Ventas at BofA Conference: Strategic Growth in Senior Housing

On Wednesday, 10 September 2025, Ventas Inc. (NYSE:VTR) presented at the BofA Securities 2025 Global Real Estate Conference. The company highlighted its robust position in the senior housing market, driven by demographic trends and strategic growth initiatives. While Ventas anticipates an 8% growth in FFO per share, it also faces competitive pressures in acquisitions. The conference underscored Ventas’ financial resilience and strategic acumen.

Key Takeaways

• Ventas expects 8% FFO per share growth, placing it among the top REIT performers.
• The company targets $2 billion in acquisitions, with $1.8 billion already closed.
• Significant focus on transitioning Brookdale assets to SHOP, aiming for $100 million NOI.
• Anticipates margin expansion with occupancy increases and a favorable RevPOR to OpEx relationship.
• Ventas is investing in AI initiatives to enhance operational efficiency.

Financial Results

• Ventas projects an 8% growth in FFO per share this year.
• The company has already closed $1.8 billion in acquisitions, with a target of $2 billion for the year.
• A line of sight exists for an additional $500 million in senior housing investments.
• Leverage is currently in the mid-5s, expected to decrease as investment activity is equitized.

Operational Updates

• Ventas is in its fourth year of double-digit NOI growth within its Senior Housing Operating Portfolio (SHOP).
• The company is transitioning 45 Brookdale Senior Living assets, expecting $100 million in NOI.
• Ventas emphasizes choosing the right operators and markets with strong net absorption potential.
• Occupancy has increased by 270 basis points year-over-year, aligning with full-year guidance.

Future Outlook

• The aging baby boomer population is expected to drive demand in the senior housing sector.
• Some markets may reach 100% occupancy in the mid-term.
• Ventas anticipates competition in acquisitions but believes its strategic advantages will secure favorable opportunities.
• The Ventas Investment Management Platform manages over $5 billion in assets.

Q&A Highlights

• Ventas remains confident in its full-year occupancy guidance following strong Q2 and Q3 results.
• Acquisition targets are newer, high-performing communities in markets with strong net absorption.
• The company expects significant margin expansion due to operating leverage as occupancy increases.
• Ventas plans to increase spending on AI initiatives to support operational efficiency.

In conclusion, Ventas’ strategic focus and strong market position suggest promising prospects in the senior housing sector. For a detailed understanding, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - BofA Securities 2025 Global Real Estate Conference:

Farrell Granit, Co-Lead for Healthcare REITs, BofA: All right, we can kick it off. Thank you, everyone, for joining. Welcome to the Ventas meeting. My name is Farrell Granit, and I’m the Co-Lead for Healthcare REITs with Jeff Spector and the BofA REITs team. I’m joined today with the Ventas team. I’ll kick it off and send it over to Debra to introduce the team, and then we can enter into some Q&A. Please, everyone, raise your hand or just jump in if you have any questions. Debra.

Debra, Ventas: Thank you, Farrell. So nice to see everyone here today. It’s a pleasure to be with you, with my colleague J. Justin Hutchens, BJ Grant, and Emmett, who are doing all the work for us. We’re here to talk about the Ventas value creation opportunity. As you know, we’re a $45 billion S&P 500 REIT that’s really in the midst of the megatrend of longevity. Our business is really fueled by demographic demand that’s strong and getting stronger, principally from the over-80 population that’s set to accelerate in 2026 as the baby boomers enter the over-80 population. In the senior housing business, which is the principal part of our business, we have this accelerating demand coupled with historically low supply, which is creating long and strong tailwinds in our favor. On top of that, we’ve really built the company to capitalize on these trends.

We have built a platform, a team, and a portfolio really to meet the moment and capitalize on the trends of demand that we see accelerating. When you look at the company, our guidance is 8% FFO per share growth this year. We’re in the top echelon of REIT growers. At the same time, we have a multiple that could see expansion. We could see dividend growth in the future. That really, coupled with a strong and getting better balance sheet, gives us an important opportunity for value creation for investors. These results are being driven by our 1, 2, 3 strategy. The first is really organic growth from SHOP. We’re in the senior housing operating portfolio. We’re in the fourth year of double-digit NOI growth, and we’re really just getting started because of this acceleration we see in the forward environment for the over-80 population.

We’ve given an update in the deck that we put out yesterday, and that’s really on occupancy. We’re seeing quarter-to-date estimated year-over-year occupancy increase of 270 basis points, right in line with our full-year guidance. We’re also seeing within our portfolio the beginning of the transitions of the Brookdale conversions to SHOP. We’ll talk a little bit more about that later. The second part of the strategy is to increase our enterprise growth rate by making external acquisitions that are accretive, that meet our financial and strategic criteria. Our guidance this year is $2 billion. We’re $1.8 billion into it with very attractive opportunities set. We have provided incremental information that we have a line of sight to an additional $0.5 billion of senior housing investments on top of the $2 billion of 2025 guidance.

Lastly, the rest of the portfolio, we’re driving performance hard and the rest of our portfolio is continuing to perform well. All the while, we have great and improving financial strength and flexibility with leverage in the mid-5s and expected to go lower as we equitize investment activity, and we have strong organic growth. We’re excited about that as well. Again, good value creation opportunity from accelerating demand, limited supply, and potential multiple and dividend expansion opportunity on a strong balance sheet. With that, we’re ready for questions.

Farrell Granit, Co-Lead for Healthcare REITs, BofA: I think we can kick it off with your occupancy update. I know at the beginning of the year, that was a very big topic. In this last quarter, you gave very outsized growth with record move-ins. I was curious, in what we have for the balance of the year, we’re currently in peak leasing season. For where your guidance is now, you’re averaging out about in line. Can you walk us through your confidence in your guidance and what you’re seeing today also within your move-ins and move-outs?

Justin Hutchens, Ventas: Sure. Yeah. During the second quarter, we talked about the acceleration we had throughout the second quarter due to very high move-in activity. What that did was really set up this strong third quarter that we’re experiencing. We’ve had 130 basis points quarter to date of occupancy growth. Comparing to the second quarter, we’re at 270 basis points year over year, which is in line with the full-year guide. We had confidence in the second quarter, which is why we stayed with the full-year guidance number. Now we’re pleased to be able to report on the actual results and that we’re in line. Move-ins have been really strong all year. They’ve been broad-based, meaning that we’ve had contributions across all geographies, and we’ve had strong contributions in both assisted living and the independent living asset classes.

Farrell Granit, Co-Lead for Healthcare REITs, BofA: In terms of the acceleration that you were seeing in the second quarter, are you seeing that continue going forward?

Justin Hutchens, Ventas: We’ve had a great key selling season. The key selling season, as we define it, is May to September. We had a great second quarter and a very, very good third quarter as we’ve seen this occupancy continue to grow. So far, so good in terms of the key selling season.

Farrell Granit, Co-Lead for Healthcare REITs, BofA: Is this all or mostly coming in with your U.S. portfolios, given the Canadian portfolio is mostly occupied?

Justin Hutchens, Ventas: Yeah, the $270 is overwhelmingly brought up by the average is brought up by the U.S. performance. We do have occupancy growth in Canada, but it pales in comparison to the U.S. contributions.

Farrell Granit, Co-Lead for Healthcare REITs, BofA: With your other update on the acquisitions, I was hoping if we can walk through what was the new incremental and potentially what assets of that, what it was made up of, including what you’re targeting when you’re looking at some of these acquisitions. You’ve been primarily mostly in AL. Is that continuing to be your target?

Debra, Ventas: We have in the deck a page of the $1.8 billion that we’ve closed in senior housing investments year to date. It’s been very consistent. It really starts with the framework of right market, right asset, right operator. The financial criteria have been well established. What we’ve closed year to date and what we have a line of sight to are very consistent. Unlevered IRRs in the low to mid-teens, going in seven-plus yields, below replacement cost. We feel really good about that private to public arbitrage opportunity that we have so that even if it’s fully equitized, it’s accretive from day one, and then it increases the enterprise growth rate. Justin, why don’t you touch on some of the deals that, you know, there’s a case study of what we just closed and the pipeline and characteristics.

Justin Hutchens, Ventas: Yeah, sure. If we just look at the types of communities, senior housing communities we’ve been buying in 2025, we tend to prefer, not surprisingly, markets that have strong net absorption or net demand opportunity. We’ve entered markets that have about 1,400 basis points of net demand, which means potential occupancy growth over the next few years of 1,400 basis points. Considering we’re buying communities that are around 90% occupied, that means we’ll probably have markets that will actually be 100% occupied during that period. There are large campuses. We tend to prefer a continuum of care. We have independent living, assisted living, and memory care working together to provide services in a residential setting to seniors, newer, eight years old on average. We’ve added, we have 11 operators involved, including seven new operators.

When we underwrite the operators, we’re looking for a demonstrated track record in that asset class, a strong clustering or experience within the geography. When you’re buying the type of communities we’re buying, which are high-performing communities with upside, there’s a track record of performance that you’re underwriting as well. We’re happy to add more operators into the platform and have them continue to operate and drive more growth moving forward in those communities. An example of this, the type of deal, is a recent acquisition we made. It’s a Bristol, Long Island portfolio. This is class A senior housing, really good locations on Long Island. It was six communities with 856 units, strong, very high barrier markets. If you know Long Island, you know that to be true. Also, strong price opportunity as the communities will also grow occupancy, we think, and we’ll have price opportunity moving forward.

The operator’s been in place since the beginning. They’ve developed all of these communities and have operated them, and they have a very, very good track record in New York and a deep management team. We’ll look forward to seeing growth in these communities, and we’re pleased to really win this opportunity to own this class A portfolio.

Farrell Granit, Co-Lead for Healthcare REITs, BofA: Great. You made a comment about in your acquisitions are about 90% occupied. I was hoping you could remind everyone of comments I’ve heard made before about the operating leverage and the step-ups that you receive as occupancy passes the 90% and as it rises.

Justin Hutchens, Ventas: Sure. I’m happy to address operating leverage. It’s one of my favorite topics. It’s really one of the most powerful parts of the senior housing business model. There are a few different ways to address that. I’ll give you some rules of thumb, and then I’m going to repeat something I talked about on the earnings call. The rule of thumb in terms of operating leverage is due to the high fixed cost nature of the business, when you have gone through that journey of being 80 to 90% occupied, you should expect somewhere around a 50% incremental margin. It only gets better when you go from 90 to 100% occupied. You’d expect around a 70% incremental margin. Due to that high flow-through at the high occupancies, you can continue to have very strong NOI growth even when you’re starting at 90% occupancy.

Another metric I shared on the earnings call is just what the growth rate of the RevPOR was based on occupancy bands. Pricing opportunity goes up as scarcity goes up, which is very logical, and it’s absolutely the case in senior housing. Now that we’re getting to higher occupancies, it’ll become even more relevant. In our portfolio, if you’re 90 to 95% occupied, your RevPOR growth was between 6 and 7%. If you’re 75 to 90% occupied, your RevPOR growth was between 3 and 5%. If you’re below 75% occupied, you had 1% RevPOR growth. There’s obviously a direct relationship between higher occupancy, less vacant units, and price opportunity.

Farrell Granit, Co-Lead for Healthcare REITs, BofA: How far can that RevPOR growth go? Say you’re in the 98% to 100% occupied market.

Justin Hutchens, Ventas: It’s unproven because we’re in new territory, because the demand characteristics in the sector will be the best we’ve ever seen. Next year, we’re entering a year where demand, we’ve had a good run, multi-year double-digit NOI growth and strong demand helping to drive that. Next year, the baby boomer population starts to turn 80. It should only get better. Market occupancies are higher, and market demand will be stronger. We’ll wait and see and answer that question as we move into this next phase.

Debra, Ventas: Two points I’d like to make. One on the pricing point. When we underwrite these investments and look at our markets, affordability is very important. As things stand right now in our portfolio, if a senior living resident lives in a community two to three years, let’s just say two years, they can afford to live there for 12 to 14 years. That shows that there’s a lot of headroom in pricing because it is a highly affordable product compared to the wealth and the income of the senior residents. It’s really important to know that headroom exists. Secondly, I would refer you to page 17 of our deck because we’re talking about the investments and the margins that we could get from pricing power. That’s really just a complement to the powerful internal growth that we’re in the midst of this multi-year growth opportunity.

The left-hand side of the page really shows that in the U.S., our senior housing portfolio is between 80% and 85% occupied. We would expect for that even bigger part of our portfolio that we have a near and intermediate and potentially long-term runway for both occupancy and rate growth. That’s really the powerful engine of this multi-year growth opportunity. They work together.

Justin Hutchens, Ventas: I’d kind of just add one other just to finish the whole point. It’s important to remember, and we probably don’t talk about this enough, what the underlying service is and the importance of it in terms of the care and service delivery to seniors. It’s a consumer-driven business. Seniors are writing us checks to stay in our communities and to have the services delivered to them. It’s incredibly important that we do a great job. When we select the operators, we’re ensuring that the track record is such that they do deliver best-in-class services to their residents. That’s a key component, obviously, in driving the demand to select your community to begin with, but also to retain residents as we’re moving pricing throughout their stay.

Farrell Granit, Co-Lead for Healthcare REITs, BofA: When we’re looking at where pre-COVID occupancy and margins were, where do we sit today with margins? Do you think that there is the potential to set a new normal of where margins sit within the senior housing business?

Justin Hutchens, Ventas: I would say the margin opportunity, if you were to step back and look at margins right around, we’ll call it the pre-pandemic era, so the last kind of stabilized number that you could point to, we had around 30% margin and 88% occupancy. I remember saying five years ago that I thought the margin expansion opportunity would be bigger, that when we got to around the same occupancy, we would have better margins than we did at that time. The only thing that got in the way was in 2022, we had very, very, very high inflation. You had assisted living wages and you needed to catch up with market, and then we had inflation on top of that. There was a little bit of a structural change in the underlying cost in delivering the services.

That’s way past us now, and now we’re at a place where we have that price opportunity that I was describing. I would expect, all things considered equal, that margin expansion will be better than we’ve ever seen because we’ll have a better relationship between our RevPOR and our OpEx than we have historically. Particularly in this period where we don’t have demand entering our new supply and entering our markets, there’s a pretty good runway really between now and the end of the decade of very strong net demand and net absorption to support my hypothesis.

Farrell Granit, Co-Lead for Healthcare REITs, BofA: Okay, and this is kind of a bigger picture question. Looking further out, there’s been obviously the SHOP opportunity. I feel like SHOP is the hottest word, and everyone is now trying to grab some of these assets, start their own platforms. I’m curious, in a multi-year looking forward, do you think that there is a potential for a bifurcation when you’re looking at the type of assets? At what point is that inflection point?

Justin Hutchens, Ventas: When you say bifurcation?

Farrell Granit, Co-Lead for Healthcare REITs, BofA: In the potential for further growth versus receiving more of a downside and the ability to either push rate or maintain that rate.

Justin Hutchens, Ventas: I mean, I think it’s, first of all, I’m really happy that SHOP is a hot topic. I’ve been waiting my whole career for that. Yeah, cool now, finally, finally. I think there’s, given the runway ahead of supply and demand, there’s a good run of experiencing, if it’s managed well, and you pick, like we always talk about, the right markets, right assets, right operators, and you have a platform that can manage it at scale the way we do, then you should experience growth. Like I said, we’ve had really good growth over the past four years, but we’ve done it during a period where the supply and demand isn’t even as good as what it will be. Our platform capabilities are significantly more advanced than they have been.

One other thing too, if you’re entering the space and you’re trying to set up a SHOP platform, there’s a lot of catching up to do. We’ve been working on this for years. We have the sophisticated data analytics, the delivery of those analytics, the CapEx management, price volume optimization, and the broader platform’s capability to manage almost 40 operators now and growing. You don’t just flip a switch and put that in place. That’s been an evolution of our platform over a number of years.

Unidentified speaker: Maybe just one follow-up on that. Sarah hosted the output of the room this morning again here. I think she said Sarah asked about big bring-out circular. I’m thinking he said housing, he said specifically senior housing. I know we asked a lot about interest in getting in. Finally growing, I mean, they kind of entered the space in a big way. I can’t answer.

Debra, Ventas: It is a hot asset class, and there’s good reason for that because you go where the demand is, right? Particularly where there’s incredibly low supply. When we look at our pipeline, our pipeline has been growing and is very active. There is, yes, the acquisition pipeline. There is more competition because people are attracted to the space. We have significant competitive advantages that should, and that includes everything from the data analytics that Justin described with the relationships in the market, the experience, and the track record that enable us to get in our cost of capital more than I would say our fair share or more. Those are all worthy competitors. We’ve been in a competitive environment really our whole careers. We’re experts in the space. We have the platform. It is a little bit hard to compete with that.

The main thing is more assets are coming to market. It’s remaining in balance, enabling us to get these really attractive returns and arbitrage and make money for shareholders. That’s continuing.

Unidentified speaker: At this point, yeah, for what they were to climb at times, one of the uphill hurdles to now, I’m right reaching this, but before they could try to print this umbrella, I mean, do you feel anything to make that list of those really push you to go even more for getting a deeper case?

Debra, Ventas: Because we have this opportunity for value creation, we have our foot on the accelerator. We know that opportunities never last forever for a variety of reasons, and we’re experienced enough to know that. We know that we’re going to capitalize on those opportunities that are present. I do think in this business, we can compete and win, and we’ll continue to do that as long as the criteria that we’ve, you know, the relationship between cost of capital, returns, risk, et cetera, remains in a positive space. We’re going to continue to harvest this opportunity aggressively.

Unidentified speaker: Advanced mediums. I’m going to be that east of the.

Debra, Ventas: Absolutely. We do have a fund and we have a joint venture. Our VIM, Ventas Investment Management Platform, has over $5 billion of assets under management. It’s been a big success. Our issue is not finding money because everybody is knocking at our door to give us money. It’s more we want to make sure we’re aggressively pursuing the right opportunities for value creation.

Unidentified speaker: Honestly, it’s a fun stop at 7%. Everything you’re describing sounds really positive, and the total returns are really positive.

Debra, Ventas: It is.

Unidentified speaker: 7% is actually quite an attractive price for what you’re buying. How long does that last? How do you get that lasting?

Justin Hutchens, Ventas: Eighty percent of our transactions have had some kind of relationship orientation to them. The way that works is, you know, we do have some off-market opportunities that we’ve had. Half of our $3.8 billion that we’ve closed was really three deals. One was totally off-market. The other two, one was kind of quasi-off-market. The other one, we had an advantage where the operator was influential in staying in the process and wanted to work with Ventas in the long term. All things considered equal, we were going to win that deal. That does help. It plays a big role because you have to think about the sellers here and the kind of assets we’re buying. We’re buying high-performing with upside. Therefore, the operator that’s in place is really important. You know, they’ve been creating that value to date. They want to stay in place.

They’re concerned about who their next capital partner is. It’s a long-term decision. I mean, we hold for the long term. They’re well aware of that. They’re very focused on who that player is going to be. We’ve established a reputation amongst the senior housing community as being influential in performance through our Ventas OI platform, collaborative, and also we deliver on and execute on transactions, you know, with no surprises and on time and with no financing contingencies. Between the relationships with the operators and our repeat transactions we’ve had with sellers, that relationship component has played well for us. That’s a big part of it.

Debra, Ventas: Yes.

Unidentified speaker: Specifically, why Ventas is in so much of that? It’s very educational.

Debra, Ventas: Did everyone hear the question? The question is about the outpatient medical. Outpatient medical is about, call it, 20% of our NOI. It’s a core-like asset that is a reliable compounding growth asset class. We have a competitively advantaged property management leasing company within Ventas that manages that portfolio. We are growing around it. Through the internal growth and external growth we described, that’s all focused on senior housing. By definition, that part of our portfolio is becoming a smaller part of the overall business. We’re more than open to selling assets when it makes sense to do so. The overall economic impact to us of disposing of those assets is kind of a push. We have a business that’s working and delivering what it’s supposed to deliver. We’re growing around it in a way that’s increasing our enterprise growth rate.

We certainly would be willing to sell assets from time to time, as we’ve proven in the past, should really compelling opportunities present themselves.

Unidentified speaker: I’m in trouble with the cost of cabinet commissions for an act.

Debra, Ventas: It’s a very important question that we consider all the time and continue to monitor. Right now, we’ve been over-equitizing investments in a way that is initially accretive. Remember, these acquisitions are intended to deliver low to mid-teens, unlevered returns. It makes sense, particularly when debt costs are relatively high by comparison. As we continue to improve leverage toward, you know, five, and as debt rates change and so on, the whole calculus remains subject to kind of review. So far, it’s been working to create value.

Unidentified speaker: Since they’ve still come down, we didn’t applaud the equity issues.

Farrell Granit, Co-Lead for Healthcare REITs, BofA: I’ll turn it back over to your pipeline. I’m curious, can you give a little bit more color and maybe compare to 2024 what you’re seeing in terms of deal flow and what’s crossing your desk and how much you’re actually evaluating? Is there potential for that to pick up?

Justin Hutchens, Ventas: Right. Our pipeline has been, I’ll start with this. We’re pretty much buying very similar communities to what we did last year. They’re actually just a little newer this year, quite frankly, slightly newer, slightly stronger markets. That’s been great. We’re really happy with what we bought last year, and we’re even happier with what we’ve been buying this year so far. Pretty consistent outcome overall, though, in terms of all the qualities I described earlier in terms of the pipeline. We own about, what, 5% of the market, and we’re getting more than 5% of our pipeline that we’re seeing in terms of senior housing each year and what we think the broader pipeline is in the sector. We’re punching above our weight in that regard. We should be number one or two in the U.S. in senior housing investments, U.S.-focused senior housing. That’s a good place to be.

We had the $3.7 billion we closed over the last 18 months from a standing start. We already gave guidance that we’d close another $2 billion. That puts that at $4 billion. Plus, we have line of sight at another $500 million. We’ve been really on a roll and accelerating our investment volume. There’s a lot of activity in the pipeline. The goal is to continue to run that playbook.

Farrell Granit, Co-Lead for Healthcare REITs, BofA: Is that coming from, or what I’m more getting at, are you seeing more things come to market? Is that giving you a broader opportunity set, or has it been a consistent level?

Justin Hutchens, Ventas: I think there’s, you know, it’s been, the pipeline’s grown. The pipeline this year was bigger than last year. There are more deals coming to market or coming to us if they’re off-market. We just had an industry conference, the NIC conference that a lot of participants attend. I would say the buzz there is that there’s a lot more coming.

Debra, Ventas: Yes, deals beget deals.

Justin Hutchens, Ventas: Exactly.

Farrell Granit, Co-Lead for Healthcare REITs, BofA: Good to hear. I know we mentioned it right in the beginning about the update with the triple net conversions and Brookdale. I was hoping if we can address that and also in terms of the CapEx that’s required for some of these conversions and some of the building blocks of what we could expect for 2026 in terms of NOI and ramp and coming online.

Debra, Ventas: Brookdale Senior Living portfolio is being bifurcated into a lease portfolio that Brookdale is retaining where rent is going up, call it 35%. We are taking advantage of the growth opportunity on that part of the portfolio that way. Justin and the team identified 45 assets that we are going to take and convert to SHOP. The key point there is that over time, we would expect to get over $100 million of NOI from those 45 assets. There is a lot of work to get from here to there. Justin is in charge of that work and has started. We are happy to report we did the first 11 transitions in September. Justin, why don’t you talk about what the intermediate term plan is for the assets and kind of getting from here to there?

Justin Hutchens, Ventas: Yeah, so, first of all, because we’ve had so much transition activity over the past several years, we’ve had 260 transitions to two new managers. We have five operators that have done multiple transitions with us. Those operators were selected for these Brookdale Senior Living transitions. They’ve all been engaged in the assets already, met with the families and residents and employees and management. We’ve already started transitioning. We’ve had 11 that transitioned already on September 1. My team has been engaged in the CapEx assessment already. We’re ready to hit the ground running when the operators start management. The goal is to have as much of that redev, refresh work done by the beginning of the key selling season in 2026. We’re planning to spend around $2 million per asset on average. We’re planning on taking a $50 million NOI number to over $100 million over time.

Really good return on that spend. These communities are high 70% occupancy, and they’re in markets that have very strong net absorption similar to what I described earlier. We like the opportunity to improve the operation with new operators, improve the asset to make it more competitive, drive occupancy, and ultimately deliver a better service, but deliver financial returns that are attractive.

Farrell Granit, Co-Lead for Healthcare REITs, BofA: I also want to ask a little bit bigger picture. For where we sit today, if you were to look back a year ago, what’s the most surprising item across senior housing?

Justin Hutchens, Ventas: Surprise question there.

Debra, Ventas: What’s the most surprising?

Justin Hutchens, Ventas: From a performance or investment or a business?

Debra, Ventas: You can go any avenue. Go wherever you want to go.

Justin Hutchens, Ventas: I’m going to say the biggest surprise in senior housing probably has to do with the net demand versus net absorption opportunity. We track net absorption, and that’s just simply considering the supply and demand characteristics over the next few years. We had to add the metric net demand because we have markets, several of them we’ve underwritten, that will be 100% occupied. The demand actually will exceed the net absorption opportunity for our communities and what we’re seeing in the market. Although we knew the demographics were strong, you could see this coming, but when you literally get to that place where we’re at now, where we’re saying, okay, there may not be any vacant units in these markets within the mid-term, that’s a bit of a surprising stat to consider.

Unidentified speaker: Justin, we call that uncapped net demand, right?

Justin Hutchens, Ventas: Yep.

Unidentified speaker: Exactly. It speaks to the pricing power.

Debra, Ventas: Yep. Biggest surprise is you can still buy Ventas at less than a 20x multiple.

Farrell Granit, Co-Lead for Healthcare REITs, BofA: To conclude, we have three rapid-fire questions.

Debra, Ventas: Okay.

Farrell Granit, Co-Lead for Healthcare REITs, BofA: When the Fed starts to cut, do you expect borrowing rates for long-term debt to decline, stay flat, or potentially rise? Choose one, please.

Debra, Ventas: When short-term rates decline.

Farrell Granit, Co-Lead for Healthcare REITs, BofA: Oh, for the long term.

Debra, Ventas: What’s going to happen on the long sides? I’m going to just go with relatively stable.

Farrell Granit, Co-Lead for Healthcare REITs, BofA: Okay. Last year, the majority of companies stated that they are ramping up spending on AI initiatives. How would you characterize your plans over the next year? Higher, flat, or lower?

Debra, Ventas: Say it again.

Farrell Granit, Co-Lead for Healthcare REITs, BofA: For spending for AI and more.

Debra, Ventas: AI?

Farrell Granit, Co-Lead for Healthcare REITs, BofA: Yes.

Debra, Ventas: Higher.

Farrell Granit, Co-Lead for Healthcare REITs, BofA: All right. Do you believe that same sort of NOI for your whole sector, not just Ventas’ sector, will be higher, lower, or the same next year?

Debra, Ventas: We have a policy of deferring on that question until we provide guidance.

Farrell Granit, Co-Lead for Healthcare REITs, BofA: Okay.

Debra, Ventas: Look, the main, I know, since I.

Justin Hutchens, Ventas: You’re a big industry participant.

Debra, Ventas: I do want to close on that because it’s exactly where we started. We’re four years into a multi-year growth opportunity. We have a great runway ahead, we believe. It’s fueled by demand that’s strong and getting stronger. That’s where investors really want to be. We’ve built a great company to take advantage of it. Thank you for having us.

Farrell Granit, Co-Lead for Healthcare REITs, BofA: Great. Thank you so much.

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