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Ventas to Acquire New Senior Investment Group In $2.3 Billion Deal

Ventas will acquire New Senior Investment Group in an all-stock transaction, valued at approximately $2.3 billion, including $1.5 billion of new senior debt.

With the acquisition of New Senior’s 12,404 units, Ventas is getting a geographically diversified portfolio of 103 private-pay senior living communities, including 102 independent living communities. It spans 36 states in the United States.

New Senior shareholders will receive 0.1561 shares of newly issued Ventas stock per share of New Senior common stock. That comes out to approximately $9.10 per New Senior share, a 31% equity premium based on its 30-day trading average and a 10% premium on its total enterprise value.

Ventas anticipates that the transaction will be approximately $0.09 to $0.11 accretive to its normalized funds from operations per share on a full-year basis. It is also expected to represent roughly a 6% capitalization rate on expected New Senior 2022 Net Operating Income.

“The transaction provides Ventas shareholders with an attractive valuation and accretion, and further positions us to win the recovery,” said Debra A. Cafaro, Ventas Chairman and CEO, in a prepared statement. “It continues Ventas’s longstanding track record of capital allocation excellence, builds on our deep experience with the independent living product and leading operators Atria and Holiday, and is a testament to the continued dedication and expertise of our outstanding team.”

The Ventas-New Senior deal is the second significant seniors transaction in the past week. Last week, Welltower announced that it was acquiring a portfolio of 86 seniors housing properties owned by Holiday Retirement for $1.58 billion, or $152,000 per unit.

The portfolio includes 80 nearly identical independent living and six combinations of independent living and assisted living properties. Upon the closing date of this transaction, expected to be in the third quarter of 2021, Atria Senior Living will assume operations of the properties and retain Holiday’s in-place senior management and staff.

The price tag of $1.58 billion represents a 30% discount to the estimated replacement cost, according to Welltower. The REIT says the transaction is expected to be approximately $0.10 per diluted share accretive to its normalized funds from operations during the first twelve months post-closing.

These transactions are occurring as seniors housing is primed for recovery. The JLL Valuation Advisory says demand in the sector will soon be at its highest point ever. Helping magnify that demand will be supply shortages as construction delays from the pandemic hindered starts. As a percentage of existing supply, units under construction dropped from peak levels of 7.0% in Q4 2019 to 4.7% in Q1 2021. JLL says the need to serve the middle-income population will increase, resulting from the global impact of COVID-19.

“Investors remain bullish on seniors housing and care investments,” said JLL Managing Director Zach Bowyer, MAI, head of Alternatives Asset Sectors, Valuation Advisory. “We anticipate market fundamentals to steadily improve and the market to re-stabilize between two and four years, depending on the location.”

 

Source: GlobeSt

Welltower Recaps $550M Medical Office Portfolio Through Joint Venture With Wafra

Welltower has recapitalized a medical office portfolio through a $550 million joint venture with global alternative investment platform Wafra.

Wafra now owns a 80% stake in the 24-asset portfolio, which is located in Texas, Florida, Minnesota, the Carolinas, Tennessee, California, Pennsylvania and Washington, among other states. The REIT is retaining a 20% interest in the portfolio, which is 97% affiliated with health systems. Welltower will also continue serving as asset manager and operator for the properties.

“The two companies may partner on other deals,” said Russell Valdez, Wafra’s chief investment officer. “We look forward to expanding our footprint together in these growing sectors with the shared goal of further collaboration on healthcare and other real estate opportunities.”

There is a case to be made that medical office assets will flourish as the pandemic passes. Cushman & Wakefield argues that the same drivers that fueled medical offices before the pandemic—namely demographics—will continue to support the sector’s growth. It also notes that healthcare spending is projected to increase by $1.9 trillion in the US alone between 2020 and 2027, per the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

 

Source: GlobeSt.

Q3 Medical Office Building Sales Were $2.2 Billion

After a slow start to the year, medical office building (MOB) sales have picked up in the second and third quarters (Q2 and Q3), providing a strong possibility that the final 2019 volume will top $10 billion for the fifth straight year.

According to two data firms that separately compile their own MOB sales statistics – Arnold, Md.-based Revista and New York-based Real Capital Analytics (RCA) – transaction volume in Q3 topped $2 billion. Both firms’ data shows that year-to-date (YTD) MOB sales through Q3 topped $7.1 billion.

RCA’s data had Q3 MOB sales at $2.35 billion, for a YTD total of $7.28 billion. The firm’s data also indicates that the average capitalization (cap) rate, or the expected first-year yield, in Q3 was 6.7 percent – up from 6.3 percent in Q2 – and the average price per square foot (PSF) of $316, which was down from $326 a quarter earlier.

Revista, which uses different criteria for compiling its MOB sales data than RCA, indicates that Q3 sales totaled $2.2 billion, bringing the YTD total to $7.1 billion. Revista’s data shows that the overall average cap rate for MOB sales was about 6.6 percent in Q3, with the average cap rate for MOB portfolio sales coming in at 6.2 percent and single assets at 6.8 percent. Revista data puts the average PSF for all MOB sales at $323.

Interestingly, Revista data shows that there is still a premium to be paid for on-campus MOBs, which sold for an average of $339 PSF; on the other hand, off-campus facilities had an average PSF of $321.

Revista’s data also indicates the highest quality properties, those in the top 25 percent, sold for average cap rates of 5.8 percent and the absolute highest quality properties selling for cap rates averaging 4.4 percent.

While the YTD MOB sales volume stood at more than $7 billion at the end of Q3, there is a good chance that Q4 will see a strong uptick in volume. This news come by way of a variety of industry professionals as well as 2019’s biggest buyer by far, Toledo, Ohio-based Welltower Inc. (NYSE: WELL).

As HREI reported on Nov. 13, Welltower, which had made MOB investments topping $2 billion YTD through the end of Q3, last week announced that in recent weeks it had entered into five separate definitive agreements to acquire MOBs for a combined total of $1.67 billion.

Welltower’s pending acquisitions, for which it has entered definitive agreements, includes a $787 million purchase of 29 “Class A” MOBs from Milwaukee-based Hammes Partners. In addition, the REIT announced that it is “under contract” to make four other, separate MOB transactions totaling $885 million.

Those purchases, if they close as predicted by the end of year, would bring Welltower’s total 2019 MOB acquisitions to more than $3.5 billion.

Welltower’s deals alone, should they indeed close by the end of the year, would bring the MOB sector’s overall volume for the year, when added to the $7 billion-plus recorded in the first three quarters, to nearly $9 billion and provide a virtual lock that 2019’s volume will exceed $10 billion once again.

 

Source: HREI