Ventas, Inc.

and welcome to the Ventus fourth quarter 2020 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during this time, you will need to press star then one on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press star then zero, and an operator will come back on to assist you. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Sarah Whitford, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Amy. Good morning, and welcome to the Ventas fourth quarter financial results conference call. Earlier this morning, we issued our fourth quarter earnings release, supplemental, and investor presentation. These materials are available on the Ventas website at ir.ventasreit.com. As a reminder, remarks made today may include forward-looking statements, including certain expectations related to COVID-19 and other matters. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and a variety of factors may cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by such statements. For a more detailed discussion of those factors, please refer to our earnings release for this quarter and to our most recent SEC filings, all of which are available on the Ventas website. Certain non-GAAP financial measures will also be discussed on this call. For reconciliation of these measures to the most closely comparable GAAP measures, please refer to our supplemental posted on the investor relations section of our website. I will now turn over the call to Deborah A. Cafaro, Chairman and CEO.

Thank you, Sarah, and good morning to all of our shareholders and other participants. On behalf of all my colleagues, we want to welcome you to the Ventas fourth quarter and year-end 2020 earnings call. Let me begin by expressing my deep gratitude and optimism, born of the strength, resilience, and innovation so many have demonstrated over the past year. and the positive developments we are seeing on the ground in our portfolio virtually every day. Our results in the fourth quarter demonstrated Ventas' resilience with normalized FFO reported at 83 cents a share and 74 cents at much appreciated funding from HHS to our senior living communities that have been affected by COVID-19. I've reflected on the grueling year we've all had. I couldn't be prouder of our productive and skilled team, our enterprise, and our capable, dedicated partners. After a fast and positive start to 2020, the last year has been dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic and punctuated by extreme weather disruption. both of which have continued into the first quarter of 2021. Throughout, we've put the full force of our firm's resources and energy behind keeping people safe, demonstrating remarkable resilience, and becoming part of the solution, whether in employee testing, advocacy, or assistance to tenants and operators who needed it. Financially, through our foresight, our long-standing diversification strategy, and our decisive action, we've kept our enterprise strong and stable, generating almost the same EBITDA in 2020 as we did in 2019, and benefiting from our investments in people, systems, and preparedness, our balance sheet flexibility, and our embedded relationships with best-in-class partners. and we found ways to grow and advance our strategic objectives, including building value through acquisition and development in life sciences, investing in LaBrute Maurice's attractive senior housing development pipeline, creating new partnerships, and establishing a third-party investment management platform that will provide more options for future growth. We remained committed to our core values of respect and integrity and accelerated our actions to promote sustainability, diversity, and social justice in our company, our communities, and our country. Finally, we were very fortunate to recently add two top-notch directors to the company, one a leader in healthcare and the other in real estate and REIT. My gratitude and optimism also flow from the life-saving COVID-19 vaccine discovery by doctors and scientists in record time and the recent acceleration of vaccine delivery by the Biden administration. Nationally, ending COVID-19 is foundational to spur sustained economic recovery and restore vitality to so many businesses, households, and workers. At Ventas, we're proud that 100% of our U.S., SHOP, AL, and memory care communities have already received the vaccine, and nearly 90% of them will complete their second dose by the end of this month. Notably, senior housing vaccine delivery represents one of the shining successes in our fight against COVID-19. In our shop communities, it is wonderful to know that about 30,000 vulnerable residents have already been vaccinated and are one step closer to feeling safe, seeing loved ones, and enjoying a richer life. From our real-time data, we also know that confirmed COVID-19 cases in our communities have recently begun to improve significantly, creating an enhanced sense of well-being and enabling more operators to open communities to new move-ins. And leads that our communities built to their highest level since the pandemic began in January once again demonstrating the strength of the value proposition of senior housing and the resilient demand for the services our care providers deliver. While we expect SHOP's first quarter NOI and occupancy, which are lagging indicators, to decline sequentially as a result of November to January extreme COVID-19 conditions, we are encouraged by the breadth and consistency of all positive leading indicators. Conditions remain dynamic, and it is too early to declare a definitive trend, but we like the picture we are starting to see. Post-pandemic senior housing growth represents an incredibly significant value creation opportunity for our shareholders. Turning to our investment outlook, our diversified asset base with five verticals has given us the ability to continue successfully allocating capital over time and through cycles. For example, we've created tremendous value since our early cycle investments in our research and innovation business in 2016. We continue to find meaningful opportunities to drive that business forward in both ground-up development and asset acquisition, with universities and in cluster markets alike. Our decision to add life sciences to our enterprise has provided uplift to our results, our investment activity, and our value. Here are a couple of current examples. Our $280 million Life Sciences Project, known as One Youth City, in the thriving research sub-market of Philadelphia, which is bookended by Penn and Drexel, is attracting significant leasing interest. In addition to the nearly $1 billion ground-up development projects already underway, our university-based development pipeline continues to hold about another billion dollars in active potential projects with both new and existing university relationships. In particular, with Westford, we are in the design development phase of a nearly half-billion dollar project with a major research university on the West Coast that is substantially pre-leased. We look forward to sharing more information with you later this year. Outside of research and innovation, we continue to allocate capital to develop large Class A independent living communities with our partner, LGM, in Quebec. We've had five projects underway with investment also totaling nearly half a billion dollars. And two of the projects were delivered in the fourth quarter. We are pleased to report that the two open communities have leased up quickly and occupancy is already nearly 80%. In addition, our pipeline of potential acquisitions in all five of our verticals is active and growing. We continue to invest with an eye toward growing reliable cash flow and favorable risk-adjusted return. We will also continue to evaluate and execute opportunities to recycle capital as well. Both Justin and Pete have been working with our deal team to target about a billion dollars of dispositions during the year to optimize our portfolio. Finally, our institutional investment capital management platform continues to grow and succeed, with well over $3 billion in assets under management. Bringing together our pre-existing and new third-party capital vehicles under one umbrella, the Ventos Investment Management business includes our life sciences and healthcare funds. The Ventas Fund stands out as one of the most successful launches of a first-time real estate fund in any asset class. Our investment management platform provides a significant competitive advantage to Ventas. It broadens our capital sources, augments our investment capacity, expands our footprint, leverages our team and industry expertise, improves our financial flexibility and liquidity, and adds an incremental source of earnings. There is tremendous market opportunity within life science, medical office, and senior housing real estate, and we are well positioned to capitalize on it in multiple ways. In closing, let me reiterate that demographically driven demand is right in front of us. The leading indicators in senior housing are improving rapidly, vaccine delivery is accelerating, and the long-term thesis for all of our asset classes and for dentists remains firmly positive. All of us at Ventas have an abiding commitment to staying strong and steady and winning the recovery on behalf of all of our stakeholders. Now I'm pleased to turn the call over to Justin Hutchins.