Sienna Senior Living Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Strong Q2 operating performance: Revenue rose 13.6% year over year to CAD 288.2 million, while Same Property NOI increased 19.4% to CAD 57.6 million. Retirement NOI grew 15.2% and long-term care NOI rose 22.6%, supported by occupancy, rate increases, care revenue, funding and acquisitions.
  • Positive Sentiment: Operating FFO increased 35% and AFFO rose 44.9%, reducing the AFFO payout ratio to 72.3% from 89.5% a year earlier. Management also reported CAD 604 million of liquidity, nearly CAD 1.6 billion of unencumbered assets and net debt of approximately 35% of adjusted gross book value.
  • Positive Sentiment: Management confirmed its target for more than 10% 2026 Same Property NOI growth in retirement and raised the long-term care target to mid- to high-single-digit growth, excluding one-time items. Retirement occupancy reached 94.1% in Q2 and 94.5% in July, with year-end occupancy expected to exceed 95%.
  • Positive Sentiment: Sienna formed a 50/50 joint venture with Fiera Infrastructure targeting approximately CAD 625 million of long-term care redevelopment projects, initially including the 448-bed Glen Rouge and 256-bed Streetsville projects. The partnership is expected to diversify development risk and roughly double Sienna’s redevelopment capacity without accelerating the currently planned project starts.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Growth was supported by CAD 100 million of retirement acquisitions and a contracted CAD 68 million long-term care acquisition, while the company issued CAD 98 million of equity through its at-the-market program. Management noted that long-term care NOI growth should eventually moderate to the low-single-digit range as temporary funding benefits fade, although the timing remains uncertain.
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Earnings Conference Call
Sienna Senior Living Q2 2026
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Sienna Senior Living Inc.'s Q2 2026 conference call. Today's call is hosted by Nitin Jain, President and Chief Executive Officer, and David Hung, Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President, Investments of Sienna Senior Living Inc. Please be aware that certain statements or information discussed today are forward-looking and actual results could differ materially. The company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statement or information. Please refer to the forward-looking information and risk factor sections in the company's public filings, including its most recent MD&A and AIF for more information. You will also find a more fulsome discussion of the company's results in its MD&A and financial statements for the period, which are posted on SEDAR+ and can be found on the company's website, siennaliving.ca. Today's call is being recorded, and a replay will be available.

Operator

Instructions for accessing the call are posted on the company's website, and the details are provided in the company's news release. The company has posted slides which accompany the host remarks on the company's website under Events and Presentations. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Mr. Jain. Please go ahead, Mr. Jain.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Sienna's second quarter reflects the continued improvements across our operations and the success of our diversification strategy. We delivered strong organic growth for the 14th consecutive quarter with both our long-term care and retirement operations achieving double-digit growth. We also completed acquisitions of two retirement residences during the quarter, maintained a strong balance sheet and investment-grade credit rating, and formed a strategic partnership to accelerate our long-term care redevelopments. This is happening at a compelling time for Canadian senior living. The sector remains exceptionally strong, driven by fast-growing demand from an aging population and limited supply. Moving to slide five. During the second quarter, Same Property NOI increased by 15.2% in the retirement segment and by 22.6% in the long-term care. Key drivers of the strong results in the retirement segment were occupancy and rate increases.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

In addition to higher care revenue, average Same Property occupancy was up 150 basis points year-over-year and has reached 94.1% in the second quarter. Quarter-over-quarter, occupancy was marginally lower compared to the first quarter as a result of slightly elevated move-out activity. Subsequent to the end of the second quarter, occupancy increased to 94.5% in July. Our well-established sales platform and focused marketing campaigns continue to generate strong leads. This was evident at the recent annual open house, which attracted more than 500 attendees and resulted in an increase in qualified leads and deposits. We also continue our focus on hospital outreach and excellent relationships with healthcare partners in the local communities where we operate.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

A key driver behind the strong performance of our retirement operations was higher care revenue. This is a result of our Respira wellness program with more efficient processes, improved staffing models, and consistent care offerings. The program was launched last year and has led to an approximate 37% increase in care revenue year-over-year. With respect to Sienna's long-term care operations, fully occupied homes with growing wait lists, higher revenue from private accommodations, and government funding increases all added to the strength of the results. In addition, the contributions from acquisitions and developments are further supporting our strong performance in the second quarter. Sienna's long-term care operations add significant value to our business and provide stability given that they're largely insulated from market volatility or economic uncertainty.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

After completing our first long-term care redevelopments in North Bay and Brantford last year, we continue to advance our redevelopment pipeline, in particular in the Greater Toronto Area. We expect to start construction at two projects in the GTA in early 2027, including a 448-bed long-term care community at Sienna's Glen Rouge site in Toronto and the recently announced 256-bed redevelopment at our Streetsville community in Mississauga. The two projects are part of Sienna's 1,600-bed redevelopment pipeline, of which more than 80% is located in the GTA. We have been actively sourcing land, and with recent site acquisitions in Brampton and Toronto, we now have land for the majority of the projects in our pipeline.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

We also continue to be active on the acquisitions front with the acquisition of two retirement residences for CAD 100 million finalized during the quarter and a purchase agreement for a newly built CAD 68 million long-term care property under contract. These acquisitions further elevate the quality of Sienna's platform by adding modern, high-quality assets in attractive markets. Sienna's acquisition pipeline remains strong as we continue to pursue opportunities that fit our diversified growth strategy. Beyond our acquisitions and redevelopments, we remain focused on creating value within our existing portfolio through asset optimization, strategic renovations, and enhancements across our retirement and long-term care platforms. In our retirement segment, we are focused on aligning our residences with market demand, expanding services, and clinical care offerings to better support residents as their care needs change.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

This will allow residents to stay in our retirement residences longer and has already generated notable results, both in terms of our financial performance and resident satisfaction. In our long-term care segment, we continue to enhance our operations to improve the resident experience. We're also encouraged by the recent introduction of a renovation program for long-term care homes by the Ontario government. The program provides capital funding to renovate existing long-term care homes or convert vacant buildings to long-term care homes. This program gives us additional options to make improvements to our portfolio, and we are currently evaluating possible opportunities to participate in the program. Moving to slide nine, in July, Sienna was once again named one of Canada's best companies by TIME Magazine. We are truly honored to have earned this recognition for a second consecutive year.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

We've also moved higher in the rankings this year and earned a place among the top 125 companies recognized in Canada. While our significant growth played a role in earning this recognition, more than anything, it is a reflection of the passion of our 15,500 team members who care for approximately 14,000 residents each and every day. Their impact comes to life in our 2026 impact report, published today, which shows how they are enriching the lives of thousands of residents, supporting families, and strengthening communities across Canada. Sienna's strong team member engagement, record low turnover, and purpose-driven culture is at the heart of our success and will continue to be one of company's greatest competitive advantages as we execute our growth strategy. With that, I'll turn over to David for an update on our financial results.

David Hung
David Hung
CFO and EVP of Investments at Sienna Senior Living

Thank you, Nitin, and good morning, everyone. I will start on slide 11 for financial results. In Q2 2026, revenue on a proportionate basis increased by 13.6% year-over-year to CAD 288.2 million. This increase was largely due to acquisitions, occupancy, and rental rate growth, as well as increased care revenue in the retirement segment. Adding to the increase were the contributions from our long-term care platform, including higher flow-through funding for direct care, increased private accommodation revenues, CAD 2.1 million in retroactive funding, as well as acquisitions and developments completed over the past year. Same Property NOI increased by 19.4% to CAD 57.6 million in Q2 2026, including by 15.2% in our retirement segment and by 22.6% in long-term care. In the retirement segment, Same Property NOI increased by CAD 3.2 million in Q2 2026 compared to last year, largely as a result of improved occupancy, rate growth, and higher care revenues.

David Hung
David Hung
CFO and EVP of Investments at Sienna Senior Living

Combined with our strict focus on operating expenses, the year-over-year operating margin improved by 200 basis points. In the long-term care segment, Same Property NOI increased by CAD 6.1 million. Higher care revenue from private occupancy, government funding increases, and retroactive funding were the key drivers behind strong year-over-year growth. Our Q2 results in our long-term care segment include retroactive items in both comparative periods. Excluding these retroactive items in both years, Same Property NOI would have increased by 13.5%. During Q2 2026, operating funds from operations increased by 35% to CAD 39.6 million compared to last year, primarily due to higher NOI, partially offset by higher income tax and interest expenses. Adjusted funds from operations increased by 44.9% to CAD 34.9 million compared to last year. The increase was mainly due to higher OFFO and construction funding income for redevelopments completed last year.

David Hung
David Hung
CFO and EVP of Investments at Sienna Senior Living

On a per share basis, OFFO and AFFO increased by 16.4% and by 24.4% respectively in Q2 2026. Sienna's Q2 2026 AFFO payout ratio was lowered to 72.3% compared to 89.5% in Q2 2025. This improvement highlights Sienna's strong operating results, the contributions from our completed redevelopments and accretive acquisitions, as well as the progressive discipline of capital to fund growth initiatives. We ended Q2 2026 with a strong financial position, including approximately CAD 604 million in liquidity and nearly CAD 1.6 billion of unencumbered assets. At approximately 35%, our net debt to adjusted gross book value is conservative, and our weighted average cost of debt remains low at 3.9%. Year-over-year, we also further improved Sienna's debt service coverage ratio to 2.7x from 2.4x in Q2 2025. Sienna has approximately CAD 180 million of debt coming due in the next 12 months.

David Hung
David Hung
CFO and EVP of Investments at Sienna Senior Living

Given our access to a broad range of capital and the recent confirmation by Morningstar DBRS of our BBB credit rating with stable trends, we are confident in our ability to refinance our expiring debt at attractive terms. With respect to our equity, we issued CAD 98 million of shares under our current CAD 150 million at-the-market equity distribution program during Q2, which provides the necessary liquidity to fund our continued growth through acquisitions and developments. As we execute our growth strategy, we will continue to stay disciplined in our approach to raising and allocating capital, always with a focus on maintaining a strong balance sheet. With that, I will turn the call back to Nitin for his closing remarks.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

Thank you, David. As we enter the second half of 2026, we are confident in our ability to deliver on our growth objectives. We are confirming our 2026 target of more than 10% Same Property NOI growth in our retirement segment. In our long-term care segment, we are raising our Same Property NOI growth target to mid to high single digits. With respect to our platform growth, we believe that our ability to operate and invest across the full continuum of care communities to differentiate Sienna and gives us a wide range of growth opportunities from private pay independent living to government-funded long-term care, from acquisitions to redevelopments, and from financing our growth with Sienna's equity to third-party joint venture capital. With that in mind, we are excited about our new joint venture partnerships with Fiera Infrastructure.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

Fiera Infrastructure is a global infrastructure investment manager and wholly owned subsidiary of Fiera Capital, a leading Canadian investment management firm with over CAD 160 billion of assets under management. Given the significant capital requirements for long-term care redevelopments, the joint venture under which both Sienna and Fiera will hold a 50% ownership interest in selective redevelopments projects, will allow us to execute more projects over a short period of time and diversify our development risk. Initially, the joint venture is targeting CAD 625 million in redevelopment projects, with Glen Rouge and Streetsville being the first projects under consideration. All of this comes at a time when Canadian Senior Living is performing exceptionally well, and we believe Sienna is ideally positioned to benefit both over the near and long term.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

On behalf of our entire team and our board of directors, I want to thank our shareholders and to all of you on this call for your continued support. With that, we are open for questions.

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and enter the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star one again. Your first question comes from the line of Sairam Srinivas with Cormark Securities. Your line is now open.

Sairam Srinivas
Sairam Srinivas
Analyst at Cormark Securities

Good morning, guys. Congratulations on a good quarter.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

Thank you.

Sairam Srinivas
Sairam Srinivas
Analyst at Cormark Securities

Nitin, just looking at the Fiera JV, congratulations on that. Can you comment on the scope of the JV in terms of the size, especially considering the two projects that you're contemplating adding in could probably amount to about 55% of the capacity there?

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

Yes. Good morning, Sairam. The intention is to not have high concentration with any given partner. We have enjoyed working with them so far. The idea is to, let's test the joint venture up to a certain amount, and over time, both parties have an opportunity to add more to it. I would use that as a starting point, then as we do projects together and get more comfortable, we can add more projects to it.

Sairam Srinivas
Sairam Srinivas
Analyst at Cormark Securities

That's great. Nitin, when it comes to timing of these projects, if you think about the timing you guys were thinking probably let's say last year for redevelopments in the GTA, versus now considering the new policy that have come out, what's the revised timing look like versus what you thought earlier?

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

You mean in terms of starting of the current projects or the total pipeline in general?

Sairam Srinivas
Sairam Srinivas
Analyst at Cormark Securities

Total pipeline in general.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

Yeah. The reality is till last year, there was really no redevelopment program that worked for GTA. That program came out last year, which we're extremely thankful for. However, behind the scenes, we already had land and we were planning to get these projects going because it takes at least 24 months of zoning work, drawings work to get shovel-ready. We have been working behind the scenes to get those projects with being optimistic that eventually there would be a program in the GTA. I think that if anything, that has given us more confidence in our ability to execute in GTA. We finally bought the last two pieces of land that for our C homes, it frankly serves all of the homes that we need to redevelop. We bought land in Brampton, and we bought another big portion of land in Toronto area.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

From a GTA development, we're well covered. I would expect this program to take next five to seven years, roughly.

Sairam Srinivas
Sairam Srinivas
Analyst at Cormark Securities

That is great comment. My last question is around the new funding policy that's recently been announced. Do you anticipate more M&A in the space right now, considering you could probably see a lot more people getting interested in adding more properties onto the LTC pipeline?

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

The new funding program now has existed for four or five years, and it has made development possible. The GTA program came out last year, and that obviously makes programs possible in GTA. What continues to not change that it is a complex project with high barriers to entry. In most cases, government is looking for someone to be an experienced operator, because the complexity has only gone up. There are a lot more people employed in each one of the homes. When hours of care in Ontario, for example, went up from 2.8-4, means you have around 35%-40% more staff now in every home. 160-bed home could easily have a couple of hundred people in it. Capital is definitely more interested in the space, which is very welcome, and Fiera being one of them, and we're looking forward to a very good partnership.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

What has not changed, the barriers to entry and the complexity of operations. That's why having the scale and the ability to operate continues to be a key for us.

Sairam Srinivas
Sairam Srinivas
Analyst at Cormark Securities

I mean, just probably looking at the June 2026 announcement that just came out, would you say essentially the same standards that applied earlier would apply to this one as well, where you'd need really experienced operators to step in and not other people interested?

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

Sairam, are you talking about the recently announced renovation program?

Sairam Srinivas
Sairam Srinivas
Analyst at Cormark Securities

Yes.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

Oh, thank you. That renovation program only applies in most cases to the homes that are currently C homes. It's an opportunity where you cannot find land to redevelop it on-site, which are usually complex. In some cases, it could actually make sense. We wouldn't believe that would make any significant changes other than to make home renovations possible where there is not opportunity to buy additional land.

Sairam Srinivas
Sairam Srinivas
Analyst at Cormark Securities

Perfect. Thank you, Nitin. Thank you, David. I'll turn it back.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Jonathan Kelcher with TD Cowen. Your line is now open.

Jonathan Kelcher
Jonathan Kelcher
Analyst at TD Cowen

Thanks. Good morning. Just to clarify that last on the renovation of existing C homes, that new program. Do you guys not have all the land that you need in Toronto to redo your C properties right now?

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

We recently acquired two properties in GTA, which was very difficult to buy in the past because we were always competing with multi-res and a few other areas, which have, because of the slowdown there, we have been able to source land. I'll just use an example. We have a property on St. George Street, which is actually called St. George. It is right next to U of T, and you can potentially move that home 15, 20 km away. The reality, it serves a very specific population, and it is much needed. A program like that is a perfect application there, where you are landlocked. It is very difficult to buy land anywhere close to there, but you can renovate that 50-year-old building for it to make it for next 25, 30 years. It would apply to very specific scenarios such as those, Jonathan.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

That would be the purpose behind it. We don't really expect that it'll have thousands of additional beds built. I think it'll be very specific to certain homes, and at this stage, it would be a pilot program.

Jonathan Kelcher
Jonathan Kelcher
Analyst at TD Cowen

Okay. That makes a lot of sense. On the LTC portfolio, the margins were up. Even if we back out the one-time stuff, the margins were up nicely year-over-year, and I guess that's partly on lower staff turnover and lower agency staffing. Can you maybe quantify the savings that you got on those two?

David Hung
David Hung
CFO and EVP of Investments at Sienna Senior Living

Yeah. I would break down the increase in LTC NOI into a couple of components. Definitely the staff savings and the agency, that would have been a couple of percentage points that contributed towards the year-over-year NOI growth. I would also highlight a couple of other things. First of all, it's around higher government funding. Similar to what we saw in Ontario a couple of years where we had the catch-up funding, we are seeing the same thing now in Alberta and BC. As we reported, Alberta has increased their funding by seven and a quarter percent, and that was to catch up for several years where the increases were a little bit lower. BC did the same thing. One of the health authorities that we operate in increased their accommodation funding by 20% after not having increased it for many years.

David Hung
David Hung
CFO and EVP of Investments at Sienna Senior Living

That is a factor within why our NOI increased. The second one is around redevelopments. We are seeing all of the accretive impact in NOI from the opening of our North Bay and Brantford buildings. Not only do we have some additional beds, we also get more preferred accommodation revenues. Our overall maintenance and operating costs on a per-bed basis is lower. The other reason that contributed this quarter was around private revenue. Within our long-term care portfolio, we do have around 200 beds that are private paid long-term care. We've been able to increase the market rates for those beds in BC.

Jonathan Kelcher
Jonathan Kelcher
Analyst at TD Cowen

Okay. That is helpful. On the staffing levels, how sustainable do you think 20% turnover is?

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

Hi, Jonathan. Good morning. We have never been in the space where the turnover is in 20%. I came from the hospitality sector where turnover was more expected, close to 100%. Part of the lower turnover is driven by general macro factors, where many people are not hiring. There was a lot of PSWs and nurses who graduated in the recent years, we have definitely benefited from that. We continue to believe some of the work we did at Sienna, whether it's a shared ownership program or the work on cultural alignment, adds to a lot of it as well. I think it's hard to predict. Can we stay at 20% for the next five, 10 years? I think macro factors definitely would have a play. Internally, we will continue to do things that we're doing to reduce this turnover.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

I think to your question, I think it's very hard to quantify those things. I'll maybe just give, usually when you hire a staff member, on average, you're training them for a week, roughly. Instead of hiring, when you have 15,000 team members and the turnover is 50%, you're hiring 7,500 people. Now at 20%, you're hiring 3,000 people. That's 4,500 people less, a week less of training. That's one. Second, team members being in their roles for longer. There is a lot more efficiency there. Family members are happy, residents are happy because they understand the needs and wants for our residents and families. Lastly, it allows for our team members to grow within the company.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

Again, as we look at recruitment costs and filling roles, we see more and more promotions internally. Just in the first half of this year, we had 80 promotions into management from frontline or management to bigger roles, including senior leadership within Sienna, which again, significant savings on recruitment, but even bigger savings in people already knowing the culture and fit more easily within Sienna's platform.

Jonathan Kelcher
Jonathan Kelcher
Analyst at TD Cowen

Okay. That's helpful. Just lastly, the full year bump to the long-term care, Same Property NOI, does that exclude the one-time items?

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

It does. It excludes the one-time items.

Jonathan Kelcher
Jonathan Kelcher
Analyst at TD Cowen

Okay, thanks. I'll turn it back.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Lorne Kalmar with Desjardins. Your line is now open.

Lorne Kalmar
Lorne Kalmar
Analyst at Desjardins

Thanks. Good morning. I just wanted to go back to the newly announced JV. Nitin, I think you said that the program will take about five to seven years, which I think is pretty consistent with what you'd said previously. I just wanted to get a better understanding of how the formation of this joint venture actually changes the cadence of project starts versus what was anticipated prior to its formation.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

Lorne, the joint venture would not change the timing of project starts. The projects will start when they're supposed to start. What it allows us to do is actually do more projects. We have been quite clear from the beginning that we don't want more than roughly 10% of our assets under development. As some of you rightly pointed out, CAD 375 million between these two projects would be roughly 10% of our asset value at around CAD 3.5 billion or so. What it allowed us to do is start working on additional projects, which we would not have been able to do. Previously, if we did not find capital partners, either we'll do other creative structures or figure out a way to spread them out a bit more.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

What it allows us to do is we're actively sourcing land and actively working on putting more projects. Essentially, it has doubled our capacity for redevelopment.

Lorne Kalmar
Lorne Kalmar
Analyst at Desjardins

You don't expect to start more developments any sooner, per se. It just kind of gives you the backstop to, I guess, execute on, or the certainty, I guess, to execute on more projects than you had before. Is that a good way to think of it?

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

I would say it's a combination. For Streetsville and Glen Rouge, the project already announced and the one under construction, which is in Keswick it'll stay on track and they're all on an expedited basis. One would be finished next year, which is Keswick, and the other two will start early next year. If we did not have a capital partner, what it'll do is you probably would not look at any additional projects to start next year or the year after. Given where we are in our pipeline, there is a high likelihood that we might add additional projects next year, or announce next year and begin construction in 2028. Again, it has doubled our speed of adding projects to our pipeline.

Lorne Kalmar
Lorne Kalmar
Analyst at Desjardins

Okay. That's sort of what I was getting at. Okay, that's very helpful. I guess maybe I'm going to keep piggybacking off of my peers' questions here, but on the LTC Same Property NOI growth, do you guys think this is something that can stay elevated into 2027, or is this sort of a 2026 phenomenon and then we go back to low single digit Same Property NOI growth?

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

Our medium-term forecast or projection would be long-term care, stable, predictable. It will eventually moderate back into the low single digit, whether that is by the end of 2026, 2027 has yet to be seen. We are still seeing governments respond to the need for long-term care and like what we've seen in BC and Alberta, where they've done these catch-up funding amounts. Eventually it will moderate back into low single digits, whether it's 2027, is a little bit hard to say at this point.

Lorne Kalmar
Lorne Kalmar
Analyst at Desjardins

Okay. I guess that's a good problem to have. Maybe just lastly before I let you guys go, on the retirement side, are you seeing any meaningful acceleration in market rents at this time?

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

Market rents and annual rent increases have been pretty consistent. Our goal is not to increase rents by 20% and upset everyone. We would rather have sustained growth over the next five, 10 years than a big bang for a year, a lot of upset residents. We continue to see the same rate we have seen in the past. When you're at 95% occupancy, again, you have the opportunity to set your market rates on a consistent basis. We are not really seeing any changes from what we've seen in the last two, three years. Other than the fact that we are seeing a lot more care-focused revenue. Not only we have clarified our programs and made them more standardized and they're more operationally efficient, but the residents are looking for more care.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

When we're doing our strategic renovations, which we have quite a few projects underway, we're adding more cares to our retirement homes.

Lorne Kalmar
Lorne Kalmar
Analyst at Desjardins

Okay. Thank you so much. I'll turn it back.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Brad Sturges with Raymond James. Your line is now open.

Brad Sturges
Brad Sturges
Analyst at Raymond James

Hey, good morning. Just wanted to circle back to the formation of the new JV with Fiera, understand the mechanics of it a bit more. I guess Sienna will be acting as a development manager over the course of the construction. Would you be earning development fees along the way? Or how should we think about perhaps that type of income stream through the construction process?

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

Sure. Good morning, Brad. As developers, we would be earning development fees. We would also be wending in our land and the work that we've done so far, because many of these projects are pretty far along, at fair market value. Additionally, we would manage these assets. All of those fees obviously would be confidential because of our joint venture terms and conditions, but they completely would be at market. If a third-party appraiser would do an appraisal of a construction project, what they would assume market development fee would be, you can assume those would be the same fee. The same applies to management fees. A truly third-party arm's-length, market fee structure.

Brad Sturges
Brad Sturges
Analyst at Raymond James

Perfect. Then just in terms of the understanding of the cash, or the acquisition structure, I guess as construction starts, there's an acquisition by Fiera of 50%. Would Sienna receive cash in at that point, or is it just effectively reducing your cash outlay for the construction phase?

David Hung
David Hung
CFO and EVP of Investments at Sienna Senior Living

At the inception of the partnership, both Sienna and Fiera would contribute an equal amount. Again, to Nitin's point, in the case of Sienna, part of our contribution is going to be the fair value of land, and Fiera's contribution would be cash. From there on in, our expectation is to get project-level financing to finance the rest of the project.

Brad Sturges
Brad Sturges
Analyst at Raymond James

Perfect. Just as you're thinking or contemplating new projects, does Fiera have a right of first look to participate in future projects that you may commence? Or is this sort of being driven by the Sienna side in terms of whether you want to bring in a partner on future projects?

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

I think there are a few terms and conditions around which projects we take to Fiera. Our opportunity, we continue to have the rights to do them ourselves. This is only focused in Ontario. Without revealing our confidential terms and conditions, I think Fiera would be a great partner for projects where we decide to partner, and it's focused on Ontario.

Brad Sturges
Brad Sturges
Analyst at Raymond James

As projects are completed a few years out, is there any formal kind of mechanics around unwinding a partnership on each specific project? Would you both have right of first opportunity to acquire the other out, or how would the mechanics of that work?

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

Sure. We would have typical liquidity provisions, but the intent of this partnership is that, obviously we would never have any intent to sell any long-term care homes or to give our operations, and Fiera has the same intent. This is not a fund which has a time limit attached to it. Based on all our conversations so far, in their mind, this is an evergreen joint venture.

Brad Sturges
Brad Sturges
Analyst at Raymond James

Perfect. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Himanshu Gupta with Scotiabank. Your line is now open.

Himanshu Gupta
Himanshu Gupta
Analyst at Scotiabank

Thank you, and good morning. First one, retirement homes. Your 2026 outlook is occupancy of 95%+. Is that the year-end target, or is it average for the year?

David Hung
David Hung
CFO and EVP of Investments at Sienna Senior Living

That would be our year-end target, in terms of average, we would anticipate being pretty close to that number as well.

Himanshu Gupta
Himanshu Gupta
Analyst at Scotiabank

Okay. What % of your portfolio is already in that 95%+ range right now within Same Property?

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

The reality is the vast majority of our portfolio would be in that range, many homes which are consistently at 100%. Where you're in the 95% range, we saw a bit of dip in occupancy in the second quarter then obviously that coming up. When you are at that range, you are fine-tuning perfection at 95% retirement, because you'll always have one or two homes which will have a medium-term, small impact if another retirement home's open, which has been less and less, or a long-term care home opens. I think you can expect occupancy to stay consistent in, call it the 94%-96% range, in the medium to long term.

Himanshu Gupta
Himanshu Gupta
Analyst at Scotiabank

Got it. Okay. On that note, occupancy, I think, looks like they've got a handle in terms of where the stabilized occupancy will shake out. You said 94%-96%. In that context, do we know where the margins will shake out? I think it's around 41% on the Same Property side of things. Agency staffing is already low. Staff turnover is also pretty low there as well. What are the other levers you can pull to move the margins, let's say into mid-forties or more from here?

David Hung
David Hung
CFO and EVP of Investments at Sienna Senior Living

Right. We continue to believe that we have opportunity to grow our margins. It was 42% in Q2. The other levers would continue to be rental rate increases, both in place and when residents turn over. We see that those rental rate increases would be in excess of inflation. Care revenues is another lever that we think that there is a lot of opportunity to grow. Over the last five years, it's grown over double. We continue to see significant increases in care revenues, especially as we standardize our care packages, make our labor more efficient. We've been able to, and we think we can continue to grow our care margins as we make it more efficient and standardize packages.

Himanshu Gupta
Himanshu Gupta
Analyst at Scotiabank

Okay. That's helpful. Turning to acquisitions, how's the acquisition pipeline, let's say today versus compared to the last year? Are you still targeting acquisition this year close to last year levels?

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

I think our goal would be that it would not be an anomaly if what we did last year, we'll repeat it this year. The market continues to be extremely strong. We have also opened a bigger market for us, which is Quebec, considering 50% of all retirement homes in Canada are in fact in Quebec. We are actively looking to grow in that market as well. Obviously, there we are a bit more selective because we are not looking for one property. We would need a bit of a structure to make sure we are setting up our back office and either work with a third party manager or if we do it ourself, that there's enough scale there. We continue to believe that we'll have multiple years of acquisition opportunity ahead of us considering we're not in Quebec.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

In Alberta, we don't own a single retirement home. We only manage one. We have only four long-term care homes there. BC, our portfolio has opportunity to grow. We are quite confident in our ability to grow for next few years.

Himanshu Gupta
Himanshu Gupta
Analyst at Scotiabank

fair enough. Maybe the last question is on the development side. Now you got some funding support, reinforcements on the LTC development. Does that free up some capital for retirement home development, or are you happy doing the acquisition, what you have been doing in the recent times?

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

You will see us do some retirement development, not dissimilar to what we've done in the past. We did one in Niagara Falls with our partners, Reichmann Senior Housing. We build another one in Brantford as Campus of Care, we continue to look for the right development partners to do retirement homes. If we get to a space of one a year for retirement home with a development partner, I think we would be very happy with that pace. Again, managing the upside on retirement home growth, but also managing the development risk and opportunity. You should definitely see us develop retirement homes as well.

Himanshu Gupta
Himanshu Gupta
Analyst at Scotiabank

Awesome. Sorry, one quick last one on LTC. I think the OA funding got announced for 2026, 2027, around 2%. Obviously similar to last year. Is that in line with your expectations?

David Hung
David Hung
CFO and EVP of Investments at Sienna Senior Living

It is. It was 2% is in line with our expectations.

Himanshu Gupta
Himanshu Gupta
Analyst at Scotiabank

Okay, it's a good runway to assume on a go-forward basis as well. Yeah.

David Hung
David Hung
CFO and EVP of Investments at Sienna Senior Living

For Ontario, the funding over the medium to long term will be in line with inflation.

Himanshu Gupta
Himanshu Gupta
Analyst at Scotiabank

Awesome. Okay. Thank you guys, I'll turn back.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Giuliano Thornhill with National Bank of Canada. Your line is now open.

Giuliano Thornhill
Giuliano Thornhill
Analyst at National Bank of Canada

Hey, guys. Good morning, everyone. Just wanted to go back to the joint venture. Maybe we went back a few years ago. I don't think infrastructure investors or funds would have kind of been there, or maybe I was wrong. I'm just kind of wondering what changed. I know the Toronto and the revised funding for redevelopment definitely helped. Is there anything else that these partners are looking at or really vying for in assets that they are partnering with you on?

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

Hi, Giuliano. Good morning. There have been infrastructure funds which have been active in this space in the past as well. I don't think that has changed. I think what has changed is with given the investment both in Ontario, and we speak a lot about Ontario, but the reality is Alberta is also building more long-term care capacity. The whole idea of government investment into healthcare, especially into long-term care, is becoming more mainstream. I mean, previously, forget about long-term care, but every real estate conference we went to, there was a group which they lumped all different sectors together, and senior was one of them. Now investors are focused on senior housing as a sector in general. I think part of it is driven just by the scale of growth in this space.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

The second, the last four or five years, from 2020 to 2022, there was a lot of turmoil, not only in operations, but funding as well. Our feedback with government has always been, this is an infrastructure play, and if there are big shocks in the system, that will make capital not invest in this space. To government's credit, and especially in both Ontario and Alberta, they continue to fund the sector appropriately in line with inflation, and we see the result with more and more incoming calls and interest from infrastructure funds.

Giuliano Thornhill
Giuliano Thornhill
Analyst at National Bank of Canada

Ontario is kind of the leader. Do you think there's any policy risks going forward related to that kind of positive funding tone right now?

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

The funding applies to all different ownership structure. The funding is appropriate to build these homes, and the reality is that it's much cheaper to build a long-term care bed than a hospital bed, which not only financially is a better thing, but the reality is no one should be in a hospital living for a year or two years. That's more for urgent care. From a hospital space, they are very happy for residents to not be in hospitals when they're not needed. In fact, it's not only a win from an economical perspective, but it's the right thing to do for the senior population. There's obviously, when you work with government, there could be changes time to time. We work with all different governments in four provinces, and long-term care continues to be a key area of focus for all of them.

Giuliano Thornhill
Giuliano Thornhill
Analyst at National Bank of Canada

I'm also just kind of wondering, just how will projects be selected for the JV? What makes one project a better fit for it? Will you have say in the projects? Can you just expand on which are going to be potentially put into it and which may not be?

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

Sure. I'll just give maybe some general guidelines without getting into specifics. It would be Sienna's choice which projects we decide to present to Fiera, and it'll be Fiera's choice which projects they decide to pursue. Again, we have a lot of alignment, and that's the reason why we partner with them, that we think that we can partner with them on majority of the projects that we plan to redevelop. Streetsville and Glen Rouge would be a good start to it.

Giuliano Thornhill
Giuliano Thornhill
Analyst at National Bank of Canada

For those two, I'm just trying to get to how much invested capital is there for Glen Rouge and Streetsville as it is. I'm just trying to get to what kind of the net equity commitment might be, if those projects are chosen for the joint venture.

David Hung
David Hung
CFO and EVP of Investments at Sienna Senior Living

The total cost for both those projects would be around CAD 375 million. If you assume, let's say, 70%-80% or approximately project financing, that would tell you how much equity that will be required approximately.

Giuliano Thornhill
Giuliano Thornhill
Analyst at National Bank of Canada

I guess I'm just trying to get to what is the land cost for those right now and recognized on your books, because that'll net against the commitment that you'll need.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

Maybe if I say it in the generic terms, I think to just add to David's comment, assuming 75%. You're looking at, call it close to CAD 80 million, CAD 90 million of equity on both sides. That's CAD 45 million each, which frankly is not a big check. Without getting into each specific of what land value is, all I would say is basically the majority of equity we have to put in would be there. In addition to land, there's a lot of additional work which has gone in getting these sites zoned, having drawings ready, all the work with architectures and all the soft cost, municipal fees. Take it from a range from zero to 45, and even the highest range is not high.

Giuliano Thornhill
Giuliano Thornhill
Analyst at National Bank of Canada

That's helpful. Just my last question, just on the Glen Rouge development itself, that is pretty large. I'm just wondering why that's been larger than your previous projects, and is there potential to replicate that elsewhere in your portfolio, or is that kind of more of a one-off major project?

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

I would say it's a bit of one-off project. four or five years ago, it was very difficult as long-term care operator to buy land in GTA. This is a site we already own, it makes sense to build. We have quite a bit of land. It's four acres plus. We had appropriate land. It was very difficult to find additional land anywhere else. It is at a location where it's easy for staff transportation. There's a lot of demand in that area. All the factors worked out to build it that large. If we had to redo it, maybe we'll do it in two stages. Again, that project has already had municipal approval. We're pretty far along, and we are confident in that ability. We believe we have the right general contractor that we have worked with on two other projects.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

We are putting that infrastructure behind, not only to build it right, but also how we operate it. We know that we cannot operate a 448-bed long-term care home as 161. We have full confidence in our operations team that we are putting the right infrastructure to run it as a much bigger home.

Giuliano Thornhill
Giuliano Thornhill
Analyst at National Bank of Canada

Great. Just to clarify, you're not consolidating beds from another kind of nearby LTC home or anything like that?

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

We would be consolidating, so it'll have impact on another home as well.

Giuliano Thornhill
Giuliano Thornhill
Analyst at National Bank of Canada

Okay.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

This would be a combination of the current beds at Glen Rouge, adding additional beds from home, and then residents will move over to the new home.

Giuliano Thornhill
Giuliano Thornhill
Analyst at National Bank of Canada

Okay. All right. Thank you, guys.

Operator

Again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Tal Woolley with CIBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Tal Woolley
Analyst at CIBC Capital Markets

Hey, good morning. Just wanted to start, you mentioned you've had really good growth on the care side of the business. Just to understand the definition of that, I sort of normally think of the monthly cost as 50% rent and 50% non-rent. When you're talking about your care revenues have increased, what exactly is in that bucket, and how much of it is that of the sort of monthly costs?

David Hung
David Hung
CFO and EVP of Investments at Sienna Senior Living

Sure. I can field that question, Tal. When we talk about care revenue, there are two components to care revenue. One, when someone moves in and they're part of an assisted living package, that's just part of the care that they provide. When we talk about care revenue growth, we're more talking about sort of the ancillary or the a la carte care. This would include things like medication management or assistance with bathing, as an example. When residents come in and they come in to an independent supportive living suite, they might need some additional care. That is the care growth that we're referring to predominantly.

Tal Woolley
Analyst at CIBC Capital Markets

Do you think in terms of the suite mix between independent living, assisted living, memory care, we're sort of at the early part of the baby boomer cycle. Do you feel like the suite mix is right, or is this sort of going to be the relief valve? If there are issues, you'll just try and sell more care within an independent living suite, versus moving someone to assisted living.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

Tal, you should work in senior housing because I think you're asking a very important question here. I think a few things are changing. In Ontario, for example, which is very common in Quebec, there are not many senior apartments, but we are seeing more demand for senior apartments. We bought a property in Oshawa and it's running at nearly full occupancy, and others have added more senior apartments in Ontario. People are also choosing retirement living as a way of choice because the average age is closer to 75, and it's not completely need-driven, but it's need-driven from a perspective of, if I'm going to live in an apartment, I'd rather live in a place which has security and has services if I need to access it. On the other side, residents are looking for more and more care.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

Whether it's a factor of not having enough long-term care beds, the reality is even with the addition of long-term care beds, we still would be significantly short. 60,000 beds are needed in the next 10 years. It'll take tremendous amount of capital and speed to get there. I just don't think that is going to be viable, even with a lot of progress. Many residents are deciding that they don't want to move from a retirement home. That's the choice they're making. We are seeing more and more care, and we are seeing more senior apartments, and we are seeing more care. The middle of the market, which was called independent supported living, which was neither here nor there, is frankly seeing some shrinkage. When we are renovating, we are either adding apartments or we adding more care.

Tal Woolley
Analyst at CIBC Capital Markets

Okay. Got it. I'm noticing in the non-Same Property pool, on the retirement side, you're seeing healthy lease-up. I think your total occupancy now is just under 90%. If you made no further changes to the portfolio, where feasibly do you think total occupancy lies a couple of years from now? Is it in that 95% range? Do you think that's achievable?

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

I think 95% is definitely achievable. Could it go to 96%? One could argue, yes, it could. I think we are in the range where you are nearly there. After that, we continue to see a lot of opportunities in market rent. The thing that we don't talk about enough is as homes are more stabilized, it is easier to predict from a staffing perspective, and I think this is where we would also see a lot more efficiency. It is hard to make something efficient while you're also growing it. When you are getting to the 95%, 96% occupancy, the standardization of menus, standardization of HPRD as it relates to staffing, I think, will become more and more straightforward.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

We do expect that as we hit closer to, call it, full occupancy, and whether it's 96% or 95%, we will see a lot more efficiencies behind the scenes, and we are actively working on those.

Tal Woolley
Analyst at CIBC Capital Markets

Okay. On the joint venture, I'm wondering if you can give some historical context in the run-up to making this decision. I have to think over the last several years, certainly since COVID, you have probably been approached maybe about doing something like this before. Maybe in the lead-up to this decision, can you just talk to how many partners did you solicit? Were there any different structures that you looked at? How did you land on this particular partner, this particular structure?

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

Sure. I can give you maybe some broad guidelines for us. When we realized that we have a pretty robust GTA pipeline and pipeline in general, we did recognize the importance of a partner. We were very clear that we would only work with an institutional-grade partner long-term, we were not looking for a weird capital structure. We were also very clear that we don't want to be a management company. We want to be owners and operators. Having 50% ownership was important to us, and ability to manage was important to us, and making sure our values are aligned in terms of building the right product. You're right. We have had discussions over time, but we were quite clear on what we were looking for.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

We would rather build less long-term care homes, given a choice between that or working with a partner where our capital structure is not aligned and our values are not aligned. In Fiera, we found very good alignment on capital structure and very good alignment on how we work. That's why the structure worked out so well. Again, we're starting with these two projects and hope to add more to that partnership.

Tal Woolley
Analyst at CIBC Capital Markets

It was interesting during COVID, we obviously saw some of these institutional partners exit the space, and I don't know, I can't speak whether that was entirely due to internal concerns or reputational risk management through the COVID period. Do you get the sense that these financial partners now sort of have the idea that this is a long-term business? There will be some days where the headline risk is maybe not what you're hoping for, but that ultimately, it sort of makes its way through. We make our way through to the other side.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

Yeah. First of all, let's not hope for another time like that what we went through in general.

Tal Woolley
Analyst at CIBC Capital Markets

Yeah.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

I think I would say, obviously, there've been headline risk, and we have seen some people exit, but there are others who actually did also stay back in the business, which is including us, and they were capital partners who stayed back. I think it really does depend on, again, as we talked about alignment and value. Again, it's hard to predict what would happen if this world is coming to an end. We believe that this is where institutional-grade capital, long-term view of it from infrastructure funds. They don't like operational risk, which we believe that we can manage well. There is a lot of alignment to get going on it. Again, as we shared, that we would have liquidity provisions in case of, as you mentioned, something like that would happen.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

The reality is both of us are going in with the view that this partnership would exist for a long time.

Tal Woolley
Analyst at CIBC Capital Markets

Okay. That's great. Thanks, Nitin. Thanks, David.

Nitin Jain
Nitin Jain
President and CEO at Sienna Senior Living

Thank you.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes the Q&A session. That concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.

Executives
    • Nitin Jain
      Nitin Jain
      President and CEO
    • David Hung
      David Hung
      CFO and EVP of Investments
Analysts