Welltower Inc.

Hello and welcome to the Welltower fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. I would now like to turn the conference over to Matt McQueen, Chief Legal Officer. You may begin.

Thank you and good morning. As a reminder, certain statements made during this call 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 violence with the SEC. And with that, I'll hand the call over to Sean for his remarks.

Thank you, Matt. And good morning, everyone. This morning, I'll provide some high-level thoughts on the business. our recent capital allocation priorities, and a recap of what proved to be a truly transformational year for our company. 2025 not only marked the 10-year anniversary of the refounding of our company by the current management, but also proved to be the most pivotal year in the company's history. We're pleased to have delivered 36% revenue growth, 32% EBITDA growth, and a 22% FFO per share growth while deleveraging our balance sheet and investing significantly into our future systems and talent. We launched our private funds management business, overhauled our internal and external incentive structure, made substantial progress on WorldTar business system initiatives, and created our tech quad to take our technology journey to the next level. However, these exceptional achievements made across the business are frankly in the rear view mirror, where our focus is firmly and intensely on what comes next. What truly excites us is the deliberate actions we took in 2025, which we believe will meaningfully amplify the trajectory and duration of our long-term partial growth. These actions were part of a decade-long effort to transform our farm from a real estate deal shop when we arrived at the company to an operations and technology-first business with the maniacal obsession of delighting residents and prioritizing site-level employee experience. There are very few businesses in which the earning the trust of customer is more important than senior living. Each day, our team shows up with one question in mind. How do we support our best-in-class operators through World Tower Business System to provide a killer value proposition to residents, their families, and site-level employees whom the residents rely on every day? As an operating company in a real estate wrapper, it is of utmost importance that we get this right. Only then do we have a shot at achieving our North Star, the long-term compounding of partial growth for our existing investors. Before providing some additional commentary on the events which led to this juncture, I'll quickly review our fourth quarter results. In terms of our senior housing operating portfolio, we ended the strongest year in our company's history, with a high note reporting 13th consecutive quarter in which same-store net operating income growth exceeded 20%. Our organic revenue growth continues to hover around 10%, driven by 400 basis points of year-over-year occupancy gains and healthy rate growth. And as Tim will outline for you shortly, we expect another year of strong occupancy upside in 2026, along with strong pricing power. Additionally, I would be remiss not to mention the continued outside expansion in operating margins, which increased by another 200 basis points, 270 basis points in the fourth quarter. As John will describe to you shortly, we continue to see multiple opportunities to drive margins meaningfully higher in the coming years, including continued implementation of Voltaire business system, our proprietary operator-tailored end-to-end operating platform. Looking to 2026 and beyond, against a macro and a geopolitical backdrop fraught with uncertainty, the end market demand for our product is highly visible and only expected to improve as the 80-plus population continues its pace of rapid growth. And with new construction remaining at trough levels and long-term interest rates and construction costs remain stubbornly high, we continue to feel good about the supply side. While demand supply picture continues to improve each passing day, we're laser focused on execution at the granular level alongside our operating partners with whom we stand shoulder to shoulder no matter what. Despite the true joy and satisfaction of helping residents to live well, the underlying business of senior living is a hard one. Needs are very different and nuanced from residents to residents. And our predecessor company, HCN, entered into equity ownership post-GFC from a historic lease or credit model without appreciating it was a completely different game. For the last decade, the current management team completely overhauled this organization, turned over two-thirds of our asset base and operators, 90% of the people, and transformed the contracts and so on and so forth. The transition has been and continues to be incredibly difficult. We built out a vertically integrated hardware plus software model to navigate this treacherous water. The hardware is our best-in-class real estate that we curated over past decade. The software is comprised of WBS along with the execution of our best-in-class operating partner ecosystem. We see the light at the end of the tunnel, but we still have a long ways to go even after almost two decades of accumulated battle scars and paying dumb taxes. This is not a complaint. The management team of this company, including yours truly, deliberately sought out this industry because it is a hard problem to solve. And our competition is forced to follow us in these difficult terrains. This vertically integrated software plus hardware model aims to reduce latency across the stack of decision-making and putting network effect into operational execution. This directly feeds into our capital allocation flywheel, driving execution into high gear in 2025, which we are likely to observe again in 2026. We ultimately completed nearly $11 billion of net investment activity for the year, consisting primarily of high growth senior housing properties across all our regions, which were funded in large part through the sale of our outpatient medical business for $7.2 billion. We thus far sold the first four tranches of the portfolio for $5.8 billion, significantly ahead of our prior expectations, with the remainder set to close in the first half of the year. And it's worth repeating that we're able to execute this massive capital rotation and shift in our long-term growth profile without incurring any near-term earnings dilution. Historically in the corporate world, these types of mix shifts to higher growth businesses from lower growth ones almost invariably comes with some degree of dilution. As lower growth businesses generally trades at lower multiple, a stark contrast to what we pulled off. Importantly, we continue to be extremely discerning in our evaluation of prospective acquisition, having passed on billions of dollars of opportunities which simply did not meet our criteria in terms of location, quality, operator contract, or pricing. We recently saw some high quality assets where we wouldn't sign even an NDA because they're encumbered by long-term management contracts, where in exchange for writing the entire equity check, you get the honor of sitting in second position on cashflow and delivered a hope note that someone else will get it right. We do not buy assets with liens on them, which exactly what long-term management contracts are. Nonetheless, we have started off 2026 with a bang with $5.7 billion of acquisitions and with $2.5 billion of new deals completed or under contract in just first six weeks of the year, and a robust pipeline that can be described as granular, visible, and highly actionable. Needless to say, 2026 is quickly shaping up to be another banner year for us in terms of acquisition activity. Importantly, capital allocation does not solely involve acquisitions, but also include disposition activity to methodically shape the portfolio of future growth. It is not about here and now, but the duration of growth that will be the key determinant of a long-term success. And through these efforts, we have been able to intensify our focus on rental housing for rapidly aging population. So in addition to the sale of our outpatient medical portfolio, which I mentioned earlier, we sold another $1.3 billion to our portfolio of skilled nursing assets, which marks one of the most successful full-circle transactions executed by our management team. We brought this portfolio as a part of UCP Transaction 2018, which is the only public-to-public M&A transaction executed by this management team. As most of you are aware, the period from 2020 to 2022 was exceptionally challenging for that sector, driven by the impacts of COVID pandemic and resulting labor shortage. However, due to the structure we created in 2018, including a parent guarantee, we did not lose a dollar of cash flow despite substantial cash flow deterioration incurred at the property level. At the time, many folks had encouraged us to simply rip the bandaid off and dispose of this portfolio given the headache it was creating for us in the public market. Instead, we rolled up our sleeves to determine the best path forward for the portfolio and for our owners, with the firm belief that volatility is not risk. Ultimately, we embarked on an arduous process of recapitalizing this portfolio with Integra, which then brought its network of regional and local short-routers to turn the portfolio around. And over subsequent three and a half years, the portfolio witnessed a massive $500 billion rebound in cash flow, which we believe is close to stabilization. The return achieved by this sale is a function of basis, structuring, and sheer greed and tenacity displayed by our team to achieve the best possible outcome for our owners. I would note that the unlevered RR of 25% and a 3.1 times unlevered money multiple achieved on this portfolio over seven years compares highly favorably to a proxy of public SNF peers whose equity is levered which delivered an approximately 10 to 11% return over the same time. Collectively, these bold capital allocation moves, both acquisitions and dispositions, have enabled us to remove organizational complexity and narrow our focus on senior housing with the goal of elevating the customer and employee experience through better operations and technology. At the same time, we fundamentally enhanced the terminal and growth rate of our enterprise. Lastly, I'm pleased to announce the closing of Senior Housing Equity Fund 1 and the launch of Senior Housing Debt Fund 1, our foray into capitalized businesses. Nikhil will provide you more details, but this business vertical represents a natural extension of our balance sheet strategy, allowing us to jumpstart a significant capital allocation business. We're incredibly grateful to Adia and our other LPs who have entrusted us with their capital in this new endeavor. And with that, I'll turn it over to John.