Sienna Senior Living Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Ciena Senior Living Inc's Q2 2024 conference call. Today's call is hosted by Nitin Jain, President and Chief Executive Officer, and David Hung, Chief Financial Officer of Ciena Senior Living Inc. Please be aware that certain statements or information discussed today are forward-looking and actual results could differ materially. The company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statement or information. please refer to the forward-looking information and risk factors section of the company's public filings, including in its most recent MD&A and AIF for more information. You will also find a more fulsome discussion of the company's results in its MD&A and financial statements for the period, which are posted on CDAR Plus and can be found on the company's website, sianaliving.ca. Today's call is being recorded and a replay will be available. Instructions for accessing the call are posted on the company's website, and the details are provided in the company's news release. The company has posted slides which accompany the host's remarks on the company's website under Events and Presentations. With that, I will now turn the call over to Mr. Jain. Please go ahead, Mr. Jain.

Thank you, Brianna. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on our call today. Our second quarter demonstrates the strength and tremendous potential of our company. The effectiveness of our strategic initiatives to improve and expand our operations and the favorable demographics of an aging population is evident in our results. But most importantly, our strong performance is a reflection of the commitment of our 12,500 team members. They're the key reason behind our operational strength. For the past six quarters, we have consistently achieved year-over-year growth in operating results across both lines of our businesses. Supporting our long-term care results this quarter are fully occupied homes with higher revenues from preferred accommodations, and the increased government funding in Ontario, which offsets high inflation in recent years. On the retirement side, growing demand and limited new supply, combined with the targeting marketing and sales campaigns at homes with lower occupancy levels, were key drivers of improved occupancy and rate increases. Further supporting our results are enhancement to our leadership team and ongoing improvements to our operations that are focused on our residents' experience, including dining, engagement, and care. As a result, our total same property NOI increased by 7.2 million to 46.1 million year-over-year in the second quarter. This is an increase of 18.5 percent. During the second quarter, we continue to make steady progress towards a goal of stabilized retirement occupancy of 95 percent. Same property occupancy grew to 88.6 percent, which is an improvement of 180 basis point year-over-year since last year. Occupancy continued to strengthen in July and increased to 89%, just the highest monthly occupancy rate in over five years. Our marketing and sales initiatives included new digital and print campaigns. We also continued with our targeted onsite marketing and sales initiatives and focused on community outreach at homes with lower occupancy levels. Our success in driving occupancy, coupled with great increases, added to the strength of our second quarter results. Moving to slide six, further adding to our results are the demographic tailwinds in Canadian senior living. We are starting to see the first wave of baby boomers considering retirement living, a trend that will only intensify in the coming years as the number of seniors over the age of 85 is expected to reach approximately 1 million by 2026 and further grow by 65% over the following 10 years. Wait lists for long-term care beds continue to grow. In Ontario alone, the current wait list for bed is approximately 43,000. And in British Columbia, the average wait time for a long-term care bed is over 100 days. At the same time, construction starts of new retirement residences remain at all-time lows. These exceptional tailwinds are also starting to resonate with a growing investor base. At Ciena, we have seen a significant increase in invested interest, both from first-time investors and those returning to senior living. Being at the intersection of healthcare, hospitality, and real estate makes our company attractive to a broad range of investors. We believe that maintaining our strategy of owning a diversified portfolio of long-term care communities and retirement residences contributed to our sector-leading stock market performance and investor interest this year. Diversification adds to the financial strength of our business as it allows us to capture higher operating margins in our retirement portfolio while benefiting from stable, government-funded long-term care operations. We are also increasingly leveraging the programs and insights gained at our retirement operations in our long-term care communities and vice versa, all with the goals to better serve our residents and meet their evolving needs. For example, we are always looking for ways to add more hospitality elements to our long-term care operations while expanding care programs at our retirement residences to meet the changing demographics of our residents. We believe that this approach will further help us to distinguish our company as a senior living provider of choice. Moving to slide eight, we are pleased with the development progress we have made over the past year at our two projects under construction in North Bay and Brantford, which we expect to complete in the second half of 2025. With respect to our most recent redevelopment in Keswick, work for the new long-term care community is out for tender, and we expect to start construction later this year. The expected development yield for the 160-bed home, which will replace the current 60 beds and add 100 new long-term care beds, is approximately 8.5%. Combined, these developments will support the government's important goal of rebuilding Ontario's older long-term care homes and benefit the fast-growing seniors population. Team member engagement and retention remains a core focus of our initiatives. Our share ownership program is one of many ways we drive alignment. It fosters a deeper sense of ownership and commitment to a shared purpose and values, and creates alignment between our team members and our shareholders. During the second quarter, we issued shares to 1,400 of our new team members, bringing the total number of active participants to nearly 7,000. This is just one of many initiatives that we introduced at CNN in recent years to ensure we are aligned with our team members. Our signature program, Spark, which is a version of Dragon's Den, also remained very successful. During the quarter, we announced the winners of the second round of SPARC, which received 175 submissions. The winning idea came from two members in long-term care home in Cremor, Ontario, who came up with a tool that supports team members in reducing resident falls. In a pilot study using this tool, residents' falls were reduced by 68%. We are now planning the rollout of the falls prevention tool across our long-term care platform And we could not be more proud of Martina, who's an associate director of care, and Taylor, a PSW. And this idea earned them $15,000 in the first price. With that, I will turn it over to David for an update on our results.

Thank you, Nitin, and good morning, everyone. I will start on slide 11 for financial results. In Q2 2024, total adjusted revenues increased by 10.7% year-over-year to $219.5 million. This increase was largely due to rental rate and occupancy growth, as well as increased care revenue in our retirement segment, and a government funding increase, higher preferred accommodation revenue, and a WSIB refund, primarily in our long-term care segment. Total same property net operating income increased by 18.5% in Q2 2024 to $46.1 million compared to $38.9 million in Q2 2023. NOI in our long-term care segment increased by $5.5 million, largely due to higher revenues offset by inflationary expense increases. One area where we were able to consistently achieve cost reductions is in agency staffing. We were able to reduce costs by one-third from approximately $6 million in Q2 2023 to $4 million in Q2 2024. Minimizing agency staffing remains a key objective for CNF. In our retirement segment, same property NOI increased by $1.6 million in Q2 2024 compared to the last year, primarily as a result of rate growth as well as improved occupancy. Moving to slide 12, during Q2 2024, operating funds from operations increased by 21.6% to $26.1 million compared to last year, primarily due to higher NOI. OFFO per share increased by 21.4% to $0.357 in Q2 2024. Adjusted funds from operations increased by 14.6% to $22.4 million compared to last year. The increase was due to higher OFFO offset by a decrease in construction funding income and increased maintenance capital expenditures. AFFO per share increased by 14.6% to $0.307 in Q2 2024. In line with our strong results, we continued to improve Ciena's AFFO payout ratio, lowering it to 76.2% in Q2 2024. This was an 11.1 percentage point decrease compared to the year prior. With respect to our debt metrics, we have seen notable improvements and further strengthened our balance sheet. We maintained ample liquidity with $297 million at the end of Q2 2024, and we extended the weighted average term to maturity of our debt to 5.5 years from 5.1 years in Q2 2023. Our debt to adjusted EBITDA was 6.8 times at the end of Q2 2024 compared to 8 times at the end of Q2 2023, and our interest coverage ratio increased to 3.7 times in Q2 2024 compared to 3.5 times in Q2 2023. We ended Q2 2024 with debt to adjusted gross book value of 43.7% and $1 billion of unencumbered assets. This provides financial flexibility and supports our refinancing initiatives at attractive rates, in particular as we actively explore opportunities to refinance our upcoming debt expiry in the fourth quarter of 2024. We have the ability to refinance a portion of our expiring debt with proceeds from a new financing or up-financing of assets with CMHC-insured mortgages at interest rates significantly below those of other financing options. Our strong financial position will also support our growth initiatives, including the redevelopment of our older long-term care homes. We will continue to prudently manage our capital and staggered construction starts to ensure our debt ratios remain strong as we support the Ontario government in this important initiative. With that, I will turn the call back to Nitin for his closing remarks.

Thank you, David. As a company, we play an important role in bringing residents, team members, families, and our community partners together to make life better for one another. Some of our most impactful initiatives are highlighted on the latest CSG report we published yesterday. The theme of the report is Create Community, which is one of Ciena's core values. Our report includes numerous inspiring examples of team members and residents who exemplify Ciena's purpose and values. Like our team members in British Columbia who have implemented sector-leading emergency preparedness strategies this year based on their first-hand experience and outstanding efforts during last year's wildfire season. Or the recipient of Ciena's Sparkle Award, which recognizes residents who go above and beyond to cultivate happiness at their communities. One such recipient is Elaine Liebold, the 93-year-old resident council president at a North Bay Longton care home. Elaine was the first to sign the legacy wall at a Northern Heights redevelopment site. Along with team members, she has been a champion of the new home by keeping her fellow residents informed and engaged with the project. As we look into the second half of 2024, we have never felt more confident about Ciena's ability to create value for our stakeholders. As a result of the numerous strategic initiatives we put in place alongside a generally improving macro environment, we expect the long-term care NOI for the full year of 2024 to grow in the low double-digit percentage range compared to last year. With respect to our retirement operations, we expect same property NOI to benefit from continued occupancy and rental rate growth as well as other initiatives to optimize revenue and grow in the high single-digit percentage range. Further adding to our optimistic outlook is the strength of our balance sheet and improving capital markets. Combined, they will continue to support our efforts to add value through capital improvements, free development, and select opportunities to grow our asset base. But more than anything, our success depends on our team members and the strong alignment with Ciena's purpose, vision, and values. On behalf of our management team and our board of directors, I want to thank all of you for your continued support and commitment. We are now pleased to answer any questions you may have.

We will now open the line for questions. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. To withdraw your question, simply press star one again. If you are dialed in and listening via loudspeaker on your device, please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question. Our first question today comes from Lauren Calmar with Desjardins. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning and congrats on another solid quarter. Maybe just on the retirement side, it looked like you guys were able to get the same property margins flat year over year, which was a nice improvement versus the prior quarter. Do you expect this trend to kind of continue or do you think you can start pushing the same property margins even higher in the back half of the year?

Thank you, Lauren. You know, our view, we have been focused on same property NOI growth, so that's the outlook that we will provide, which we have provided. But, you know, frankly, it will come really only from two places, which is occupancy and from margin growth. You know, I think this is, we like the trend which we are in, but, you know, one quarter doesn't really constitute a trend for us. Our focus is to grow margin, and one of the things we're realizing is that You know, providing more care, obviously keep residents in homes, but also comes at no margin, in some cases no margin. And that's what we're resolving for at the moment. So we do expect our margin to grow over time, but just we haven't provided any outlook or timing for it.

Okay. Fair enough. And then maybe sticking with the same property theme on the LTC front, obviously you guys increased the guidance range. Was the WSIB payment the big factor there or was there something else that you weren't seeing at the beginning of the year that you're seeing now that drove the increase?

Yeah, no, thanks for that question, Lauren. So, I mean, the WSIB refund was part of our increase in guidance, but also what increased our guidance was really just the stability of our long-term care operations, the increase in the OA funding, which has given us the confidence to increase our guidance versus the last quarter.

Okay. But with the OA funding, that was, I guess, already known last quarter. So now that it's been implemented, you're seeing something different? I'm just trying to get a better idea here.

No, I mean, we did know that last quarter. I think in addition to that, just the continued stability within our long-term care operations, the fact that we've also been able to maintain our agency costs well under control, you know, has helped with the increase in our guidance.

Okay, perfect. Thank you for that. And then last quick one from me. Obviously, one of your peers was pretty active on the acquisition front. I was wondering if you're seeing anything out there that has sparked your interest.

You know, we continue to look for opportunities, and one of the things that is unique about us is that we can acquire both in long-term care and retirement, including campuses, so it puts us in an enviable position. I think we'll Continue to look for opportunities, even though in the last two years we have not made a big announcement. We have nearly $200 million, actually $250 million in active construction and another one shortly. Our development projects are quite unique because the day they open, you get a contract from government which frankly reduces the cost on a balance sheet from an $80 million project to $25 million. And specifically to acquisitions, I think we'll continue to look for opportunities, and we do expect to grow in the next 12 to 18 months.

Okay, great. Thank you so much for the call. I will turn it back. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Jonathan Kelcher with TD Cowan. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning. Just going back to retirement and the same property, the same property expenses were up 10% year-over-year, and I think you maybe touched on this a little bit, Nitin, but could you maybe give us a little bit of color on what drove that? Was that simply just more care for in-place residents, or were there elevated marketing to drive occupancy?

Yeah, I think both of those things exactly, Jonathan. It is more care expenses. It is also more marketing spend. And when we look at, just based on the previous question, Our margin has been a bit all over the place in the last quarter. You know, in Q1, we were at 35.6 last year, and we ended at 34.9 with an average of 36. We started lower this quarter. You know, we do know that we have an opportunity to increase margin, and that's the work our team is doing. We have a pretty good insight where the margin can be. We just not reached at a point where we can get that outlook. But you should expect our margin to continue to grow. Because we have to do two things. One is making sure we're spending marketing in the right place. And secondly, when we have the expenses for care, that we are charging for it appropriately.

Fair enough. If I look back pre-pandemic, and I know your portfolio is a lot different now, but you were in the low to mid-40s. Is that if you're sort of targeting towards 95% over time and not really, I'm not holding you to any timeframe on that, but if you get to 95, should we be thinking low to mid 40s? Is that the right way to think about it?

You know, it is quite a bit out there in terms of timing. What I would say is portfolio has changed. So for example, in 2019, we made it on 45% margin. But at that time, the proportion of care was a bit lower and care would never have that higher margin. So I don't think we'll get to 44, but could it get closer to 40 and a little bit up? Yeah, that is possible. But again, I'm just speculating at this time because we really haven't given out any guidance on it specifically.

Okay. And then just on the G&A, is Q2 a good run rate or was there any one-time things in there?

Yeah, no, I think that Q2 would be a relatively good run rate. We did see a little bit of uptick in our stock comp, but generally speaking, I think that would be a good run rate going forward for the rest of the year.

Okay, thanks, guys. I'll turn it back. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Himanshu Gupta with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning. So just on LTC guidance increased to double digits, obviously it includes the benefit of one time WSIB refund. I mean, is it fair to say that your Q3 and Q4 NOI expectations are unchanged from last quarter?

Yeah, I mean, generally speaking, they would be relatively unchanged, maybe uptick by a little bit. You know, but our overall guidance, excluding the one-time funding and the retro, would be in the low double-digit range overall. Okay.

I think there are a few things, Himanshu, that change from Q1. And again, you know, Jonathan asked the same question, or Lauren, sorry. And so last quarter when we released results, the OA funding just came out. We were just making sure that we were not missing any expenses that relates to it. We had a whole strategy on driving preferred accommodation, which the team has done an exceptional job. So we did not factor in enough. And the third one, just on the agency one, we made a lot of progress last year, and we just wanted to make sure that progress is sustainable. And the team has proven after four quarters that it is sustainable. So that gave us more comfort in upping our guidance.

Awesome. Okay, thank you. And then just moving to retirement homes, and thanks for providing the move-ins and move-outs data in Q2. I mean, how does the move-in move-outs compare to the last year? I mean, is there a theme, any trend? You're seeing high move-ins or lower move-outs, anything to elaborate there?

Yeah, so in the past, we have seen a pretty consistent number of move-outs. And really our occupancy has fluctuated because of moving. This quarter we saw a little bit lower number of move outs. So we are cautiously optimistic that we are headed in the right direction. And I guess no surprise there, the math here is more moving than move outs would drive occupancy. And we are now getting into the fall season which is usually stronger. So we are expecting that occupancy will grow as we move forward. And the focus for us has been, as we talked about before, you know, rather than just looking at move-in, move-outs in total, is really looking at the homes with a lower occupancy. Because since we are close to 89% occupancy, we have many homes in our portfolio which are 95% plus. Some of them are at 100%. So the ones we are really, and the ones which are 95% plus, they have good wait lists for kind of rooms that people are looking for. So the data we are focused on is per home. And the homes with lower occupancy, that's where the move-in, move-out are bigger focus. including how many leads we get in a week, how many conversions we have, because that eventually is what will drive occupancy home. And 95% might go to 95.5% or 96%. That would not really make such a difference versus if something is at 70%, we're going to 85%, 90%, because that's the focus for few homes.

Yeah, okay. Thank you. And are there homes which are like 80% less occupancy?

Yeah, we have a handful of homes which would be in that range, but I would say a very small handful.

Okay, okay. Okay, thank you. And then just sticking to retirement home, same property, NOI, I mean, obviously high single-digit vote in 2024. I mean, given your commentary around occupancy gains and margins, do you think it is very repeatable in 2025 as well?

We haven't really given any outlook for 2025, but good for you to try him, I'm sure. So I think that's something you'll have to make a guess yourself.

Okay. Maybe, you know, I'll ask this question, a simpler one. Is there a thumb rule here? You know, as for every 100 basis point of occupancy increase, as we, you know, head towards 95, is there like an NOI margin it should go up? Or is there a desirable NOI margin?

Yeah, it's a good question, Himanshu. So broadly speaking, for every one percentage point we go up in occupancy, that would be about $2 million of revenue, and about 75% or 85% of that would be margin. The reason being, you know, it's pretty high margin because the only incremental cost would be some additional food, maybe some, you know, extra housekeeping, laundry staff, et cetera.

That's great, Kala. Thank you, David. Thank you, Nathan. I'll turn it back.

Thank you. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Juliano Thornhill with National Bank Financial. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, guys. Maybe just on the marketing spend that you guys mentioned earlier, could you provide some color just on the geography or possibly like suite type that requires this higher investment?

Thank you. You know, there's really not, it's not focused on suite type or geography. And we don't really do any national campaigns because our focus is very local. At the end of the day, retirement, people make a choice very locally. So, you know, no one is moving from Vancouver to Muskoka just because we will have a different brand. So the focus is very, very specific. And the spend is more focused on driving occupancy at the lower occupancy homes. The question was around homes which are around, you know, 80%, 85% lower. And that's where we are spending money to ensure that we have the right focus and the right opportunity to drive that occupancy.

Do you think the return to pre-COVID activities may have affected demand for some of your properties or even the occupancy trends that you've seen to date?

I'm not sure I follow. Can you just maybe expand a bit more?

Just with the more secondary markets that your sites are located within. I feel like more people are looking towards the cities versus away. And have you noticed that within your retirement occupancy?

Actually, not at all. Many of our sites which are in smaller markets continue very well. And the reverse is also true. So I don't think it is specific to specific areas because in a macro level, what remains true is that the demand is higher than supply of retirement homes. And only in a couple of markets, the supply is higher, but that will only get absorbed shortly. So I don't think it's an issue of demand and supply because we think demand is higher. It's more an issue of if they're Three retirement homes, they all will be full eventually. The idea is who will get full first.

Okay. And then just last one on the Series A maturing. Have your plans or intentions maybe changed now that spreads have come down and the rate path outlook is a little more certain than before? Sure.

Yeah, so, I mean, we continue to look at all options right now, you know, because of, you know, our conservative balance sheet. You know, we continue to actively pursue CMHC financing because that continues to be the lowest rates available, you know, out of our options. But, you know, we would also have other options as well, including, you know, drawing on our unsecured revolver, conventional mortgages, as well as possibly another issuance of unsecured bonds.

All right. Okay. Thank you, guys.

Our next question comes from Dean Wilkinson with CIBC. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Morning, guys. Most of my questions have been answered. Just as it comes down to sort of these retroactive adjustments and things like that, Do you guys have any expectations of more stuff coming in future quarters? Do you have any line of sight in terms of perhaps appeals or things around different payments that may still yet come in?

I think the WSIB one, that's a bit unique. But from a government perspective, they are becoming more common. And different provinces have a different view where the funding would reflect one thing, but they understand their costs are always higher. And I think one of you talked about that in the past, that because the funding was not there, we were punitive. So the fact that the funding has come up, we should not be punitive again. So I do think time to time we would see these retroactive adjustments because the last four or five years were very challenging, and I think different governments took a different approach in how to fix that. So I don't think it will be that unusual for us to once a year get some funding correction in one of the provinces.

So it's kind of like it was sort of before we even knew what a COVID was. You're kind of going back to that situation, I suppose.

Yeah, I just think not only that, things have changed in the last four years where government is focused on ensuring the sector remains viable. We need to build more homes, and that only happens with the appropriate funding.

Got it. And then maybe, David, you're obviously out talking to lenders and syndicates. Where do you think pricing would come in right now if you were to, say, go to the unsecured market, which there's a tremendous amount of demand on that side for product?

Yeah, no, so you're absolutely right. There has been a tremendous amount. We've seen a lot of demands. We stay very close to the market right now. Rates right now might range in the 5.25% yield. And they have come down significantly. A year ago, we might have been looking closer to 7%. So both GOC rates and spreads have come down quite significantly. And right now, it might be around 5.25%.

Yeah, that probably gets lower by the time we get to the back half of the year. That's it for me. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Pammy Beer with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning. I just wanted to come back to the comment on the lower occupied assets. Do you have an estimate of maybe what portion of the portfolio that they currently represent? And if you had to estimate on average, where is the occupancy in that segment versus, say, the rest of the retirement portfolio?

I don't have to guess. I have the numbers. We just haven't got into that level of detail, Tammy, before. But just to maybe... build a bit of context, I would say, you know, more than half of our portfolio would be, you know, what we call stabilized, which is 95% plus or right in that range. And then, you know, if you break the portfolio further, you know, the other 25, 30% of it would be getting very close to it or we have line of sight to get to that. And then probably, you know, eight or 10 sites, which will be anywhere from some could be as low as 75 as way all the way up to 85. So that would be the quantum of it. In some cases, it is external. So, you know, if you're in the Oshawa market, your occupancy is lower because there is more supply in that market. In other cases, you know, we had a home which was not performing well. And with the right leadership structure change and the right sales and marketing, we saw occupancy change by nearly 1,000 basis points in the last eight months. So I just think there's Out of those seven or eight homes, a couple would be market-driven. The other five or six is, frankly, we have to do things differently to drive occupancy, and the team is all over that to deliver on it.

Okay, that's very helpful. Thanks. Maybe just coming back to the comment on retirement margins, and it kind of ties into what you just said on maybe more focused strategies on lower-occupied assets. But maybe can you comment on the use of incentives? Are you offering really much at this point, just given where the backdrop sits? And if there are, do you see that maybe burning off and maybe helping margins in the year ahead?

You know, our incentive strategy has not really changed. So the common incentive in usual markets is around the month-free rent. And I think that incentive is pretty common. We are seeing some development projects offering significant incentives, and those eventually come back to haunt you in later years. And since we are not a developer or trying to flip our assets, we have no intention of doing that. So, for example, we are leasing up our asset in Niagara Falls, and giving significant incentives would be a good way to drive occupancy. But again, we are not after occupancy. We are about margin dollars. So we have not taken any aggressive approach in that.

That's great. Thanks very much. I'll turn it back.

We have no further questions at this time. With that, this will conclude today's conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.