CareTrust REIT (CTRE) Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Executive Summary

Q2 2025 delivered double-digit growth and a clean beat on revenue vs consensus, driven by the Care REIT UK acquisition and continued U.S. deployment; total revenues rose 63.3% year over year to $112.47M, and normalized FFO/FAD per share were $0.43.
Revenue beat Street by ~10% ($112.47M actual vs $102.02M consensus) while GAAP diluted EPS printed $0.35 vs $0.34 consensus; normalized EPS screens below some EPS frameworks due to REIT reporting emphasis on FFO. Values retrieved from S&P Global.
Management raised FY 2025 guidance for normalized FFO/FAD to $1.77–$1.79 and net income per share to $1.43–$1.45; component assumptions include ~$338M cash rental revenues and ~$44M interest expense, underpinned by low leverage (net debt/annualized normalized EBITDA ~2.0x) and strong liquidity.
Strategic catalysts: successful integration of Care REIT (entry into UK care homes), reloaded ~$600M pipeline, and term loan swap fixing SOFR at 3.5% (4.63% all-in), supporting visible runway for external growth.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well
- UK Care REIT acquisition closed, adding ~133 care homes with inflation-linked leases and strengthening diversification; management is “chuffed” with operator relationships and sees ample UK growth opportunities.
- Revenue up 63.3% YoY and normalized FFO per share up ~19% YoY; dividend increased 15.5% YoY to $0.335 with ~78% payout, keeping a comfortable coverage.
- Balance sheet strength: net debt/annualized normalized EBITDA ~2.0x, fixed charge coverage 8.2x, and ample revolver capacity; ATM activity bolstered equity and term loan fixed rate enhances interest visibility.
What Went Wrong
- G&A rose with integration and team buildout (including UK manager acquisition), implying near-term opex headwind before synergy realization.
- EPS optics still governed by non-GAAP-to-GAAP reconciliation and FX items (e.g., $4.41M FX gain), which can complicate comparability vs Street EPS frameworks.
- Competitive dynamics in seniors housing show wider cap rate ranges; at lower cap rates CareTrust may be less competitive, highlighting need for careful operator selection (SHOP entry remains deliberate).

Transcript

Speaker 7

Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to Lauren Beale, CareTrust REIT Chief Accounting Officer. You may begin.

Speaker 6

Thank you, and welcome to CareTrust REIT's second quarter 2025 earnings call. We will make forward-looking statements today based on management's current expectations, including statements regarding future financial performance, dividends, acquisitions, investments, financing plans, business strategies, and growth prospects. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to materially differ from our expectations. These risks are discussed in CareTrust REIT's most recent Form 10-K and 10-Q filings with the SEC. We do not undertake a duty to update or revise these statements except as required by law. During the call, the company will reference non-GAAP metrics such as EBITDA, FFO, and FAD. A reconciliation of these measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measures is available in our earnings press release and Q2 2025 non-GAAP reconciliation that are available on the Investor Relations section of CareTrust REIT's website at www.caretrustreit.com.

A replay of this call will also be available on the website for a limited period. On the call this morning are David M. Sedgwick, President and Chief Executive Officer; William M. Wagner, Chief Financial Officer; James B. Callister, Chief Investment Officer; and Derek J. Bunker, FCP Strategy and Investor Relations. I'll now turn the call over to David M. Sedgwick, CareTrust REIT's President and CEO. Dave?

Speaker 5

Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us. Before I share the highlights for the quarter and the many good things yet to come, I think it's important to take a minute to step back and put our growth over the past two years in context. In the second quarter and since, we've closed on approximately $1.1 billion of investments, highlighted, of course, by our acquisition of Care REIT and entry into the UK care home market closed in May. Over the past 18 months, we have deployed roughly $2.7 billion of investments, eclipsing the total amount we invested in the prior eight years since our inception.

During our Q4 call, when we were celebrating a record $1.5 billion of investments in 2024, which is seven times the amount of our annual average, I mentioned how we would not rest on that record but would instead continue full steam ahead. We quickly followed through and closed our first M&A deal in the Care REIT acquisition in May, diversifying our operator bench, our asset type mix, our payer mix, our geographic concentration, and providing a compelling exposure to a key market in which we expect to grow simultaneously with our U.S. opportunity set. The team did not stop there. Since closing on Care REIT, we closed on another nearly $220 million of investments and yesterday announced a reloaded pipeline of approximately $600 million that James will talk about in his update.

The results of this record pace of investments are: total revenues are up 63.3% in the second quarter over the prior year quarter, normalized FFO per share is up about 19%, and normalized FAD per share is up about 16%, each over the same period. We've also increased our quarterly dividend by 15.5% year over year while maintaining a comfortable payout ratio. Turning to an update on the quarter, the integration of the Care REIT assets is off to a strong start. James has promised not to use the word "plucky" again in this, and I promise I won't use a British accent, but I will say we are chuffed with the operator relationships that we've stepped into, and I've already game planned with many of them how to grow together in the near future.

We continue to introduce ourselves to the market and expect more care home opportunities to find their way into our pipeline over time. At the end of June, we acquired Care REIT's former external manager and began the integration of those employees into CareTrust. They're a talented group that brings to the table experience with these assets and market and deep relationships with operators and other key industry participants. We believe a CareTrust UK team will help us source, identify, underwrite, and close on growth opportunities there. It is fun to celebrate all of our recent investments, and it's important to highlight what makes us so excited about the near and long-term future prospects. I'll reiterate what I conveyed on the last few earnings calls: we are not done.

We very much feel like we're still in startup mode and hungry to prove ourselves and produce sustainable FFO per share growth over many years to come. In order to keep the flywheel ripping, along with investing in real assets, we've been investing in the people and systems to support their integration and our future growth. In addition to building out our UK presence, we've added key professionals here in the U.S. across tax, finance, investments, and asset management that position us to grow in more markets in more diversified ways. Our expanded team is stronger, smarter, and hungrier than ever before, and this behind-the-scenes investment in the team, like our investments in real assets, will continue to pay off over time. With that, I'll hand it off to James for a report on investment activity and the acquisition landscape.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Dave. Good morning, everyone. During the second quarter, in addition to closing the Care REIT acquisition in May, we completed the acquisition of its external manager and began the process of welcoming those employees to CareTrust. As Dave mentioned, leveraging this platform allows us to focus simultaneously on our growth in both the U.S. and UK across skilled nursing, seniors housing, and care home asset types. Also in the quarter, through a joint venture where we provided approximately 95% of the total required investment capital, we closed on an approximately $146 million portfolio of 10 skilled nursing assets in the Pacific Northwest leased to two high-caliber existing operators.

These are quality assets that we're very excited about, and it's a testament to the hard work of our team up and down the organization to close on a transaction of this size immediately on the heels of the Care REIT deal. In the rest of the quarter and since, we've deployed approximately $110 million in additional capital across skilled nursing real estate acquisitions, preferred equity investments, and a mortgage loan. These deals bring our total investments closed year to date to approximately $1.2 billion. As we look forward, our investment pipeline remains strong, sitting at approximately $600 million. The quoted pipeline includes some singles and doubles, as well as some mid to large-sized portfolio transactions, and primarily consists of skilled nursing facilities, but also includes a couple of seniors housing deals and a UK care home opportunity.

Please remember that when we quote our pipeline, we only include deals that we have a reasonable level of confidence that we can lock up and close within the next 12 months. We continue to see a robust pipeline of both broker-marketed deals and off-market opportunities sourced through our operator network and other relationships. The flow of prospects spans skilled nursing and seniors housing assets, both triple net and SHOP, with a measured yet meaningful uptick in overall volume. At the same time, we're building our pipeline in the UK, actively evaluating potential acquisitions across the pond, and regularly meeting with established and new operators who value a capital partner like CareTrust in a capital-tight environment. The UK care home sector represents an additional avenue of accretive growth, where our rigorous underwriting, operational expertise, strong balance sheet, advantaged cost of capital, and proven certainty of closing position us to win.

Importantly, our pursuit of UK transactions will not slow our primary focus on sourcing and executing high-return real estate acquisitions in the United States, as evidenced by around $215 million in U.S. investments closed post-Care REIT acquisition and by our reloaded pipeline. With that, I'll turn it over to Bill.

Speaker 2

Thanks, James. For the quarter, normalized FFO increased 58.2% over the prior year quarter to $83.1 million, and normalized FAD increased by 53.9% to $83.1 million. On a per-share basis, normalized FFO increased $0.07 or 19.4% to $0.43 per share, and normalized FAD increased $0.06 or 16.2% to $0.43 per share. During the second quarter, we raised approximately $355 million of cash from equity sales under our ATM and closed on a $500 million term loan. These proceeds allowed us to fund investments, including a portion of the UK, to pay off our revolver balance as of June 30th, and subsequent to quarter-end pay off approximately $260 million of debt we assumed as part of the Care REIT acquisition.

Also, after quarter-end, we entered into an interest rate swap to fix the rate on our new term loan for a period of three years with a go-forward all-in rate of 4.6%, bringing our fixed-rate debt as a percentage of total debt to 93%. In yesterday's press release, we raised guidance for this year to $1.77 to $1.79 for both normalized FFO and normalized FAD per share. This guidance includes all investments closed today, a diluted weighted average share count of 195.3 million shares, and also relies on the following six assumptions: one, no additional investments nor any further debt or equity issuances this year; two, CPI rent escalations of 2.5%. Our total cash rental revenues for the year are projected to be approximately $338 million. Not included in this number is straight-line rent of $8 million and the amortization of leasing tangibles of $2 million.

Three, interest income from financing receivables of $12 million. Four, interest income of approximately $87 million, which is made up of $80 million from our loan portfolio and $7 million from cash invested in money market bonds. Five, interest expense of approximately $44 million, which includes roughly $5 million of amortization of deferred financing fees. Six, G&A expense of approximately $48 to $52 million and includes about $12 million of stock compensation. Lastly, our liquidity continues to remain strong. In addition to $65 million of cash on hand, we have $1.14 billion available under our revolver. Despite our record pace of investments, we continue to maintain low leverage with the net debt to annualized normalized EBITDA of two times. Our net debt to enterprise value was 12.3% as of quarter-end, and we achieved a fixed charge coverage ratio of 8.2 times. With that, I'll turn it back to Dave.

Speaker 5

Thank you, Bill. Super excited about the performance and super grateful and proud of the teams for what we've been able to accomplish over the last couple of years and last quarter. Happy to take your questions.

Speaker 7

Thank you. At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask questions, press star, the number one on your telephone keypad. We will pause for just a moment to file the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of William John Kilichowski from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. Thank you, team. Maybe if we could just start on the pipeline, would you mind kind of talking about the composition of that? I'm curious how much of a contribution the UK is already starting to see and if you're seeing that ramping. Maybe part two of that would be what % of that is SHOP, if any? Dave, you get bonus points for using a British accent.

Speaker 5

I'm going to defer to James to answer this one.

We'll see if he uses the accent or not.

We'll fight that.

I got to be true to myself, so it's just going to be me. You know the pipeline, John, the majority of it is still U.S. skilled nursing. The remainder of it is a combination of U.S. seniors and UK. There's definitely a UK transaction in there, and that ramp continues to grow as we continue to engage in and develop relationships with the broker and operator community. I think that, you know, there is a component of the seniors housing in the U.S. that does consist of SHOP. You know, we have 12 months to realize on that, but we are continuing to actively look at SHOP and try to source the right deals when we find them.

Got it. That's helpful. Of the SHOP deals that you're looking at, could you kind of talk about maybe strategically the ones that you're interested in, whether it's core, core plus, or value add, and what tier markets are you looking at? I'm just kind of curious how you're positioning yourself versus peers.

Yeah, I mean, I think we're pretty open, John. I think we're really focused on the right operator-manager relationships based on the deals that come in and looking at, can we really find an operator or manager solution that we really like and vet and get comfortable with? I think we're pretty open on the deals. I think we're going to be more competitive in some than others. I think we're really looking at everything, focusing on the right operator-manager solutions for that deal and focusing on the ones that maybe others will be more competitive than we would, but focusing on the ones we feel like are in our lane and that we can source the right operator for.

Very helpful. Thank you.

Thanks, John.

Speaker 7

Your next question is coming from the line of Farrell Granath of Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Speaker 0

Hello. Good afternoon. This is Farrell Granath. I also just wanted to dig in a little bit deeper of what you're seeing in your pipeline. As some of the overhang when it came to skilled nursing facilities has kind of lifted slightly with the passing of the reconciliation bill, I was wondering if you've seen anything else come into the market more or if you've seen greater competition for assets of both skilled nursing facilities, seniors housing, or even SHOP as you're coming to the table.

I don't think we've seen a meaningful uptick or impact from the Big Beautiful Bill on deal flow at all. I think that you still see regional owner-operators and mom-and-pops starting to bring assets to the market as their recovery has made most of their way through their recovery following COVID. As that has stabilized, a lot of them are bringing more stuff to bear and to the market. I haven't seen really any impact from the Big Beautiful Bill. I think that deal flow is consistent. It's probably getting a little uptick recently. I think that it's pretty much the same buyers at the table in the skilled nursing market as it's been for a while.

I would say on seniors, maybe a few more entrants on the private equity side, private money side, but still primarily the publics and the known private equity groups have been there for a while now.

Great. Thank you. My second question is about the potential synergies, as you were just mentioning about the integration of the CareTrust REIT team, of what we could maybe see, especially given your G&A ticked up slightly and with the expectation of that going forward, of what that could turn into even in out years.

Speaker 3

Yeah. Hey, Farrell, this is Derek. I think, first of all, it's going really well. We're excited about those teams. We felt like with the record pace of investments in real assets over the past 18 months, it was important to make sure we build a team around it to take care of it and to position ourselves for that diversified growth across markets and kind of future opportunities. I think you'll see that continue to bear out through the rest of the year. We feel like we've made a lot of headway. At the end of June, we brought in those UK teams already, and we made quite a bit of investment in the U.S. team as well. It may not be done, but we've made a lot of headway. We're really excited about the progress so far and feel like we've positioned ourselves well to support that growth.

Speaker 0

Okay, thank you so much.

Thanks, Farrell.

Speaker 7

The next question is coming from the line of Michael Albert Carroll from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks. I guess, James, I want to quickly touch on the pipeline where you said that there were a few seniors housing deals. I mean, are those deals SHOP deals, or are they just traditional triple net lease type transactions?

Speaker 3

There's some of both in there, Mike.

Can you talk about the REDIA platform that you've been kind of looking to get into? I mean, how's that market looking? Are we any closer to some type of transaction on that side or anything interesting out there to you?

Speaker 5

I would say that with respect to CareTrust REIT, what we've been saying for, I guess, about the last 18 months is still very true, which is, like James said, we're looking at a range of opportunities, a range of entry points from large deals that would come with a team and platform all the way down to onesie-twosies that would be a more modest entry. We're going to be opportunistic. We don't feel any pressure to be fast about it. We want to get it right. I think James's answer to the previous question was right on where it's less about the size of the deal for SHOP, and it's all about the operator. When you look at our lease coverage, it's so high, relatively speaking, and that's based on matching great opportunities with great operators.

If we can stay true to that with respect to SHOP as well, then all of our energy can really be focused on growth. I'll say we continue to look at the field and we'll be opportunistic. I'd be really surprised if we didn't get something done with respect to SHOP within the next 12 months.

All right. Thanks, Dave. That's helpful. I guess last for me is, has the competitive landscape made it more difficult, specifically on the seniors housing side? I know cap rates for SNF rarely change. I'm assuming that that's still kind of holding true. Are you seeing any type of compression on the seniors housing side that might make it more difficult?

Speaker 3

I wouldn't say to make it more difficult. You just have a much bigger range in the seniors housing world of cap rates, Mike, depending on location, the quality type, the newness of the asset, a whole host of other things. You see just a different, wider range of cap rates than you see on the skilled side. I don't think anything that makes it particularly difficult. As you get into lower cap rates, we may not be as competitive as others, but I don't think there's anything that makes it particularly difficult. There are more prospective buyers, but I think with the right opportunity, when we've got the right operator, you know, we can be pretty gritty and still compete.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Thanks, Mike.

Speaker 7

Your next question is coming from the line of Ali Preji from Baird. Please go ahead.

Hi, and thanks for taking my question. First, on the new investment-grade rating, can you speak on what you would do for the next issuance, whether private placement or another term loan, and when that would be?

Speaker 3

Yeah. It's Bill. The next issuance, if we did a bond offering, we'd probably wait until we get investment-grade from all the different agencies. It all depends on the size, would all depend on the investment pipeline and what we're closing on at the time. With equity priced so nicely right now, that's a real good way to fund our investments.

It makes sense. Second for me is, thinking of opportunities with new operators, are you looking at new operators, and would you look to finance deals with them or buy assets right away to start relationships? Just any commentary on new operators?

Speaker 5

CareTrust REIT - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Executive Summary

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

Transcript

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