Community Healthcare (NYSE:CHCT) held its first-quarter earnings conference call on Wednesday. Below is the complete transcript from the call.

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Summary

Community Healthcare reported a 4.8% annual revenue growth to $31.5 million in Q1 2026, driven by higher rental income and property operating expense recoveries.

The company announced significant strategic initiatives, including the acquisition of an inpatient rehabilitation facility for $28.5 million and plans to acquire four additional properties for $99 million.

Occupancy decreased to 89.8%, but the leasing team is active, and occupancy is expected to increase next quarter.

The company raised its quarterly dividend to $0.48 per share, continuing its trend of consecutive quarterly increases since its IPO.

Management highlighted progress on the sale of a tenant's operations to a new operator, with legal and business due diligence in final stages.

Interest expense decreased slightly, but is expected to rise in Q2 due to changes in the revolver balance and expiration of interest rate hedges.

Full Transcript

OPERATOR

Welcome to Community Healthcare Trust 2026 first quarter earnings release Conference Call on the call today, the Company will discuss its 2026 first quarter financial results. It will also discuss progress made in various aspects of its business. Following the remarks, the phone lines will be opened for a question and answer session. The Company's earnings release was distributed last evening and has also been posted on its website www.chct.reit. The company wants to emphasize that some of the information that may be discussed on this call will be based on information as of today, May 6, 2026 and may contain forward looking statements that involve risks and uncertainty. Actual results may differ materially from those set forth in such statements. For a discussion of these risks and uncertainties, you should review the Company's disclosures regarding forward looking statements in its earnings release as well as its risk factors and MD&A in its SEC filings. The company undertakes no obligation to update forward looking statements whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise, except as may be required by law. During this call, the Company will discuss GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation between the two is available in its earnings release which is posted on its website. Call participants are advised that this conference call is being recorded for playback purposes. An archive of the call will be made available on the Company's investor relations website for approximately 30 days and is the property of the Company. This call may not be recorded or otherwise reproduced or distributed without the Company's prior written permission. Now I would like to turn the call over to Dupuy, CEO of Community Healthcare Trust.

Dupuy (CEO)

Great. Thank you very much. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us today for the 2026 first quarter conference call. On the call with me today is Bill Monroe, our Chief Financial Officer Leanne Stack, our Chief Accounting Officer and Mark Kearns, our Senior Vice President of Asset Management. Our earnings announcement and supplemental data report were released last night and furnished on Form 8K along with our quarterly report on Form 10Q. In addition, an updated investor presentation was posted to our website last night. During the first quarter, the geriatric behavioral hospital operator, a tenant in six of the company's properties, paid rent of approximately $300,000, an increase of $100,000 over last quarter. On July 17, 2025, this tenant signed a letter of intent for the sale of the operations of all six of its hospitals to an experienced behavioral healthcare operator and is under exclusivity with that buyer. The buyer is finalizing legal and business due diligence and has entered the drafting phase of the definitive purchase documents, including new leases on the six hospitals owned by the company. We continue to maintain frequent productive communication with the buyer's team to advance the closing process while the transaction is progressing. We can't provide specific timing or certainty that it will close, however, we remain committed to providing further updates as the process moves forward. We had a busy first quarter from both an operations and a capital recycling perspective and continue to be selective from an acquisition standpoint. Our occupancy decreased from 90.6% to 89.8% during the quarter due to lease terminations. However, our leasing team is very busy with renewals and new leasing activity and we expect leased occupancy to grow next quarter. Our weighted average lease term increased slightly from 7 to 7.1 years and our asset management team continues to do a great job serving our tenants while focusing on property operating costs. We have three properties that are undergoing redevelopment for significant renovations with long term tenants in place once the redevelopment or renovations are complete. The largest of these projects, a behavioral healthcare facility, received its certificate of occupancy in March. Due to healthcare licensure requirements, we expect this property to commence its lease and contribute NOI during the third quarter of 2026. During the first quarter, we acquired an inpatient rehabilitation facility after completion of construction for a purchase price of $28.5 million. We entered into a new lease with a lease expiration in 2044 and anticipated annual return of approximately 9.3%. We also have signed definitive purchase and sale agreements for four properties to be acquired after completion and occupancy for an aggregate expected investment of $99 million. The expected return on these investments should range from 9.1 to 9.75%. We expect to close on two of these properties in the second half of 2026 and the remaining two in the second half of 2027. In February, we sold one building in Fort Myers, Florida and received net proceeds of approximately $5.2 million resulting in a small loss on the property sale. We also received net proceeds of approximately $700,000 from the disposition of a property at the end of 2025. We did not issue any shares under our ATM last quarter. However, we continue to evaluate capital recycling opportunities and we would anticipate having sufficient capital from selected asset sales coupled with our revolver availability to fund near term acquisitions. Going forward, we will evaluate the best uses of our capital, all while maintaining modest leverage levels to wrap up. We declared our first quarter dividend and raised it to 48 cents per common share. This equates to an annualized dividend of $1.92 per share and we are proud to have raised our dividend every quarter since our IPO. That takes care of the items I wanted to cover, so I will hand things off to Bill to discuss the numbers. Thank you, Dave. I will now provide more details on our first quarter financial performance. I am pleased to report total revenue

Bill Monroe (Chief Financial Officer)

grew from $30.1 million in the first quarter of 2025 to $31.5 million in the first quarter of 2026, representing 4.8% annual growth over the same period last year. On a quarter over quarter basis, total revenue grew 1.9%, primarily from higher rental income from our recent acquisitions and higher property operating expense recoveries partially offset by recent capital recycling dispositions and net leasing activity. Moving to Expenses Property operating expenses increased by approximately $360,000 quarter over quarter to $6.4 million for the first quarter of 2026. This increase was a result of seasonally higher snowplow and utility expense at several properties that we typically see in January and February. In particular, total general and Administrative expense was $5.1 million in the first quarter of 2026, which was approximately $330,000 higher quarter over quarter, primarily as a result of higher non cash amortization of deferred compensation and our typical first quarter adjustments due to the timing of annual employee salary increases, employer HSA and 401k contributions and employer tax payments on a year over year basis. G and A did not increase from the same $5.1 million in the first quarter of 2025. Interest expense decreased by $160,000 quarter over quarter to $6.8 million in the first quarter of 2026 due to two less days in the first quarter and slightly lower floating rates on our revolving credit facility. I'll note that we expect our second quarter interest expense to be higher, however, based on an additional day in the second quarter. A full quarter of our current revolver balance, which includes net borrowings from our inpatient rehabilitation facility acquisition in February and the expiration in late March of $75 million of interest rate hedges. Moving to Funds from operations FFO in the first quarter of 2026 was $13.4 million, a 5.8% increase year over year compared to the $12.7 million of FFO in the first quarter of 2025. On a diluted common share basis, FFO increased $0.02 year over year from $0.47 in the first quarter of 2025 to $0.49 in the first quarter of 2026 and remained the same quarter over quarter from the $0.49 of FFO in the fourth quarter of 2025. Adjusted funds from operation or AFFO, which adjusts for straight line rents and stock based compensation, totaled $15.4 million in the first quarter of 2026, a 4.1% increase year over year compared to the $14.7 million of AFFO in the first quarter of 2025. AFFO on a diluted common share basis was $0.56 in the first quarter of 2026, which was $0.01 higher both year over year and quarter over quarter from the $0.55 of the AFFO in the first quarter of 2025 and the fourth quarter of 2025, respectively. That concludes our prepared remarks. Dorwin. We are now ready to begin the question and answer session.

Dorwin

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press Star then one on your Touchstone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please Press Star Then 2. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Alexander Goldfarb with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Alexander Goldfarb (Equity Analyst)

Oh, thank you and good morning down there. Dave, you made some promising comments about the Assurance Hospital transfer. Sounds like things are progressing, sort of getting in late stages. Can you just give a little bit more color? Do you feel like we're getting close to the end or is this sort of like typical sort of government work where, you know, you have to enjoy the process and at this point, you know, based on the shot clock, you're like, okay, we should be at the point of the shot clock where, you know, this should be coming to a conclusion.

Dave

Hey, Alex. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for the question. We, we are feeling like we're, we have definitely made some progress over the last quarter. Some of the roadblocks that we've seen, as you've alluded to, have been related to, you know, some getting some confirmation on some outstanding liabilities from a couple of the various governing bodies that pay. So in particular as it relates to Ohio Medicaid firming up the amount that is owed, but we do feel like we're making good progress. The company is highly engaged, the buyer is highly engaged in the process, and we do feel like we're hopefully going to get final confirmation on timing and everything very shortly. So we do, like I said in the prepared Remarks we are currently trading documents and purchase agreements and we would anticipate getting this thing in a good place hopefully in the next quarter.

Alexander Goldfarb (Equity Analyst)

Okay, that's certainly good to hear. Second question is, obviously senior housing is all the rage these days and MOB and I think your traditional property types may not be as vogue, at least when you look at the public stock prices. When you guys look in the market for acquisitions, is that the same that you see on the private market or is there. Are you. Basically, what I'm asking is your acquisition pipeline is coming down. I realize that you're managing that relative to your cost capital, but I'm also trying to understand what's going on in valuation landscape. And if there's sort of all the healthcare, private capital is heading only to senior housing. And your traditional target class remains still very attractive. And therefore your decision to pull the pipeline down is more based on just your cost of capital versus everything is once again getting bid up and therefore there's less product that's of interest to you.

Dave

No, it really has to do with the latter, Alex. I mean, we see a number of acquisitions. We continue to have investment committee meetings every couple of weeks where we go through opportunities. And yeah, if we were in a different position and weren't doing capital recycling and having to sequence those asset sales in order to acquire new assets because we don't want to raise capital through our ATM, we would definitely see the types of properties and the types of opportunities that we like to invest in. And so, you know, what we are doing as far as focusing on capital recycling is we're using this as an opportunity to do two things. Obviously, we're using this as an opportunity to trim some of the properties that are in less attractive markets. You know, a lot of these facilities that we sold, we sold five properties in 2025, we sold another one in 2026. And so we're using this as an opportunity to really prune the portfolio and improve the portfolio. And so it is not the most fun as far as selling a property in order to buy properties, but that's what we're going to focus our time and efforts on. And what we expect is in the second half of the year as some of these redevelopment projects and other things that we've been working on to come online, we would expect, you know, to start posting AFFO growth, and we hope that that's recognized as a positive in the marketplace and puts us in a position to start doing what we have been doing historically as a company, which is not just growing the portfolio performance through leasing, but also growing the portfolio through acquisitions. Great. Thank you, Dave. Thanks, Alex.

OPERATOR

Our next question comes from Jim Camerty with Evercore. Please go ahead.

Jim Camerty (Equity Analyst)

Good morning. Thank you, guys. Nobis, if I'm pronouncing it properly, acquisition that was quoted about a 9, 3 yield, I believe. Is that a gap or a cash yield? And if gap, I'm just trying to understand perhaps what are the representatives and escalators on that long lease.

Dave

That is a cash yield, that 9.3% cap rate. And what, what are the bumps on that? Jim, you weren't coming through very clear. You trying to. Are you asking what are the escalators on that property?

Jim Camerty (Equity Analyst)

Yeah. I'm sorry, David. Yes. Yes, thank you. What are the. Because you clarified it's cash deal going in. Thank you. And then. Yes. What are the representative escalators and are they then representative of say, the other for assets in the pipeline?

Dave

Yes, they're 2% escalators and it would be consistent with what we would anticipate with the other ones that are in the pipeline.

OPERATOR

Great. So thank you. Great. Thank you again. If you have a question, please press star then one. We have no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back over to management for closing comments. Over to you.

Darwin

Great. Thanks, Darwin. And thank you everybody for dialing in. We hope to see many of you at NHERI coming up in June. Thank you.

Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company's SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants' and analysts' statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.