Welltower Inc. (NYSE:WELL) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Steve Sakwa: Shankh, I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the investment opportunities that you’re sort of seeing out there? And sort of the distress in the system, you guys were obviously very active last year. I’m just curious what it takes to sort of shake the tree and how the returns might have changed kind of looking forward on the new deals?

Shankh Mitra: Steve, I don’t think I have much to add. Maybe Nikhil has something to add after I’m done. I would just tell you that this is sort of the only time I’ve seen where there’s opportunity in all three product types across all three countries, right? You usually don’t see that. And that’s driven by — last couple of years have been primarily debt driven, right? So, we have seen a lot of opportunities in the IRR. So, we have done senior housing 9%, call it circa, 9%, some higher, some lower, but call it around 9%. Historically, I’ve said medical office is an interesting business to buy or interesting space to invest around, call it, 7-plus unlevered IRR. Finally, we’re seeing opportunities in 8-plus level. And on the wellness side, where the cap rates have been very, very tight, IRRs have been in the 6s, we’re finally seeing they’re in the high-7s, right?

So, that’s sort of, I would say, where the different investment landscape where we’re seeing opportunities, but depends on — some are obviously higher. We’re still seeing some double-digit opportunities. But I will tell you the other thing is because it’s not just debt driven but also equity driven, most of the stuff that we have bought in last couple of years, we’re fundamentally focused on right location, right product, right basis. And we have bought lots of assets with no cash flow, negative cash flow. And finally, we’re seeing because people have to transact, right, what’s happening, we are seeing opportunities that with very good bases, with very good locations, assets are also starting to come with cash flow. That’s sort of, I will say, the slight change in nuance of the investment landscape.

But I don’t know, Nikhil you want to add anything?

John Burkart: And I think the other thing I’ll add is we just go through a lot of pain and effort to try and be the highest quality counterparty for someone to deal with. Whether it is the speed of execution, whether it is across the time frame of a transaction sticking with what we started off saying initially, the deal was, and in times like these, it just makes us the preferred counterparty. And so, there’s a lot of recognition for that across the Street. And it’s times like these that we really are able to shine. So, very excited about our pipeline for the year.

Operator: We’ll take our next question from Rich Anderson at SMBC.

Rich Anderson: If I could just — on the PLR, very, very interesting indeed — just some thoughts around it. Does this mean that we should see sort of a pace of investment from you guys to bring managers in-house for what you have currently? And how much of the IL portfolio that you have today didn’t qualify? Will there be cut changes there to have them pass the test so that they also can qualify for the PLR ruling? Thanks.