National Health Investors, Inc.

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the National Health Investors' 4th Quarter 2024 Earnings Webcast and Conference Call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. If you have any questions or comments during the presentation, you may press star 1 on your phone to enter the question queue at any time, and we will open the floor for your questions and comments after the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Dana Hamley. Sir, the floor is yours.

Thank you, and welcome to the National Health Investors Conference Call to review results for the fourth quarter of 2024. On the call today are Eric Mendelson, President and CEO, Kevin Pascoe, Chief Investment Officer, John Spade, Chief Financial Officer, and David Travis, Chief Accounting Officer. The results, as well as notice of the accessibility of this conference call, were released after the market closed yesterday in a press release that's been covered by the financial media. 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-K for the year ended December 31, 2024. Copies of these filings are available on the SEC's website at sec.gov or on NHI's website at nhiread.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 furnished on Form 8K to the SEC. Listeners are encouraged to review those reconciliations provided in the earnings release together with all other information provided in that release. On that turn the call over to our CEO, Eric Mendelson.

Hello, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. We ended the year on a strong note as the fourth quarter results exceeded our expectations with contributions from across the portfolio. Our cash rent increased by nearly 9% year over year on solid organic growth from rent step-ups and deferral repayments, as well as increased investment activity Shop occupancy continued to accelerate through the end of the year, which helped to generate 12.5% NOI growth, and we announced investments of over $150 million during the quarter at an initial yield of 8.5%, while our balance sheet leverage ticked down to 4.1 times from 4.4 times in the third quarter. Reflecting on the full year's results, we benefited from similar trends. Our hard work performed during the portfolio optimization contributed meaningfully to 2024. This included over $11 million in total deferral repayments and approximately 17% growth in Bickford's cash rental income. Shop NOI increased by approximately 32%, which was above the high end of our guidance. driven mainly by improved occupancy and 350 basis points of margin improvement. From a capital allocation perspective, we announced over $235 million at an average yield of approximately 8.6%. This was our most active year since 2019, and the momentum is clearly building. As a result, the company delivered growth in annual NAE REIT FFO, normalized FFO, and FAD for the first time since 2020. And while that growth is not linear, we exceeded the high end of our original February guidance for the full year. John will provide more details in his comments. Looking forward to 2025, we expect growth to continue as reflected in guidance. As noted a moment ago, our 2024 results were bolstered by rent step-ups and deferral repayments resulting from the effects of COVID era restructuring. While we still expect some benefit to accrue from the 2025 financial results, we are looking for other avenues to support internal growth. Specifically we're considering select opportunities to transition triple net senior housing assets to shop structures, where we see excellent long term potential with existing or new operators. The senior housing industry has exceptional tailwinds, so we believe this strategy is a capital efficient way to improve shareholder value by increasing our overall exposure to senior housing operations and working with strong partners to generate greater cash flow and higher real estate valuations. We also continue to see significant organic upside in our existing shop platform With the portfolio operating at close to 90%, we plan to strategically increase REV4 to further drive margin expansion. After 32% NOI growth in 2024, we're guiding to 12% to 15% in 2025. Turning to our outlook on external growth, The balance sheet is in great shape and very supportive of funding significant investment opportunities. We were able to be advantageous in the equity markets last year by raising net proceeds of approximately 262 million on a forward basis of which approximately 119 million remains available to settle. As John will detail in his comments, we are including $225 million of incremental investments in our guidance reflecting our high conviction in the near-term outlook. While we're not including any investments beyond that, I think it's safe to say that we'd be disappointed if we did not surpass last year's total of $237.5 million. We're off to a good start in 2025. We closed 21.2 million sale leaseback in January, have 152.3 million under signed LOIs, and in addition, we have an active pipeline of approximately 190 million. In closing, I'm pleased with the execution in 2024, and I'm very optimistic that 2025 will be an even more productive year. While the interest rate environment has weighed recently on the cost of capital, we still have the capacity and ability to move more quickly than other capital providers to the senior housing sector who have either scaled back their exposure or exited the industry entirely. As operators rush to take advantage of the most favorable industry fundamentals in the history of senior housing, NHI is competitively positioned as the partner of choice, which convinces us that we're in the early days of multiple years of exceptional growth. Before I turn the call over, I want to briefly comment on the recent filing in which Landon Buildings has nominated two candidates for election to our board of directors at the upcoming annual shareholder meeting. The company and the board take information received from shareholders very seriously. As such, the board has made significant changes over the last several years which reflect its commitment to its fiduciary responsibility and in direct response to shareholder concerns. We appreciate everyone's interest and hope that you'll understand that we have no further comment on this matter. I'll now turn the call over to Kevin to provide more details on our operations. Kevin.