Welltower Inc.

Thank you for standing by. My name is Brianna and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the Well Tower third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Please note that this call is being recorded. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star 1 a second time. I will now turn the conference over to Matt McQueen, General Counsel. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, and good morning. As a reminder, certain statements made during this call may be deemed forward-looking statements in the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Although Welltower believes any forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, the company can give no assurances that its projected results will be attained. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements are detailed in the company's filings with the SEC. And with that, I'll hand the call over to Sean for his remarks.

Thank you, Matt. Good morning, everyone. I'll review third quarter business trends and our capital allocation priorities. John will provide an update on operational performance for our senior housing and medical office portfolios. Nikhil will give you an update on the investment landscape, and Tim will walk you through our triple net businesses, balance sheet highlights, and guidance updates. I'm once again pleased to report another very strong quarter across the board at World Tower. From operations to capital deployment, a further strengthening of our balance sheet, continued progress on our operating platform rollout. The result was a 21% increase in FFO per share and our fourth guidance raise for the year, this time by 13 cents per share, reflecting the extraordinary strength of our platform. This quarter also marks the first time in our company's history in which our quarterly revenue exceeded $2 billion. In terms of the senior housing operating portfolio, results continue to surpass our already high expectations. Year over year, same-store NY growth came in at 23%, eighth consecutive quarter in which the growth exceeded 20%. And despite macroeconomic uncertainty and heightened geopolitical tensions, top-line growth on a same-store basis remained resilient at 9%, driven by another quarter of outside occupancy growth of 310 basis points, coupled with strong rate growth. Particularly noteworthy is the 160 basis points of sequential spot-to-spot occupancy growth that we experienced a reflection of both strong tailwinds of our business and especially our operating platform initiative, which will continue to bear fruit in the coming quarters and years. Not only were placed with the sequential growth, but the occupancy run rate exiting the quarter solidly exceeded the prior year and early fourth quarter results have been positive as well. Additionally, I would be remiss not to mention that the spread between report or unit revenue and export or unit expense remains at historically wide level. This trend resulted in another 300 basis points of year-over-year margin expansion of our shop portfolio. As we have discussed in the past, we remain focused on the delta between report and export, not the absolute levels. Overall, we are delighted with our results and believe that we're carrying significant momentum into 2025 as tailwinds which we have lifted our business over the past couple of years continue to strengthen. As I have described in a recent call, the backdrop of our senior housing business is only getting better as the growth of 80 plus population picks up from here. Starting next year, 5,000 Americans will turn 80 every day. And remember that we are only at the front end of this trend with the crest of the silver tsunami not being seen until well into the future. And what is also irrefutable is the favorable supply outlook. Construction starts continue to drop, and in the third quarter reached the second lowest level on record after the second quarter of 2009. Banks continue to wind down their senior housing loan exposure and have been reluctant to put new capital to work. And given the extended timeline to build a new senior living community in our market, which we detailed on slide 19 of our business update, we may not face the impact of new supply in our markets for years. Frankly, in today's construction cost and financing cost environment, it makes no economic sense to build. We have had a couple of years of solid growth, but we believe that we are still in the very early stages of an extended period of extraordinary growth for the senior housing sector. And without stealing John's thunder, this end market demand growth will be amplified by the rollout of our operating platform. I'm delighted to report that during the quarter, we went live with our tech platform at our first set of properties, along with preparing to broaden and accelerate the rollout in the near term. Beyond the technology rollout, we expect our broader operating platform initiatives, including our hands-on asset management, to have a compounding effect on our portfolio's outperformance. Shifting to capital deployment, The only change we have observed since our last call is that the opportunity set has expanded further. We announced another $1.2 billion of transaction completed or under contract since our last quarterly update, bringing our total year-to-date investment activity to over $6 billion. Nikhil will provide you more details, but as with the past few quarters, most of our investments have been bolt-on acquisitions within senior housing sector, improving and benefiting from our already established regional density. Our goal remains to go deep in our markets, not broad. While 2024 is shaping up to be a record year for World Tower in terms of capital deployment, we continue to unearth compelling opportunities across all property types, geographies, and capital structure, and expect a busy Q4 and a Q1. I will quickly reiterate that through the exceptional cash flow growth we have achieved this year and prudent funding of our investment activity, our balance sheet has strengthened meaningfully. With leverage at 3.7 times and nearly $10 billion of liquidity, we remain well positioned to address all near-term obligations and capitalize attractive investment opportunities. and as we have created flexibility to lean in to the balance sheet to drive further growth at opportune time. To sum it up, we're starting to see the Lollapalooza effect of cyclical, secular, and structural growth driven by our operating platform, which will be further enhanced by bolt-on acquisitions and balance sheet optimization to drive meaningful partial growth. We are singularly focused on this long-term compounding of our partial earnings growth for existing owners, our true North Star. We cannot be distracted, discouraged, or dissuaded. With that, I will turn the call over to John.