Welltower Inc. (NYSE:WELL) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Shankh Mitra: Yes. I think, Jonathan, if you think about the sheer number of transactions that we do, but beyond that, everything we look at [indiscernible] humanly impossible to do that without having incredible tools, right? So that — and you’ve seen a lot of this, but the tools and the capabilities on our analytics team are the only reason we are able [indiscernible] do. And so they are an integral part of every step of the investment process from a pretty screen to shift through hundreds of buildings to them be able to predict the stabilized NOI for each building under different operators and find the right operator for those buildings. It’s integral to what we are doing. So all the investments that we’ve made are paying off [indiscernible].

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Juan Sanabria of BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Juan Sanabria: I just wanted to ask around the seniors housing portfolio that non-same-store pool that Shankh mentioned was doing well. Just curious how many of those, I think it’s nearly 160 assets are in the transitions bucket not in same-store, will be added over the course of the year? And how are those faring relative to the same-store pool? And should we expect those to be additive to growth as those are folded into same-store?

Shankh Mitra: Juan, a lot of these early transitions will eventually come into after five quarters. So depending on when they were done, they will come towards the end of the — towards the end of the year. You should expect strong growth from them, whether they will be additive or not, it’s too early to say. Probably, there will be similar growth or they will add to the growth. But it depends also — remember, they’re coming up with strong overlapping strong quarters behind them as well. What was the other part of your question, Juan that I missed?

Juan Sanabria: That was essentially it. Thank you.

Tim McHugh: Juan, just on the kind of numbers there, the 159, so the Canadian assets that have transitioned, there’s about 62 of those in our transition portfolio. Those transition in the fourth quarter. Those will be — those will come back in ’25, the majority of the rest of them come into the pool up ’24.

Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Michael Griffin of Citi. Your line is open.

Nick Joseph: Thanks. It’s Nick here with Michael. You touched on what’s happening on the bank side and on the lending side, but also on kind of the long-term drivers and the supply-demand imbalance. So I guess — are you seeing more capital that you’re competing with for some of these deals, get more interest in the [technical difficulty], and I guess on the same — on the flip side, just on development, obviously, we haven’t seen starts bounce back, but are you starting to see anything from a planning stage or any green shoots of supply starting to at least be contemplated?

John Burkart: Yes. Nick, I think the answer to both of those questions is a simple, no. We haven’t seen any new capital come into the business. And there’s really not much capital out there that is not reliant on the debt market. And the debt markets are just completely frozen [ph] and we expect them to continue to be frozen for the foreseeable future. And that obviously plays into the development cycle as well. So we’ve actually seen the opposite rather than folks take on new predevelopment and new potential projects, folks are giving us on products that they’re previously pursuing [indiscernible] team and all of that. So [indiscernible] answer your questions.

Operator: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Joshua Dennerlein of Bank of America. Your line is open.

Joshua Dennerlein: Good morning, everyone. John, I wanted to follow-up on a comment you made on the operating platform and how a big part of the strategy is to create efficiencies to reduce the admin burden and put more time into care. I was hoping you could elaborate on where you are in building out this capability. And just in general, just provide more color on this aspect of the operating platform.

John Burkart: Yes, absolutely. I would rather quiet honestly about it. We are getting very close. There’s not a lot of detailed updates to give other than we are right on plan right now. As it relates to the types of savings we expect and that we are identifying pretty substantial when you look at how a person starts as a prospect and move through the process ultimately into the community reducing the paperwork pretty dramatically, reducing the repetition of input of information because the system is a singular unified system. And so all of that reduces errors. It reduces wasted admin time and really enable senior people like the nursing teams, like the executive directors and others and sales teams to really focus on their job and leverage technology to drive value there.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Michael Carroll of RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Michael Carroll: Yes, thanks. I guess, John, sticking with you, can you provide some color on the performance of the Cogir, PLR portfolio in Canada? I mean how has that relationship worked so far? And are there plans or discussions to kind of create new PLR relationships to kind of build off of the structure in different parts of the market?

John Burkart: Yes, I’ll start with the broader question as far as plans for broader PLR, our focus is and always has been to drive value from a customer employee perspective and, of course, from a shareholder perspective. So it’s not the process to say let’s create a bunch of those types of partnerships. The objective is to drive value. In this case, the value is substantial. Our partner, Cogir and my partner, Frederick, are fantastic to work with. That is doing very, very well. The assets have embraced Cogir, the teams have embraced Cogir and Cogir’s management and we’re very satisfied and appreciative to all the work that is being done there. Our expectations of that portfolio will perform fantastically this year. Of course, this transition has occurred during the quiet period. So it’s not a lot of activity as it relates to leasing. It’s just starting at this point in time up in Canada.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Jim Kammert of Evercore. Your line is open.

Jim Kammert: Good morning. Thank you. It looks like there’s some real standouts on the Senior Housing side among your larger operators in terms of in-place NOI contributions. I mean, Sunrise was up 30% sequentially, Oakmont 11%, StoryPoint 19%, et cetera. And John, you speak to sort of the benefits of densification and regional operators. Was such gains in the NOI really driven more by that, do you think in best practices? Or was this more of a cyclical episodic portfolio in terms of NOI advances traditional occupancy, et cetera? Thanks.