National Health Investors, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the National Health Investors Second Quarter 2020 Earnings Call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, we will conduct a question and answer session. At that time, if you have a question, please press the 1 followed by the 4 on your telephone. If at any time during the conference you need to reach an operator, please press star 0. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded Tuesday, August 11, 2020. I would now like to turn the conference over to Dana Hambly. Please go ahead.

Thank you and welcome everyone to the National Health Investors Conference call to review the company's results for the second quarter of 2020. On the call with me today are Eric Mendelsohn, President and CEO, Kevin Pascoe, Chief Investment Officer, and John Spaid, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We're also joined today by Donald Thompson, who is the founder and CEO of Senior Living Community. The results as well as the notice of the accessibility of this conference call on a listen-only basis over the Internet were released yesterday after market close in a press release that's been covered by the financial media. As a reminder, any statements in this conference call which are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. NHI cautions investors that any forward-looking statements may involve risks or uncertainties and are not guarantees of future performance. All forward-looking statements represent NHI's judgment as of the date of this conference call. Investors are urged to carefully review various disclosures made by NHI and its periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the risk factors and other information disclosed in NHI's Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2020. Copies of these filings are available on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. or NHI's website at www.nhireap.com. In addition, certain terms used in this call are non-GAAP financial measures, reconciliations of which are provided in NHI's earnings release and related tables and schedules which have been filed on Form 8K with the SEC. Listeners are encouraged to review these reconciliations provided in the earnings release together with all other information provided in that release.

I'll now turn the call over to Eric Mendelsohn. Thank you, Dana. Hello, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. First and foremost, we want to express our gratitude and admiration to all of our operating partners and their frontline heroes that go to great lengths to keep our senior population safe in what is inarguably the worst crisis this industry has ever experienced. While too often overlooked and unfairly criticized in the media, The work they do is inspirational to all of us at NHI and we cannot thank them enough. I said on our last conference call that reputations are made during a crisis and that when history reflects back on this time, there will be operators that are hailed as heroes. Now that we are another three months into this pandemic, I still feel the same way. Our operating partners weathered the initial onslaught of the pandemic which introduced significant obstacles including difficulties in sourcing PPE and addressing erratic staffing and regulatory issues, not to mention the negative media coverage. While certainly not back to normal, our operators have adapted and generally experienced better stabilization as move-ins have gradually rebounded to slow the rate of occupancy decline experienced in the earliest months of this crisis. But the challenges posed by COVID, particularly to our senior residents, are very real, and it is difficult to say with any degree of accuracy when we will return to a more normal operating environment. In recent weeks, our operators have experienced an increase in active resident cases, which broadly reflects what we have seen in the country as COVID spreads. As of August 4th, we had 450 active resident cases in 85 of our buildings. This was down from the prior week, but still the second highest weekly number since we started reporting this data in mid-March. It should be pointed out that in some cases, our skilled operators are accepting COVID positive patients for treatment from hospitals in the normal course of business. Our operators have done an admirable job of limiting the spread of COVID if it does get into the community. More extensive testing is leading to earlier detection, particularly of asymptomatic residents, which we believe translates to better clinical outcomes and fewer deaths. Today we are pleased to have Donald Thompson with Senior Living Communities join us as a special guest today to provide an operator's perspective on the impact of the pandemic and his longer-term outlook for SLC, and Seniors Housing in general. Our second quarter and year-to-date AFFO growth have been above our initial projections, reflecting the strength of the triple net lease strategy. John will cover the results in more detail. Our second quarter contractual rent collections were nearly 100%. July was strong as well at 97%. And month-to-date August collections are as expected. We expect to provide a business update for August as we have done for June and July. Notwithstanding the results so far, our visibility is obviously clouded by COVID and the impact it is having on our operators' margins. Subsequent to the quarter end, we reached a rent deferral agreement with Bickford and are negotiating another agreement with a separate operator. Kevin will provide more details in his comments. Our priorities for the balance of the year are simple and straightforward. Continue active dialogue with our operators and support them when and where we can with the goal of improving coverage, maintain a low-levered balance sheet to provide financial flexibility, and continue to provide transparency to the investment community as the pandemic unfolds. With that, I'll turn the call over to John. John.