Healthpeak Properties, Inc. (NYSE:PEAK) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Scott Bohn: Development and redevelopment, it always — you sign a long-term lease, it comes with free rent. I mean we’re not taking the benefit of that free rent either. So all the NOI growth that you see coming from that development and redevelopment portfolio, that’s not benefiting same-store at all, but it’s obviously generating a heck of a lot of NOI that will eventually flow through earnings absent some unique issues that we’re overcoming this year.

Vikram Malhotra: That’s helpful. And maybe just, Scott, sticking with you, just a follow-up. You mentioned on the call at the beginning of the call that for the first time, acquisitions are appearing more attractive than development. Can you maybe give us more color on specifically what you’re seeing in terms of types of opportunities, pricing expectations or IRR? And if you can just link that sort of acquisitions over development to maybe how that feeds into broader goals for the executive team as you think about long-term compensation and what metrics you may be gauging as it pertains to altips .

Scott Brinker: Yes. I mean we don’t have a metric focused on just volume of acquisition or development. But obviously, we have a lot of metrics around total shareholder return, FFO growth and leverage. So if growing the company can help us accomplish those objectives, then we’re going to do a lot of it. So it’s made overwhelming sense for five years, not a new development. The spread relative to acquisition cap rates was 300-plus basis points is a pretty easy decision and there’s a nice spread to our cost of capital as well. It feels like that spread is down quite a bit today. Some of that is anecdotal. But the big commercial banks really aren’t doing secured financing yet. So big portfolios are harder to trade, which can make things more interesting.

Some of the regional banks are starting to be more active. But obviously, interest rates that are 100 if not 150 basis points higher than what you would have seen 1.5 years ago, LTVs are probably down a touch. That is a huge impact on levered buyers. We’re not really a levered buyer at least in the traditional sense. And you saw the pretty strong execution in the bond market two weeks ago. So we do feel like our cost of capital relative to conversations we have with counterparties, whether it’s the big LPs, private equity, the brokers, the banks, it feels like there’s a higher likelihood that acquisitions could make sense this year, but it’s still early in the year. In the fourth quarter, as I had mentioned earlier, it was just really quiet.

So not much happened. But activity is picking up, and we’re starting to get a lot of phone calls on things that are more interesting and potentially more actionable than what we would have said for the last couple of years.

Vikram Malhotra: And sorry, just if I could clarify that, that you mentioned the life sciences non-core assets traded at I think it was a 5. Would you give us — can you just share any more color on where kind of asset pricing in life sciences are today like core, not higher quality — non-core versus higher quality core?

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