At Exxon's annual meeting Wednesday, shareholders elected at least two of the four board directors (votes are still being counted) nominated by Engine No. 1, an activist investment firm that turned up the heat on the oil major late last year. Engine No. 1, which holds a mere 0.02% stake in Exxon, has criticized the company's poor performance over [...]
April 2021 marked the first monthly occupancy gain in Welltower's senior housing operating (SHO) portfolio since prior to the pandemic. With the vaccine rollout enabling many senior living communities to drop comprehensive move-in restrictions that were implemented last year to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission, Welltower is hopeful that the industry has finally bottomed [...]
Activist investor Elliott Management on May 17 published a letter to Duke Energy's board urging the utility to break itself into three separately traded companies. Elliott argued that Duke's sprawling portfolio of utilities, which spans parts of the Midwest, Florida, and the Carolinas, "has burdened shareholders with a conglomerate discount relative to the value of Duke's utility [...]
AT&T on Monday announced plans to combine its WarnerMedia business (around 20% of cash flow) with rival Discovery to form a new publicly traded company. AT&T will maintain its current dividend until the transaction closes, which is expected in mid-2022. Then, management will reduce the dividend to account for the distribution of WarnerMedia to AT&T shareholders, who [...]
National Health Investors (NHI) has kept its dividend covered with cash flow throughout the pandemic despite the challenging environment faced by its senior housing and skilled nursing tenants. The healthcare REIT's rent collection rates averaged over 95% in 2020 and exceeded 94% in the first quarter of 2021. However, Covid's impact continues to be felt [...]
Omega Healthcare continues collecting virtually all rent due despite the crushing blow dealt by the pandemic to many of its skilled nursing tenants (over 80% of revenue). As we discussed last summer, operators of skilled nursing facilities had razor-thin margins heading into the crisis, with around half of them failing to turn a profit. Years of [...]
In May last year when pandemic uncertainties were at their peak, STORE Capital's rent collection rate fell to just 64% as restaurants (14% of pre-pandemic rent), gyms (5%), movie theaters (5%), and other "non-essential" tenants braced for a long downturn. At this level of rent collections, cash flow no longer covered the dividend. And management [...]
In April last year, in the midst of a burgeoning pandemic, National Retail Properties was able to collect only 52% of rent payments due. With cash flow failing to cover the dividend, the retail REIT cautioned investors that "by no means is the dividend untouchable." Over the year since, conditions have improved so much that [...]
AbbVie has demonstrated enough progress deleveraging its balance sheet, integrating its transformative acquisition of Allergan, and advancing its drug pipeline to earn a Dividend Safety Score upgrade from Borderline Safe to Safe. Progress across these areas is critical to protect the dividend in 2023 and beyond when blockbuster drug Humira (40% of sales) loses exclusivity in America. AbbVie [...]