Ventas, Inc. (NYSE:VTR) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Unidentified Analyst: Hey good morning. Jesus on for Connor this morning. Thanks for having me on the call today. So, just on the equitized loan portfolio, how should we be thinking about the rest of the assets in the mix here? So, how far along is Ventas been identifying and processing the CapEx needs of the outpatient medical assets? A couple of quarters back, you were talking about using a playbook from a previous portfolio. So, I’m just wondering if you can quantify the amount and timing of these investments? And how are these leasing conversations progressing for the portfolio? And just a quick follow-up. Looks like the SNFs, you guys had some pretty favorable cash yields in the assets sold. Any color on the coverage level or remaining lease term on these assets? Thanks guys.

Debra Cafaro: Good morning Jesus. I’m going to ask Pete to talk about the opportunity in the medical office building portfolio outpatient medical that he’s taken over and is deploying the Lillibridge playbook. There’s a lot of opportunity, and we’re obviously off to a good start there. And Pete, I’ll turn that over to you and–

Pete Bulgarelli: Thanks. So, we’re really excited about the portfolio. So far, we have transitioned 32 buildings onto our Lillibridge platform, out of 88. So we’ve made great progress in the first quarter. As it relates to leasing, we have replaced about half our leasing agents. We’ve replaced 12 out of 23 leasing agents for people that we think are really going to run with this portfolio. We started this portfolio at 77% occupancy. We just completed our first quarter of running this portfolio. We had an 85% retention rate and we’ve got 200,000 square feet worth of new leasing in our pipeline. So we’re very optimistic. And I’ll give you — just — to me, it’s a fun anecdote. We had this building that we inherited called Eagle’s Landing in suburban Atlanta.

It’s a 45,000 square foot building, it was empty, 0% occupancy when we picked it up. And it’s now 30% leased, and we just signed an LOI on another 20,000 square feet in the building yesterday. So, we’re going to be at 75% occupancy, very shortly in that one building. So, we’re optimistic about the portfolio. As it relates to capital, we are investing some capital to improve some of the infrastructure of these buildings, and we’re well underway on those as well.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Michael Stroyeck with Green Street. Please go ahead.

Michael Stroyeck: Good morning. Can you just provide some additional color surrounding the decline in occupancy within the MOB portfolio, the info on the type of tenant — assets seen the decline and just what drove that would be helpful? Thanks.

Pete Bulgarelli: Sure. So, look, our occupancy is at 91.7%. And we’ve had some really nice gains over the last couple of quarters in occupancy. We’re really happy with our retention. Retention is 82%, TTM and 88% for the quarter. We got a very strong new leasing pipeline of 600,000 square feet for the OM portfolio. And we have two off-campus, non-strategic 30,000 square things that we’re considering selling. And if those were not in the portfolio, occupancy be essentially flat.

Debra Cafaro: Thanks Pete.

Operator: Our final question comes from the line of Vikram Malhotra with Mizuho. Please go ahead.

Vikram Malhotra: Thanks for taking the question. Just considering the success you’ve had with the transitions at holiday. I’m wondering, is there a plan to maybe take another bucket and transition them? Or are there any signs that there’s maybe incrementally group that ABC sort of BP — performance, given how successful the transitions have been — and just related to that transition, can you also just address where you stand on the Brookdale lease, which I think is due in a couple of years?