TOLEDO, Ohio — Welltower Inc. (NYSE: WELL), a Toledo-based REIT and the largest owner of seniors housing in the United States by number of units, has reported coronavirus-related expenses hit $7 million in March. Across the company’s 586 seniors housing communities, there were 1,044 confirmed cases of the virus as of May 1.
The numbers came in Welltower’s first-quarter earnings report. Although 72 percent of the company’s seniors housing properties have zero cases of COVID-19, the majority of the properties that do have at least four cases.
“The financial headwinds resulting from the pandemic will create significant pressure on our near-term cash flow, leading to the difficult, but prudent decision to reduce our quarterly dividend to 70 percent of pre-COVID levels,” said Tom DeRosa, Welltower’s CEO.
“While the duration and full impact of COVID-19 on our business is uncertain, we remain confident in our long-term strategy of owning, managing and developing a class of real estate that can better deliver health care services and manage the wellness needs of an aging population in settings that ultimately lower health care costs and improve health outcomes.”
Occupancy has also suffered as a result of the pandemic. Although move-outs have stayed consistent with previous years, move-ins have slowed to a crawl. Portfolio-wide occupancy fell from 85.8 percent on Feb. 28 to 82.7 percent on May 1.
“In March, we started to source and distribute much needed personal protective equipment, or PPE, for many of our operators and tenants who could not access masks, gloves, gowns and testing kits,” said DeRosa. “These efforts have helped our operators and tenants to better protect their staffs and residents. This is not what a REIT typically does, but extraordinary measures are often needed in extraordinary times like these.”