Ventas, Inc. (NYSE:VTR) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: Your next question will come from the line of Ronald Kamdem with Morgan Stanley.

Ronald Kamdem : Just a quick two-parter. Thanks for the presentation. It was super helpful. Two things. The first was just the leading indicators and the lead generators being pretty strong, both in 4Q and January. Maybe just a little bit more color on what that’s capturing conversion rates. Just thought that was really interesting. And then the second piece is, I think on the end of the presentation, you talked about sort of a $900 million SHOP NOI opportunity with all things said and done. If you take a step back, just curious how you guys are thinking about sort of the margin profile at that point versus pre COVID?

Debra A. Cafaro : Well, Ronald, we’re glad you like the deck. We obviously pride ourselves on our analytics, but your old colleague, BJ Grant, is helping us put it in the best format for our external constituencies. So we’re glad that you like it. And I’ll turn it over to Justin to start to answer your question.

Justin Hutchens : Sure. So in regards to leading indicators, you’ve noted they’re looking really good. We’ve had, we think, the highest fourth quarter lead volumes on record in terms of leads. Movements were solid. You noted the conversion rate. We had an operator that put in place a website upgrade intra month in December. It slowed down leads, a bit slowdown move-ins. Those move-ins have since recovered in January already, so no worries there. We expect to follow normal seasonal trends. And so you’ll see move-outs be a little bit higher. We’ve had — it’s normal to have additional clinical move-outs. It’s normal to have additional financial move-outs. And then so far in January, we’re off to a strong start with move-ins at 104% of 2019 in the U.S., 111% in Canada.

So all looking pretty good from a leading indicator standpoint. In regards to the margin question, there’s 1 thing that we’re all excited about. Obviously, Debbie noted it, I noted it, and that’s the pricing power. That’s really helped to accelerate our margin expansion. Occupancy growth does as well. So we do anticipate margins to continue to expand. And also, to Debbie’s point, we’re anticipating and hoping to get back to that 2019 level again. And margins will — should settle out but also should continue to grow because of the strong demand for the senior housing sector.

Operator: Your next question will come from the line of Michael Carroll with RBC Capital Markets.

Michael Carroll : Just regarding to your SHOP same-store growth forecast. Is there a meaningful difference between the legacy same-store assets versus the new properties coming in, in terms of growth? I mean, I think that a lot of the new stuff being added from new seniors, so is the growth profile of the new senior assets different than the legacy same-store portfolio?

Debra A. Cafaro : Mike, I’m glad you asked that, and I’m going to ask Bob to answer it.

Bob Probst : Yes. Mike, I’d say, first off, all the pools, all of the operators are contributing really attractive growth across the board literally as you look at it. This is broad-based growth in recovery and improvement across the portfolio. And you mentioned new senior, new senior importantly part of that contribution. And when you look at the fourth quarter of ’22, you’ll see almost the same asset pool, and that growth in the fourth quarter reflects that broad-based strength.

Debra A. Cafaro : Yes. I mean, what I think you should like about it is we now have the vast majority of our SHOP business in the same-store pool. So that makes it more meaningful for investors to understand the performance of the business.

Operator: Your next question will come from the line of Steve Sakwa with Evercore ISI.