Chiron Real Estate Inc.

Chiron Real Estate Inc.

26.40
EUR
-0.20
(-0.75%)
4.13EPS
10.09P/E
431.46MMarket Cap
Nov 04Next Earn

Q4 FY2025 · Earnings Call TranscriptFebruary 26, 2026

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the Chiron Real Estate's fourth quarter 2025 earning call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode.

A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad.

It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Jamie Barber. Thank you.

You may begin.

Jamie Barber

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Chiron Real Estate's fourth quarter 2025 earnings conference call. My name is Jamie Barber, and I'm Chiron's General Counsel.

On the call today are Mark Decker Jr., Chief Executive Officer; Bob Kiernan, Chief Financial Officer; Alfonso Leon, Chief Investment Officer; and Danica Holley, Chief Operating Officer. Statements or comments made on this conference call may be forward-looking statements.

Forward-looking statements may include, but are not necessarily limited to, financial projections or other statements of the company's plans, objectives, expectations, or intentions. These matters involve certain risks and uncertainties.

Company's actual results may differ significantly from those projected or suggested from any forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors which are discussed in detail in our SEC filings. Additionally, on this call, the company may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures.

You can find a tabular reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most current comparable GAAP numbers in the company's earnings release and in filings with the SEC. Additionally, information may be found on the Investor Relations page of the company's website at www.chironre.com.

I would now like to turn the call over to Mark.

Mark Decker

Thank you, Jamie. Good morning, everyone.

I'm thrilled to welcome each of you to Chiron's inaugural earnings call. This quarter was a busy one, with meaningful achievements across all verticals.

Bob will discuss our fourth-quarter performance in a moment, but before that, I'd like to use my time to summarize what we intend to achieve as an engaged and reinvigorated organization. Yesterday, we published a full investor presentation outlining how the Chiron team is building for the future.

I'll walk us through a subset of those slides this morning, but encourage you to take a moment to review the full deck. We trust that you'll find it to be direct, transparent, and thoughtful.

We'll start with a quick mythology note. In Greek lore, our namesake, the venerable centaur Chiron, is the father of medicine and the architect of medical education.

We like the imagery, and believe his legend aligns well with our new mission statement of delivering value at the intersection of care, capital, and real estate. Our team is well positioned to execute on this mission, with strong leadership across operations, finance, and investments.

We have a deep bench of talent beyond the familiar names, and I believe that we can punch above our weight. Before looking at where we're going as Chiron, it's important to acknowledge what we've done as GMRE.

From the date of our IPO, GMRE has meaningfully exceeded the total return profile of our closest MOB peers. That's a good thing, and we intend to keep outperforming.

What's not good is that medical office has been in a bear market for years. This bear market has had more to do with interest rates than asset performance, but we need to be prepared for a world where 4% 10-year Treasuries is the new normal, and 2% to 3% rent growth may be sub-inflationary.

We've rewritten our playbook to prioritize earnings growth on top of our stable existing portfolio. We've already made an incredible amount of progress.

This progress includes establishing a long-term strategy to guide our decision-making and hold ourselves accountable, as well as a comprehensive review of our existing portfolio. Our findings have informed our decision to reimagine the way we approach asset management, leading to the appointment of Alex Wilburn as portfolio manager.

Alex is one of our longest-tenured team members, most recently serving as a senior investments professional. We're excited for him to apply his capital allocation and market-oriented mind to the portfolio management function, and know that he will thrive in his new role.

We also took time to think about how our existing portfolio stacks up against the field, drawing a few conclusions. First, it's important to acknowledge the overall return profile of medical office.

Rent growth is incredibly consistent, but modest, due to our fixed-rate escalators and long average lease term. This growth is partially offset by the capital and leasing costs.

We found that our performance is in line with the sector generally. One key difference is entry price.

We believe that if you're going to face limited growth, it's important to realize more yield going in. Second, we believe that the benefit of healthcare the benefit of the healthcare sector is that you can find great investment opportunities outside of primary markets.

When comparing the demographic profile of our assets to that of the United States at large, we found that we're biased towards higher-prosperity markets. Third, the vast majority of our portfolio is owned fee simple, meaning that it's not encumbered by a ground lease.

This is critical, as outpatient medical owners often operate in an environment where the building tenant is their land lessor. This has the predictable effect of reducing your opportunity when negotiating renewals.

When the ground owner is your healthcare system, they often have the ability to dictate leasing outcomes. Finally, rising construction costs and undeniable demographic shifts have given us an outstanding opportunity to push rents in the year to come years to come.

We think that an improved emphasis on driving portfolio performance, including a more proactive approach to pruning underperforming assets, will put us in a great position to capitalize on this opportunity. Bob and his team have also been working hard in the capital markets to position our balance sheet for offense.

I'm proud to share that we now have no debt maturing before 2028, a big change from where we were 6 months ago, and our current maturity schedule is well-laddered and manageable. Looking toward the road ahead, it's our ambition to build an organization that can routinely deliver earnings growth in the upper quartile of the equity REIT universe.

Doing that has historically meant growing cash flow by 6% per year. This will be a process requiring active management of the existing portfolio and investing more broadly across the healthcare sector.

We put a lot of thought towards how we're going to approach each of these considerations. Importantly, we are still firm believers in the economic and demographic tailwinds benefiting our existing portfolio.

That said, we also believe that these same tailwinds benefit other subsets of healthcare real estate, namely active adult and seniors housing. Our entire team has spent considerable time thinking through whether we should pursue investments in the senior space, concluding that the answer is an enthusiastic yes.

The silver tsunami is just building, with the first baby boomers now just entering their 80s. More broadly, the population of Americans aged 70 or older will expand for decades to come.

Existing supply is severely constrained, and project deliveries are expected to be far short of what is needed to satisfy demand. Once we knew that we wanted to explore seniors, the next question was how.

We believe there's an opportunity to assemble a differentiated portfolio of premium newly built active adult and SHOP investments in the public markets. There's a lot that went into that decision, but I'll highlight a few components.

The lack of new supply through COVID and the GFC have led to an average age of 24 years for existing senior housing assets. These facilities were designed for a different generation of residents, and we think that newer assets with great operators will have a competitive advantage.

This is especially true in the active adult segment, where high-end amenities and programming are the defining component of the resident experience. Second, the cohort of highest-income seniors is sizable and growing, providing us with the comfort that demand for premium facilities will prove resilient.

Finally, our lack of incumbency and small size confers an advantage. We can focus solely on the product we want, and relatively small transactions move the needle, enabling the potential for stronger growth.

It's the early days of the silver tsunami, and there's lots of room on that wave. Our team has a sound understanding of the space, and believe our boutique approach to partnership with operators and developers gives us a broad opportunity as we enter these verticals.

Many existing owners, operators, and developers of senior housing facilities are middle-market in nature, so that decision of who to partner with on their business is a monumental one, and there are many considerations beyond who's willing to pay the most. This obvious value proposition has allowed us to build an attractive pipeline, each with strong return profile and opportunity to build a larger relationship.

For now, we'll be thoughtful in limiting investments to those that we can fund through capital recycling, but we're ready for more when that changes. Our announced active adult investment in Minneapolis is a great example of the opportunity available to Chiron.

We've taken a 49% interest in the development of a new community with an expected delivery of 2027 and a stabilized double-digit unlevered IRR. This investment was sourced off-market through a relationship with an experienced luxury housing developer that we've transacted with in the past and known for a decade.

We believe this relationship provides us with future pipeline of great communities. As mentioned earlier, we're being thoughtful about how we fund these acquisitions given our current cost of capital.

During the quarter, we sold an early-vintage medical office for a sales price of $10 million, sparing our team the outsized execution risk and capital required to stabilize a poorly positioned building. We use these proceeds to repurchase stock in a leverage-neutral fashion, which we view to be a sound capital allocation decision.

We'll be very conscious of debt levels as we execute our pipeline, and have already identified approximately $250 million of prospective dispositions. These dispositions are likely to focus on assets that we believe will demonstrate the overall quality of our book, including a portfolio of IRF assets and the Beaumont surgical hospital.

We've begun marketing efforts on each, and believe that we will realize proceeds meaningfully above our basis, demonstrating our ability to make sound investments. Thank you for allowing me to take you through that.

Bob, would you please walk us through some of our quarterly highlights?

Bob Kiernan

Thanks, Mark. Our NAREIT defined FFO per share and unit was 97 cents for the quarter.

Core FFO, which we previously referred to as AFFO, was $1.16 per share and unit. Net debt to adjusted EBITDAre was 6.2 times for the quarter, a reduction of 0.7 times from the prior period, which was driven by our recent preferred equity issuance.

Same store cash NOI, which includes all assets owned by Chiron for at least 15 months, increased 5.4% on a year-over-year basis. Sequential performance was also strong, at 2.9%.

I'm pleased to share that Chiron will be transitioning to a monthly dividend, with no change to the annual $3.00 per share rate. We believe that the dividend will provide our shareholders with a more frequent income stream, while also reducing frictional costs for the company.

I'm also pleased to share our initial 2026 Core FFO guidance range of $4.30 to $4.45 per share and unit. This range includes 36 cents of anticipated headwinds due to the results of our balance sheet fortification efforts throughout the back half of last year.

Notably, this guidance does not reflect any speculative acquisition or disposition activity. Mark, would you like to provide some closing thoughts?

Yeah.

Mark Decker

If you're just joining the call, you need to know that it's been a busy quarter and we've accomplished a lot, and we're well positioned in the care delivery universe and broadening our aperture to add growth from senior housing to our quality cash flows. The care universe has undeniable tailwinds that make a nimble player like Chiron well positioned to grow quickly through internal and external cash flows, and we're excited for our future and believe strongly in what we're doing.

We wouldn't ask you to endorse a strategy that we ourselves are unwilling to invest in. With that, we look forward to seeing some of you at Citi next week.

Operator, we're ready to take questions.

Operator

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session.

If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue.

You may press star two to remove yourself from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up the handset before pressing the star keys.

One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from the line of Juan Sanabria with BMO Capital Markets.

Please proceed with your question.

Juan Sanabria

Hi. Good morning, and thanks for the time.

Congratulations on laying out the new strategy and thesis. I guess the big question in my mind is just there's obviously a lot of enthusiasm around seniors housing and why do you think Chiron is positioned to execute over and above what some of your peers are doing.

The focus in seniors, is that more assisted, independent living? How do you plan to pick the operators, the market focus?

If you could just give us a little sense of kind of what we should expect going forward in seniors and why Chiron is the platform to out-execute some of your peers.

Mark Decker

Sure. Good morning, Juan.

Thanks. Listen, it's a big universe out there, and operators have lots of options.

I think the way that we'll have to compete is by delivering value as we've articulated sort of as the main mission. There's lots of considerations that go into who the real estate partner is going to be, and I think if I'm on the other side of the table, choice is good, and so we're one more choice.

We'll have to win the business just like anyone else on the merits of our value proposition. Why do we think we can?

We talk about this a lot around the water cooler. There's a version of the universe where we're the smallest, most irrelevant company in the space, and then there's the real world where we have an unsecured balance sheet and $100 million of EBITDA and a great team with good gray matter.

If I was describing that company to just a normal person, they'd say, "Oh, that sounds like a pretty good business." It is a good business.

It's possible the public market will appreciate that and we can use that tool to our advantage, or not, but either way, we're going to build a great business.

Juan Sanabria

The focus on seniors would be on what kind of product types, kind of putting active adult to one side, independent, assisted, size of communities, markets, etc.? What's the focus area, if there is one?

Mark Decker

We're really focusing on the operator and the real estate, and we're really looking at independent and assisted, some memory care, stay away from skilled.

Juan Sanabria

Okay. Then on the disposition side, the $250 million of assets that you're potentially looking to capital recycle, just you kind of put some yield targets for the investments, but how should we think about the yield associated with those potential sales?

If you could talk maybe about the timing of the selling versus buying, and how we should think about kind of the cadence of recycling that capital.

Mark Decker

Yeah. We can't force anything, everything takes two two good willing parties.

We have launched a JV. We like the health facility space.

We'd like to express that like of that space by hoping to find a capital partner with us. We have a good track record and a decent-sized portfolio in that niche, and we think we can do some interesting things and grow that, and we'd like to do it with a capital partner.

We're out in the market looking for a joint venture. It's possible someone comes and says, "We've got to have this at a price that makes it a full sale," but that's not our objective.

I would imagine that happens in the second or third quarter. Then on the MOB sale, we are working with a buyer there, and I would expect we'd announce an LOI on that in the next, I don't know, 60 days, and probably have that off the books by the third quarter.

That asset has been a real strong contributor to our same store, we kind of hate to see it go, but we just signed a 15-year lease with a A-rated credit, and it's a really good recycling candidate for that reason. Then,

Juan Sanabria

just last question for me, on the White Rock bankruptcy, I guess have they paid first quarter rent, or how should we think about the impact to financials at this point in time?

Mark Decker

Yeah. They are currently current on what they've been paying us.

This is a situation where we have a great basis in that property. It's a 14-acre property just east of Dallas, kind of looking at the city, and on a reservoir lake.

We're in it for about 105 bucks. The operator there purchased that out of a bankruptcy in 2023, and took some pretty tough terms from their counterparty, and the bankruptcy is really about trying to free up some of their financial capacity by eliminating some of the seller financing that they took.

We believe that they have a good chance to do that. We're supportive.

We went down and met with them in December. This was on their menu of options, and we're working very hard to be a good collaborative partner.

We'd like to see them win, and if they can't win, then we'll make sure that we have a good alternative prepared. It's an evolving situation.

We're in close contact with them and monitoring it, and doing everything we can to help them be successful.

Juan Sanabria

Thank you.

Mark Decker

Thanks, Juan.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Austin Wurschmidt with KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc.

Please proceed with your question.

Austin Wurschmidt

Thanks. Good morning, everyone.

Mark, I was just hoping you could start by discussing when this strategy shift discussions with the executive team and the board really started to come about.

Mark Decker

Sure. We really started in August using a consultant that I've used in the past called RCLCO.

We put together kind of the top 10 folks at the company and our board, and we did a bit of a 360 evaluation where we had people who don't work here tell us what they thought about the business. We all considered it, and we had really a multi-month process where we kind of beat up lots of different ideas and ultimately laid out a strategy for the board in December, which they're supportive of and helped collaborate in.

We've really been at it since August, and feel great about where we are relative to our plan in that timeline.

Austin Wurschmidt

Helpful. Then, Bob had highlighted there's no real capital recycling that's assumed in guidance, but I guess how are you just thinking through the near-term earnings impact from executing the strategy of selling some of these legacy OM assets and then recycling into that development, which obviously tends to have some downtime from an earnings perspective, as well as just being able to compete on the senior side and redeploy that capital at kind of minimizing that spread versus the sales?

Mark Decker

Yeah. I think the truth is we'd like to get through that period as soon as possible, and we'd like the market to see what we can cook up.

Hopefully, we can get through that sort of valley as fast as we possibly can. Again, we don't get to dictate all the timing, in terms of earnings impact, as you can imagine, as we're trying to delever the business and we're selling assets, there definitely could be, there should be, there will be dilution there.

We're really thinking about it like it's our own money and imagining what the best business looks like, and frankly, the returns that are available in the housing space are superior to those in outpatient medical, we're not by any means abandoning outpatient medical, but deals are going to compete on return.

Austin Wurschmidt

Just one more for me. There's some efficiency and other savings that's outlined in the 2026 guidance.

Can you discuss what that includes? Then also, as you build out the senior side, how are you thinking about the asset management side of that business given, as you move along the higher-acuity spectrum, the operating intensiveness of that business obviously picks up?

Just curious some of the puts and takes from an overhead perspective. Thank you.

Mark Decker

Bob, you want to—

Bob Kiernan

I'll start out relative to the outlook and the efficiencies in the 2026 guidance. The efficiencies are largely items that won't recur in 2020 2026 as much as any.

2025 items that won't recur in 2026, as Mark mentioned, the time we spent working through the strategy, and some of the other one-off-type items like that that were in our 2025 numbers that won't repeat in '26 is the primary driver. Then

Mark Decker

to get to your question on sort of building out seniors, some of that will be a function of how fast we're able to make investments, and then it could go slower than we want, and we want to be mindful of how we're staffed. As the road's sort of littered with smart real estate people who didn't appreciate the operating intensity and leverage embedded in running a senior housing operating property, and we have a lot of respect for that.

It's really about picking great partners that we have confidence in and can learn from. Look, we don't have all the answers, and we'll learn and we'll make some mistakes.

I think we'll make more good decisions than bad ones, but it'll be a new business line for us, we have a healthy respect for what that means, and we'll be very focused on mitigating our risk there, really through choosing partners that we've vetted extensively. Great.

Austin Wurschmidt

Thanks for the time. Thank you.

Mark Decker

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Wes Golladay with Baird.

Please proceed with your question.

Wes Golladay

Hey, good morning, everyone. I just want to build off of Austin's last question.

Maybe on the investment team, is that team for the senior side all built out now? Or mostly built out?

Mark Decker

No. Uh-uh.

Right now, we're using our investment team. Alfonso's on the line here.

He's dressed in his senior housing gear right now. I would imagine we could add to that team as we progress, but we do have some relationships that reside here already, and we're working on those.

Wes Golladay

Okay. Then when you look at how you want to approach it, and know it's early innings, but do you have a sense of how many operators you want to work with?

Are you going to be more regionally focused? Will you target mainly new I guess developments?

Would there be any potential for redevelopments? Just kind of get a little bit better sense on how you're approaching it.

Mark Decker

It's a great question. Right now, the operators we're focused with are I would call them kind of regional or single-market operators with good track record, and generally speaking, newer assets.

As we said in our prepared remarks, we're focused on newer product. We believe that's a place where we can possibly differentiate.

Wes Golladay

Right

Mark Decker

now, the answer to your question is as few and as good as possible, but obviously, if we can get some size, it would be great to have a stable of operators that we can share ideas with across and so forth, but that's ambition today.

Wes Golladay

Okay. Thanks for the time.

Mark Decker

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Gaurav Mehta with Alliance Global Partners.

Please proceed with your question.

Gaurav Mehta

Thank you. Good morning.

I wanted to ask you on the portfolio allocation as you build your SHOP, active adult portfolio, how would the allocation look like between medical office and housing part?

Mark Decker

That's a great question. Good morning.

Thanks for the question, Gaurav. A lot of that's going to be dictated by the opportunity set, we don't have a pie chart in mind that we're going to manage to.

We're going to manage to the opportunities and be somewhat opportunistic there. Active adult, in particular, sort of quote, unquote, modern active adult, which has kind of really only been around for 10 years or so, is a relatively small niche.

The hunting grounds in seniors much much larger, but we really like that active space. We'll see.

I wouldn't hazard a guess, to be honest.

Gaurav Mehta

Okay. I guess for the acquisitions, should we expect primarily to be focused on SHOP, or would you be open to medical office as well?

Mark Decker

As we said earlier, everything competes on return, and today, SHOP is winning that competition.

Gaurav Mehta

Okay. I guess, what are cap rates like on SHOP versus medical office?

Mark Decker

Cap rates are actually pretty similar. It's the character of the forward-looking growth that's much different.

Call it plus or minus 6 on forward going in, but one has 2% to 3% growth and one has 4% to 8%, and some really sustainable tailwinds.

Gaurav Mehta

All right. Understood.

Thanks for taking my questions.

Mark Decker

Thank you. It's our pleasure.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Juan Sanabria with BMO Capital Markets.

Please proceed with your question.

Juan Sanabria

Thanks. Couldn't get enough.

Just curious on the active adult, I think one of the prior callers had a question with regards to how we should be thinking about your entry there. Development historically is a drag until the asset leases up, although I recognize the lease-up is a lot shorter than in seniors housing.

Are you guys getting a preferred return on the capital you're investing to kind of bridge the gap until the asset can start to cash flow, or just how are you thinking about that segment of the opportunity set with active adult?

Mark Decker

Yeah. Welcome back, Juan.

We're glad to have you, and we love the curiosity. The answer to your specific question on this first opportunity in Minneapolis is no, we are not getting a preferred return.

However, that would be our goal in the future. That situation was an interesting one.

They were under construction already, and they preferred a 50/50 scheme, we went with it. It was a relatively low-dollar amount.

Did some of this at Centerspace where we had kind of a build-to-core strategy, if you will, where we employed a preferred element, and we would endeavor to do that again here. I would expect you'd see more of that, and obviously, we'll be mindful sort of overall sizing of that loan book, if you will, and risk.

Then

Juan Sanabria

the medical office, the Steward bankruptcy last year, you took some vacancy, but that was an opportunity as you re-let that space. Just curious on the update on kind of the opportunity there and how much has been backfilled, and how that has contributed or could contribute to growth in the core business today?

Mark Decker

Yeah. The Steward piece is really resolved.

It was really that what is now the Christus asset, the Beaumont asset that we talked about disposing of. I think there might have been one other small lease, but it's not material.

Okay. Yeah.

Juan Sanabria

There were two other small leases, but nothing too—

Mark Decker

Yeah. Then we have Prospect, which is still going, so that our East Orange asset has been affected by that materially.

That's one we're still working on.

Juan Sanabria

Okay.

Mark Decker

The Prospect Hospital

Juan Sanabria

space—

Mark Decker

I'm sorry, Juan. Say that again.

Forgive me.

Juan Sanabria

No, the Prospect upside is still to come if you are able to backfill that?

Mark Decker

Correct. That would show up today as negative NOI.

Juan Sanabria

Okay. Last question for me, anything on the watch list to call out over and above the White Rock?

Mark Decker

No. In the past, White Rock would have been the one when people asked us about watch list that was kind of top of mind, and again, that's a great entrepreneurial group.

We're in good touch with them. We believe in their ability to be successful, but there's nothing past them that we're spending a lot of time on right now.

Juan Sanabria

That's it for me. Thank you, and good luck with everything.

Mark Decker

Thanks, Juan.

Operator

Thank you. We have reached the end of the question-and-answer session, and I'll now turn the call back over to CEO Mark Decker for closing comments.

Mark Decker

Thanks very much. Thanks, everyone, for your time and attention, and look forward to talking to you next quarter.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time.

Thank you for your participation. Have a great day.