Overview
Omega Healthcare Investors, Inc. (“Parent”) is a Maryland corporation that, together with its consolidated subsidiaries (collectively, “Omega,” or “Company,” “we,” “our,” or “us”) has elected to be taxed as a REIT for federal income tax purposes. Omega is structured as an umbrella partnership REIT (“UPREIT”) under which all of Omega’s assets are owned directly or indirectly by, and all of Omega’s operations are conducted directly or indirectly through, its operating partnership subsidiary, OHI Healthcare Properties Limited Partnership (collectively with its subsidiaries, “Omega OP”). As of March 31, 2022, Parent owned approximately 97% of the issued and outstanding units of partnership interest in Omega OP (“Omega OP Units”), and other investors owned approximately 3% of the outstanding Omega OP Units.
Omega has one reportable segment consisting of investments in healthcare-related real estate properties located in the United States (“U.S.”) and the United Kingdom (“U.K.”). Our core business is to provide financing and capital to the long-term healthcare industry with a particular focus on SNFs, ALFs, and to a lesser extent, independent living facilities (“ILFs”), rehabilitation and acute care facilities (“specialty facilities”) and medical office buildings. Our core portfolio consists of our long-term leases and mortgage loans with healthcare operating companies and affiliates (collectively, our “operators”). All of our mortgages are secured by first liens on the underlying real estate and personal property of the operators. In addition to our core investments, we selectively make loans to operators for working capital and capital expenditures. These loans, which may be either unsecured or secured by the collateral of the borrower, are classified as other investments. From time to time, we also acquire equity interests in joint ventures or entities that support the long-term healthcare industry and our operators.
COVID-19 Pandemic Update
The COVID-19 pandemic has continued to significantly and adversely impact SNFs and long-term care providers due to the higher rates of virus transmission and fatality among the elderly and frail populations that these facilities serve. As a result, many of our operators have been and may continue to be significantly impacted by the pandemic. Agemo Holdings, LLC (“Agemo”), Guardian Healthcare (“Guardian”) and Gulf Coast Health Care LLC (together with certain affiliates, “Gulf Coast”), three operators that failed to make contractual payments under their lease and loan agreements for periods of 2021, continued to not make payments during the first quarter of 2022. During the first quarter of 2022, two new operators, representing an aggregate of 6.1% of total revenue (excluding the impact of write-offs) for the three months ended March 31, 2022, missed contractual rent payments during the period, and we have agreed to short term deferrals with these two operators, as well as allowed one of these operators to apply its security deposit to pay rent, as discussed further in “Collectibility Issues” below. Additionally, we allowed three other operators, representing an aggregate 2.5% of total revenue (excluding the impact of write-offs) for the three months ended March 31, 2022, to apply $1.3 million of their security deposits to pay rent to accommodate short term liquidity issues, with regular rent payments required to resume shortly thereafter.
We believe these operators were impacted by, among other things, reduced revenue as a result of lower occupancy and increased expenses resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and uncertainties regarding the continuing availability of sufficient government support. We remain cautious as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to have a significant impact on our operators and their financial conditions, particularly given continued uncertainty regarding the availability of sufficient government support and trend of reduced federal support to our operators beginning in 2021, the persistence of staffing shortages that continue to impact our operators’ occupancy levels and profitability, the impact of governmental vaccine mandates for staff on these ongoing staffing shortages, other factors that may impact virus transmission in our facilities, including genetic mutations of the virus into new variants, the commencement in April 2021 for many of our operators of the repayment of accelerated payments of Medicare funds that were previously received as Advanced Medicare payments in 2020 and the commencement in December 2021 of repayment of deferred FICA obligations.
As of April 27, 2022, our operators have reported a decline in cases of COVID-19 involving employees and residents from the high caseload experienced in January 2022 driven by the Omicron variant. Our operators reported, as of April 27, 2022, cases of COVID-19 within 151, or 16.1%, of our 939 operating facilities as of December 31, 2021, which includes cases involving employees and residents.