Nick Stengel: following the COVID pandemic in 2022. Similarly, our associate turnover and key three leader turnover have continued to improve and are now the lowest since the beginning of the COVID pandemic. These improved metrics are indicative of the success of our recent organizational changes and the cultural transformation we have undertaken. Taken together, they are leading indicators of the accelerating improvement in resident satisfaction, occupancy, and operating margin that we expect over the remainder of the year. At Brookdale, we are truly excited for our future, both this year and in the coming years. Equally, we are appreciative for each of our residents, associates, and shareholders for your trust in our team. As a company, we remain on track to unlock the intrinsic value of Brookdale's specialized services and real estate assets. I will now turn the call over to Brookdale CFO Don Cusso for more details on our financial performance and outlook.
Don Cusso: Thank you, Nick. This morning, I'll recap Brookdale's first quarter financial performance and our financial outlook for the year. I'll also discuss progress on our ongoing portfolio transition and other balance sheet improvements. turning first to the first quarter financial results. Comparing our first quarter, 2026, to the prior year quarter, we grew our consolidated occupancy by 280 basis points to 82.1%, and our same community occupancy by 170 basis points to 82.7%. The first quarter marked the 17th consecutive quarter that Brookdale has delivered 100 basis points or more of year-over-year consolidated occupancy growth. Sequentially, our first quarter consolidated occupancy declined 40 basis points from the fourth quarter of 2025. Seasonally, the first quarter typically declines from the fourth quarter due to higher levels of flu and other winter illnesses, the impact of winter weather, holiday timing, and also as a result of our annual in-place rate increases, which occurs on January 1st each year. Occupancy during the first quarter was modestly behind our expectations, reflecting the impact of the winter storms in the quarter. In contrast, our April occupancy sequential growth of 30 basis points was stronger than our historical average post-COVID April sequential occupancy improvement of 10 to 20 basis points. This level of sequential occupancy growth speaks to our improving execution under the new operating structure. For the first quarter, resident fees of $722 million declined 7.1% from the first quarter of last year. The key factors underpinning the revenue decline versus last year were a 14.2% reduction in our consolidated average units, partially offset by an 8.2% rev par increase. As a reminder, we guided to 8% to 9% rev par growth for 2026, And we're within that range to start the year. We expect year-over-year REVPAR growth to accelerate over the remainder of the year based on improving community-level execution and the positive mix impact of dispositions. The 8.2% year-over-year increase in REVPAR was driven by a balance of rate improvement and the 280 basis point increase in weighted average occupancy. Note that the unit mix, which stems from our decision to exit a number of communities, including many that were underperforming, also positively impacted our reported rev par, leading to a consolidated rev par increase of 8.2% versus a same community rev par increase of 5.5%. Resident rate increases were also beneficial to the quarter, As revenue per occupied room, or REVPOR, essentially a realized pricing metric, increased 4.5% year over year. We successfully implemented a high single-digit in-place rate increase on January 1st. Note that the first quarter of 2026 year-over-year REVPOR comparison was impacted by strategic rate concessions taken starting in the second quarter of 2025 to accelerate occupancy. Sequentially, our REVPOR grew 6% from the fourth quarter of 2025, reflecting the benefit from the rate increase. While we typically expect REV poor to decline throughout a given year, for 2026, we expect our year-over-year REV poor performance, especially for the second half of the year, to be better than our typical seasonal trends as we annualize concessions embedded in the prior year periods. Now let's turn to expenses. As Nick mentioned, the first quarter expense impact of significant winter storms was approximately $3 to $4 million. on a consolidated basis first quarter expense per occupied unit or export increased 3.2% over the first quarter of 2025. Our 4.5% increase in REVPOR exceeded the 3.2% increase in EXPOR, generating a 130 basis point positive spread between realized revenue and expenses per occupied unit. Beyond the storm impact, we did see modest same community margin compression due to the operating leverage impact of the seasonal occupancy decline. We expect a resumption of positive margin trends as we first grow occupancy through the year and second, move lower occupied communities up the occupancy bands and realize the associated operating income flow through. On a consolidated basis, senior housing operating income grew 14% sequentially with margin expansion of 330 basis points. Year-over-year operating margin improved 80 basis points, while operating income declined 4% on a 14% decline in units since the prior year. Labor is our single largest cost item, at 64% of total facility operating expenses during the quarter. First quarter, same community labor expense as a percent of revenue improved 20 basis points year-over-year, and we expect to realize additional leverage over labor costs as occupancy increases in coming quarters. We continue to make progress on reducing labor turnover and improving labor utilization, and we project a stable and predictable labor cost environment for 2026. Other facility operating expenses increased 40 basis points as a percent of revenue on a same community basis. Utility costs were higher year-over-year, mainly from the storms, as were food expenses. We expect these costs to moderate during the year. For the quarter, despite the $3-4 million expense impact of the storms, we expanded our adjusted EBITDA by $7 million to $131 million, a 5.6% increase over the first quarter of 2025. As relates to the year-over-year expected mid-teens growth rate, recall that our 2026 mid-teens adjusted EBITDA growth guidance is from our 2025 baseline adjusted EBITDA of $445 million, not from the as-reported $458 million. The $445 million baseline nets out the timing benefit of Brookdale's first half 2025 G&A reduction associated with the planned Ventas community dispositions, which occurred during the third and fourth quarters of 2025. If we were to normalize GNA in the prior year to create a baseline quarter, our year-over-year increase in adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter would have been approximately 11%. General and administrative expense, excluding non-cash stock-based compensation expense, and transaction, legal, and organizational restructuring costs, declined 3.8% year-over-year to $40.6 million for the first quarter. Recently, we removed additional G&A costs to reflect both disposition activity as well as our scaled-back managed community portfolio. As you may have noted, the guidance provided in our updated investor deck now assumes $157 million in full-year G&A, a decrease from our previous guidance of $162 million. We expect to realize the incremental benefit of reducing GNA starting toward the end of the second quarter, with the most of the savings realized in the second half of this year. Cash facility operating lease payments during the first quarter of 2026 were $44.7 million, down a significant $12 million from $56.7 million in the prior year quarter, primarily as a result of the Ventas lease dispositions, which occurred in the second half of last year, coupled with the contractual step-up on lease payments on the retained Ventas leases. Now I want to shift to Brookdale's progress on our portfolio optimization strategy, which includes the plan's dispositions of non-strategic or underperforming owned and leased communities. We previously shared that we expect to sell 29 communities comprised of 2,364 units during 2026, with the majority of those transactions to occur during the second quarter. During the first quarter of this year, we completed the sale of seven communities with 330 units for proceeds of $22 million net of transaction costs. During the second quarter through today, we've closed on the sale of three additional communities comprising 545 units for $88 million in net proceeds. The dispositions of most of the remaining 19 communities comprising 1,438 units, are tracking close during the second quarter, though a small number may close later in the year. We continue to estimate total proceeds for our planned community disposition in 2026 to be approximately $200 million. During the first quarter, we also exited two communities with 152 units through lease terminations. Once the remaining 19 dispositions are complete, we do not foresee significant changes to Brookdale's consolidated portfolio on a forward-looking basis. Looking ahead, we remain comfortable in Brookdale's ability to deliver both on our 2026 Earning Guidance and on our multi-year outlook through 2028, that we provided at our January Investor Day and reiterated on our previous earnings call. As a reminder, for 2026, we expect to deliver 8% to 9% rev par growth and mid-teens adjusted EBITDA growth from our 2025 baseline of $445 million, a level that translates to $502 to $516 million of 2026 adjusted EBITDA. Through 2028, we expect to maintain mid-teens adjusted EBITDA growth, and we also believe we can decrease annualized leverage to below six times by the end of 2028. Our 2026 guidance sets forth annual targets. We describe our quarterly pacing outlook for units, rev par, and adjusted EBITDA for 2026 on slide 12 of our investor presentation. Remember the comparability of the first two quarters of 2026 against 2025 periods. are impacted by disposition activity, the timing of the related G&A cost savings, and managed business timing, which results in smaller growth rates on reported results for the first two quarters. We expect our underlying business to still deliver the 2026 and multi-year growth that we have previously outlined. We just reported first quarter adjusted EBITDA year-over-year growth of 5.6%, We expect second quarter adjusted EBITDA growth versus the prior year as reported results to be in the low to mid single digit range. But remember, when baseline G&A timing in the prior years considered, our growth would have been up in the low double-digit range. Then, with improved occupancy levels and the associated operating income flow-through, and as cost initiatives take hold, year-over-year adjusted EBITDA growth in the third quarter is expected to return to our longer-term mid-teens growth rate level, and fourth-quarter growth should be even stronger than that. We expect other seasonal factors, as outlined on the last page of our investor deck, to remain consistent with historical trends, with the exception of REV poor. REV poor typically declines slightly over the course of the year. For 2026, we expect REV poor to decline slightly in the second quarter, but then to remain relatively firm in the back half of the year, helped in part by the mixed impact of our dispositions. As I mentioned earlier in my remarks, we now estimate general and administrative expense excluding non-cash, stock-based comp, and transaction, legal, and restructuring costs of approximately $157 million, down from our previous estimate of $162 million for 2026. We continue to expect that cash facility operating lease payments should be approximately $180 million during 2026 and management fees for the second quarter through the fourth quarter to be a total of approximately $1 million. Looking now at the balance sheet, our annualized leverage continues to improve, and we finished the quarter at 8.8 times. As of March 31, 2026, Brookdale's total liquidity was $369 million. On the topic of leverage, I'd like to highlight that on March 31st, we refinanced a significant portion of our remaining 2027 mortgage debt maturities, effectively extending those maturities to April 2033. Through this transaction, we obtained $185 million of non-recourse mortgage debt secured by seven of our communities, and we repaid $191 million of mortgage debt secured by 11 communities. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Our team continues to proactively manage Brookdale's balance sheet and extend our more imminent maturities. Adjusted free cash flow for the first quarter was a seasonal outflow of $12 million, reflecting, among other factors, use of cash for changes in working capital, including the payment of annual incentive compensation and an increase in non-development capital expenditures. In conclusion, we're excited about the underlying strength we saw to end the first quarter and into the start of the second quarter. As we look forward to the balance of 2026 and beyond, we remain confident that we have the right team in place and that we are pursuing the correct strategic and operational plans. The Brookdale team remains highly confident in our ability to create durable, long-term growth and value for our shareholders. Operator, we will now open the call for questions.
Operator: We will now begin the question and answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Brian Tankwilit with Jefferies. Brian, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Brian Tankwilit: Hey, good morning. Maybe, Mike, thanks for putting these slides together, so I'll reference one of these slides. Don, when I look at slide 12, where you have the quarterly cadence on even the growth, even with baseline, just curious how you're thinking about that ramp, because it looks like there's a ramp implied in here, and where that confidence comes from, especially given your comment about Rev4th trend over the course of the year.
Don Cusso: Yeah, thank you. Thanks for the question. And yes, slide 12 is a new slide that just talks to and is explicit about how we're thinking about the quarterly pacing. As we talked about in our prepared remarks, adjusted EBITDA in particular, 5.6% growth year over year on an as-reported basis. What we expect for the second quarter is that low to mid single digit year over year growth on an as reported basis. And, you know, what's really driving that is two things. Our seasonal trends that we outline on the last page of the investor deck. We have a full quarter of merit, additional days and holidays that normally come into the quarter. And then the managed property, the disposition of the managed property is going away. And the fact that the cost savings are really kind of coming in the back half of the year. So that timing difference. But, you know, important to look at the last item, as Nick and I both talked about in our prepared remarks, that low to double digit year over year growth on really kind of the underlying business. We do expect to accelerate throughout the year. So appreciate the question on that quarterly pacing. And I think Nick will comment on the confidence in the guidance.
Nick Stengel: Yeah, thanks, Brian. Nick here. So a lot of this has to do with our results despite all the changes and disruption that we had to do. So we really are on a transformative kind of path here, and some of it predates me. So this started maybe about a year ago, but even in the last seven months that I've been enrolled, and I did share some of these details during the prepared remarks, but it bears repeating, we have undergone many, many changes And first and foremost, it's organizationally how we're structured, and it truly defines who we are as a company. And the line of connection between the executive leadership team, me, namely, as the CEO, all the way down to communities, has been reset. So there's much just a cleaner line of enablement, a cleaner line of accountability than we've had in many, many years. And a lot of that has to do with hiring a COO, layering up our sales team and our clinical team under that COO, and doing the same thing at every layer of the organization. At the same time, and we need to keep sight of this, is we've disposed and exited over 100 communities in that time period, which is very much the right decision, but it's also very disruptive. A lot of effort, a lot of work of leaders going into making that as seamless as it has been, which it has been quite seamless. And that is now mostly behind us. We do have a few communities, as we've shared, that we still have to get out of in Q2 and potentially just a handful later in the year. But the reality is that is now mostly behind us, and we're now in a position to really lean into the company and operate the company as the operating company that we are. And I do want to point out our April results. Again, one data point, you know, no need to start doing victory laps quite yet, but it is a very strong data point. in our April occupancy growing 30 basis points, when historically it's been closer to flat, maybe 10, 20 basis points. So to have that happen at the beginning, at the early stages of the selling season, which in senior living industries typically May, June, July, August, September, is reflective of our confidence and of all the changes that we made.
Brian Tankwilit: I appreciate that. And maybe, Nick, I'll use that as a segue. When I look at slide nine, I love these slides. Controllable move-outs obviously picked up in Q1. Just curious what your philosophy is or how you're thinking about the balancing act between REV4 or REV4 growth and move-outs, right? Because I think move-outs aren't necessarily negative in this sense when you're REV4 and REV4 growing as much as they are. So just curious how you would walk us through that thought process.
Nick Stengel: Yeah, no, very, very, very good insightful question there, Brian. So fundamentally, REF PAR is the number we all need to lean around. And obviously, we report the 8.2% feel good about that REF PAR and what that looks like for our guidance for the rest of the year. And it truly is a balance between rate and occupancy. And we're always monitoring that. and it's always a constant mix. Obviously, as occupancy goes up, then we can lean more on rate. As occupancy is not going up and is stagnant in the subset of communities, we have to lean on rate in a different direction. But as far as the move-outs for Q1, we feel very good about it. In light of the large in-place rate increase that we were able to push on January 1st, typically, January 1st, you always have, or in January and February, for that matter, you do have a slightly increased pace of move-outs specifically for financial reason, and we monitor all the different categorizations because of the in-place rate increase. And that happens every January, every February, every year. This year was slightly higher based on the higher in-place rate increase that we pushed through, but it was well within our expectations. And in fact, if anything, it showed the stickiness of that in-place rate increase. So we feel really good about what we did. We feel really good about our pricing power. And the net result of that move-out pace was as expected and in line with what we actually kind of hoped to see with the stickiness of that in-place rate increase.
Brian Tankwilit: That makes sense. Now, if I may ask just one quick question. Slide 19, you show these community renovation CapEx projects. Just curious, How should we be thinking about the pipeline of these projects and what you're seeing? Obviously, the ROIs look good here in this slide. So if you could just walk us through that. Thank you.
Nick Stengel: Yep. Yeah, I'm glad you pointed that out. That is another new slide in our investor deck. So take a look at slide 19 for those that didn't note it. So for those that joined us at our investor day, we did a tour of another community where we did a very meaningful CapEx investment. Obviously, beautiful building, great results. We wanted to kind of share even more details since part of our story has been our CapEx spend. We are projecting a spend of between $175 to $195 million of CapEx this year. And we want to do that because we see the results. And slide 19 shows three very specific examples where those results exist. And we have a pipeline. I alluded to, I mentioned earlier in my prepared remarks, we have hired a new role to our company, the Senior Vice President of Strategic Operations. And that team, that leader, deploys this capital. So we have a program, we have a prioritized list of communities where we build a pro forma, we monitor our results, and we project seeing results very similar to what you see on slide 19. And we have dozens of projects, large, deliberate, comprehensive investments of capital to improve the overall performance of the communities and get returns that achieve our hurdles. Awesome. Thank you.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Ben Hendricks with RBC Capital Markets. Ben, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Ben Hendricks: Thank you very much. I very much appreciate the slide on pacing, slide 12 here. I just wanted to drill in a little bit on the expectation for RFPAR acceleration in the second half, and you've noted here both the disposition impact and also the core occupancy growth. Maybe we can help us parse that out a little bit more. Any notes you can give us on the overall occupancy profile and performance profile of those 19 facilities still, you know, pending disposition? And then so we can kind of get an idea of the kind of the core growth and then in the mix there, in fact. Thanks.
Don Cusso: Yeah, Ben, great question. Digging into the slide, if you, you know, we've outlined the rev par growth we expect You know, on the 8.2% here in the first quarter, we expect that to be similar in the second quarter. And really what's driving that, of course, is our occupancy and rev pour. And from an occupancy perspective, we expect our occupancy growth really to be directional with historical seasonal trends. We've gotten the disposition of the 19 communities. I think they're relatively small communities. The largest one really went on April 1st. relatively small communities. They're lower performing communities, but not moving the needle. We're getting a little bit of accretion on the back half, but I would say occupancy is directional with the historical trend. The rev pour, as I mentioned in our prepared remarks, how we're thinking about the second quarter, we normally see our rev pour step down after we do our January 1st rate increase. We expect that step down to be slight in the second quarter, but then in the third and fourth quarter, as I said in my prepared remarks, we expect that rev pour to remain firm just because you get the accretion benefit that's offsetting kind of that normal step down. And that's what's going to drive that rev pour growth that we've outlined on that slide, or excuse me, the rev par growth that we've outlined in the slide.
Ben Hendricks: Great, thank you. Just almost along the same lines, just if you could kind of give us a little bit of detail on kind of the sources and pacing of the incremental G&A savings. It makes sense that maybe you would see a little pick up there in savings and getting rid of some of these smaller communities. But I just wanted to kind of get an idea of where that's coming from and how we should think about that layering on through the balance of the year. Thanks.
Don Cusso: Of course. As we said in our prepared remarks, we've taken our G&A expectations down by $5 million. Most of that we expect to see in the second half. From a pacing perspective, my expectation is G&A is going to be relatively the same in Q2 as it was in Q1 because, remember, you get a little bit of extra expense with more days and then our merit increase that comes in in the second quarter that's going to offset that little bit of savings that we'll get. most of that $5 million is going to be in Q3 and Q4.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Joanna Gadzik with Bank of America. Joanna, your line is open. Please go ahead. Good morning. Thanks so much.
Joanna Gadzik: So I guess maybe different questions a little bit, but At your investor day, you mentioned your interest to add some assets strategically, talking about packing acquisitions, small things. So with a lot of interest from the REITs and private equity to consolidate in the industry, does it mean you see more competition or that's still kind of on the table?
Nick Stengel: Yeah, thanks for the question, Yana. So our strategy, and we articulated this, as you mentioned on the investor day on the acquisition side is very small, deliberate, single one, two, three community type acquisitions in markets that we already exist. So when we're in 41 States today, no desire to be in a 42nd or 43rd state where we're in about 125 different markets, no desire to be in 126, 127. And that is a strategy for some of our peers. But that's not our strategy. Our strategy is to be in markets we already are in. On Investor Day, we used Kansas City and Dallas-Fort Worth as illustrative examples where we are looking to make a very deliberate, strategic target acquisition. And typically, you know, our big here REITs are not doing single community-type transactions. They're looking for larger, you know, things where they can really take their team and invest and make larger acquisitions. So I do not feel, and we do not feel, based on the pipeline that we're looking in and currently contemplating, that we're competing against large REITs because we're basically deploying different acquisition strategies based on our needs and based on their needs.
Joanna Gadzik: Thank you. And I guess coming back to the discussion around... uh right increases so it sounds like you push like a high school digits um uh renting pieces this year and the financial movements were higher but not out of um you know ordinary so to speak but we're also hearing a lot about uh high community fee so is that also another level you can pull especially when you have communities with higher occupancy
Nick Stengel: Yeah, no, for sure. And we don't talk about community fees a lot, and I'm glad you brought that up. So that is one of the features in our industry, for sure, at Brookdale, where we do have an upfront non-refundable community fee. And as your occupancy goes up, you collect on that far more regularly and you can even increase the community fee as your occupancy is lower and you need to drive move-ins, that's potentially one of the first things you would discount because it's a one-time thing and you're not locking in for a year or two years worth of rate. So it's an easy concession to give to a prospective resident. But our community fees are strong. In fact, they continue to grow as our occupancy grows. Our overall report is obviously growing the monthly rate that we get paid, but even the community fees, that upfront non-refundable community fee, we collect and we can increase.
Joanna Gadzik: Okay, great. And last one, and thank you for taking questions. So I guess talking about the occupancy and these different buckets, so it looks like, what, 15% of your consolidated communities are above 95%. So can you talk about margins and growth in those highly occupied assets? Are the street increases, you know, rate increases much higher than the in-place customers when you have such highly occupied assets?
Nick Stengel: Yes, for sure. And we've been communicating this high single-digit in-place rate increase that we pushed through on January 1st. Not every community got the same number, and that's an aggregated number. More highly occupied communities actually had a low double-digit increase, while the lower occupied communities had a, call it a mid-single-digit increase. The net effect is what we've been communicating, but for sure you have very strong pricing power that exists as your occupancy goes up. And in fact, on slide 18, we updated the numbers, and it's a slide that we've had for a while, where you can see the EBITDA per available unit. It increased meaningfully as you compare it to last quarter's slide 18, or whatever the equivalent slide number was, because of that in-place rate increase, additional in-place rate increase we were able to achieve in the more highly occupied communities.
Joanna Gadzik: Yeah, exactly. I like that slide. That's 20, I guess, 1,000 EBITDA per unit that's what I was getting at. So thank you so much for taking the question.
Nick Stengel: Yep. Awesome. Thanks for pointing that out. Thank you, Yana.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Mock with Barclays. Andrew, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Andrew Mock: Hi, good morning. The same store rev pour, which had cut through the noise of divestitures, was up about 3.4% in the quarter for the senior housing community. You called out annualizing concessions as weighing on that metric in the quarter. So can you give us a sense for how same store rev pour is tracking in your higher occupancy or non-discounted communities? And just to be clear, we should expect same store year-over-year rev pour growth to also accelerate in the back half as you anniversary those pricing sessions, correct?
Don Cusso: Thanks for the question, Andrew. We generally are bifurcating out the rev pour growth between the occupancy bands. As we just had on the last call, we're looking at the occupancy bands where we're giving you adjusted EBITDA on a per-unit basis. From a rev pour perspective, we absolutely expect, as we're thinking about our rev pour, to follow that normal trending that I talked about earlier. with our rev pour to kind of do the normal stepping down, but we expect the rev pour to, the export growth to certainly be expanding throughout the year as we, you know, as we think about our labor costs and getting the, getting as the compression releases and you get that additional incremental margin growth.
Andrew Mock: Got it. Okay. And then just to follow up on the winter storms, I think you sized total direct costs of about 3 to 4 million in the quarter. Do you have a more comprehensive impact that would include both the revenue and cost side of things? Thanks.
Don Cusso: We didn't quantify the revenue and the cost side. We talked about the occupancy impact and the slowness of the occupancy in the first couple of months. We thought it would be helpful at least just to quantify those direct costs, most of those costs of the $3 to $4 million. You can see them in our other facility operating expenses. A lot of it was our utilities. I'd say about two-thirds in our other facility operating expenses and then the other one-third maybe up in our labor expense. But we didn't quantify the top line just because I think it becomes a little bit more fungible, especially when you're talking about the pacing of the occupancy growth and things of that nature.
Andrew Mock: Great. Thank you.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Raj Kumar with Stevens. Raj, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Raj Kumar: Hi. Good morning. Maybe just kind of focusing on the capital investments and, you know, you kind of reiterated your CapEx guidance for this year. As I kind of think about, you know, what you highlighted during Investor Day with the kind of Hort initiatives and just kind of thinking about, you know, how many communities are underway for 2026 with that, with those efforts and, you know, in terms of the average investment size, are you seeing, you know, a bigger investment on a per community basis in terms of the portfolio and, you know, what remains requires a bigger, you know, lift from that perspective. And then I guess also on that front, are you also integrating health plus as a part of that process to boost the, the offering at those, at those communities?
Chad: Yeah, Raj, I think what we can say on the, and good morning, this is Chad. What we can say on the TAPEX front I think is we have a number of projects underway across the portfolio As Nick talked about when he came on, we had a shift in strategy as we think about our CapEx program. Instead of doing sort of piecemeal projects here, adding, you know, adding some new furniture or whatever, we've really focused to say let's prioritize our CapEx spend in places where we can drive a great return, as you see on the slide we've included in the investor deck, but also prioritize larger community refreshes. So we've not given you an exact number of that. the budgets included in our overall CapEx guidance that we've given for the year. But I think it's in our way of looking at it is if we can do some more of these refreshes and markets where we can drive additional growth, we think that will drive better returns and ultimately help our performance and help us achieve the guidance that we've given, the multi-year guidance that we've given. As it relates to HealthPlus, we have it in around 180 communities across the portfolio. We think it's still a very innovative program. that is something that our competitors don't offer. It allows us to play in the value-based care space in a way, but it also really provides benefits for the residents and their family members in the way of reduced hospitalizations, reduced ER visits, et cetera. And so we think as that goes and that matures, that program matures, we'll continue to drive Good results, hopefully, and as we expect, leading to longer lengths of stay. And we've got a lot of good things going on in the portfolio. One other thing Nick mentioned in his call was the progress in his prepared remarks is the progress we've made on net promoter score and turnover. Those are really key leading indicators that I think are going to help us really achieve the results that we've talked about today. We're very excited about where the company is going.
Raj Kumar: And then as my follow-up, you know, appreciate the kind of disclosures on the occupancy bans and that, you know, with the own portfolio. And as I kind of think about the lease portfolio and that kind of bifurcating that opportunity, any way of kind of framing kind of that, you know, portfolio's progression in 2026 and kind of what's embedded in guidance as we kind of think about that piece of the portfolio?
Don Cusso: Yeah. Thank you, Raj, for the question. We obviously have a separate slide, slide 11, in our supplement that has the lease portfolio economics. We're pleased with the margin growth that we've seen in the portfolio itself. I don't know that we would call it anything specific other than, you know, we are pleased with the product that we've made on our lease portfolio. It is adjusted free cash flow positive. We just talked a little bit about the CapEx deployment. We have a significant number of CapEx reimbursement opportunities with our landlords that we are taking advantage of. And we expect that portfolio to continue to progress just as we expect our own portfolio to progress.
Nick Stengel: Yeah, and fundamentally, it is accretive to the business and maybe for the first time in many, many years. In fact, if you look at the specific performance of our lease portfolio, it actually did quite well from an occupancy NOI expansion perspective year over year. So we feel really good about our portfolio mix. And it's the overall portfolio mix. So we're going to be, what, 76% owned? 24% leased, managed is just a tiny, tiny sliver on the management side. So again, it's one of these transformational shifts that we have undergone over the last year that I alluded to, and this is a big part of it. So now we have the right portfolio in the right locations, in the right markets, with the right buildings, and we have the right team. So again, I, Roger, appreciate the question. We feel really good about our lease portfolio, just as much as we feel really good about the assets we own, which is that scarce real estate.
Raj Kumar: Great. Thanks.
Operator: We have reached the end of the Q&A session. I will now turn the call back to Nick Stengel, CEO, for closing remarks.
Nick Stengel: Excellent. Thank you, Samantha. I'd be remiss if I didn't just take a moment and thank all our associates. Over 30,000 associates for this very moment are caring for all our residents. I'd also like to thank all our residents, their loved ones who have put their trust or their family members have put their trust in their loved ones. And I'd also like to thank all our stakeholders, all our investors, our banking partners, all the different partners who work with us. Excited by what the rest of the year brings now that we have pivoted our company, now that we are on the tail end of all the transformational changes that we've undergone over the last year and excited by what the 2026 will bring. So with that, Samantha, I think we can end the call.
Operator: This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.
