Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the CareTrust REIT Fourth Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentations, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question at that time, please press star then one on your touchtone telephone. As a reminder, today's conference call is being recorded. I would now turn the conference over to your host, Ms. Lauren Beale, Senior Vice President of Accounting and Controller of CareTrust REIT. Ma'am, you may begin. Thank you, and welcome to CareTrust REIT's fourth quarter and year-end 2020 earnings call. Participants should be aware that this call is being recorded, and listeners are advised that any forward-looking statements made on today's call are based on management's current expectations, assumptions, and beliefs about CareTrust's business and the environment in which it operates. These statements may include projections regarding future financial performance, dividends, acquisitions, investments, returns, financings, and other matters, and may or may not reference other matters affecting the company's business or the businesses of its tenants, including factors that are beyond their control, such as natural disasters, pandemics such as COVID-19, and governmental actions. The company's statements today, and its business generally, are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to materially differ from those expressed or implied herein. Listeners should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and are encouraged to review CareTrust's SEC filings for a more complete discussion of factors that could impact results, as well as any financial or other statistical information required by SEC Regulation G. Except as required by law, CareTrust REIT and its affiliates do not undertake to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements where changes arise as a result of new information, future events, changing circumstances, or for any other reason. During the call, the company will reference non-GAAP metrics such as EBITDA, FFO, and FAD, or FAD, and normalize EBITDA, FFO, and FAD. When viewed together with GAAP results, the company believes these measures can provide a more complete understanding of its business but cautions that they should not be relied upon to the exclusion of GAAP reports. CareTrust yesterday filed its Form 10-K, an accompanying press release, and its quarterly financial supplement, each of which can be accessed on the investor relations section of CareTrust's website at www.caretrustreit.com. A replay of this call will also be available on the website for a limited period. With me on the call this morning are Bill Wagner, Chief Financial Officer, Dave Sedgwick, President and Chief Operating Officer, Mark Lamb, Chief Investment Officer, and Eric Gillis, Vice President of Portfolio Management and Investments. I will now turn the call over to Greg Stapley, CareTrust REIT's Chairman and CEO. Thanks, Lauren, and good morning, everyone. 2020 turned out to be a very busy year for CareTrust. One might think that with M&A and our asset classes virtually shut down for most of the year, a healthcare REIT like ours might have had little to do. Thanks to our conservative balance sheet, our top-flight operators, and especially the outstanding team that I'm privileged to work with here, capital never dried up and the few deals that were out there did cross our desks. Anticipating some potential dislocation in the markets as we recover from the pandemic, the team worked harder than ever to find smart ways to deploy the extensive dry powder we've carefully accumulated over the years, and their efforts were rewarded with $105 million in new assets that helped our stock price and related cost of capital recover quickly. To be sure, $105 million is a light year for CareTrust, but we're thrilled to be reporting that we actually grew both assets and shareholder value in the face of unprecedented headwinds this last year. When the pandemic broke, we firmly believed that our outstanding operators would find a way to navigate through the challenge. This gave us the confidence to maintain both our dividend and guidance. That confidence proved well-placed, as CareTrust collected 99.3% of contract rents in 2020 and experienced no rent leakage in connection with the one operator change we made during the year. These results and the ongoing performance by our tenants under some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable have proven once again the value of our operator-first investment discipline. I don't want to downplay the importance of government measures, especially those aimed at helping the skilled nursing industry to weather the COVID storm. CARES Act funds for those who needed them and the waiver of the three-day qualifying stay have both been huge. To help you see that as clearly as possible, we've once again provided enhanced disclosure around the relief funds in this quarter's supplemental. We hope that the government will see the obvious value in continuing the waiver beyond 2021, and that any additional relief funding will be sufficient to help those who need it to achieve the soft landing our healthcare heroes and their employers deserve. In spite of everything that's going on, CareTrust remains well-positioned to continue expanding, reducing our cost of capital, and solidifying our spot as a leader in the market. For example, on the credit front, in case you didn't see it this morning, Fitch published a BB+ rating on CareTrust today, one notch below investment grade, with a stable outlook. After lengthy conversations with them, we feel confident that they understand our business fairly well, including some of the key things that make us different and better. This marks another important step in CareTrust's ongoing evolution and growth. Finally, speaking of evolution and growth, maybe the most exciting thing to happen this year, we've made some significant personnel moves that we believe will set us up to take CareTrust to the next level and beyond. First, congratulations go out to Dave, who was named President and Chief Operating Officer by our board this week. Most of you know Dave well, and you won't be a bit surprised by that move. In his expanded role, Dave will be taking even greater responsibility for leading our investing, financing, asset management, portfolio management, and investor relations efforts. This will free me up to spend more time on strategy and relationships and will further strengthen an already solid team. Second, a long overdue congratulations goes out to Lauren Beale, who was promoted to Senior Vice President and Controller this week. Lauren has been with us almost since the beginning and has pulled the laboring oar on everything from setting up our accounting systems to designing and implementing our internal controls over financial reporting, to handling audit and overseeing SEC reporting and more. She's been a huge contributor, and we couldn't be happier to have her on the team. Finally, we feel like we scored a major coup in persuading James Callister, one of the best-known and most well-respected attorneys in the healthcare REIT world, to join us as General Counsel and Secretary, James has been with us as outside counsel from the beginning and b ringing him in-house will allow us to involve him and his deep expertise at higher levels in the day-to-day workings and growth of the company. We're grateful to have him. As is the case with our operator first investment philosophy, for the team here, it's all about the people, it is a real privilege for me to work alongside so many amazing and talented professionals who all share the same goal: to make CareTrust the healthcare REIT of choice for operators, capital suppliers, and investors. With that, I'll turn it over to Dave for some more color on what's happening out there. Mark will jump in with the pipeline, and Bill will finish off the financials. We'll open it up for Q&A. Dave? All right. Thank you. Good morning. Today, I'd like to address three interrelated areas of focus for the company. First, I'll briefly address vaccine participation. Second, I'll update you on occupancy, and third, I'll dig into our latest lease coverage disclosure and speak to the question of runway for our key operators. First, regarding vaccines, we have recent data from all but two of our operators. Based on those direct reports, as of February 5th, resident participation is coming in at 67.6%. For some context there, the CDC reports skilled nursing residents participation ranging widely from nominal to 100%, with the median at 77.8%. As for staff participation, we're coming in at 42.6% so far. Again, for context, the CDC reports skilled nursing employees' median participation at 37.5%. We've been looking to the vaccine to be an effective catalyst for a return to normal life, which will, in turn, be a catalyst for a return to normal hospital discharge patterns and recovering SNF occupancy trends. Next, let me report on occupancy. I've noted on past calls a simultaneous decline in overall occupancy in our skilled nursing facilities, coupled with an increase in skilled mix. Fortunately, the revenue loss from the overall census drop is being significantly offset by the increased skilled revenue. In Q4, our operators reported a sequential decline in SNF occupancy of 154 bps. However, comparing Q3 skilled mix to Q4 skilled mix, we saw another increase of 270 bps. I can't underscore enough the importance of the waiver of the three-night qualifying hospital stay as a lifeline for both the patients who are able to avoid a risky and traumatic transfer to the hospital and for the operators themselves. For seniors' housing occupancy, the first two quarters of COVID showed remarkable resilience. Q3 seniors' housing occupancy was at about 82.5%. In Q4, our operators reported occupancy of 80.4%. As with skilled nursing, we have some facilities gaining ground and others who have slipped. Remember, our sample size for seniors' housing is relatively small here. Going from 82.5% down to 80.4% is the result of each seniors' housing location dropping by only 1.5 residents on average. While occupancy is certainly central to the plot, the elevated expenses and soft costs associated with the pandemic are also very important. Which leads me to my third area of focus, lease coverage. You see in yesterday's posted supplemental a continuation of our enhanced COVID era disclosure, wherein we try to be as transparent and helpful as possible by reporting lease coverage on an EBITDAR and EBITDARM basis, both excluding CARES Act funding and amortizing the CARES Act funds received to date through June of this year. From our perspective, there weren't really any surprises. Stripping out the CARES Act funds, we saw overall portfolio coverage hold steady, just down 2 bps to 2.07 x. Look, to be anywhere near 2x coverage without CARES Act funds this deep into the pandemic is remarkable and a testament to the quality operators in the portfolio. On the other hand, there are, of course, some areas in the portfolio that have absolutely needed the HHS funds. We spent a lot of time modeling what we refer to here as runway for those few operators. Making a couple assumptions around run rate performance and a baseline minimum 1 x lease coverage ratio, we are cautiously optimistic about the runway they have to make a soft landing back to pre-pandemic fundamentals. One note on asset management. We welcome Noble Senior Services, an operator we've worked with since 2019, to our top 10 list last quarter. Noble stepped into our existing Virginia seniors' housing assets under a new triple net lease with no loss in rent. They've done a great job with the assets they transitioned for us in 2019, and both we and they are excited about their prospects in the Virginia portfolio. From our first earnings call since the pandemic started, we've maintained guidance because we could see a reasonable path for that guidance to be achieved. We acknowledge the several uncertainties that will likely remain throughout this year, but when we take what we have experienced so far and weigh the existing headwinds with the regulatory and financial support given to the industry, we continue to see a reasonable path for this year. With that, I'll pass the call over to Mark to talk about investments. Mark? Thanks, Dave, and hello, everyone. We wrapped up Q4 and the year with two investments. First, in November, we closed on the Texas four portfolio, which we bought with existing leases in place with Ensign. The value for us was both the blue-chip operator and a portfolio that covers well above two times on an EBITDAR basis. We paid $47.6 million for the portfolio and receive annual rent of just under $3.8 million. Later in the month, we made a $15 million mezzanine loan at a rate of 12% to Next Healthcare on a portfolio they purchased in the Mid-Atlantic region. This was our first investment alongside Next, and we hope to grow our relationship with them over the coming years. We finished the year with a total of $105.3 million in new investments. Deal flow continued to be light in Q4. As COVID spiked, operators continued to keep their heads down, and both underwriting and diligence were complicated by the pandemic. However, we have seen an uptick in deal flow over the past few weeks, and based on conversations we are having with the brokerage community, we anticipate an increase in opportunities over the coming months as operators navigate their way out of the way this COVID spiked. Deal flow to date is largely composed of one-off, non-stable seniors housing assets with smaller portfolio opportunities scattered over several states. On the SNF side, we continue to pick through largely broken and challenged assets to find opportunities that work for our operators. That being said, we expect 2021 to be an active year as we believe more and more small operators will look to exit the business as we get COVID further behind us. We're watching this closely, as another spike in COVID could push out this timeline further into the back of the year and into 2022. As we sit here today, the pipe continues to hover in the $125 million-$150 million range, which is in line with our historical range. It is primarily made up of singles and doubles, but there are at least a couple of small portfolios that we hope to pair with both our existing tenants and a couple of new ones that we would love to welcome to our core of best-in-class operators. The composition of the pipe is a mix between SNFs and seniors housing assets, and for each deal, we are carefully pursuing a customized transactional structure designed to help our operators as they face remaining COVID-19-related uncertainties in both over the initial 12-24 months after acquisition. Please remember that when we quote our pipe, we only quote deals we are actively pursuing under our current underwriting standards, and then only if we have a reasonable level of confidence that we can lock them up and close them in the relatively near term. Now I'll turn it over to Bill to discuss the financials. Thanks, Mark. For the quarter, normalized FFO grew by 5% over the prior year quarter to $34.2 million or $0.36 per share, and normalized FAD grew by 5% to $35.7 million or $0.37 per share. Even though we raised our dividend significantly in early 2020 and maintained it despite the pandemic, our payout ratio remains right where we like it at approximately 69% on normalized FFO and 68% on normalized FAD. Leverage continues to be at all-time lows at a net debt to normalized EBITDA ratio of 3.3 x. Our net debt to enterprise value was 20% as of quarter end, and we achieved a fixed charge coverage ratio of 8x in Q4. Last year, we saw no reason to pull guidance as rents continued to come in. In 2021, we plan on taking the same approach. As long as rents continue to be collected, we will continue offering our best estimates of where we think the year is headed. As of right now, we expect normalized FFO per share of $1.40-$1.42, and normalized FAD per share of $1.49-$1.51. This guidance includes all investments and dispositions made to date, a share count of 95.6 million shares, and also relies on the following assumptions. One, no additional investments or dispositions, nor any further debt or equity issuances this year. Two, i nflation-based rent escalations, which account for almost all of our escalators at an average of 1.25%. Our total rental revenues for the year, again, including only acquisitions made to date, are projected at approximately $175 million, which includes less than $80,000 of straight-line rent. Three, interest income of approximately $1.8 million. Four, i nterest expense of approximately $23 million. In our calculations, we have assumed a LIBOR rate of 15 bps and a grid-based margin rate of 125 bps on the revolver and 150 bps on the unsecured term loan. Interest expense also includes roughly $2 million of amortization of deferred financing fees. Five, we are projecting G&A of approximately $17.5 million- $19.4 million. The G&A projection also includes roughly $7 million of amortization of stock comp. This range is up approximately $1.2 million-$3.1 million over 2020 due to our newly structured long-term performance plan causing us to recognize more in new stock compensation expense in 2021 and roughly $3.2 million more than in 2020. Additionally, as we recently disclosed, we have brought on a new general counsel. He used to work primarily on investments for us in the past while at his outside legal firm. Now that he will be working for us, even though his duties aren't materially changing, the accounting rules require us to expense these costs instead of capitalizing the cost to new investments. While it's cash neutral to us, it does negatively impact G&A and FFO and FAD per share. Our leverage and liquidity positions remain strong. We did not sell any shares under the $500 million ATM that we put up last year, and the outstanding balance on our $600 million revolver currently sits at $50 million. We have approximately $19 million in cash. In addition, cash collections for January came in at 100% and are currently at 98% for February, but we expect that number to go to 100% shortly. With that, I'll turn it back to Greg. Thanks, Bill. Again, we hope this discussion has been helpful to you, and we thank you again for your continuing interest and support. With that, we'll be happy to answer questions. Valerie? Thank you. Our first question comes from Jonathan Hughes of Raymond James. Your line is open. Hey, good afternoon. Dave, could you give us some more details and background on the operator transition in the quarter, and then maybe also talk about Noble's progress on the 2019 properties they took over? Yeah. I'll go in reverse order. They stepped into a portfolio back in 2019 of seven facilities across four states. It was the beginning of our relationship with them, and they've done a very good job of stabilizing those assets and increasing occupancy there, even in a couple of the buildings that had historically been fairly challenging. One of those seven actually has been closed this entire time, and is about to come online down in Fort Myers. Once that comes online and they're able to fill that up, their performance in that lease will do exceptionally well. Because of their performance there, we felt confident in turning to them for these Virginia assets. The operator that exited essentially felt like these assets would be in better hands with somebody else in terms of the ability to meet the rent obligations going forward. When Noble took a look at them, they saw a lot of potential, as they did with the original seven, and we're excited to step in at the current rent. That's helpful. Just to clarify on the Noble coverage that's shown in the sup, does that include one property that's effectively a. They're paying rent on, but it's not generating any EBITDAR because it's closed. Is that right? That's right. Okay. Maybe one for Mark here on the deal pipeline and external growth, but you mentioned you're offering customized structures on some deals. Can you kind of expand on that, what you mean by that? Yeah. I think in this age of COVID, I don't think we're the only ones that are doing it. I think really it's more a function of uncertainty around occupancy and where revenue is and kind of getting the necessary protections and safeguards in place should occupancy or revenue dip prior to our operator taking over. Whether that's a form of a holdback or other creative ways to make sure that our operators are not going to be harmed as they take over. As you know, sometimes as you have operators exiting portfolios, they tend to take their foot off the gas, we just need to make sure that occupancy levels and overall cash flow levels, there's a catch-up or a look-back mechanism to make sure that our operators from a coverage perspective are not harmed by that. Okay, maybe after a couple of years if things recover and stabilize, there's a reset feature in there to be able to capture some of that upside that you're giving them leeway on in the near term? No, it's more of a function of the outgoing operator, the outgoing owner of the assets. There's a catch-up feature directly to our operator, just depending on how quickly the recovery takes place with the new incoming operator getting the building or buildings back to, call it, pre-COVID levels. Okay. Maybe I'll follow up offline, but I want to ask one more for Bill. I'm going to leave you out. Can you talk about the stock comp guidance and the new performance and incentive plan? It is a noticeable increase to any color there on how that package has changed would be helpful. You know what, Jonathan? It's Greg. I'll take that one. Quite simply, we've just switched to a more conventional type of long-term incentive plan that is different from what we've been using, because what we've been using was sort of back-end loaded, and we took the expenses later. Now, using a more conventional plan, there's issuances up front that vest over time. For this year, and I anticipate only this year, we will sort of have a double stock expense, so to speak. I think it's better overall. I think the shareholder advisory services and others are going to like the plan better, and we'll publish more about it in the upcoming proxy. Okay. All right. Thank you very much for the time. Appreciate it. Thank you. Our next question comes from Steven Valiquette of Barclays. Your line is open. Great. Thanks. Hello, everybody. Thanks for taking the questions. First question, the trend of the improving EBITDA rent coverage ratios among many of your leading SNF operators during the first six or nine months of the COVID pandemic versus the pre-COVID baselines, I mean, it is pretty remarkable. I guess I'm just curious to hear more about some of the fundamental drivers within the SNF operations that are driving the improving EBITDAR. I'm sure it's a combo of a lot of things, whether it's improved skill mix or just treating higher acuity patients. Also, as SNFs are just treating more and more COVID patients, are COVID patients ultimately turning out to be fairly profitable patients for SNF, either based on reimbursement bonuses or other factors? I'm just curious to get your thoughts around all this as far as the improving fundamentals within the SNF post-COVID. Thanks. Thanks for your question, Steve. Yeah, it has been a remarkable trend to see. In your question, you sort of answered it by talking about the main drivers, and you're right, it really is the skilled mix that has offset the drop in overall occupancy significantly. Couple other things, just a little bit more color on that. We saw PDPM kick in just in time for this pandemic. I think the picture that we'd be seeing here would be different if we were still on the old RUGs program that was largely driven by volume of therapy minutes. The fact that reimbursement is now based on the clinical characteristics of these patients has mattered a lot. We see our Medicare rate go up quite a bit because of PDPM, then it goes up after COVID starts, we see that tick up just a touch more because the COVID patient does require a lot more in terms of cost, and those characteristics of a COVID patient are captured under PDPM. When captured appropriately under PDPM, those costs are reflected in the reimbursement. Right now, we have a lot of our operators, well, not just now, but from the get-go, some of our operators realized that they needed to be part of the solution. They created wings in their facilities that would specialize in COVID and became sort of that COVID facility of choice in their markets. That trend has continued and is largely the reason for the increased performance there. Okay, great. That's definitely helpful. One other quick question. I feel like I probably could've tracked down the answer to this, sometimes it's hard to keep track of all the individual transactions taking place among some of your operators. It looked like Ensign maybe acquired some additional properties in the fourth quarter over and above the four Texas facilities that CTRE also press released. I wasn't sure if there's just some variables that determine when CTRE is involved in facilities being acquired by your largest operator and when you're not, maybe there's just some other nuances there. I think they acquired some California properties, maybe there were just some circumstances there. I I just wanted to hear more about when you're involved and when you're not with that particular operator. Yeah. This is Mark. My understanding is those were a transition of another California operator, and there was another landlord involved, so it was the transfer of the operations for those three. California-based assets that you touched on. Yeah. Just to be clear, this is Greg. The assets that we took over in November that were Ensign assets, those we just bought from another landlord with Ensign leases already in place. They've been in place for some time. With respect to any additional work that we do with them, we show them deals from time to time, and we'd be happy to have more to grow our relationship with them any time and every time it makes sense to do so. Okay. That's helpful. Okay, great. Thanks. Thank you. Our next question comes from Jordan Sadler of KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open. Thank you. Hello, gentlemen. Curious about the CPI escalator assumption. Bill, I think you threw one a quarter into the number. What is the impact of every 100 basis points of CPI on FFO? Is that an obtuse question? Something you might have handy? Let's see. Well, it's going to impact 2021 a little differently because some of our leases, the renewal dates are throughout the year. Our biggest renewal. Yeah, that's why I asked. Yeah, the biggest renewal, which is Ensign, hits on June 1st, let's see, that would be It's about $0.01 for the year on those CPI increases. For the 1.25% for just every 100 basis points or just the 1.25% You have guided? For the 1.25%. Okay. There's some incremental contribution across the rest of the portfolio to the number. Correct. Okay. That $0.01 for 2021 is 1.25% on all leases. Oh, okay. The penny is 1.25% on all leases. That's all the impact is. Okay. Yep. Got it. Not just in. In terms of the sort of acquisition pipeline, Mark, you talked a little bit about it. I'm curious, the appetite on seniors housing. I mean, you did say the pipe includes a mix that incorporates some seniors housing, and I'm kind of just curious how you're thinking about sort of pricing, coverage, the occupancy required, as you underwrite those types of assets today. Yeah. I think the first variable is going to be which of our kind of small stable of seniors housing operators are looking to grow at this point. We're also kind of keenly focused on the outgoing operator and kind of how strategic the asset or assets are to them, how much low-hanging fruit on the expense side is there for our operators to kind of come in and make some day one changes. Certainly on the occupancy side, that's going to be a bit of a mixed bag. Obviously, depending on the area, some occupancies have held up better than others. I think from an underwriting perspective, we're kind of in always in that 1.2x-1.5x on an EBITDAR basis. Really it's kind of like as we kind of view SNF opportunities, where's the low-hanging fruit and maybe occupancy has been held down because the existing operator just didn't want to admit, didn't really have the right infection control protocols in place. Yeah, I mean, there is some seniors housing in our pipe and we feel comfortable with where the buildings kind of have performed over time, and we think that our operators are going to get in and actually kind of increase occupancy fairly quickly. Really it's kind of on an asset-by-asset basis. Mostly, these would not be sale-leasebacks, it sounds like. It would be new operators? That's right. Okay. The coverage, you're talking about the 1- 1.25, that's going in or upon stabilization? I would say when you underwrite any deal, you can sort of sign the PSA and have coverage at 1.2 or 1.15 or 1.30, and that number will inevitably move around. The coverage upon stabilization to be above 125. Where we ultimately end up going in is going to be a function of when we close on the transaction. I would expect it to probably be anywhere, coming in the 110- 125 range, just really dependent upon how COVID-19 impacts specific facilities and where we are when we actually close on the portfolios relative to how the operators are doing. That was part of the prepared remarks in terms of we're structuring so that the operators, if we sign a deal up at 125, our structure will allow our operators to kind of catch up or to get made whole to an extent on some of the cash flow that they have maybe have had to have put out. We feel very comfortable about, in the particular assets that we currently have in the portfolio, of how we've structured for coverage. Okay giving them runway to get to where they need to be on a stabilized basis. Great. Thank you. Lastly, maybe for Dave. Congrats, Dave, on the promotion, I thought a little color maybe on some of the tenants who seem to be under the most pressure in the portfolio. We already discussed really Noble from a coverage standpoint, maybe back on Premier. Trillium fell off the top tenant list, any insight you can cover? I know some of these guys have not received HHS provider relief fund. Yeah. Thank you. Regarding the seniors housing guys like Premier and Noble, you're right. The HHS funds have been anemic, if any. They've been kind of fighting the headwinds without that support, and doing an actually pretty strong job compared to the rest of the seniors housing sector. In terms of an update, there's really not much of an update to give over the last couple of quarters. It's just more of the same in terms of their navigating the challenges that COVID presents. It's difficult, as you can imagine, to be in a situation before COVID that was challenging and trying to make that turn, and then to continue to try to make that turn during COVID. Trillium on the skilled nursing side has, like many of our other operators, have had a bit of a roller coaster with COVID. They've had some pretty hard hits on the occupancy front. The expenses for skilled nursing have increased quite a bit. I think our OpEx PPD has gone up by 9% because of COVID. That's largely because of staffing costs, needing agency costs as people have to be quarantined for COVID and things like that. While it's been a pretty steady quarter for us, we don't want to convey that all is nice and easy out there. Our operators are definitely still slaying dragons in their several markets. Is there anybody that we're worried about here who's not current on rent or is at risk? Yeah. Like Bill said, we expect to be at 100% rent for this month like last month. In spite of the dragons that they're slaying, they really do have a lot of runway. For the foreseeable future, we feel like the liquidity is there to help them bridge the gap. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Again, ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star then one. Our next question comes from Jason Idoine of RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open. Hey, guys. I wanted to ask a question on maybe what you're hearing from your operators or what your own expectations are. I guess what the remaining duration of the emergency health period would be or what you would expect it to be? When should we start thinking about the HHS supports beginning to phase out? Well, we've got some good news on the government funding. As you know, the emergency has been extended through the end of this year, which means that sequestration and FMAP and the three-night qualifying stay, all very important supports for the industry, should stay in place now through the end of this year. There's still somewhere around $27 billion of from previously passed stimulus money that has not been allocated yet. So, it's too early to sort of predict the degree of the recovery slope, and when that really starts. We think that overall, it's going to be fairly uneven throughout our portfolio and throughout the country as a whole. We're encouraged to hear anecdotally from our operators that where they're seeing COVID wane, that they're starting to see an increase in their overall skilled nursing census. That's the color that we have right now on the government funding as it relates to, and as that relates to our recovery. Got it. Okay. The balance sheet today is pretty well positioned. I know you guys have some room for additional leverage, also the ATM available. I guess how should we think about the targeted range of 4x- 5x, and where you guys sit today, and maybe how you'll be funding acquisitions in the future? I think you'll see us continue to, as long as stock price kind of stays where it's at, we like to match fund the deals as we go. If large deals come up, we would look to maybe do an overnight, or the high yield market is wide open with very attractive pricing. We could tap that as well. I would expect over time, even though we love the leverage where it's at right now, it is a tad bit low, so call it a slight uptick in it. Got it. Last one from me. I know the investment volumes have been pretty light through the pandemic. Are you seeing any larger portfolios start to come to the market? Obviously, you completed the four-property acquisition this quarter. Are they still mostly onesie-twosies coming to the market or anything bigger? Yeah, no, everything's kind of onesie-twosie. Obviously, there's been some announcements from our REIT brethren of some $500 million plus deals. There's a couple of large SNF portfolios that closed last year, down in the southeast. At this point, to our knowledge, there isn't really anything that's of that magnitude at this point in time. We are tracking a couple larger portfolios that we know the operators want to exit at some point. They obviously want to make sure that their numbers are kind of back to pre-COVID levels so that they can get the valuations that they want. As we sit here today, there isn't anything that is chunky or significantly transformative. Got it. Thanks. Yep. Thank you. Our next question comes from Daniel Bernstein of Capital One. Your line is open. Hi, good morning, I guess good afternoon, and congratulations, David. I guess, when we were talking to your peer, Omega, on their earnings call, there's a debate as to how fast skilled nursing occupancy can come back and whether home health has permanently taken some market share from the skilled nursing business. Just wanted to get your thoughts on how much has home health impacted your portfolio and maybe whether there is a permanent change in discharge pattern as a result. Thanks. Hey, Dan. This is Dave. Yep. Home health has historically been a very close second to skilled nursing for Medicare post-acute discharges. Given the circumstances of COVID-19, I don't think anybody's surprised that home health has bounced back faster than skilled nursing. I'd say that the narrative around home health permanently taking share from patients from skilled nursing is mistaken. Okay. Now, given the impending demographic surge, it wouldn't be a bad thing if they were able to take more share over time. As you project, five, 10, 15 years, we're going to have a capacity problem. Before, during, and after the pandemic, essentially all residents and patients in skilled nursing facilities need to be there. Structurally, home health has the same ceiling on how high it can climb the acuity scale as they did before. Just some home health context there. On average, over a 60-day period, a home health patient will be visited by a nurse eight times. They'll get on average 18 visits from the home health agency, a mix of nurses and therapists and others, but that nurse is going to visit, on average, eight times over 60 days. In a skilled nursing setting, a Medicare patient must be seen by a nurse multiple times every day. It's just a very different type of patient. Those patients, well before the pandemic, have already largely been going home, if at all, they had that ability to do it. We believe that with time, the balance of discharges to skilled nursing and home health will recalibrate. Okay. I appreciate the answer. I experienced exactly what you said firsthand with a parent coming home and seeing a nurse twice a week for a couple of weeks, and that was it. Yeah. Hey, one other thing on that, Dan. Just a little anecdote. Spoke with a fairly large regional home health operator in the Midwest. They take care of about 1,400 lives a day. In the fourth quarter, they told us that they diverted 30% of all their new patients to skilled nursing facilities due to acuity needs. Yeah, you might be seeing quite a bit more going to home health out of the hospital, but in this case, 30% of those couldn't stay in home health. They had to go straight to a skilled nursing facility. Okay. The other question I had was just going back to Ensign. They had split out their real estate as a different, I guess, part of their business. I didn't know if you had any thoughts of whether there was an opportunity to maybe help them monetize or realize the value of that real estate in some form or fashion. I don't know, kind of open-ended question. I just thought it was curious that Ensign had split out the real estate within its financial statements. I didn't know if there was an opportunity there for you. Hey, Dan, it's Greg. That was an interesting move, and we haven't actually had an opportunity to chat with them about that. We know exactly as much as you do about their thinking behind that. Again, they're a great operator and a great tenant for us. As I mentioned before, we'd love to do more with them if the opportunity arises. All right. Good enough. Take care, and have a good one. Bye. You too. Thank you. Our next question comes from Theo Zaferiou of Wells Fargo. Your line is open. Hey, guys. Good afternoon, and congrats, Dave, on the promotion. Thank you. Most of our questions have been answered. We wanted to ask some questions around tenant purchase options. It looks like a portfolio of seven properties are up for tenant purchase options starting here in Q1. Just wondering if you could talk about any conversations you've had on that front. If they did choose to exercise, how much notice or time elapses typically until those transactions are completed? Yeah. At this point, we don't expect them to exercise that option this year. I think we would have quarters before a window opens, we're going to start kind of having that conversation with those guys to see what their plans are. At this point, we don't expect any options to be exercised this year. Okay, great. Thanks. That makes sense. In general, it looks like most of the tenant purchase options we see are for leases expiring in 2030 and beyond. Are these legacy kind of agreements, and have you included tenant purchase options in your more recent deals at all? Yeah. Look, we're here to grow, not shrink. There have been a handful of times where we provided purchase options in order to sweeten the risk/reward assessment for operators, usually when taking over existing operations, and allowing us to maintain the rent where it is. It's not something that we do as a matter of course. Occasionally, there'll be a new investment that has a particular building or two that in order for the operator to engage, you'd have to sweeten that deal for them. Most of what you see here is a result of some restructuring work and re-tenanting and giving incoming operators the incentive to step in and take some higher than normal risk in taking over some buildings that need some turnaround. That all makes sense. Thanks a lot, Dave. Appreciate it. Thank you. Our next question comes from Omotayo Okusanya of Mizuho. Your line is open. Yes, good afternoon, everyone. Dave, congrats. Also a good quarter, good guidance. In regards to government regulation going forward. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Oh, perfect. In regards to government regulation going forward, appreciate the commentary about FMAP and sequestration being extended to the end of the year. Any comments around what could potentially happen with PDPM reimbursements come the typical spring period when it's kind of reviewed for the next fiscal year would be helpful. Any comments around Medicare advance payments and an extension of the payment period would also be helpful if there's anything out there. Tayo, thank you by the way, but I'm not sure we have much more than some sophisticated speculation to share on those fronts. With PDPM, when it first came out, I think there was a general expectation that some period after seasoning of a brand-new program that Medicare would reevaluate and potentially recalibrate the algorithm to make sure that the rate is doing what it expected. What we saw in the previous administration was, I think, an indication that any attempt to recalibrate was going to be put on hold until the pandemic was behind us. I think most folks in the industry expect that position to maintain under the new administration. Again, it really is a guess and nothing better than that it's likely not going to be tinkered with this year. It certainly could next year with the assumption that next year we're going to be living in a post-COVID world at some stage. As far as the Medicare advance payments. Advance, yeah. Yeah, I think we had one of our operators who participated in that. I'll have to double-check on that for you. I don't have any new information about the government's plans on changing the goalpost there except for the fact that they continue to then move the goalpost out further. I wouldn't be surprised if that were to take place. Great. That's helpful. Then one quick follow-up. Again, a lot of positive commentary on the call about the acquisition outlook, yet you specifically don't put acquisitions in the 2021 guidance. Any reason why? Again, it seems like there could be potential upside to guidance just from you guys doing accretive deals giving you a low leverage. Yeah. Tayo, this is Greg. We've never put acquisitions into our guidance simply because we think that imposes sort of an artificial discipline on us that's not real. We would hate to tell you that we're going to do X hundred million dollars of deals this year and then fall short, or worse, stretch farther than we should to hit that number if the market's not there for us. We'll let you decide what you think we can do in a year, and we'll just report the deals as they come in. All right. I'm going to stick $2 billion in the model. Awesome. We appreciate your confidence. All right. Well done. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm showing no further questions at this time. I'll just turn the call back over to Greg Stapley for any closing remarks. Thanks, Valerie. Thank you everybody for being on the call today. It's been good to chat with you again, and as always, if you have any other questions or anything else we can help you with, do not hesitate to call. Take care. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.