The Ensign Group, Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Ensign Group Q3 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. It is now my pleasure to introduce Executive Vice President Chad Keech.

Thank you. Welcome, everyone, and thanks for joining us on our call today. We filed our earnings press release yesterday, and it is available on the investor relations section of our website at nzinegroup.net. A replay of this call will also be available on our website until 5 p.m. Pacific on Friday, November 25, 2022. We want to remind any listeners that may be listening to a replay of this call that all statements made are as of today, October 27, 2022, and these statements have not been nor will be updated subsequent to today's call. Also, any forward-looking statements made today are based on management's current expectations, assumptions, and beliefs about our business and the environment in which we operate. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to materially differ from those expressed or implied on today's call. Listeners should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, and are encouraged to review our SEC filings for a more complete discussion of factors that could impact our results. Except as required by federal securities laws, Ensign and its affiliates do not undertake to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements where changes arise as a result of new information, future events, changing circumstances, or for any other reason. In addition, the Ensign Group, Inc. is a holding company with no direct operating assets, employees, or revenues. Certain of our wholly-owned independent subsidiaries, collectively referred to as the service center, provide accounting, payroll, human resources, information technology, legal, risk management, and other services to other operating subsidiaries and standard-bearer healthcare REIT, our real estate subsidiary, through contractual relationships with these entities. In addition, our wholly-owned captive insurance subsidiary provides certain claims-made coverage to our operating entities for general and professional liability as well as for workers' compensation insurance liabilities. The words Enzyme, Company, We, Our, and Us refer to the Enzyme Group, Inc., and its consolidated subsidiaries. All of our operating companies, the service center, standard bearer, and the insurance captive are operated by separate, wholly owned, independent entities that have their own management, employees, and assets. References herein to the consolidated company and its assets and activities as well as the use of words like we, us, our, and similar terms are not meant to apply, nor should it be construed as meaning that the enzyme group has direct operating assets, employees, or revenue, or that any of the subsidiaries are operated by the enzyme group. Also, we supplement our GAAP reporting with non-GAAP metrics. When viewed together with our GAAP results, we believe that these measures can provide a more complete understanding of our business, but they should not be relied upon to the exclusion of GAAP reports. A Gap to Non-Gap Reconciliation is available in yesterday's press release and is available in our Form 10-2. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Barry Port, our CEO. Barry?

Thanks, Chad, and thank you for joining us today. We're proud to report another strong quarter and are pleased that we have been able to continue to improve our clinical and financial results across our portfolio. We are grateful for the efforts and commitment of our teams, caregivers, and leaders who work endlessly to love one another and support each other which allows for the high quality patient outcomes they consistently achieve. In spite of yet another quarter of impressive results, we also recognize that there are many opportunities to improve on certain operational fundamentals, both in existing operations and the growing number of new acquisitions. During the quarter, we experienced steady improvement in occupancies, Medicare revenue, and managed care revenue. Our operators also achieved sequential growth in overall occupancy for the seventh consecutive quarter. Our operations experienced strong quarter-over-quarter growth in skilled mixed revenue with same store skilled mixed revenue of 54% and transitioning skilled mixed revenue of 48%. Additionally, we saw continued improvement in occupancy with same store and transitioning operations increasing by 2.4% and 5.3% respectively over the prior year quarter. Recently, the federal government extended the state of emergency to January 2023, which keeps in place many of the regulatory and other forms of assistance helpful to patient care. We continue to benefit from improved Medicaid funding in several states. While we certainly can't know for sure what the COVID future looks like, it is possible that this additional funding will not continue to be extended. Given the improvements we continue to see in occupancies, skilled mix, and reimbursement, we are raising our annual 2022 earnings guidance again to $4.10 and $4.18 per diluted share, up from the previously increased guidance of $4.05 to $4.15 per diluted share. In addition, we are raising our annual revenue guidance to $3.01 billion to $3.03 billion, up from the previously increased revenue guidance of $2.96 billion to $3 billion. The new midpoint of this 2022 earnings guidance represents an increase of 14% over our 2021 results and is 32% higher than our 2020 results. We remain confident that our operating model will continue to allow each operator to form their own market-specific strategy and to adjust to the needs of their local medical communities, including methods for attracting new healthcare professionals into our workforce and retaining and developing our existing staff. We are very excited to be adding new operations in several geographies. These transitions will take time, particularly given the continued labor pressures, but with each new operation, we are creating new opportunities for the next generation of leaders and look forward to working together to help each operation reach its enormous clinical and financial potential. An important part of the Insight story has been our local leaders' ability to acquire struggling operations and transform them into facilities of choice for their communities. We are confident that as we diligently apply our proven principles, all of our recently acquired operations will become high-performing, end-sign caliber operations. To be clear, when we evaluate our expanding portfolio, we see more organic growth potential within our existing portfolio than ever before. Combine that with a number of very attractive acquisition opportunities we see on the near and far horizon, And we are poised to again showcase our ability to find, acquire, and transition performing and underperforming operations by applying proven InSign principles developed over two decades. As we relentlessly follow and protect the cultural fundamentals that got us here, we are confident that we will continue to consistently produce world-class clinical and financial performance. Next, I'll ask Chad to discuss our recent growth. Chad?