 2017, where we had no idea what was going happen with reimbursement. There was all that conversation about RCS1 which we thought was an improvement but was as it turns out much more complex than PDPM is going to be.
So now that we are where we are in the latter half of twenty eighteen and even with some of these footage in coverage that you saw really across the space pretty much this earnings season, it's really slowed down quite a bit. And so people see that, they understand the business, they know it, so they feel more positive about it. So I think in terms of senior care centers, they see a business that even all those positives aside should organically benefit from stronger management. And then if you add those other positives to it that are more a function of what's happening in the environment, then that makes that portfolio more attractive than I think it would have been in 2017.
Okay. You mentioned private equity has been aggressive towards senior housing, which has sort of locked you out of some of that those deals. Would you be able to make a statement similar or is there anything to extrapolate to the skilled nursing side as it relates to private equity or is that there's that's just a completely different animal for them?
Yes, I think it's a completely different animal. Okay. Yes, I don't see anything there.
Okay. That's all I need to hear. And as far as the timing of senior care, to what degree are you I understand that you had a buyer in place, but are you also perhaps not that you're dragging your feet, but you also want to line up a use of proceeds. To what degree are you sort of a participant or sort of dictating the process because you as a REIT, you want to make sure that you have a use of proceeds at least to some degree lineup over and above the seller financing idea?
I wouldn't say we're dictating the process. We certainly have a preference and in terms of which buyer we're focusing on currently a buyer that is more amenable to the structure that we want, which does allow us to manage earnings better and manage proceeds coming in and deployment of those proceeds. We prefer to work with that buyer. That said, we want to move the portfolio out and that's the number one priority. So we're not going to be sort of stubborn about it and if it turns out that the best buyer is a buyer that just wants to buy the whole thing for cash, then we're not going to we wouldn't dismiss that because we prefer to sort of manage this whole thing better.
And I think we have an opportunity to manage it better. And look, most everybody is going to want to take this to HUD, because as you know, the long term rates are just phenomenal. So unless someone's really got that kind of access to cash to pay you for all cash and can live with that for a while because the HUD process, that's going to take 9 months, it could take 15 months. It's always a matter of when, not if, but when measured in HUD standards is it's like a dog's life. So to the extent that we can be helpful, which also obviously helps us, we'd like to do it that
way. Okay. And last question for Harold. When you think about Genesis and the residual rent that you're going to book in the next 4 plus years, does it actually work out from a value perspective better for you, so you get lesser proceeds, but you get this income stream over the next 4 years. I'm wondering if $15,000,000 less proceeds is less value than the 10, I imagine it is.
I mean, I imagine it works better for you as a company to have those residual proceeds and lesser proceeds of residual rent and lesser proceeds from the sales at the point of the event. Is that a true statement?
I think you could definitely make that argument, Rich. And that's precisely why we structured it that way because our negotiation with Genesis was they had an ask of a rent cut and we knew that that rent cut was going to get them to the coverage they were looking for, but we felt like there was some risk there that our ability to exit assets at that coverage. And so we said we'll give you that rent cut now, But what we're going to ask in return is we'll take any risk on selling assets. We're going to be basically made whole from any lower purchase price we get because buyers want more coverage. So the intent was to at least at a minimum make it us neutral, but I think you can make an argument that's actually a positive to us, yes.
Yes. Okay. That's right. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Tayo Okusanya from Jefferies. Your question please.
Yes. Good morning on the West Coast. Question for you Rick, I mean you took a look at the NIC data and where occupancies are kind of industry wide. Yes, you kind of just take a look at that occupancy, you make some assumptions about mix and things like that. And it just strikes me that there has to be a lot of SNFs out there or SNF operators who are just not making any money at this point.
So when you kind of take a look at that, I guess you were talking about things getting better in 'nineteen, but when I take a look at just that number, it just strikes me that there should be a fair amount of mom whether it's mom and pops or whoever it is, who are currently in a lot of trouble that may not make it to 2019. Do you think that's a fair statement?
Yes. So I think a couple of things tie off. I look at that the Smith data with a little bit of skepticism from Nick only because this is a really unusual year in terms of the flu season. Historically, senior housing gets slammed by the flu and skilled nursing operators benefit from the flu. But I think as everybody now knows, this strain was so bad.
I think when we hear that only 20% of the people that receive vaccinations actually worked. And so for the first time this year, we saw skilled nursing operators restricted missions rather than admit these patients because of their high level of concern that admitting these patients would cause basically an epidemic and they lose control of their back door. So we've never seen that before. So we think that the decrease in occupancy, I think they showed sequential occupancy decrease in Q4 to Q1. We think it was because of the flu season.
So I'm not sure that you're going to continue to see that, we'll see obviously. But in terms of the mom and pops, yes, I agree with you. I'm not sure they're going to you're going to see a bunch of little bankruptcies, but because most of these guys have little or no debt service. But you're going to see them selling you're going to see them selling their facilities because you're absolutely correct. It's still a high percentage, could be the amount of hops could still be a third of the industry.
And so that is a legitimate component of the NIC data that brings the numbers down and it's hard to see those guys making any money. I think it's been getting worse every year because if you think about it, these are primarily Medicaid shops. And so really going back to what 2,006 or 2007 was the last time that you saw Medicaid rate increases. I'm talking on an aggregate basis, it's obviously different in every state. But prior to 2,008, you were still seeing percent Medicaid increases kind of all over the place.
And since then, it's been anywhere, it was sort of flat through the recession and it's sort of 1% to 1.5% on an aggregate basis across 50 states since then. So when you look at your cost increasing and you're not doing much in the way of rehab or complex nursing or anything like that, where you're going to get more Medicare and higher rates, you're trying to resist on the declining revenue base with your cost increasing. So and I think the fact that for a lot of these mom and pops, it's a generational business. They've owned these assets for a really long time. They don't have much of anything in the way of debt service.
So that's allowed them to survive. But this shift to PDPM, it's a big shift, right? I mean, you're talking about you're going to change how you're doing business, the mix of business, how you bill, you've got to make software changes. It really is going to it's considerable if you think about an operator who just has run things one way forever and ever. It's really a lot to think about.
So I just think that that's going to create more, as I said, more opportunity and these are the guys that are going to be going, they're going to be not necessarily, I shouldn't say going under, but we're going to get out of the business, however that happens.
Got you.
All right.
That's helpful color. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Daniel Bernstein from Capital One.
Hi, good morning. Hi, Dan. You have a lot of buyers looking at your assets in the senior care side. Does that and the pricing seems to be probably pretty good out in the market right now still, cap rates haven't backed up. Is it think you want to go ahead and kind of reevaluate your portfolio even further and maybe sell some more assets at this point No.
Beyond what you've already announced?
Yes, yes, yes, yes. No, I get it. Not really. I mean, we have operators that are looking at selling some individual assets within their portfolio, whereas Avamere may sell or close the building. You've got Wingate is in the process of moving for their assets actually to another operator.
So we actually may wind up retaining those with a different operator. So we've got a number of those situations where it's just sort of tweaking existing portfolios. But as I look at our tenants as sort of a whole, we haven't looked at any particular tenant beyond what we've already talked about and said, we just don't think these guys can make it or we're concerned about them making it or we just don't want to wait as long as it's going to take for them to make it. And so we want to move them out of the portfolio. So, yes, so I don't think other again, other than tweaking things here or there, which is as much the operator wanting to do it as it is us, I just don't see much else happening.
Okay. That's fair. And then on the pipeline, it sounds like it's mostly turnaround value add type of properties in the seniors housing side. I know maybe from the tone it didn't sound like you were too interested in there in those assets. But if you were, would you consider moving that to RIDEA structure?
Should we expect maybe for you to do more RIDEA or some other kind of operating joint venture type of structure in the seniors housing
space? So this is Talia. I would suggest that to you that RIDEA is very situation specific from our perspective. That could be an opportunity, But there's nothing that we've looked at so far that we've we have seen and felt was worth the risk of turning into our idea structure and because we believe that there was a fairly achievable turnaround in a reasonable time horizon. A lot of the so called value add and turnarounds are properties that have reached a not very robust occupancy level and revenue level because of the issues around oversupply and that is going to take time to resolve up.
Okay. And one last question.
Okay, sorry, go ahead.
That's why we I made the comment, I think in my quarter in the press release that the upside in senior housing, we think lags behind skilled nursing because you do have that oversupply issue with which outside of the state of Texas just doesn't exist in skilled nursing. So it's just going to take longer and probably should have noted earlier. The other dynamic, I think to Tayo's question maybe, the other dynamic that we really like is not just the increase in occupancy that we see skilled nursing and the reimbursement system, but you're going to have continuing decline in supply as some of these mom and pops continue to get out of the business and existing operators buy those facilities, they're going to have to modernize those facilities. And when they modernize those facilities, they're going to be taking a lot of beds out of service. So you may buy 45 year old 100 bed facility by the time you modernize it and have more semi privates and privates and more common space, that 100 bed building maybe 75 or 80 beds.
And so you're going to see a lot more of that over the next few years. So I think the demographic trend combined with the decline in supply bodes really well for the skilled nursing space.
Are you going to be willing to take the risk to buy those Medicaid heavy mom and pop assets and then put money into it right upfront within a lease? Or are you thinking maybe you'll help fund operators via loans or some other kind of capital to get those assets to a right place and then maybe buy the assets later on? Just thinking about how over a couple of years how that consolidation might work.
I think we'd be willing to take the risk. 1, I think we're pretty good at assessing that risk. But for us, it's going to come down to it's not really an obsolescence factor to even an old skilled nursing facility, if it's in the right market and has the right operator. So sometimes you go into things and you may structure an earn out or it's not an earn out or something like that. So the operators can get in there at a lower rent and then you have an opportunity to have a higher rent as the business improves.
But I don't see us kind of as we're sitting here today, funding an operator and then buying it later on. I think we go in with the operator and watch them turn that around. So, and I think for certainly for me, in my experience and some of the other folks in our team who have been in the operating world for a long time, My whole career was built on turnarounds. So we really like those kind of opportunities. We haven't seen very many good opportunities like that recently.
But I think it's fair to assume that we may see more of those going forward.
Okay. Sounds good. I'll get back in the queue. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Smedes Rose from Citi. Your question please.
Hi, thanks. Earlier in the year, you had talked about potentially refinancing, I think, up to $700,000,000 and it got kind of postponed, I think, due to a split rating. And I was just wondering if you could just talk about any recent conversations or upcoming conversations with the rating agencies and maybe how you're thinking about refinancing opportunities at this point?
Yes, sure. So yes, the answer is we definitely were looking at it back in November once we completed the Care Capital transaction. And at that time, the market was such that we had our eye on being able to refinance our existing bonds and have some nice accretion from that transaction given where interest rates were. Since that time, interest rates really haven't cooperated both kind of on a macro basis and it's improved somewhat here more recently, but also in some specific situations around some things that some of our peers, some issues they had around tenant coverages and things back in November that really forced us to put that on the back burner. So it wasn't specific to being split rated that we pulled back.
I think where we're at today is as we think about what's going to differentiate us further from some of the expectations that were a skilled nursing REIT, which again when our skilled nursing exposure was over 70%, it was pretty hard to argue that that was a comparison that should be made. So I think the thing that we're looking at now is as we continue to divest some of our skilled nursing assets, based on recent conversations with the one rating agency who currently does not have us as an investment grade rated company. Today, it will go a long way to getting us over that hurdle and become investment grade, so we're no longer split rated and thereby remove kind of that issue for investors such that we think we could have better execution and further differentiate ourselves from being a SNF REIT. So our position right now is that we're going to be opportunistic, and we're continuing to have conversations with the agencies as well as educating the high grade investors to the Sabra story and the progress that we're making. And then we'll look for the opportunity to do something because again we don't we're not compelled to do anything here in the short term given we've got a couple of years before those bonds come due.
And so we think there's enough catalyst in our strategy that will allow us to further improve our spreads and our comparisons to some of our peer companies and get something done that will be accretive.
Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it.
You bet.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Lukas Hartwich from Green Street Advisors. Your question please.
Thanks. Good morning everybody. I just had a quick one. The gap between skilled EBITDARM and EBITDAR coverage has widened over the past couple of quarters. I guess it looks like management fees are going up.
Can you talk about that? Is that just noise or is there something structural that's changing there?
No, there's nothing structural at all. There shouldn't be much noise there. So maybe we could spend some time with you offline and take a look at what you're looking because nothing's really changed.
Okay.
I will follow-up. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Todd Sater from Wells Fargo. Your question please.
Thanks. Rick, you made a comment on turnaround opportunities. I don't know if you've addressed this, but does that strategy work with the senior care portfolio? You might be taking a write down, should you sell it, but what about if you swapped out the operator? Just getting a sense and if you like the real estate or maybe there's some CapEx you have to put in, just your thoughts?
Yes. No, that's actually a really good question and we thought about it. But Texas is one of the tougher skilled nursing states. We have other operators in Texas and they're actually they're holding their own and which is in stark contrast I think to senior care centers, but they don't have as many buildings there. So I think for us, look, if we sell this and some new operator goes in there and turns it around kind of more power to them is really our attitude.
You want to see everybody be successful in the business. But I think for us, Texas is a big state for us, even though there's a huge lobbying effort going on to have the Medicaid system change in the fall of 2019. It failed last time. And so even though I think the efforts good, we don't know what's going to happen there. There continues to be new building going on in Texas.
So maybe if we had 10% exposure there to the state and not 17% or 18% whatever it is, we feel a little bit differently. But it's just a lot of exposure to one state that's got some challenges. But again, it's a fair question because we have operators in Texas that's doing a lot better than senior care centers. But I think for us to get our skill mix back down into the mid-50s, gives us a lot more play even in terms of skilled opportunities if we see some operators that we really like, so that we can do some more of those kinds of deals without it really impacting our exposure. I just think there's just too much benefit to us there.
And if you go back to look at if you go back and look at how well we traded before we ticked up this house, it's over 70%. Even though we got a lot of other benefits out of all those transactions, we just think we're better off staying on that path.
And just kind of a high level question, private equity has proven to be the primary buyer of senior housing, especially what the REITs are disposing of. What changes that? What gets the REITs back in the market? Is this it just seems like a longer cycle. Do we have see operator distress within the private equity portfolios going into next year and beyond?
Is it a cost of equity that the REITs have to get a better advantage of and they have to work through all their dispositions so far? What brings the REITs back in and maybe pushes private equity out?
This is Talia. I'll tell you, I think on the private equity side, what pushes them out is one at least two things. 1 is change in the cost of debt is going to make a difference on their leverage IRR outcomes. And then 2, I think the private equity has been behind a lot of the development initiatives. And I think that exits that don't meet expectations is going to have a significant chilling effect on ongoing investment by private equity.
When that starts to really prove out in a significant fashion, we're still waiting to see that, but I think it's starting to happen. I think the REITs have been collectively on the sidelines watching this and waiting for it to play out, poised with pruned portfolios and ready to move forward more strategically at a better cost.
And the other comment I'd make, Todd, in terms of your reference to cost of equity for the REITs, I don't really see that as a determining factor because the way private equity is valuing these businesses on future earnings that I think for most of us, we just don't see as realistic. That's not really a cost of that that's not a cost of equity issue. I don't think even if all things were equal that you would see the REITs paying up the way some of these guys are paying up and not just on assets that are leasing up, but on stabilized assets that you look at them and there's no reason to believe that that hockey stick in revenue improvements ever going to occur. So I just think the REITs are a lot more disciplined. I think that private equity just has a ton of money that they have to put to work.
So, but I think it's more focused, more matter of discipline on the part of us and our peers.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Our final question is a follow-up from the line of Juan Santabria from Bank of America. Your question please.
Hi, just two quick ones. Rick, the improvement that you expect in skilled nursing coverage in 2019, is that something fundamental driven mix shift or is that more just climb back the lost occupancy from the flu this year?
It's occupancy and not necessarily clawing back from the flu. The occupancy has been dropping since about 2013. I think we're going to finally start to see some of the benefit of the demographic. And I just think it comes in a little bit sooner to the skilled space and the senior housing space just because of the health issue. And if you go back to when the boomers were born and you sort of run that thing forward, it starts becoming apparent in terms of admissions, we think in 2019.
And it's not going to be a big wave. It's going to be incremental, but incremental when you've got occupancy as low as it currently exists in the space, incremental is really a big deal because your costs are currently fixed. You've got you have no levers left to pull, you've got no place left to hide. So you get that extra patient or that extra 2 patients and that's just a straight pull through to the bottom line. So we're not anticipating a big new demographic wave, but we think there's going to be an incremental improvement from the demographic starting sometime in 2019 that will then continue on a regular basis.
Okay. And then maybe just lastly a question for Harold. Just curious as to why you guys don't deduct CapEx to arrive at the AFFO? And if you could just give us a sense of what you're budgeting from a CapEx perspective for the RIDEA portfolio?
Yes, it's a good question. Historically, we just not had any significant CapEx. So we're going to take another look at our definition of a FFO. I know a lot of people include CapEx because as it becomes more material, it is something we should consider. And I think it's somewhere around $10,000,000 a year is kind of our budget for the CapEx.
Yes. So it's just been a matter of circumstance, Ron.
Okay. And the $10,000,000 is your pro rata share for the joint venture?
No, that's the full balance. Our pro rata share would be half of that.
Okay. Thank you. Thank
you. This does conclude the question and answer session of today's program. I'd like to hand the program back to Rick Matros, Chairman and CEO for any further remarks.
Thank you and thanks for joining us today and we appreciate it. As always, we're available for follow-up conversations. We're very accessible. And if we don't talk to you in the near term, we hope everybody enjoys the remainder of the summer. Thanks.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Good day.