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spk04: Greetings and welcome to Global Medical REIT second quarter 2021 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Steve Sweat, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
spk06: Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Global Medical Reits' second quarter earnings conference call. On the call today, we have Jeff Bush, Chief Executive Officer, Alfonso Leone, Chief Investment Officer, and Bob Kiernan, Chief Financial Officer. Please note the use of forward-looking statements by the company on this conference call. Statements made on this call may include statements which are not historical facts, and are considered forward-looking, including statements related to the COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on our tenants' businesses. The company intends these forward-looking statements to be covered by the safe harbor provisions for forward-looking statements contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and is making this statement for purpose of complying with those safe harbor provisions. Furthermore, actual results may differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. and will be affected by a variety of risks and factors that are beyond the company's control, including, without limitation, those contained in the company's 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020, and its other SEC filings. The company assumes no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Additionally, on this call, the company may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures such as funds from operations and adjusted funds from operations. You can find a tabular reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most currently comparable GAAP numbers in the company's earnings release and in filings with the SEC. Additional information may be found on the investor relations page of the company's website at www.globalmedicalreit.com. I would now like to turn the call over to Jeff Busch, Chief Executive Officer of Global Medical Reef. Jeff?
spk08: Thank you, Steve. Good morning, and thank you for joining our second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Joining me today are Alfonso Leone, our Chief Investment Officer, and Bob Kiernan, our Chief Financial Officer. We hope that everybody continues to stay healthy and enjoy their summer. GMRE is committed to building a high-quality portfolio of medical facilities aligned with strong operators and healthcare systems that will generate stable and growing returns for our investors. We continue to execute against this strategy and are very pleased with our performance in 2021. In the second quarter, we further strengthened our balance sheet and enhanced our financial flexibility, positioning us to continue executing on our growth plans and drive value for our investors. Importantly, our 2021 equity issuance have reduced our leverage from 52% at the year end of 2020 to 41% at both March 31st and June 30th, 2021. Specifically, in the second quarter, we raised $51 million to our ATM program at an average price of $15.27 per share, adding to the $150 million of equity we raised in the first quarter. In addition to our equity activity, we also amended our credit facility in the second quarter. The recast facility is unsecured and now has a total capacity of $750 million. We also reduced our pricing grid meaningfully and extended our debt maturity. With respect to earnings in the second quarter, we grew net income attributable to common shareholders to 4 cents per share. We also grew our FFO per share and unit to 22 cents, up 16 percent from the second quarter of 2020, and our AFFO per share and unit to 23 cents, up 10% compared to the same quarter last year. Despite the fact that we are seeing increased competition for acquisitions in our target markets, we remain disciplined and have been able to complete 140 million of acquisitions at a 7.4% weighted average cap rate to date in 2021. We have made steady progress so far this year, and we look forward to continuing to provide value to our shareholders through the rest of 2021. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Alfonso to discuss our acquisition activity.
spk09: Thanks, Jeff. The market for medical facilities remains competitive. Investors are valuing the benefits of medical facilities due to their outperformance during the pandemic and optimism in the long-term fundamentals of healthcare. Despite increasing competition, we continue to successfully source attractive properties within our target cap rate range. During the second quarter, we closed on seven acquisitions, totaling $71 million at a weighted average cap rate of 7.2%. Year-to-date, we have completed $140 million of acquisitions at a weighted average cap rate of 7.4%. Since our last earnings call, we've acquired four MOBs, namely a $19 million two-building portfolio, which is 94% leased, to A2-rated Memorial Health in Fortis, Illinois, with 10 years of weighted average lease term, a $9 million primary care clinic with lab and imaging, In Northeast Tallahassee, Florida, leased to one of the largest independent primary care groups in the market. A $7 million cancer center with diagnostics located adjacent to a 321-bed HCA hospital in North Charleston, South Carolina, which was acquired on a new 15-year single-tenant lease. And a $4 million acquisition of a Blue Sky Vision clinic in a suburb of Grand Rapids, Michigan. This is an add on to our existing portfolio with Blue Sky Vision in the Grand Rapids MSA, which was acquired in March 2020 for $22.5 million. After factoring in our 2021 acquisition, we now have a $1.3 billion portfolio in 33 states. We have averaged 18 closings per year, which ranks us among the most active investors in the MLB sector. Our focus on acquiring individual assets has benefited us tremendously as most other investors focus on acquiring large portfolios. As we continue to grow, we will leverage our relationships and network to continue to source and secure deals. To that end, we currently have three properties with an aggregate purchase price of $23.2 million under contract. These properties are currently in due diligence and subject to customary closing conditions, and we can offer no assurance that they will be closed. Looking ahead to the remainder of the year, we are reaffirming our expectation for acquisitions in 2021 to be within our guidance range of $175 and $225 million. I'd like now to turn the call over to Bob to discuss our financial results.
spk07: Bob? Thank you, Alfonso. GMRE continues to benefit from a stable platform and from the strong and reliable relationships that we have built with our tenants. This quarter, our portfolio produced strong results, and we are excited to see what the remainder of 2021 brings. With respect to key performance metrics, we ended the quarter with 4.1 million of total leaseable square feet, portfolio occupancy of 99.1%, with weighted average base rent of $23.90 per square foot, and 2.1% weighted average contractual rent escalation. Our tenants had an average rent coverage ratio of 4.4 times and our weighted average lease term at quarter end was 7.5 years. In the second quarter, we achieved a 28% year-over-year increase in rental revenues to $28.2 million, driven by our acquisition activity and rent escalation. Rent collections remained strong. Overall, we've collected over 98% of Q2 rent, including the impact of two tenants that we account for on a cash basis. Our total expenses for the second quarter of 2021 increased to $24.1 million from $20.4 million in the second quarter of 2020. The growth in expenses is primarily due to acquisitions completed over the past 12 months. G&A expense for the second quarter of 2021 was $4.3 million compared to $1.6 million for the second quarter of 2020. This difference is primarily due to the company being externally managed during the second quarter of last year as opposed to our current internally managed structure. including the $2 million of management fees incurred in Q2 last year in this comparison, reduces the increase in our 2021 G&A costs to $600,000 year over year. This remaining increase is due to an increase in non-cash stock compensation costs, which went from $900,000 in the second quarter last year to $1.6 million this year. Looking ahead, We anticipate our G&A expense to remain between 4 and 4.3 million on a quarterly basis in the second half of 2021, even as we increase the size of our portfolio. Net income attributable to common stockholders for the second quarter of 2021 was 2.55 million, or 4 cents per share, as compared to net income of 0.2 million in the second quarter of 2020. FFO in the second quarter was $0.22 per share and unit, up 16% from $0.19 per share and unit in the second quarter of 2020. AFFO for the second quarter was $0.23 per share and unit, up 10% from $0.21 per share and unit in the prior year quarter. Moving on to the balance sheet. As of June 30, 2021, gross investment in real estate was approximately $1.3 billion, which is up $263 million, or 26%, from the second quarter of 2020. In the second quarter, we generated gross proceeds of $51 million through ATM equity issuances of 3.4 million shares of our common stock at an average price of $15.27 per share. Year-to-date, we have raised $201 million from new equity issuances. Proceeds from these issuances were used to fund acquisitions, pay down the balance on our revolver, and for general corporate purposes. Reflecting the impact of equity issuances, at June 30, 2021, we had $507 million of net debt, and our leverage ratio was 41%, which was consistent with the end of the first quarter of this year and down significantly from 52% at year-end 2020. As Jeff mentioned earlier, we amended and restated our credit facility this quarter, increasing capacity by $150 million to $750 million, reducing borrowing costs across our pricing bids, converting to an unsecured facility, and extending maturity. Our weighted average interest rate during the quarter was 3.17%, and our current unutilized borrowing capacity under the revolver is approximately $265 million. Overall, based on the progress we've seen so far in 2021, We are well positioned to continue executing on our acquisition and overall business strategy and look forward to sharing our progress with you throughout the rest of the year. This concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, please open the call for questions.
spk04: Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Our first question today is from Amanda Schweitzer of Baird. Please proceed with your question.
spk00: Thanks. Good morning, guys.
spk04: Hi, Amanda.
spk00: I wanted to start on your unchanged acquisition guidance. And just given that you're approaching the low end of that guidance when you include your under contract pipeline, Can you give us a sense of what you need to see to give you greater confidence to raise that for your acquisition guidance, or at least point investors towards the higher end?
spk09: Sure. So, um, you know, in our, as you point out in our prayer remarks, we, we affirmed our guidance of 1 75 to 25 million. Every week we have pipeline calls to discuss deals and process new deals and potential deals. And this helps management and the entire company keep a pulse on deal flows, capital needs, timing of closing, and sequencing for logistical purposes. So these calls also help management calibrate the pace of deals and market pricing. And every quarter, we sit down as a management team to prepare our earnings report. And our acquisition guidance is a product of the cumulative knowledge we have at the time. Given our relative small size, there's always the possibility that we may find deals that will move the needle. Historically, we've come across larger transactions that offer a good value. It's not possible to predict whether or not we will find these larger transactions. So the flow of deals in the market is inherently unpredictable. But we try to provide a guidance number that is reasonable based on what we know at the time.
spk00: That's helpful, Alfonso. And then I guess kind of following up on that, you talked about the increased competition in the deal market, but can you quantify at all how much deal volume you are seeing on a monthly basis and how that compares to either earlier this year or pre-COVID level?
spk09: Sure. So I think, you know, just based on my tracking of the market, it's just to give you a rough sense, I mean, we, on average before we would see 25, 30 deals a month and it's closer to 40 to 50 deals a month in terms of dollar numbers, uh, dollar values, you know, it's running at call it 70, 80% above average, you know, and if you look across time every month, there's a lot of volatility, uh, in terms of, um, number of deals and volume that comes to market. But the last three months have clearly been very busy and everyone I talk to is, um, you know, running full and, you know, and with more to come. Uh, so everyone is, it's pretty, it's expecting this year to have a lot of, uh, transactions come to market. Um, it's very, very busy. You know, everyone is really, uh, stretched pretty thin. So, uh, you know, it's, it's, um, it's dramatic.
spk00: Yeah. That's helpful. And then final question from me. I mean, debt and equity capital are both available to you today. Can you provide an update on how you're thinking about funding deals for the rest of the year between leverage and equity and where you're comfortable taking that leverage level today?
spk07: Sure. So just kind of thinking back and looking at what we've done so far this year, you know, with the $200 million of equity that we have raised, we were very opportunistic in this second quarter and able to sell shares at an attractive price. And we're comfortable doing that and taking advantage of those situations. And we'll, you know, as we look ahead, we'll look at our pipeline and assess market conditions and consider additional equity. But, you know, we're comfortable in this range of between $40 and $45. percent leverage. And so far, you know, we've been at the lower end of that range, but I think that range is still a comfortable range for us.
spk00: That's helpful. Thanks all for the time. Appreciate it.
spk04: The next question is from Rob Stevenson of Janney. Please proceed with your question.
spk01: Good morning, guys. You guys have had very little lease expirations over the past few years, but when you start looking out, in 2023 and especially 2024, the lease rollover starts to increase pretty noticeably. When you look at those, is that one or two large tenants? Is that a lot of little tenants that are in that sort of 6% and 17%? And when do you guys start approaching those tenants to sort of knock that down a little bit so that you're not doing a lot of heavy lifting in the back half of 2023?
spk07: So, Rob, I'll start. And with respect to 2023, you know, four of that 6% is to specific tenants. So it's pretty highly concentrated. And as you get into 2024 and you look at the percentages increase up towards 16, there are, you know, a number of individually significant tenants, say at that called 3% level, 2% to 3% level that start to add up. And, you know, we're working on that today. I mean, those are things that we are kind of socializing and are part of the process that we're going through at this point. So it's really never too early to be focused on it. And, you know, I think the team is really, you know, starting – you know, those processes today and staging it the way that we, you know, we can be successful against that.
spk01: Okay.
spk08: Yeah. And then. Let me just add to that. You know, we renewed number two of our top three tenants for 10 years this last year. And that was one of them was in advance. One of them came up. We are in front of our tenants all the time, and we're starting conversations with all of them, even a few years out.
spk01: Okay. And then, Alfonso, are you seeing any better opportunities given the volume and the pricing in certain asset types these days over others among your core?
spk09: Not necessarily necessarily. No. You know, there's – I would characterize it more as supply is meeting demand. But not that I can tell that it's really opened up, you know, any – nothing really kind of popped to mind in terms of – as a result of the supply coming to market.
spk01: Okay. And then last one for me. Jeff, you guys bumped the dividend to half a penny earlier this year on the comments. you have a 80 to 85% targeted payout and you were about 89% here in the second quarter. How are you and the board thinking about future dividend increases and the magnitude of those increases and the frequency?
spk08: Well, it's up to the board, so I can't really give what they're thinking. I mean, the idea the last time was we were going to start a dividend policy and hopefully do every year. Right now, what we've done is we brought down, you know, we traded off AFFO for leverage. So you see how our leverage went from 52% to 41%. And a lot of that was a strategic trade-off to reduce our leverage in there. But right now, I expect, you know, now that we're at the low end of our cycle in leverage, as we get larger, our AFFO will get larger. So the coverage ratio, I mean, the ratio – that we calculate our dividend will be right in target. I do expect that. Okay. Thanks, guys.
spk04: The next question is from Connor of Barenburg. Please proceed with your question.
spk05: Good morning, everybody. Thank you for having me on the call today. Just to start on rent coverage, I noticed in the MOB portfolio, coverage had ticked down slightly in the last quarter. I'm wondering if this is due to acquisition activity, rolling new tenants into the list, or was there kind of a change in the complexion of operations in the tenant base within the last two quarters or so?
spk07: Yeah. Hi, Connor. There wasn't, I mean, anything really in particular that drove that change. I think, you know, when we look at the number as a whole, you know, we're still, you know, kind of very comfortable up at the level that it is. And That decrease from Q1 to Q2, it wasn't anything kind of called individually significant or a trend as I went back and looked through it.
spk05: Okay, that helps. And then I think it was mentioned in the prepared remarks, the two tenants on the cash basis. Apologies if I missed this. Are they current on rent and then? You know, what's the plan with those two tenants? Is there a plan to transition those properties or maybe dispose of them as we go along?
spk07: Yes. So I can give some color on those. So kind of backing up, there's two tenants, Kirby Kansas in Melbourne, Florida tenants that are both on a cash basis. And we did not receive any payments from them during the quarter. The Derby asset is much smaller, so I'll focus on the Melbourne asset and just give an update as to the current status. As we've mentioned in the past, it's a company that is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and they have gone through the Chapter 11 proceedings, and they have a court-approved reorganization plan. And as part of that, they have affirmed an updated lease with us. However, the tenant hasn't complied with the provisions of the reorganization and continues to be in default under our lease for nonpayment. We had been encouraged by the way they were handling the Chapter 11 and how it was moving, along with their pursuit of both equity and capital and PPP debt. But the lack of progress in securing capital and ongoing violation of the bankruptcy provisions, you know, we've initiated that. some more aggressive efforts to improve our position and just pursue alternative tenancy, you know, for the building should that opportunity arise. And, you know, as we work the different sides of the situation, you know, including some administrative elements of our underlying CMBS debt that finances that asset, you know, we've received very positive feedback, you know, from several high-quality tenant prospects over the last month. So, we certainly have better visibility into that market and what that looks like. And I think although we're disappointed, you know, that the progress here is moving more slowly than we hoped, we continue to be very optimistic about the long-term prospects of this building. And, you know, right now, you know, our next step is to really pursue potential remedies with the bankruptcy court. As I mentioned, if they're in violation of the reorg plan, we're going to be more aggressive on that front. And that could result in a situation where we, you know, two positive results for us. We can possibly begin to more actively pursue re-tenanting, or it can begin to force them to comply with the provisions of the bankruptcy. So that's really, those are our next steps. And that next court date is later in August. So it's something that is coming up, something that we're working and obviously has complexities in it due to the bankruptcy.
spk05: All right, I appreciate that. It's more color than I thought I was going to get. Thanks.
spk04: The next question is from Barry Oxford of Colliers. Please proceed with your question.
spk02: Great. Alfonso, when you're looking at the acquisition market right now, and I know you're always looking at kind of different property types, when you look at behavior health, how are you viewing that now, given that that is probably in more demand Have you seen cap rates moved, or are you liking that property type going forward more, more so? Sure.
spk09: So we've been looking at behavioral pretty much since the beginning, not with a heavy emphasis. And, you know, what's different about behavioral, and this is my perspective on it, is that when I compare it to medical office or surgery centers, The variety of operator, the variety of building type is much narrower than within behavioral. The variety of facilities within behavioral is pretty wide. You know, everything from institutional kind of hospital setting to resorts to, you know, things that look more like camps. So that's one obstacle. The other one is the types of businesses. It also varies a lot. And, you know, there's a lot more nuance behind kind of each type of operator and type of business they're doing and, you know, how they're positioned, what their reimbursements look like, what their payers look like, you know, and what kind of services they provide. You know, for me, a big thing is How resilient is their business model? What are their competitive advantages? What do their financials look like? The other challenge with behavioral is they tend to want to monetize their assets at a pricing that is meaningfully above appraised value. So that becomes a challenge, too. Having said that, though, I mean, there have been – Opportunities that make sense to us, that the real estate is attractive, has good residual value, the pricing is reasonable, the rents are reasonable. But, you know, from our perspective, it's, you know, a smaller subset of what's available. And the other thing to keep in mind is in the last couple years, cap rates for behavioral just across the board have gotten compressed. They were reliably sort of north of eight cap or seven cap. And now there's been some comps that have printed into sixes. So that's shifted as well. I don't think the market is doing a good job of differentiating between the types of operators and types of businesses. They're applying sort of a simplistic approach maybe. So that makes it challenging, too. But, you know, we are looking. There are some segments like geriatric behavioral or pediatric behavioral that make a ton of sense. You know, there's some operators that are very good as well that we like and know a few. But it's, you know, you have to dig through a lot to get deals that we find attractive.
spk02: I know. Perfect. Appreciate the color on that. question for Jeff. With the Delta COVID kind of coming back and kind of rearing its ugly head in some states out there, Jeff, would you see us kind of going back to postponing elective surgeries, or would you say, look, Barry, I don't think that's really on the table?
spk08: They kind of want, I mean, some of it is on the table, realistically, but they got a lot better at what they're doing. I mean, the time they postponed it, there wasn't vaccination, there wasn't other issues. So it's possible it could be a short slump in those, but not major. The medical practices themselves got really good procedures and how to protect the patients, excellent procedures and worked a lot. So, you know, the Delta are out there. can have some impact. I mean, even during the time that they postponed, we still collected 99% of our rent. Our tenants are in good shape, but there could be a little bit of that realistically.
spk02: Okay. Thanks for that. Thanks so much, guys. Thanks, Barry.
spk04: The next question is from Brian Marr of B Reilly Securities. Please proceed with your question.
spk03: Good morning, guys. Most of my questions have been asked and answered. But, you know, one of the things that we learned, you know, early on on Wall Street is, you know, for every buyer, you know, there's a seller. And Alfonso, you talked a lot about how deal activity, you're seeing a lot of assets for sale. Maybe Alfonso or Jeff, you can talk about what's motivating these sellers. Is it uh, just purely pricing? Is it developers looking to, you know, sell an asset and move on to the next, um, you know, property? What is, what is going on out there on the seller side?
spk09: Uh, you know, I think it's a combination of things. I mean, yes, uh, pricing is attractive. Um, you know, I think, um, there is some tax concerns. I mean, that's come up in conversation, um, And one way to look at it is less than you would have expected, but I'm always a little skeptical when I hear it as a rationale. M&A activity also drives, has brought a lot of monetizations to the market. The private equity investors, they like selling their real estate when they buy the opcos. And more often than not, it's the physician group and the founders that own the real estate. They're the ones that are selling in conjunction with or ahead of or after they get acquired by a private equity group. I think there's just natural life cycle end of life cycle where, you know, you've got a founder that's owned the building for five, 10 years. It just feels it's the right time to sell. There's estate planning. There's always a variety of reasons. You mentioned investors too. I mean, that's been a growing inventory of real estate that's come to market. I mean, just as the industry has matured, there's just more investors that own a bigger estate. a bigger amount of real estate. So it's a combination of things. And so, you know, it's not any one thing.
spk03: Okay, thank you. That's all for me.
spk04: There are no additional questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back to Jeff Bush for closing remarks.
spk08: I'd like to thank everybody. I just want to mention one milestone that we hit, which wasn't easy. We went over a billion dollars market cap. in this quarter. And thank you very much for attending this meeting and stay safe.
spk04: This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
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