Ventas, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Ventas third quarter 2021 earnings conference 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 the session, you will need to press star one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your host today, Sarah Whitford. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Alicia. Good morning and welcome to the Ventas third quarter financial results conference call. Earlier this morning, we issued our third quarter earnings release supplemental and investor presentation. These materials are available on the Ventas website at ir.ventasrete.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 BICEP 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.

Thanks, Sarah, and good morning to all of our shareholders and other participants, and welcome to the Venta third quarter 2021 earnings call. I'm so happy to be hosting this call in person with my trusted colleagues for the first time since early 2020. Ventas delivered positive results in the third quarter, saw outstanding sequential shop average occupancy growth, benefited from its large medical office, life science, and healthcare triple net businesses, and executed on its investment priorities. delivering 73 cents of normalized FFO per share, which is in the upper half of our guidance range. Our same store shop portfolio increased rate and grew occupancy at record levels in Q3, despite the high incidence of COVID-19 in a broader environment. Occupancy in this portfolio has now increased for eight consecutive months through October. Demonstrating powerful demand, our U.S. same store shop portfolio has increased occupancy 750 basis points since mid-March 2021, lifting the entire same store shop portfolio nearly 600 basis points during the same period. I'm also encouraged that our year-over-year shop occupancy turned positive for the first time since the onset of the pandemic. So, a robust senior housing recovery is well underway, but as we stated, it may not progress in a straight line. Consistent with macro trends, and as we anticipated in our last call with you, the pandemic has created a tight labor market, resulting in labor cost pressures that accelerated in September. Looking ahead, we expect to see meaningful revenue increases in the first quarter of 2022 and improving pricing power. At a macro level, many economists forecast that labor force participation will expand from its current low rate for a variety of reasons. These factors should cause current conditions to ease considerably over time. Even more importantly, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who has been consistently the most accurate expert throughout the pandemic, stated today that the COVID-19 pandemic is effectively behind us in the U.S., given all the tools we now have to combat it, including Pfizer's new treatment. If Scott continues to be right, it is a momentous day for all of us. We continue to be delighted that one-third of our business consists of medical office outpatient and life science research and innovation. Our operational initiatives in medical office and aggressive capital deployment in life science are providing reliable growth and value creation for our enterprise and stakeholders. Turning to capital allocation, we have been highly active with $3.7 billion of investments announced or closed year to date. Our current capital allocation focus remains senior living, selective private medical office building opportunities, and life science R&I. Let me highlight a few new investments we've made. We've completed $2.5 billion in independent living investments, including our accretive acquisition of new seniors 100-plus independent living communities at an attractive valuation, well below replacement costs, and a six-community Canadian senior living portfolio with one of the new senior operators, Hawthorne. In medical office, we've completed or announced $300 million of investments. Establishing a new relationship with industry leader Eating Recovery Center, we acquired a Class A asset under a long-term lease in this rapidly growing sector. Second, by acquiring our partner, PMB's interest in the Sutter Van Ness Trophy MOB in downtown San Francisco, we now own 100% of this asset at a 6% yield. With 92% of the MOB already leased, we intend to capture additional NOI growth and value. Finally, we intend to expand our relationship with Arden Healthcare by acquiring 18 of their 100% leased medical office buildings for $200 million by year end. On our third capital allocation priority, we are delighted to announce that we have commenced development of a one million square foot life science project anchored by Premier Research University, UC Davis, with our exclusive partner, Wexford. Purpose built for clinical research, this project will be 60% pre-leased to UC Davis, and total project costs are expected to be half a billion dollars. Turning to our robust investment pipeline, our team remains busy evaluating attractive opportunities. In fact, we've now reviewed more deal volume this year than we saw in all of 2019, over $40 billion, and we continue to pursue those that meet our multi-factor investment framework. Capital continues to flow into our sectors as global institutional investors agree with our thesis on the favorable trends benefiting all of our asset classes. These strong capital flows are also supporting our intention to recycle $1 billion of capital this year to enhance both our balance sheet and our portfolio. Our diversified business model continues to provide significant benefits. Our early and aggressive investments into medical office and life science are creating significant value. We are also proud to be associated with so many leading care providers, operators, and developers in all our business lines and to be establishing new platforms for growth through both our investment and our portfolio actions. In closing, the U.S. is in the midst of an impressive economic recovery that together with demographic demand for our asset classes gives us confidence and optimism in our future. We believe that the more widespread administration of vaccines and new efficacious treatments for COVID-19 will benefit both the broader economic recovery and our company. Our aligned and experienced team continues to be focused on capturing the double upside in senior housing from both pandemic recovery and the projected growth in the senior population, and also to continuing our long track record of external growth. Justin?