Sonida Senior Living, Inc. (SNDA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to the Sonita Seniors Living Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. I will now hand the conference over to Megan Caldwell, VP of Investor Relations. Megan, please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. All statements made today, August 10, 2026, which are not historical facts are forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. The company expressly disclaims any obligation to update these statements in the future, except as required by law. Actual results or performance may from forward-looking statements. Certain factors that could cause actual results to differ are detailed in the earnings release that the company issued earlier today, as well as in the reports that the company files with the SEC, including the risk factors contained in the annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Please see today's press release for the full Safe Harbor and Forward Looking Statements, which may be found in the Form 8K filing from this morning or at the company's investor relations page found at investors.sonitaseniorliving.com. As previously disclosed, the company completed its acquisition of C&L Healthcare Properties Inc. or CHP on March 11th, 2026. Unless otherwise specifically noted or the context otherwise requires, the financial and operating results we are discussing today and that are included in our earnings release and presentation represent the combined company on a pro forma basis for any period presented in which we did not own CHP for the full period, including CHP as if the acquisition had closed on the first day of the period. We believe this pro forma information provides a meaningful method of comparing the performance of the combined business over historical periods. This pro information giving effect to the CHP acquisition has not been prepared in compliance with Article 11 of Regulation SX and does not reflect the actual results we have achieved had the CHP acquisition occurred on the first day of the applicable period and may not be predictive of future results. Please Please note that our GAAP financials reflect CHP's results from the closing date only and our second quarter 2026 financials reflect CHP for the full period without any adjustment. See the disclaimer slide in our presentation for additional information about the preparation of and the limitations associated with this perform of financial information. Please also note that during this call, the company will present non-GAAP financial measures. For reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measure, please see today's earnings release and presentation. If you'd like to follow along during today's call, you can find Sunita's second quarter 2026 earnings presentation in the investor relations section of the company's website. In addition, we have included supplemental earnings information within our presentation consistent with prior quarter releases. I would now like to turn the call over to Sunita, president and CEO.

Brandon Rebar. Thanks, Megan. Good morning and thank you for joining us on our second quarter 2026 earnings call. Last quarter, we outlined Sunita's shift from building its foundation to compounding on it, transitioning from survival and stabilization to now, in 2026, compounding. Our compounding phase is well underway with today's results showing clear fundamental and I'm pleased to report a strong second quarter. On the same store basis, weighted average occupancy increased 240 basis points year over year to 87.8%, reflecting continuous growth continued gains in move-in volume and sustained execution by our sales, operations, and clinical teams. top line growth continued to flow through efficiently to profitability. We're encouraged that this momentum continued into the third quarter with our total portfolio occupancy increasing sequentially by 40 basis points in July versus June. QSameStore Community NOI grew 16.9% with NOI margin expanding 250 basis points year-over-year to 32.6%, underscoring the operating leverage embedded in the portfolio. We are pleased that our operational efforts have demonstrated a significant expansion from our 14% year-over-year same community NOI growth in Q1. On a total portfolio basis for the second quarter, normalized FFO per share was 48 cents with adjusted EBITDA of $50 million, both reflecting the earnings power of the platform as it scales. The strength of these results highlights the caliber of leadership across the operating platform, the effectiveness of our proprietary SPIN business intelligence tools, and the operational discipline to balance onboarding new communities while delivering consistent performance in our core portfolio. The continued integration of the CHP portfolio remains on track, and our pipeline of additional near-term investment opportunities continues to expand, both of which I'll cover in more detail later in my remarks. Our primary objective remains generating durable per share value creation through the combination of a stronger balance sheet, a differentiated operating model, and a deeper leadership bench. We are also pleased to formally introduce Anton Nicodemus as our Chief Operating Officer, a newly created and vital role as we focus on continuing to compound value. Anton's arrival reflects a deliberate investment in enhancing the resident and overall customer experience as we build on a strong operating foundation and position Sunita for long-term competitive advantage as an owner-operator. Anton brings a valuable perspective rooted in hospitality. At its best, senior living is not simply a care business. It is an experience business. Culinary quality, service consistency, resident programming, and the design of the physical environment, together with disciplined sales, marketing, and revenue management, are details that drive renewals, generate referrals, and sustain pricing power through market cycles. They're also the most difficult things to replicate at scale. As Sunita's platform grows, our ability to embed a hospitality-driven culture at the community level and to hold that standard across a larger and more diverse portfolio is a key source of differentiation in our business model. Anton is here to build and sustain that capability, and we are excited to have him leading that work. This mandate is especially relevant given the pace of integration work underway. As of July 1st, 14 communities, more than a quarter of the CHP shop portfolio, have transitioned to CINEDA management. The execution was smooth, and more importantly, it was instructive. Our operational excellence team, built over the last several years since we began acquiring assets in 2024, continues to accelerate asset transitions and data migration onto our SPIN platform, enhancing a playbook refined through two years of integration work. To contextualize this a bit, the six communities transitioned at the beginning of May, delivered year-over-year NOI improvement exceeding 60%, and expanded NOI margin by 850 basis points compared to Q2 2025. Ongoing investment in detailed training and development of new leadership coupled with community-level incentive structures are keeping teams focused and results steady throughout the integration process. We remain confident in the performance of our remaining third party managers. They have preserved operational continuity and institutional knowledge at the community level, and in a handful of cases are evolving into longer term strategic partnerships, a dynamic that is opening incremental opportunities for us across a range of fronts, That's deal flow, sourcing networks, or regional density advantages. That same playbook mentality, building infrastructure that gets smarter with each transition, extends beyond the integration itself. It is what underpins the Sonita Performance Insight Navigator, or SPIN, our proprietary operating platform that provides real-time insights around occupancy, rate, and labor trends, with datasets coming from over 100 of our communities. We introduced SPIN to our investors for the first time in our April shareholder letter and in further detail on our Q1 call, though it reflects work we've been building for years. SPIN FIN is a proprietary system with layered best-in-class third-party capabilities specifically tailored to how we operate, bringing resident care, workforce, and community-level data into a single real-time view. What's changed since last quarter is scale. Each community acquisition we integrate enriches that data set and drives further development of predictive insights into resident clinical profiles and labor efficiency. Dividing to capital allocation, our investment focus remains return driven, not category driven. Every dollar deployed is measured against the creation to free cash flow and net asset value per share. underwrite with the same rigor and cost of capital discipline as an institutional investor. But the CINEDA advantage lives in what happens after the deal closes. We execute as a best-in-class operator, converting operational upside directly into NOI in a way a pure capital allocator cannot. That operating advantage shapes our conviction about the types of assets that create the most value for CINEDA shareholders. assets that reward not just an owner, but an operator, where our operational capabilities allow us to lean into a deal, specifically high quality assets available at a discount to replacement cost in markets with favorable supply demand dynamics, where we see multiple levers to grow occupancy, rate, and margin, rather than a single asset thesis dependent on cap rate compression. Regional density is a particularly important part of that thesis. Today, local operating density is becoming harder to replicate and more valuable. Our concentrated presence in key markets such as Dallas, Fort Worth, northern Florida and Atlanta deepens access to the operating and market data that sharpens our capital deployment decisions, while regional clustering drives referral networks, purchasing power, and labor efficiencies that optimize our operational opportunity. This density is also reinforced by how we're perceived in the market. We believe our platform is resonating with sellers who care about what happens to their communities after a transaction closes, and we expect that to become an increasingly important differentiator to our sourcing efforts over time. Together, these dynamics feed the flywheel we described last quarter, where every acquisition deepens our operator relationships as to the spend dataset and strengthens our density in the markets that matter most. The value of SPIN and our broader integration and operations playbook is increasingly reflected in our results. Our stone joint venture is a case in point. Formed in 2024 to acquire four highly distressed communities across the Midwest, the portfolio NOI has grown 5.6 times, driven by a complete overhaul of the operating model to drive both top line and margin growth. performance yielded a cash out refinancing that closed this quarter, returning the full amount of invested capital to Sunita and our joint venture partner with attractively priced long duration flexible mortgage debt. Importantly, we believe the growth from this acquisition is far from finished. The portfolio remains in the stabilization phase with meaningful upside opportunities ahead. We've previously discussed our 2024 cohort, which is currently yielding approximately 11.5% relative to our cost basis, with meaningful further upside ahead. Our 2025 cohort is showing similarly strong momentum since Q4 2025, the first full quarter of ownership. CINCY and NOI are up 1,400 basis points and 1,600 basis points respectively. Notably, occupancy for the 2025 cohort sits at 70.4% as of June, reflecting significant upside ahead. The Stone JV and our other one-off acquisitions to date reflect the kind of value creation we look to replicate as we continue to deploy capital. And we are seeing that same opportunity set in our current pipeline. Today, we are under contract to acquire approximately $88 million of assets that share these same characteristics. attractive markets, and well-located buildings where our operating prowess can drive a significant uplift in performance. We anticipate these assets to generate a mid-teens on levered IRR and accretion to normalized FFO and NAV per share on a stabilized basis. This is all consistent with the approach laid out in our April shareholder letter, where we are looking for acquisitions that generate outsized return on unlevered cost of capital when compared to our current implied cost of capital in the public markets. We continue to build the pipeline behind this initial $88 million, which remains deep and compelling and our acquisitions team is as busy as it's ever been. We look forward to sharing more on our acquisition efforts in the upcoming calls. With that, I'll turn the call over to Kevin to walk through the financial results, balance sheet and asset recycling efforts in more detail.

Thanks Brandon. Turning to slide 16 in the investor deck, a quick reminder on how we're structuring portfolio reporting. As we outlined last quarter, we report across three groupings, same store, non-same store, and triple net lease, a framework designed to provide a clean read on our core earnings base while isolating the parts of the portfolio still in motion. That second bucket, non-Same Store, is where our active portfolio management shows up most directly. It includes newly acquired and stabilizing communities, assets undergoing reinvestment or care model conversion, and a target set of communities identified for disposition as part of our ongoing portfolio optimization strategy. On that last group, we are making significant progress towards an efficient exit of these non-core positions to redeploy that capital into higher quality communities that better align with our growth and margin profile. Capital recycling of these 14 communities, which represent less than 2% of total NOI for Q2, should have a deleveraging impact on the company's balance sheet beyond enhancing overall quality and earnings power. We see this as one of the clearest ways to show disciplined capital allocation in action, and it's a dynamic we expect to keep pointing to as the portfolio accelerates a shift to higher quality, higher growth assets. The net lease portfolio includes the 15 communities we own that have operating leases in place. Initial lease maturities are between May 2030 and July 2032, and all include five-year tenant renewal options. Turning to slide 17, our same store portfolio generated strong operating gains in the second quarter. We picked up 240 basis points of occupancy on a year over year basis. The percentage of same store communities with occupancy above 90% grew from 43% in 2Q25 to 54% today, while the percentage below 80% declined from 30% to 20%. These occupancy gains are supported by increased lead volume from our focused digital marketing efforts, coupled with a higher conversion to tour ratio. REF4 grew 4.9% year-over-year, reflecting continued rate strength following the annual renewal of 70% of the company's resident leases in Q1. The overall strong performance and revenue was complemented by well-controlled operating expenses, which yielded an NOI margin of 32.6% for the quarter and increase of 250 basis points year-over-year. The continued discipline in labor and non-labor cost management drove an incremental flow-through of 63.4% on the increase in revenue for the same quarter and prior year. Also contributing to the widening margins within our same store portfolio is the steady stabilization of the 2024 acquisition cohort, which continues to increase its absolute NOI contribution with each consecutive quarter. While we are encouraged by Q2 strong operating results, which were highlighted by 16.9% year over year increase in NOI, we see several avenues for margin expansion and a still maturing same store portfolio. all anchored into the utilization of the SPIN platform by our community leaders and regional teams. Moving to total portfolio results on slide 18, total shop NOI grew 17 and a half percent, supported primarily by growth in the same store portfolio. The estimated average occupancy increased 170 basis points year over year to 86.6%, reflecting continued strength across the stabilized core portfolio while incorporating acquired communities with lower starting occupancy basis. Assets still in transition and assets that are being actively recycled cycled out. In addition to these occupancy gains, total shop rev4 also grew 4.9%, with rate opportunities still embedded in our newer and repositioning communities as they continue to mature. As Brandon mentioned, the 2025 cohort's occupancy trajectory has been a standout, and that momentum has flown through to our profitability as well. NOI margin across these four communities moved from negative 1% in Q4 2025, the first full quarter in which all four assets were included, to 15% this quarter. With plenty of runway left on these assets, the pace of stabilization should support meaningful year-over-year NOI contribution when they flip into same-store or in 2027. More broadly, total shop NOI margin for the quarter was 29.9%, a level that we expect to build upon as we execute on our strategies across acquisition stabilization, community transitions and portfolio pruning. We will move to slide 19 now to look at our same store portfolio in more depth. A steady increase of rev core over the last five quarters reflects the company's focus on optimizing resident rates through SPIN, as well as the staggered nature of the legacy CHP rate renewal conventions. The combination of these two factors should provide for further rate increase capture throughout the year and beyond. The company continues to appropriately match level of care revenues to its acuity-based staffing model within SPIN, providing another lever to widen margin profile while both occupancy and operational efficiencies climb. Moving to slide 20, you'll see our same store labor efficiency continues to drive up incremental margin flow. In Q2, total labor costs declined 1.5%. 130 basis points as a percentage of revenue year over year to 40.4%, a portfolio low, primarily highlighted by 100 basis point improvement in direct labor, with both contract and other labor remaining minimal and stable. These continued improvements in our labor profile are the direct result of the utilization and proficiency of real-time spin labor metrics by our community teams. Other non-labor operating expenses also continue to push down relative to increasing revenues, contributing to a 410 basis point spread between REF4 and EX4, and ultimately the 16.9% increase in NOI from Q2 and prior year. This three-quarter trajectory reflects the continued evolution of our spin labor modules, and more importantly, their broadening adoption and utilization across our community and regional teams. Turning to slides 22 and 23, our balance sheet continues to strengthen as we advance toward our targeted near-term leverage range of six to six and a half times. of June 30th, the company's capitalization includes two term loans totaling $575 million, which includes an additional $25 million commitment received in Q2. The two term loans are priced at SOFR plus 195 basis points with step downs that allow pricing to compress to as low as SOFR plus 130 basis points as leverage is reduced. Subsequent to quarter end on August 7th, we completed a $380 million five-year term loan, including two extension options with Ally Bank. The proceeds from the allied term loan were used to fully settle the $170 million bridge loan and the existing allied term loan of $122 million, with the remaining proceeds used to pay down the senior revolving credit facility increase availability to fund future acquisitions. The LA term loan, along with the two term loans from the CHP merger in Q1, meaningfully extend our debt maturity profile and addresses any near-term refinancing risk associated with the company's debt stack. transaction on a pro forma basis, total debt stands at approximately $1.6 billion at a weighted average interest rate of 5.43%. 86% of our total debt is either fixed rate or floating hedge. The Ally refinancing also reshapes our maturity ladder meaningfully, with 97% of total debt maturing in 2029 or later and 43% maturing in 2031 or later, prior to the inclusion of extension options. As of the date of the Allied Turn Loan financing, the secured revolving credit facility carries a total commitment of $455 million. of which roughly $166 million is available immediately and continues to provide meaningful incremental capacity to support future growth. Finally, in July, the company issued approximately 672,000 shares of common stock under its ATM program at an average price of $41.05, resulting resulting in net proceeds of $27.3 million. We anticipate these funds to be used for the equitization of the nearest term community acquisitions within our pipeline. We remain pleased with the quality, flexibility, and duration of our capital structure following this transaction as we execute on our growth and de-lettering strategy. With that, I'm going to pass the call back to Brandon for closing remarks. Thanks, Kevin, and thank you all for joining us today. Taken together, our second quarter results reflect the strength and durability of the operating momentum we've built across the portfolio. Same store and total shop performance both point to a business generating meaningful top line growth while translating that growth into outsized margin expansion. And our recent balance sheet actions have further strengthened our financial flexibility to support that momentum going forward. None of this happens without the people behind it. Our team members across each of our communities and in our support roles show up every day for our residents with genuine care and pride. And that dedication is the foundation. Everything else the Sanita story is built on. We are also grateful for the continued confidence of our investors who have partnered with us through this journey and share in our excitement about where Sunita is headed. Thank you again for your time today, and we look forward to speaking with many of you in the weeks ahead.

Operator, you can open the line for any questions. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. standby while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question from the line of Ronald Camden.

with Morgan Stanley. Ronald, your line is open. Please go ahead. Great. I guess just a couple of quick ones from me. Starting with the normalized FFO 48 cents in the quarter, which looked pretty strong. Can you guys just remind us when you guys plan to give sort of normalized FFO guidance and how the thinking is going through there?.

Hey, Ron, good morning. Our goal is to start issuing guidance for the full year 2027 as we just continue to pull the entire portfolio together and work through the completion of the integrations from the CHP deal as well as the other acquisitions we have in our pipeline. So that's the goal.

Great, that's really helpful. And then as you sort of take a step back, I'm just curious when you look at the portfolio right now, where in your mind you think stabilized occupancy can get to over time and if you can just overlay what sort of the new COO Ohio as well as the SPID platform, the SPIN platform, excuse me, how that plays into that occupancy trajectory. Thanks.

Certainly, I'd say that from an occupancy perspective, you know, we see continued improvement. We've seen good year-over-year growth and, you know, don't see any major headwinds to that continuing here in the next, you know, the foreseeable future. So getting into the low to mid-90s seems, from my perspective, a good idea. from our perspective, very achievable. Obviously, pace will depend on our performance and the market. And I'd say that the hiring of Anton was a big piece of just the continued improvement and trajectory of the business. his experience over 30 years in adjacent industries and what he'll be able to do in terms of the overall resident and customer experience as we continue to build out, you know, just our exceptional operating platform is something we're incredibly excited about his knowledge of the customer and and how to create the right type of offering to match and exceed their expectations is something that even in the first couple of months of his joining our team, we've been super impressed with. And so how we continue to build out the operating platform for the future resident and their family is something we're excited to continue down very quickly. And then I'd say just on the SPIN tool, the more that we've been able to add communities to our overall just base of analytics, the more we learn about areas of opportunity, both on the staffing side, which is exciting because we just have a very real-time view of what's going on in our communities, but also as we think about continuing to push through and expand our rate profile, just understanding how long units are on the market, we can get them filled up and priced appropriately, and then just doing more on a real-time pricing basis as we build out our product and grow that occupancy is really important because as as you know when you start exceeding 90 occupancy um it's absolutely foundational that you get very strong rate growth and so we're always trying to balance the the growth of the rate with our occupancy as well and excited to have anton on board to help us drive with the continued build out of our SPIN platform and our overall customer offering.

Ron Riggio. Helpful. That's it for me. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ron.

Your next question from the line of Rich Anderson with Cantor Fitzgerald. Rich, your line is open. Please go ahead.

James Heitingkamp, Norcal PTAC, All right, thanks good morning next quarter. James Heitingkamp, Norcal PTAC, So I just want to talk about good morning, so I want to talk about the triple net portfolio and the recycling plan there. You mentioned the lease expirations and the extensions. Like, to what degree, can that process you know start rolling sooner rather than later And, you know, what's your what's your mindset around cap rates and redeploying, you know, you know what the spread would would be to redeploying into growth, your assets and so on any any incremental color you can give on timing and economics to that area.

to that strategy would be helpful. Thanks. Yes, absolutely. I'd say that as we built the relationship with both of our tenants, we've been impressed with their capabilities and, you know, they're both structures that we have a lot of confidence in from a stability perspective. But as we talked about before, ultimately, we're not interested really in growing the triple net business. And so I think, you know, just continuing to get market color on, you know, what that would look like should we go down a path, you know, here in the, you know, in the future. in the near to midterm, we're not in any real hurry because it's still very strong cash flowing assets that have good underlying metrics. I think, you know, just we can obviously continue to evaluate opportunities for more of a shop style profile of those assets. But I'd say that, you know, here in the next probably six, months to a year, we want to make sure that we're clear on whether or not that's something we want to pursue from a market transaction perspective or not. And I'd say that the spread there, based on what we're seeing in the marketplace and kind of the asset profile that we referenced in our pipeline, you know, that there would be, you know, clearly a solid spread to where the triple net would trade today. And I guess it's fair to say that there's differing opinions on what the cap rate would be on the triple net side until you really were to pursue a market type of a transaction. But that's what we'll look at is can we can we recycle that and buy it, you know, at 100, 200 basis point type of a spread? Okay.

Thanks very much. Last second for me. You know, very unique operating model. I think we all can appreciate everything under one roof or almost everything and transitioning those that aren't at the moment. When you're out in the market looking for activity, though, is there any situation where you're taken out of the running because an operator may want to still be an operator and doesn't want to lose lose that business. And so because you're you're more than likely to transition to the Sanita operating platform, is there a hesitancy to do business with CINEDA in some cases? Thanks.