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

Shankh Mitra: Let me try that. So first on CapEx I do not believe, other than inflationary changes, anything change from a CapEx standpoint, right? So just understand that we bought predominantly in the last two, three years, new assets. We bought one or two portfolio as the value-add portfolio. And when we bought it, for example, the Holiday Atria portfolio, we told you exactly what we underwrote to spend on CapEx, right? We bought in an extremely cheap basis. And we told you exactly what that CapEx needs are and how we plan to invest. So from that perspective, as you think about going forward, I do not believe — outside those couple of value-add investments that we have done, and we told you otherwise, when we have done it, we do not believe the business’s CapEx needs outside the sort of inflationary increases that are happening anything has changed.

Now, I think John has a very large plan, a very big plan to reamenitize the portfolio and sort of fundamentally changing what the value proposition might look like. Obviously, we’ll do that if think that we’re getting fantastic return on that incremental investment. But from a regular CapEx perspective, I don’t think anything has changed. From a pricing power standpoint, I don’t think — what else I can add other than to what I said to John’s question and the earlier question, which is we are feeling very good about the pricing power across all our countries and across all our product types. As you know that Canada has been a laggard, feels like Canada is starting to catch up. UK and U.S. has been strong and continue to be strong. So, we’re feeling pretty good.

John, do you want to add anything to that?

John Burkart: Yes. I mean, again, I would just say, on the value-add side, this is purely opportunistic. I mean, I just look at the world and see our portfolio is positioned so well to come with another layer of value-add opportunities because of the age of the portfolio, which are really the highest returns because the infrastructure is all in great shape. And so, you’re talking about what some people would call fluff and buff, but reamenitize, enhancing the units a little bit really improving that value proposition and getting paid very well for it, very much similar to what many of the multi have done, so. But that’s all enhanced the returns.

Shankh Mitra: Vikram, I missed one part of your question. I’ll just tell you that from a pricing power standpoint, this is something I mentioned in the last call that we are — despite our average occupancy of the portfolio, call it, circa 80%, there’s a significant part of the portfolio, call it, give or take, half of the portfolio, 45% of the portfolio is in that high-80s, mid- to high-80% occupancy. There, the pricing power changes to raising price because have no rooms to sell, right? So there is a dynamic that’s going on and increasingly we’ll get to the point as we move average occupancy for the portfolio, more and more properties within the bucket that you will get to that pricing power because, frankly, you have no room to sell. So that transition is happening and will continue to happen in ’23.

Operator: We’ll take a follow-up from Michael Griffin at Citi.

Michael Griffin: I just wanted a clarifying question. I don’t recall if I heard this earlier, but on the assets that continue to be operated by ProMedica, the assisted living and memory care. What is the coverage on those? Do you happen to have that handy?

Tim McHugh: Yes. Those are covered one-times on EBITDA basis.

Operator: And we’ll go next to Derek Johnston at Deutsche Bank.