Welltower Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. My name is Krista and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Welltower second quarter 2026 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 at that time, simply press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. and if you'd like to withdraw your question, again press star one. Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to Matt McQueen, Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel. Matt, please go ahead.

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 remarks.

Thank you, Matt, and good morning, everyone. I'll review business trends and our capital allocation priorities, and the team will follow the usual cadence. I'm pleased to report a record quarter for our company as the end market demand for our needs-based senior housing business remains resilient despite continued macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty. The uncorrelated nature of demand growth combined with the mixed shift of our portfolio resulted in 25% year over year increase in partial FFO growth, one of the highest levels achieved in our history. As Tim would describe shortly, our strong start to 2026 and increased confidence in the back half of the year enabled us to increase the midpoint of our full year FFO guidance by 12 cents and many more. and incurring near-term dilution from 3.6 billions of disposition completed year-to-date is a trade-off we will gladly make. Remember, every decision we make is evaluated obsessively through an opportunity cost lens to extend the duration of our growth curve. And the trade-offs we made last year vis-a-vis the sale of our outpatient medical portfolio and concurrent redeployment of proceeds are clearly being reflected across our P&L. This includes revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth this quarter, which increased 39% and 36%, respectively. At the same time, we maintained an underlevered balance sheet and continue to invest heavily in operations and technology side of the house. Turning to operating results, we're pleased with our second quarter performance, particularly when weighed against an economic backdrop fraught with uncertainty. Organic revenue growth of 9.2% was driven by another quarter of strong occupancy gains and healthy pricing power. Same store occupancy increased 330 basis points year over year, which follows a 420 basis point increase in the second quarter of last year. and our sequential spot occupancy growth in the quarter was 100 basis points reflecting a strong start of the summer leasing season versus 80 basis points in Q2 of last year. We also continue to be pleased with the pricing power that our operating partners are achieving with rep pour or unit revenue increasing 5.2% during the quarter relative to 4.9% achieved in Q2 of last year. We believe this reflects two powerful dynamics. First, capacity in the system continues to shrink with strong percent of our portfolio rapidly crossing 90 and 95% occupancy thresholds creating additional pricing power. This is not solely a supply demand story though. We serve the wealthiest of age cohorts in history with a significant concentration of wealth held by baby boomer generation. This cohort increasingly prioritizes exceptional experiences and high quality amenities and service, particularly later in life. This is also a highly discerning customer base that expects the best and willing to pay for it. Our operators and their onsite teams work relentlessly every day to deliver that exceptional and differentiated experience. Ultimately, we believe the combination of supply constraint and a highly affluent need-based customer will continue to support healthy rate growth for many quarters and years to come. It is also worth highlighting that red poor growth continues to meaningfully outpace the growth of export or unit expenses, which resulted in another strong quarter of operating margin expansion of 300 basis points to over 32%, surpassing pre-COVID levels. And we believe that meaningful margin upside remains for the portfolio driven by operating leverage inherent in our High fixed cost business coupled with structural changes being effectuated by world tar business system. Turning to capital allocation. Transaction activity across seniors' housing space has picked up in recent quarters, but our ability to execute on highly attractive investments in U.S., U.K., and Canada has not diminished. In fact, the pace of activity has picked up meaningfully as a result of geopolitical uncertainty coupled with a spike in interest rate. Thank you very much. and our ability to provide certainty at a lightning speed and close quickly as depicted on slide 15 of our business update presentation. This is particularly important given the recent rise in interest rate and growing uncertainty with respect to the direction of the economy. Our investment teams remain busy as ever, and I suspect that will be the case in fall and into the year end. Not only does our investment pipeline remains robust, visible and actionable, but our conviction in deploying capital is enhanced by our ability to meaningfully increase cash flow post acquisition through transitioning assets to one of our best in class operators and implementation of WBS. Despite this confidence, make no mistake that we remain exceptionally disciplined in deploying our shareholders' precious capital. We will not compromise our standards for asset quality, management contract structure, or host of other criteria which are embedded in our investment process in pursuit of near-term accretion or overall size. Our goal is simply and only partial growth. and while we almost invariably remain the first call from sellers, we have passed on tens of billions of dollars of transactions this year alone, which did not meet our stringent criteria for quality, price, equity, future growth and contract structure. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this is not a spread investing business, at least not for a product obsessed operating powerhouse like us. I can't speak for the shadow banks in our space who only understand the spread investing language and are perhaps particularly impressionable by silver-tongued investment bankers. Lastly, we're delighted to have announced an increase in our quarterly dividend by 15% to 85 cents per share. This marks the third consecutive year in which the Board has elected to raise our dividend and marks a step function higher from the previous increases. This increased size of the dividend reflects Board's continued confidence in the growth trajectory of the business and health of our balance sheet. At the same time, our free cash flow generation continue to grow rapidly, providing us with greater flexibility to allocate capital in ways to maximize shareholder value and extend the duration of our partial growth. With that, I will pass it over to John. Thank you and good morning.