Medical Properties Trust Inc (MPW) 2010 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome the third-quarter 2010 Medical Properties Trust, Inc. earnings conference call. My name is Colby and I will be your operator for today. (Operator Instructions). As a reminder, this call is being recorded for replay purposes.

I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Charles Lambert, Director of Finance. Please proceed, sir.

Good morning. Welcome to the Medical Properties Trust conference call to discuss our third-quarter 2010 financial results.

With me today are Edward K. Aldag Jr., Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of the Company; and Steven Hamner, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Our press release was distributed this morning and furnished on Form 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission. If you did not receive a copy, it is available on our website at www.MedicalPropertiesTrust.com in the investor relations section. Additionally, we are hosting a live webcast of today's call which you can access in that same section.

During the course of this call, we will make projections and certain other statements that may be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause our financial results and future events to differ materially from those expressed in or underlying such forward-looking statements.

We refer you to the Company's reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a discussion of the factors that could cause the Company's actual results or future events to differ materially from those expressed in this call.

The information being provided today is as of this date only, and except as required by federal securities laws, the Company does not undertake a duty to update any such information.

In addition, during the course of the conference call, we will describe certain non-GAAP financial measures, which should be considered in addition to and not in lieu of comparable GAAP financial measures. Please note that in our press release, Medical Properties Trust has reconciled all non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly-comparable GAAP measures in accordance with Reg G requirements. You can also refer to our website at www.MedicalPropertiesTrust.com for the most directly-comparable financial measures and related reconciliations.

I will now turn the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Ed Aldag.

Thank you, Charles, and thank all of you for listening in today.

The third quarter of 2010 was an exceptionally busy quarter for Medical Properties Trust. While most of the activity in the third quarter will be reported on in future quarters, our entire team has been deeply involved with numerous underwriting and due diligence assignments for potential acquisitions.

As has been our policy in the past, however, we will not comment on the details of any acquisitions until the transaction has been completed. We are excited about what we have in the works and look forward to more announcements soon.

I'm sure each of you has read this morning's press release and saw where we closed on the acquisition of a development hospital in Florence, Arizona. This facility will be an emergency room-focused acute care hospital leased to an entity run by the Visionary group. This group has very successfully developed and operated a similar facility in Gilbert, Arizona.

Construction has already commenced and should be completed within the next 12 to 15 months. MPT's total investment is approximately $30 million with a good double-digit going-in cash cap rate. We believe that this will be the first of several acquisitions with this group.

I'm also pleased to announce that we've made tremendous progress on both campuses of the River Oaks complex in Houston, Texas. As you all know, these two facilities were closed approximately two years ago as part of the HPA liquidation, and then were hit by Hurricane Ike a few months later.

This past month, we completed the sale of the smaller south campus for approximately $3 million. In addition to the sales proceeds, the disposition will save MPT approximately $700,000 in annual property expenses and untold savings in man-hours and distractions.

Also, after working through the web of coordination efforts with the state of Texas, which, by the way, has been very helpful, insurance companies, contractors, and multiple tenants, we are pleased to report that we have begun the renovation and restoration of the much larger and much more valuable north campus of River Oaks. From this point forward, this facility will be known as the River Oaks Medical Center and will be a multi-tenanted hospital facility.

The facility is expected to house an LTACH, inpatient rehabilitation facility, and ASC, along with other ancillary services.

When completed, our total GAAP investment in the River Oaks Medical Center will be approximately $45 million. Our total return on this facility is expected to exceed our rent we were collecting on the north and south campuses combined. Renovations are expected to be completed in late 2011.

Our total investments thus far in 2010 have been slightly more than $128 million, leaving only approximately $22 million left to meet our 2010 targets. As I've mentioned previously, we remain confident we will meet the 2010 target of $150 million and expect our 2011 acquisition activity will return to our track record levels prior to the world economic recession of at least $300 million.

Our existing portfolio of properties, which as you know spreads across the country from coast to coast, continues to perform very well. Our EBITDAR lease coverages continue to be some of the strongest coverages in the REIT industry.

Our hospital portfolio, on a trailing 12 months, 2010 third quarter over 2009 third quarter, coverage was up 4% to 6.61 times. Trailing 12 months Q2 over Q3 coverage fell slightly by 2%.

And our rehab hospital portfolio on a trailing 12 months, 2010 third quarter over 2009 third quarter, coverage was up 2% to 3.11 times. Trailing 12 months Q2 over Q3 fell slightly by 4%.

And our LTACH portfolio on a trailing 12 months 2010 third quarter over 2009 third quarter, coverage was up 4% to 2.26 times. Trailing 12 months Q2 over Q3 coverage rose by 5%.

Remember that the third quarter has historically been the slowest quarter of the year for hospitals, so to have two of our segments fall by only slightly quarter over quarter and one rise is very encouraging. When you include the fact that all three segments rose year over year, you continue to see the strength of our properties.

Another barometer for the health of our properties is utilization. Across the board, our acute care hospitals saw an increase in admissions year over year of 2.5%, while the post acute care facilities saw an increased utilization of 9.5%.

An additional indicator is the direction of bad debt. Our tenants as a whole saw a decrease year over year in bad debt of 2.8%. All of our publicly-reporting tenants that have reported thus far have also reported good growth in EBITDA. In addition, only one of our publicly reporting tenants saw a slight decrease in their utilization.

To summarize, our acquisitions are right on track with good expectations for the remaining of the year and a return to more normalized acquisition levels in 2011. Our portfolio continues to perform at superior rates with our overall portfolio EBITDAR lease coverage up more than five times. With the performance of our existing properties, the activity of our acquisitions, and the strength of our balance sheet, we look forward to finishing out a very successful 2010. Steve?

Thank you, Ed. Good morning, everyone. I'll briefly run through the highlights of our third-quarter 2010 financial results, and then we'll open up the call for your questions.

For the third quarter of 2010, we reported normalized FFO of approximately $16.5 million and AFFO of approximately $16.9 million, or $0.15 per diluted share for each measure. This is in line with our outstanding guidance after adjusting for certain non-routine items, primarily consisting of property-related expenses of about $600,000, or $0.01 per share. Excluding this item, the per-share calculation was $0.16.

As Ed has already described, during the quarter we agreed to sell the Sharpstown property and commenced redevelopment of the River Oaks facility, so we do not expect to incur these types of expenses going forward.

Net income for the three months ended September 30 was $8.9 million, or $0.08 per diluted share, compared with $10.4 million, or $0.13 per diluted share for the year-ago period. Net income includes a gain on disposition of real estate of approximately $1.5 million related to the substitution of one of our properties that is under a master lease. Accounting for this transaction also required us to write off approximately $200,000 in previously accrued straight-line rent.

We also determined that it is more likely than not that the existing tenant in our Monroe hospital will not remain the tenant for the entire remaining life of the lease, so we wrote off approximately $2.5 million of previously-accrued straight-line rents.

In comparison of these results to those of the same period a year ago, the per-share amounts were affected by an increase in the weighted average diluted common shares outstanding to $110 million for the three months ended September 30, 2010. This is up from $78.7 million for the same period in 2009 and is primarily due to the common stock offering of 29.9 million shares completed in April of this year.

I'll briefly review our present capitalization and commitments. During the quarter, we repurchased about $12.5 million of our 2011 6-1/8% exchangeable notes. That leaves only $9.2 million of these notes to be repaid between now and November 2011.

We added $30 million to our revolver capacity by exercising our right to increase that facility by up to $75 million. We presently have a total $330 million commitment on which we have not drawn anything. We also have a fully undrawn second revolver that provides for borrowings of up to about $40 million.

As of November 4, the Company has approximately $425 million in available liquidity through cash balances and credit facilities for investment in new hospital real estate, including approximately $100 million in cash. This morning, we announced our agreement to develop the approximately $30 million hospital in the Phoenix area, and the total liquidity of $425 million is net of that amount, which we expect to be expended over the next approximately 18 months.

Today, we are operating with a very low debt ratio of 22% of net debt to gross real estate assets, and our net debt to recurring EBITDA on a last-quarter annualized basis is only 2.6 times. We have no near-term debt maturity issues.

And we have substantial access to liquidity in order to pursue attractive investment opportunities in healthcare real estate. We expect the leverage levels to increase in the near term as we execute pending acquisition and development agreements.

Moving to guidance, historically our policy has been not to provide estimates of future quarterly financial results. We have provided estimates of annualized FFO, based solely on assumptions about a specific portfolio, and that's what we have done again this quarter. Based solely on the September 30, 2010, portfolio, the Company reiterates its previous estimates that that normalized FFO per share would approximate $0.60 to $0.64.

The Company further continues to estimate that its existing portfolio of assets, plus approximately $425 million of assets expected to be acquired with available liquidity, will generate normalized FFO of between $0.94 and $0.97 per share on an annualized basis once fully invested. This estimate assumes that average initial yields on the new investments will range from 9.75% to 10.5%. This range of yields is supported by the transactions that we have completed this year, including the Phoenix hospital that we announced this morning, and the transactions that are presently in late stages of negotiation.

Total debt to gross real estate value subsequent to acquisition of the new properties is expected to approximate 43%. These estimates do not include the effects, if any, of costs and litigation related to discontinued operations, real estate operating costs, interest rate swaps, write-offs of straight-line rent, or other nonrecurring or unplanned transactions.

In addition, this estimate will change if the $425 million in new acquisitions are not completed or such investments' initial yields are lower or higher than the range of 9.75% to 10.5%, market interest rates change, debt is refinanced, assets are sold, other operating expenses vary, or existing leases do not perform in accordance with their terms.

The estimate also includes an estimated general and administrative expense of approximately $5.5 million to $6 million per quarter, of which $1.5 million is non-cash share-based compensation expense. Included in G&A this quarter is approximately $365,000 in acquisition costs related to successful and expected successful acquisitions.

As we mentioned on last quarter's call, this reflects the new accounting pronouncement that requires such costs that previously were capitalized into the cost of the acquired asset to be expensed in the period incurred. Our future quarterly estimate of G&A does not include any such cost.

Finally, the estimate excludes other unique and non-routine items of income and expenses, such as write-offs of straight-line rent, asset impairments, property sales, lawsuit recoveries, and other items.

That concludes our prepared remarks for today. I will now turn the call back to the operator, and he will open it up for any questions that you may have. Operator? The operator is queuing the calls. Operator, are you with us?

Jerry Doctrow, Stifel Nicolaus.

Just a couple of things. Congratulations on getting some of the River Oaks stuff kind of moving along, I guess, or out of the way. I think you said on Phoenix, it was going to be 18 months until that is completed. I think that's what I heard Steve say. Any income in the interim or do we see that return, basically, when the property is finished?

There is income because we're accruing on the advances day to day, but that's not recognized until we actually put the property in operation.

And you had sort of a kind of a double-digit yield. Can we get any more specific just about what we -- where the yield is on that cash yield?

No, we've done that in the past, Jerry but we've recently decided that it puts us at a disadvantage competitively. So, I think Ed gave a pretty strong hint that it was strong double digits. You know the range that we've given, 9.75% to 10.5%, and I can just say it's in excess of that range.

Okay. And then on River Oaks, sort of the same thing. What's the timeframe for completion? When might we start seeing rent sort of come in on that property?

It will actually be done in phases, Jerry, with the entire thing completed in late 2011. But the first phase ought to be completed in the early part of the summer, at which time you'd start seeing the rent recognized for that portion of it.

Okay, so maybe we start third quarter or fourth quarter kind of next year.

Correct.

I guess the other thing, just sort of a broader question, my sense was sort of strategically what you were doing was moving towards more acquisitions and kind of higher quality systems and that sort of thing, maybe taking a little bit lower yields. You know, what we've got in the quarter, I guess, is kind of a development project.

I guess I'm trying to understand sort of maybe how you're thinking about acquisitions versus development, that kind of risk versus return trade-off, and whether we're -- in the pipeline, we're seeing kind of larger credits or smaller credits or just a little more color kind of just strategically what you are trying to do.

Jerry, in the pipeline, it's larger credits than maybe what you've seen in the past with us. It's more established operators.

We are going to do development projects, as I have said, historically, this country is in bad need of development projects. But you probably won't see us doing as many development projects as we did in our initial years. So you're going to see -- really, if you go -- look a year out, a good complement of all of what that you just mentioned.

And in terms of just mix of assets, LTACHs, general acute, and that sort of thing, candidly I thought when [med] equities did not get done, we'd see a quicker ramp-up with your stuff in the ERFs and LTACHs and that kind of thing.

You're going to see continuing on our portfolio looking very similar to what it looks right now. From a dollar standpoint, about 75% acute care, with the rest of it being split out fairly evenly between the various post acutes. Our pipeline has never been dependent on the success or failure of med equities.

I didn't mean to imply that it was, but, okay, fine. That's all for me, thanks.

Remember also that we announced last quarter three ERFs of very high quality at very attractive yields. So, you're absolutely right. We have increased that.

(Operator Instructions). Michael Mueller, JPMorgan Chase & Co..

A few questions. First of all, on the tenant for the Phoenix hospital Visionary group, can you give us just a little bit more background on them? I think you said they have one other property in the market. Do they have other properties elsewhere? How long has the company been around, et cetera?

That's the only -- they only had the one other property. It's a -- the two leaders of the company are -- one has years of hospital CEO experience and the other one has years of emergency room and family practitioner medicine experience. They have been operating the other hospital since about four years ago. And this is their second hospital. This is their second together.

Got it. And you said you're in discussions with them for another hospital. Would that be a development as well or is that an acquisition?

Yes.

Yes, a development?

Yes on possible all of that.

Yes on possible all of that. Got it. Got it. You mentioned the River Oaks, the rent on that would be about what or in excess of what the north and south was combined. Can you remind us what that rent was on the old properties?

It was a little less than $4 million. The operators that we're in negotiations with now would, based on the term sheets that we've got outstanding, would be paying a little bit more than that.

We'd also have a slightly higher basis because of the $17 million refurbishment that we're about to commence. But we look to have double-digit cap rates on that on top of the new basis that we'll have. It's going to end up being one of our better properties, actually.

Okay, so if we are thinking about this at the margin, at the margin there is an incremental $17 million that goes out the door, and the incremental, I guess, by the end of next year the run rate -- you will have an incremental of about $4 million of rent coming online. Is that --

That's the expectation.

That's the expectation. Okay, got it. And then, I think, Ed, you mentioned next year hoping to get to more normalized acquisition levels. What do you guys consider to be more normalized acquisition levels?

In the $300 million range.

Last question on my end. I guess after the write-down of the accrued rent at Monroe, are you booking any rent on that facility at this time and did you book any in the third quarter?

We continued to book the base rent and we'll continue to do that for the foreseeable future.

Okay, so it was just accrual. Okay, great. Thank you.

Tayo Okusanya, Jefferies & Company.

Good morning, gentlemen. Glad to see everything moving in the right direction. Just a couple of quick questions. The tenants that you -- the prospective tenants at River Oaks, again I know you can't disclose any of their names or anything, but just kind of give us a sense whether all these tenants would be new tenants that would diversify your tenant mix, number one.

And then, number two, if you could just kind of give us a general sense of their credit profile. Are they public company? Are they kind of smaller operators? What are they?

Tayo, one of the -- let me be sure everybody understands. The three tenants that we have LOIs on that we're currently trying to finalize the leases with, that would represent approximately 80% of the space. So we still have some additional vacancy there that we can still fill, which will increase the rental numbers that Steve went over just a moment ago.

Of those current three tenants, one of them is an existing MBT client. None of them are public companies, but all of them are very experienced in their fields.

Okay, not a public company. So the $4 million number that Steve was referring to before, that's just in regards to these three NOIs, not the additional 20% of space?

That's correct.

That's helpful. And then, your overall basis in River Oaks after the $17 million of reinvestments would be what? Roughly about $40 million?

About $45 million.

$45 million, okay. That's helpful. And then, the swap that happened during the quarter, or the property swap, could you talk a little bit about what the logic behind that was?

It was a request by the master lessee, Tayo. We have three properties under master lease. One of them was performing very poorly, has been since we acquired it. It was a lease we acquired in the HCP acquisition two years ago.

We have the parent guarantee. It's a very strong public company guarantee. They want to close the hospital and they can't do that without our consent. So, they replaced that particular facility with a much better, stronger facility.

We got a number of very nice concessions in regards to that. And so -- including an increase in their cash investment in the new facility of over $9 million. So we're very satisfied with that. It was strictly something we did at the request of the tenant, but much to our benefit.

Apart from the $9 million or core investment commitment, can you talk about some of the other concessions you got?

We got an extension of the lease, we got a modification to the minimum purchase -- repurchase provision in the lease. It was just a grand slam home run for us all the way around.

And the reason was the hospital -- the initial hospital was really performing very poorly for the operator.

Then last question, with Monroe, just -- if you just remind me and I might be off base on this, but is there a loan receivable balance related to Monroe? And can you tell us what that balance is as at the end of the quarter?

Well, remember, two quarters ago, we took a $12 million impairment charge on that loan, and so the net balance is about $27 million.

So, it's a $27 million balance, and are you accruing interest on that at this point?

We are not.

Kevin Ellich, RBC Capital Markets.

Ed, in your discussion, you talked a little bit about utilization trends with your hospitals. Just wondering how that has gone throughout the year, and also if they provided you an update with how things are trending in the latter part of the year.

Yes, the numbers that I gave you were at the end of the third quarter. So that goes all the way through the end of October. And they have trended up across the board on all of our facilities slightly.

Okay. So that's through the end of October and not September?

I'm sorry, through the end of September.

That's good. Then, you also indicated bad debt has gone down. Did they say -- give any explanation as to what is driving the improvements when we still have high unemployment and maybe more people losing jobs?

Well, Kevin, if you look at the total analysis of that logic, going through that assumes that everybody that's become an uninsured or unemployed person has been a hospital customer. And that's just generally not the case.

If you take everybody on this call, if we were all were to become unemployed and then uninsured, how many of us would that actually affect the hospital operations? So you take the total unemployment number, while it is certainly historically a very large number right now, it's not a very large percentage in the total effect of the hospital patients.

Okay, understood, understood. And then, had a question on the exchange that you guys did with Community Health. What led to that and are there any other properties that you're looking at doing a similar exchange on?

We just went through the reason and the detail behind that with the answer with Tayo, so rather than repeat all of that for everybody else on the call, we'd be glad to go over it with you offline, and no, we don't have any other properties at this point scheduled for anything like that.

Karin Ford, KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Who was the buyer of Sharpstown and what's the planned use for that going forward?

It's a non-healthcare entity, Karin, and I honestly don't know if we have the ability to disclose it or not, but it's a non-healthcare entity.

So it won't be a medical facility going forward?

That's correct.

When you're looking at your investment options between acquisition and development, what type of risk premium do you think you need today between acquisitions and developments?

Well, it's not as simple a question as that because there are a lot of different parameters that go into it -- the strength of the developer, the experience of the operator/developer, and the capital that that particular developer has.

But in a very wide vacuum, it's probably anywhere from 150 basis points to 250 basis points.

That's helpful. Can you just talk about, in the acquisition arena, what's been the trend on volumes of product available and other potential buyers?

Karen, in our market, which is generally -- is hospitals and generally acute care and LTACHs and rehabilitation hospitals, our portfolio -- our pipeline of acquisitions is as strong today or stronger than it has ever been. We are extremely excited about where we are in that particular position, and it's hard to give you much more detail than that, other than to say stay tuned.

From the other buyers, we are still not seeing really any other buyers in the acute care sector. There are a number of existing REITs out there that are interested in the postacute, and a number of private REITs that are interested in the postacute.

That's helpful. Last question just relates to the operating expenses. Can you just clarify, now with River Oaks under redevelopment, what's the run rate of operating expenses going forward?

Well, we are uncertain on the River Oaks part of the campus. It's been about $1.2 million per year. Some of that will go away as the construction gets going. Most of the rest of it will be capitalized into the construction cost. All of it -- virtually all of it will become the responsibility of the tenants as construction is completed and the tenants take occupancy.

Got it. So, most likely it will go down to zero because it will be -- from an expense standpoint because it will be capitalized during redevelopment and then go to the tenants after that.

That's correct.

And just to remind me, is there operating expenses related to any other asset in that line? Or does that basically go to zero?

There's miscellaneous stuff, but I mean you shouldn't expect more than really de minimis once the River Oaks has gone away or become capitalized.

Jerry Doctrow.

Thanks. Just on Monroe, I know you've talked about in the past negotiating with various potential buyers or new tenants or that sort of thing. Any color on that or just any sense of timing as to when we might get some resolution.

Jerry, there has been some movement, but nothing that I can disclose right now. Hopefully in the very near future, you will see something.

This now concludes the Q&A session, so I will now turn over the call to Mr. Aldag for closing remarks.

Well, again, thank all of you for being on today's call, and as always, if you have any follow-up questions later on in the day, feel free to call Charles, Steve, or myself. Thank you very much.

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This concludes the presentation. You may now disconnect. Good day.