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Welltower (WELL): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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Welltower

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Thank you for standing by. My name is Jeannie, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Wild Tower Second Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session.

You. I would now like to turn the call over to Matt McQueen, Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning. As a reminder, certain statements made during this call may be deemed forward looking statements in the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Although Wells Fargo believes any forward looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, the company can give no assurances that its projected results will be attained. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward looking statements are detailed in the company's filings with the SEC. And with that, I'll hand the call over to Sean for his remarks.

Thank you, Matt, and good morning, everyone. As usual, I'll review business trends and our capital allocation priorities, and the team will follow the usual cadence. Second quarter marked another period of solid execution across the board at Welltower from operations to investment activity and a further strengthening of our balance sheet. We also made significant progress on the rollout of our operating platform, which John will discuss shortly. Ultimately, we are pleased to have delivered another quarter of strong FFO per share growth of 22%, exceeding our already high expectations.

These results coupled with increased conviction for the back half of the year has enabled us to once again raise the midpoint of our full year FFO guidance this time by $0.13 to $5.1 per share. For the quarter, we reported 23.4% same store NOI growth for our seniors housing operating portfolio, representing the eleventh consecutive quarter in which the growth has exceeded 20%. Organic revenue growth came in at 10% driven by four twenty basis points of occupancy gains, the highest level of growth we have achieved outside the post COVID recovery. Notably, our UK portfolio posted a 600 basis points of pickup in occupancy and 27% same store NOI growth, reflecting strong end market demand and our favorable positioning of our purpose built portfolio in highly selective and attractive micro markets. Growth in Redpour reflective of pricing power was approximately 5% and remained healthy across all regions.

We expect a further strengthening of Redpour in coming years as portfolio and industry wide capacity continues to diminish. I will also highlight the spread between RedPOR or unit revenue and export or unit expense remains at historically wide level driving additional three thirty basis points of margin expansion in SHOP. Our consistent pace of growth has allowed us to achieve two significant milestone this quarter as both in place annualized NOI for SHOP assets have surpassed $2,000,000,000 and overall annualized company revenue have eclipsed $10,000,000,000 for the first time. While the demand supply dynamic remains attractive for the industry, we do not believe that the fundamentals alone will drive durable long term performance in such an operational intensive business. As in the past, we'll continue to leverage insights from our industry leading data science platform and well done business systems to drive additional portfolio and asset management initiatives, efforts we believe have been key contributors to our historical outperformance.

For example, from a capital allocation standpoint, over past five years, we have completed roughly $29,000,000,000 of investment activity through the scale achieved from our data science platform. But it's often forgotten that we also sold $16,000,000,000 worth of assets over the past decade to improve the quality and growth trajectory of overall portfolio as we enter the perceived golden age of the industry. We have painstakingly transitioned hundreds and hundreds of properties over the past few years to best in class aligned regional operators to unlock full operational potential of these communities. This includes the transition of 10,000 units Holiday by Atria portfolio, which we announced last summer, the largest portfolio of transition to date. For background, Holiday was acquired in 2021 at a price we believe to represent an extraordinary value, but so far it has turned out to be our biggest capital allocation mistake by yours truly.

We have increasing conviction that our initial execution plan and structuring was flawed, But regardless of the reason, we consider the deal a failure so far and our biggest disappointment over past decade as we have so far been unable to make money for you, our fellow shareholders. As you have come to know, we do not take such shortcomings lightly and as always prepared to take decisive action when outcomes fall shy of our high standards. So in middle of last year, we announced the transition of the portfolio to six of our existing regional operators. This was not an easy feat given the size of the portfolio, geographic disruption and the challenge inherent in any operating operator transition coupled with the value add nature of the original business plan. While we have a long way to go, we're encouraged by the early results.

Since the beginning of this year, this portfolio has delivered a five sixty basis points of improvement in occupancy, which you are not seeing the benefit of in our reported numbers as these properties are not yet in same store. I would encourage you to take a look at the Slide thirteen and fourteen of our business update presentation for more details. While the NOI has yet to recover as operators tweak the service model, we're optimistic about the momentum in occupancy and estimate that the NOI will turn the corner in Q4. We believe that substantial upside remains not only from this portfolio, but also other transitions we have announced over the past few years. I'm grateful to the Welltower team for our best in class and our best in class operating partners for their tireless efforts and I look forward to providing further updates in future quarters.

Shifting to capital deployment, even after announcing a historic level of investment activity in the first quarter, which exceeded the level of acquisitions completed in all of 2024, our investment team has never been busier. Nikhil will provide you more details, but year to date we have closed or under contract to close approximately $9,200,000,000 worth of highly attractive acquisitions across all of our regions. We remain pleased with the state of our pipeline, which remains robust, visible, actionable in all three countries that we do business in. And lastly, turning to our balance sheet, following the current rating upgrade we received last quarter from both S and P and Moody's to A, our balance sheet has trended even farther. Another quarter of strong cash flow growth coupled with prudent funding of our balance sheet has driven net debt to adjusted EBITDA below three times and interest coverage over six times and lifted our total liquidity to $9,500,000,000 Our upcoming debt maturities remain modest and we have created significant flexibility to fund future investment activity.

Overall, it has been an incredibly active first half of the year and I'm proud of what we have accomplished. However, our work is far from being complete this year. Our team shows up every day to win, and we have a long journey ahead of us. With that, I'll pass it over to John.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. We delivered another strong quarter, reflecting the ongoing momentum across the business. In Q2, total portfolio same store NOI increased 13.8% year over year, led by another standout performance from our senior housing operating portfolio. First, I'll touch on the outpatient medical business, which remained stable, delivering year over year same store NOI growth of 2.6%. Leasing velocity remains healthy, and our retention rate remains consistent at 94.2%.

Same store occupancy, which continues to lead the peer group, also remains steady at 95%, reflecting the high quality nature of the portfolio. Turning to the senior housing operating portfolio. Performance continues to be outstanding, with the eleventh consecutive quarter of same store NOI growth well in excess of 20%, a remarkable feat. The broad based strength witnessed across the regions and property types resulted in another upward revision to show portfolio guidance, which Tim will detail shortly. Top line growth remained resilient at 10.1% year over year, supported by positive trends across all three regions.

Canada delivered 8.5% growth, while The U. S. And U. K. Posted increases of 10.211.5%, respectively.

We are particularly pleased with another quarter in which occupancy growth surpassed 400 basis points, reflecting healthy end market demand for our needs based product. In terms of rental rates, RevPAR growth remained strong at 5%. We're pleased to report that expense pressures remain subdued with year over year growth in export or unit expense reaching the lowest level in our reported history at just 0.2%. This is largely a function of the scaling benefits received from the rapid increase in occupancy. We're also encouraged by trends within the labor market with agency labor and employee turnover well below pre COVID levels.

From a margin perspective, the continued historically wide gap between RevPOR and export growth resulted in another leg higher in operating margins, up three thirty basis points year over year to 30.7%. And as Shankh indicated, while we have essentially returned to pre COVID levels of margins, we still expect significant upside going forward, driven primarily by three factors. First, as we've noted before, given the high fixed cost nature of seniors housing business, flow through margins are expected to rise alongside further occupancy gains. Said another way, the operating leverage inherent in the business will be recognized in a more meaningful way going forward. Second, continued benefits from the ongoing realignment of the portfolio.

We're increasing our portfolio concentration with our key growth operators creating collections of assets, allowing us to increase efficiency by sharing various employees, contractors and marketing, similar to what's been done in multifamily. Finally, the impact of WBS, or Well Towered Business System, our end to end operating platform, which is benefiting from the synergistic partnership with our operators as we continue to improve our existing systems and add to our robust WBS road map. As I've said many times, Coke doesn't give out the recipe nor do I give out the proprietary details of our business. That said, I will say that we are touching many parts of the business via WBS in partnership with the operators and finding both opportunities and successes, which will translate to years of improved operations and margins. Tangible evidence of our work this quarter can be seen in utilities.

We have bent the curve with an increase of only 2.8% overall on a year over year basis, and utilities actually declined 2.1% year over year on a per occupied day basis. Yes, even a line item that many people believe cannot be improved, such as utilities, has opportunity for improvement, and we're all over it. Working with our partners, we are finding numerous opportunities in every aspect of the business. WBS is transforming all aspects of the senior housing business. And although the path is never smooth, I continue to have confidence in years of margin expansion as we continue to improve the customer and employee experience in this business.

While we're encouraged by our results and the initial rollout of the operating platform, the team is running very hard. We've trained over 8,000 site employees who are now benefiting from using WBS On-site. The more time we spend with our operating partners going through the details of the business, the more opportunities we identify to improve the customer and employee experience and address numerous inefficiencies which exist in the industry. And even after bringing significant operating expertise into the company in recent years, we continue to seek and attract high caliber talent from outside the industry to bring their experience and share our vision of disrupting the senior housing business, a vision that we share with our best in class operating partners who are working shoulder to shoulder with Welltower team to implement the platform while continuing to deliver exceptional care and support to our residents and their families. We continue to be grateful for their unrelenting efforts and the quality of care they're delivering.

More to come in the coming quarters. And with that, I'll now turn it over to Nikhil.

Thanks, John, and good morning, everyone.

Since our first quarter call in April, we've expanded our investment activity by an additional $3,000,000,000 bringing our year to date closed or under contract volume to 9,200,000,000.0 As of late July, our 2025 activity already exceeds 202450%, and that was the most active transaction year in our company's history. While volume is notable, it's never our measure of success. We remain focused on the quality of assets, the basis at which we acquire them, and most importantly, our ability to execute the business plan and deliver attractive risk adjusted returns. As many of our friends, family and peers spent the summer on lakes or golf courses, he loved how our team was out pounding the pavement, engaging in the art of old school deal picking, looking people in the eye, shaking hands, and operating with honor and integrity, doing first class business in a first class way. Our $9,200,000,000 in year to date activity includes $3,700,000,000 in closed transactions through the first two quarters with the remaining $5,500,000,000 under contract and expected to close in the coming months.

While we've already discussed the $3,200,000,000 Amica transaction, the remaining $2,300,000,000 spans 26 separate transactions, 90% of which were privately negotiated and are predominantly focused on our seniors and wellness housing businesses. This speaks to the depth of our sourcing network and the trust and relationships we've built across the industry that continues to unlock high quality off market opportunities. During the second quarter, we closed on $1,000,000,000 of transactions on our balance sheet. Excluding the pro rata portion of our investment in the Gulf Power U. S.

Seniors Housing Fund, our on balance sheet activity spend and transactions covering over 2,500 units. Notably, 90% or $900,000,000 of this activity was also sourced on an off market basis, underscoring our ability to uncover and execute on differentiated opportunities. With a blended occupancy of 76% and a median asset age of just three years, this newer vintage portfolio is well positioned to deliver strong cash flow growth and compounding as we execute our business plans alongside our best in class operating partners. This quarter's investments also reflect an expansion of our relationships with several key partners, including StoryPoint and Cogir, among others. While strong industry fundamentals can certainly make it more challenging to uncover high quality opportunities with tremendous upside, our investment activity this year demonstrates that there is no shortage of attractive opportunities if you're willing to work hard and dig deeper.

And that's exactly what we're built to do. The transactions that I described weren't just negotiated in conference rooms around the globe. They were also forged in living rooms in Canada, at a pub on a street corner in Paris, on a rooftop terrace in London, and even at the bar at the city conference at the Disneyland Hotel in Hollywood, Florida. These moments and the people behind them are what makes this business fun, and they're a big part of why we continue to find and create value where others might not be working. This is also what makes this work so rewarding.

As I reflect on our activity this year, I genuinely cherish the many moments where we sat across some counterparties and shook hands on deals built on trust and mutual respect. In a fragmented industry where our opportunity set spans three countries and tens of millions of micro markets, with significant variation in operating outcomes across owners and operators, our team continues to identify opportunities to enhance the value of assets under our platform. This is made possible by our exceptional operating partners and our ever expanding operating moat powered by the Bell Tower Business System. I want to take a moment to express my deep gratitude to our team and our operating partners. The unity of purpose, clarity of vision, and mutual respect that define our culture are what make this platform so special.

We all take the responsibility of being fiduciary seriously, and it shows in the care, discipline, and passion with which our team approaches every opportunity. We often reflect internally on the quality of the opportunities we continue to unlock and how, years from now, we'll look back on this period as one that meaningfully enhanced the strength of our business and the quality of our portfolio. The actions we're taking today are laying the foundation for long term compounding of earnings and cash flow, and we couldn't be more excited about what lies ahead. With that, I'll turn the call over to Tim to walk through our financial results and updated earnings guidance.

My comments today will focus on our second quarter twenty twenty five results, performance of our triple net investment segments, our capital activity, our balance sheet liquidity update and finally, an update to our full year 2025 outlook. Walltower reported second quarter net income attributable to common stockholders of $0.45 per diluted share and normalized funds from operations of $1.28 per diluted share, representing 21.9% year over year growth. We also reported year over year total portfolio same store NOI growth of 13.8%. Now turning to the performance of our triple net properties in the quarter. As a reminder, our triple net lease portfolio coverage stats are reported at quarter in arrears.

These statistics reflect the trailing twelve months ending threethirty onetwenty twenty five. In our senior housing triple net portfolio, same store NOI increased 5.1% year over year and trailing twelve month EBITDAR coverage increased to 1.19x. Next, same store NOI in our long term post acute portfolio grew 2.7% year over year and trailing twelve month EBITDAR coverage of 1.19x. Moving on to capital activity. We continue to capitalize our investment activity with equity, raising $2,000,000,000 of gross proceeds in the second quarter.

In addition, we reentered the bond market for the first time in three years with our first issuance as an A rated credit, raising $1,250,000,000 in senior unsecured notes across two tranches for a blended coupon of 4.825%. This capital, along with retained cash flow, allowed us to fund $1,000,000,000 in net investment activity, repay our $1,250,000,000 June bond maturity and end the quarter with $4,500,000,000 of cash and restricted cash on the balance sheet, while driving net debt to adjusted EBITDA to 2.93x, the lowest leverage level recorded in Welltower's history. As a result of our current capital position and the improvement in outlook for full year operating results announced last night, we expect run rate net debt to adjusted EBITDA to end the year at approximately 3.5 times, while having added $7,200,000,000 to our planned 2025 acquisition activity since our initial balance sheet guidance was provided in February. Note that a substantial portion of our acquisitions under contract are expected to close in the fourth quarter, including the previously announced $3,200,000,000 Amica transaction. Sticking with positive cash flow trends, we announced a 10.4% increase to our quarterly dividend last night.

The decision reflects the Board's confidence in the durability of our cash flows and our continued growth trajectory. At the same time, we are continuing to improve our cash flow retention profile, giving us greater flexibility to reinvest in high return value accretive opportunities. Lastly, as I turn to our updated 2025 guidance, I want to remind you that we have not included any investment activity in our outlook beyond the $9,200,000,000 that has been closed or publicly announced to date. Last night, we updated our full year 2025 outlook for net income attributable to common stockholders to $1.86 to $1.94 per diluted share and normalized FFO of $5.6 to $5.14 per diluted share or $5.1 at the midpoint. Our normalized FFO guidance represents a $0.13 increase in the midpoint from our prior normalized FFO range.

This increase is composed of $03 increase from higher NOI in our senior housing operating portfolio, zero seven increase from accretive capital allocation activity, dollars $0.03 from increased FX and income taxes offset slightly by higher G and A. Underlying this FFO guidance is an estimate of total portfolio year over year same store NOI growth of 11.25% to 13.25%, driven by subsegment growth of outpatient medical, 2% to 3% long term post acute, 2% to 3% senior housing triple net, 3.5% to 4.5% and finally, senior housing operating growth of 18.5% to 21.5%. This is driven by the following midpoints of their respective ranges: revenue growth of 9.2%, driven by increased expectations for both full year REVPOR and occupancy growth now at five point one percent and three sixty basis points, respectively and expense growth of 5.25%. And with that, I will hand the call back over to Sean.

Thank you, Tim. Before we start the Q and A, I want to highlight two things that are top of my mind. One, talent management and incentive design and two, a refined focus on reimagination of our technology, data and innovation ecosystem. Over the past few months and through our January 2 press release, annual shareholder letter and our new website, I've written extensively about talent, culture and incentive design. Now we are in the implementation and expansion phase of many of these ideas both internally at Welltower and externally with our operating partners.

Importantly, we're engaging with leaders across our key operating partners to achieve the same goals that I outlined previously for internal stakeholders. Personally, I'm focused on integrating these work streams guided by the same basic design tenant. As I described in my most annual letter, we believe that the five pillars of well designed incentive systems are the following: one, simple two, significant three, non gameable either by payer or payee four, armed as a team and five, duration matched. I envision a future where these five pillars shape the incentive structure for everyone from executive leadership and regional management throughout WealthHour and our operating partners to critical caregivers and frontline service in our communities. We're excited about a world where everyone is fully aligned and all in to create an ultimate win win equation.

While I continue to be told that vision is utopian and perhaps even foolish, I remain convinced that it is achievable if we make the resident and employee experience our highest priority. This is why I believe the most important pillar is matching duration. We anticipate providing you more in this area as we begin to roll out our sixth generation of aligned partnership agreement and incentive programs in coming quarters. Moving to the next topic. As we continue to ramp up our investments in WorldTower business systems, we realized that we need to think more boldly and more holistically about technology ecosystem.

Software and hardware, both at site level and enterprise level at WorldTower, along with data architecture and innovation, all require the same level of focus, leadership, and talent that we have invested in past decade in building our data science platform. And the fastest way to move the dial is to narrow our focus. Over the past year, John, Tim and Nikhil have been pushing me very hard to concentrate on the reimagination of our broader technology ecosystem as admittedly I have historically focused more on the data science side of the house. After having immersed myself in this area during the summer, I see enormous potential in the interconnection of many of the initiatives which are currently underway as well as identifying new opportunities to explore next. You can expect a handful of new leadership performance in these coming months to drive maximum growth and maximum gain in this area, all following the principle of bringing the hottest source to the coldest sink that I spoke about a couple of quarters ago.

To sum it up, while our recent performance has been somewhat satisfactory, we're never satisfied. But our confidence continues to grow as demand supply backdrop for senior housing business continues to improve, the implementation of what what our business system bears fruit and our capital deployment opportunity set remains robust. And as I have outlined just outlined, we remain focused on rethinking the critical areas of our business including talent, incentive management and transformative potential of technology, information, data and innovation. We remain intensely focused on pure execution in all facets of our business and have never been more excited as we are today about our future prospects. While our momentum is strong, we're still in early stages of a long journey of delivering compounding part share cash flow growth for our existing owners, our North Star.

Thank you for your support. Operator, please open the call for questions.

Your first question comes from the line of Jonathan Hughes with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Thank you for the prepared remarks and commentary. I wanted to ask about future growth potential. At the start of 2022, you outlined an opportunity to deploy $30,000,000,000 of capital, over the next ten years. You've done nearly that in just three years and now achieved a market cap over $100,000,000,000 So following the success, what's next for Welltower from a growth standpoint? Thanks.

Thank you, Jonathan. Success is a relative term. While we're suddenly proud of what we have achieved, I wouldn't call it a success. Ultra is a long organization. It is working progress, and it is a start up mode.

I am deeply worried about, frankly, paranoid about any perceived notion of success because that creates complacency. I think it's Rockefeller who said that if you go to sleep on a win, you will wake up with a loss. When an organization and is young and is on the way up, possesses generative characteristic of a dynamic organization. It's on the hunt, playing to win. It's lean, mean, forward looking, unified in purpose, nimble, focused, responsive, open to risk, and most importantly, willing to look foolish.

When the organization perceives itself to be successful, degenerative characteristics emerge. We made it mentality brings huddling and storm sellers, playing not to lose, the fear of appearing to be foolish. Culture becomes pervasive while people look in the rearview mirror, become risk averse, and bureaucracy sets in. And I think I talked a lot about this with you guys for a long period of time. Maybe maybe with size and maturity, some changes are appropriate as we go from sprint to marathon.

Nevertheless, the positive genetic feel of a young organization is something an organization should never lose. You can you can define the genetic feeling as a shared vibe of enthusiasm and unity, doing whatever it takes, stretching, enriching, and making dream come true. For us, we're still in the sprint mode, Jonathan. Still sprinting, still have an audacious dream of transforming this industry. Previous 30,000,000,000 or next 30,000,000,000, previous 100,000,000,000 or next set, the 100,000,000,000, it's just a means to an end.

It is easier for a team to do really hard things that matter than do easy things that do not matter as I truly believe that audacious dreams motivate people. As as I've said this before, when this game for the love of the game, we'll see what the market gives us, but I really appreciate the question. But success, you know, defines a destiny a destination. We for us, this is a journey. We'll see where we get to. But thanks for the question.

Your next question comes from the line of Nick Yulico with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning. So just had a question. In terms of senior housing operating portfolio, you now have, I think, more than half the NOI is actually in the non same store. Can you just talk a little bit about the performance of non same store sort of in the last year versus some of the same store metrics and how we think about it going forward?

Because clearly, looks like there's more some more occupancy growth potential in that portfolio, some more margin benefit. In the last year realizing that pool has changed a little bit in terms of some of the metrics you report, it feels like the occupancy growth and the margin expansion actually wasn't as strong in some of the non same store versus same store assets. Thanks.

Yes. I'll start with that, Nick. So when you look at the non same store portfolio, it's really important to think about what we're buying and what Nikhil has highlighted on these calls. We continue to buy under occupied, under optimized assets. We also continue to have developments come online.

Both those things come into that pool, and they come into that pool the quarter acquired or the the quarterly come online. So that's that's part of what, you know, continues to keep the margin and occupancy profile below what the same store portfolio looks like. And that that makes sense, we think, through kind of what same store is supposed to represent as being the more stabilized piece of it. That being said, on an aggregate basis, growth looks very similar to our same store portfolio. There's different pieces of that.

But overall, there's been pretty similar bottom line growth in that portfolio.

I'll just add Nick, when you say that it appears that it wasn't as strong, you are comparing with last quarter's number and we don't restate those numbers. So you have a lot of new assets coming, including the health mix and you're sort of comparing apples to oranges.

Your next question comes from the line of John Kilachowski with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you. In your most recent annual letter and on your website, you spent a lot of time on this decade long journey in harnessing technology and data, but mostly in the context of using your data science platform to inform capital allocation decisions and micro market selections. But based on your comments this morning, it sounds like your views are evolving with an opportunity to apply the operating technology to improve the customer experience. Could you elaborate on this and strategically what you're trying to accomplish?

Yeah. So I I think I think, John look. If you just kinda take a step back and think about different industries, if you think about sort of real economic industries, say industrial companies, say real estate companies, say people like us. Right? Retail.

You know, these companies have real customers who have real touch points in the physical world. What we tend to see is they have their sandwich and their tech work. That's what you see. If you look at the client companies, who come up with that the frontier of, you know, changing the technology world, the TED rich and the TED poor. What we have been trying to do is to have a company that we have, by definition, is extraordinarily cam rich, and we're trying to be tech rich.

And the tech, as I just pointed out, is sort of the opportunity set, which we have spent, obviously, a decade on the data science side. John has been focused last four years on the operational technology side, and we are sort of now putting even more focus on thinking how do we expand that and from, you know, sort of enterprise technology to site level technology and that integration of everything in between as the technology ecosystem evolves. So as I mentioned, you know, there's gonna be more to talk about this in next six to nine months. More to be seen, but appreciate the question. But there's a lot lot going on in our organization.

And I'll tell you after Tim has pushed me very, very hard over the last eighteen months, I'm finally focused on it, and You're going to see some significant changes in this area.

Your next question comes from the line of Ronald Kamdem with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hey. Just quick ones. Last quarter, we talked about sort of the gradient to the portfolio, 90 plus versus sort of 80 and below. I just love to get an update on how those are performing and your conviction on, you know, the potential for reacceleration here, which you got a little bit this quarter, but reacceleration going forward as occupancy built. Thanks.

Yeah. Well, it really hasn't changed. We sort of think about not below 80 or say, you know, sort of below 75 is sort of report growth was roughly, call it, 1%, 75 to 80, call it, you know, sort of same. But on the other hand, if you look at above 90 to say 90 to 95 is roughly, you know, five seven, above 95, six seven, so call it above 90, above six. That's sort of the gradient, you know, sort of, you know, call it, you have below 80% occupancy.

You don't have pricing power. You have 90 plus percent occupancy. You have significant pricing power, and it sort of scales in between. Right? Which makes sense.

It's just basic demand supply, and that's where the excitement is as, you know, it's just not us who is getting more and more towards, you know, 90 plus percent occupancy, so also the overall industry is getting there. I think you will see, you know, at some point, hopefully, and I think I I'm on the record saying it should happen after, someone leasing this thing on next year. We'll see whether that happens whether that happens. But sometimes the next eighteen, twenty four months, we should see pricing power probably gets better. But we shall see what the market gives us.

Your next question comes from the line of Omotayo Okusanya with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Shankh, in your opening and again, first of all, congrats on another solid quarter. In your opening comments, you talked quite a bit about just aligning incentives. And and, you know, you mentioned it quite a few times. And I guess I'm just curious, again, when when we kind of take a look at your company in particular, I think since your team has been in place, you guys have increased insider ownership. I can't recall any stock sales in recent times. Just kind of curious as we kind of think about the overall philosophy around, you know, incentives, just, you know, you you already kind of think you're moving in the right direction. What what's the additional kind of, know, step you're trying to take in that regard? And what do you ultimately hope to achieve from that in regards to in regards to, you know, increasing additional, whether it's insider ownership or, again, more people across the company being, you know, tied into the stock?

Yep. It's a very important it's a it's a very, very important observation, Tyrone. Actually, our management team, we have never sold one stock in this company. Neither I have nor my my partner can have. Well and, you know, I it's hard for me to comment on people's personal personal financial situation.

I understand sometimes you buy a house, you do this, you're in a wedding or whatever. These things come up in life events, but we haven't. I you know, I've I've never told explicitly to my partners they can, but they haven't because, you know, at the end of the day, you know, I have trouble with companies that sort of tells you that they're the best thing, French sliced bread. And every opportunity to get their own liquidate their own ownership in the company, they do. And just kind of it just seems at least it doesn't particularly work well with how I think about the world.

As I've written in our foundational document many years ago, whether whether look. We all pretty much all my partners, my entire team comes from little or no strong financial backgrounds. They're all self made people. So the issue is not the amount. The issue is how much of your personal network is on the line.

Right? That's what we have promised that you know, our our shareholders tend to benefit from diversification, but we don't because I don't believe in that that should be the case, that's the way you take away sort of the agency problem. This is a very important problem important thing to think about as we are thinking about how we do how do we design incentives. Think about what we're trying to do. We're trying to be all in.

I just described how we align that. You think about, you know, sort of what what we expect from our operating partners. They are not diversifying. They're we know I have a tremendous amount of respect for our privately owned enterprises in this country. And many of those, they think about what my operating partners do.

They own their companies. Right? We expect them to continue to own their company. Right? Through these tough times, you think about I was yesterday with one of my strongest operating partners, Toricoin, in Toledo, where we are now.

You know, we're talking with Dan and his team and talking about how difficult the last five years have been. You know you know, all the investments they have done in that company, you know where that money came from? Their own pockets. It didn't come from someone else. Right?

If that's how they I expect them to believe. You know, I can I I was thinking about that comment? Was thinking about five years ago, I sat down with Oakmont and SoyPoint with Courtney, and we're thinking about what we want to do the next five years, you know, where the all this investment in Oakmont came from. It came from Courtney's pocket. Right?

So why would it be okay for me to expect her to be all in, but not for us to be all in? Right? So that's sort of the whole point is what we are trying to do at an incentive perspective from everybody from executives at WorldTower to the executives at our operating partner to all the way to the people who work in the community. They're defined by the same structure, they're defined by the same shared success. And I think that's possible.

It's complicated, but it's possible if we prioritize resident experience and employee experience as a top priority. And if we can do that, I think we'll take this industry a level that has never been seen before, but remains to be seen.

Your next question comes from the line of Juan Sanabria with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for the time. Just hoping, Shankh, you could or Nikhil talk a little bit about the competitive dynamics for investments. A lot of what you're buying seems to be newer Just curious on the runway for that type of product as the industry kind of approaches pre COVID levels or ninety percent next year or shortly thereafter. And just the financing environment more broadly just for seniors housing. If you could

Yeah. I think, one, really comes down to, you know, whether it's occupancy or it's other aspects of the business plan. You know? Is there an opportunity to find transactions, find assets where we can improve the cash flow profile? Right? I think there is no shortage of opportunity there given, you know, everything that John and the team are working on to optimize the cash flow profile.

So whether it's occupancy optimization or rate optimization or other aspects of the business plan, that is given how fragmented the industry is, given how varying the outcomes are under different, you know, operators and and owners, we don't think really there's any limits to finding opportunities to enhance cash flow profile of assets. And so so, you know, as seen by our activity that we continue to find this kind of opportunity. We have to work harder. We have to, you know, look in places because we haven't looked at in the past, but there's a shortage opportunity.

And I'll just add one, you know, obviously, question is a very important one. Look. At the end of the day, investing capital and making money is not the same thing. We're focused on, obviously, finding opportunities where we can make a strong risk adjusted return for our partners. Making money is hard.

Right? And let me tell you what is harder. Making money at scale is much harder. And we believe that that is making money at scale. It's not just a function of your capital allocation acumen, which is important.

Right? It's a necessary, but not a sufficient condition. What's necessary on top of that, what is an asset worth in your own hands? Right? So all these investments that for the last decade we have made from our data science platform to what our business is is is all designed to do just that.

So far, it seems like we have no type of opportunities. We'll see what market gives us.

Your next question comes from the line of Nick Joseph with Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Thanks. You talked about the run rate of 3.5x leverage and kind of the debt offering this year, reentering the debt markets and obviously the equity. So how do you think about the optimal capital stack going forward, particularly given the amount of acquisition and investment opportunity that you're seeing today?

We believe a company that operates with this notion that you do handshake business and never walk away from a handshake needs to operate with a low leverage. Right? That's the business model. It's not the balance sheet strategy is different from on one side of the balance sheet, which is the liability side of the balance sheet that you're talking about and is different from the left handed side of the balance sheet. This is our business model, you should expect us to continue to have very strong liquidity, very strong balance sheet all the time.

And that's and so that no counterparty ever are cautioned if we make a promise whether we'll come through. Right? That's just our business model. Having said that, look, how we fund an investment or a series of investments, it's just a function of where we think the best risk adjusted sort of capital is as a source. That could be debt, right?

Obviously, we think as we think about regarding more and more conviction on what the growth prospects of our company is, the downside of that, that our internal view of our equity cost of capital continues to go higher, right? So debt cost of capital is pretty obvious. You know it's fixed for next, you know, seven years, ten years, twelve years, whatever tenor of debt that you are raising. So we you saw that we're back to that we got back to the debt market, and Tim and his capital markets team did a terrific execution. So it remains all open, right?

It's debt, it's equity, it's asset sales and most importantly, most importantly, it's massive return free cash flow, right? So that's sort of all four we're thinking about. And depending on what the combination of capital we assets we see and how much capital we need, you will see us execute different have different points of the market at different points in time.

Your next question comes from the line of Farrell Granath with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. This is Farrell Granath. My question is around potential margin expansion. You've outlined now a lot of the focus that you have on expenses and individual line items. And I'm kind of curious, when you're looking further out, how far can margins go?

We've said numerous times that there's not an exact number we're going to give up. But at the same time, Shankh has said clearly, and I said to Shankh, I will not be here unless we expand margins pretty significantly. The opportunity is substantial. Again, realize that we're talking about a business that has been created by numerous different operators, and they're very small as a general rule. They haven't had the resources to invest in all the various areas that a company like ours can invest in.

So as we step into it and partner with our operators, we find all kinds of opportunities. And I just pointed out that one item on the utilities business, Every line item of the GL has opportunities across the board, and we're just methodically going after them. So where exactly it ends up, I can't tell you. I can tell you in multifamily, margins expanded dramatically when that business was professionalized. You can look that up and look at other businesses for comparison sake.

Prahlad, just add one thing. From your question, it appears, maybe you didn't mean it this way, that you think margin expansion is a function of expense management. I would say the bigger impact will come from the revenue side. Obviously, expenses matter and we're intensely focused on every single line item. I think we have 15 people team who are focused on or shared between John's teams, Nikhil's teams, and Tim's team.

About 50 people are focused on this every single line item or how to think about how to optimize cost. And really remove excess that you might see, and I can give you million examples right sitting right here. And I don't want to bore you that with that, but just understand that margin expansion, whatever it might be, we're clearly optimistic about where it can get to, will be a function of, I will not be surprised, significant more contribution comes from revenue than expenses, but it will come from both.

Your next question comes from the line of Mike Mueller with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Yes. Hi. I guess generally speaking, does the piece of occupancy gains increase or decrease materially once a property crosses 90%, I guess, on the way to what you see as full in the mid-90s?

Welltower (WELL) Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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