Community Healthcare Trust Q1 2026 Earnings Call - Dividend Hike Amid Portfolio Pruning and Behavioral Health Transition

David H. Dupuy, Moderator/Operator, Community Healthcare Trust: 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.

I would like to turn the call over to Darwin, CEO of Community Healthcare Trust.

Darwin, Chief Executive Officer, Community Healthcare Trust: Great. Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone, 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 8-K, along with our quarterly report on Form 10-Q. 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 17th, 2025, this tenant signed a letter of intent for the sale of the operations of all 6 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 6 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. 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 7-7.1 years, and our Asset Management team continues to do a great job serving our tenants while focusing on property operating costs. We have 3 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, an anticipated annual return of approximately 9.3%. We also have signed definitive purchase and sale agreements for 4 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%-9.75%. We expect to close on 2 of these properties in the second half of 2026 and the remaining 2 in the second half of 2027. In February, we sold 1 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. 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 $0.48 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’ll hand things off to Bill to discuss the numbers. Thank you, Dave.

Bill Monroe, Chief Financial Officer, Community Healthcare Trust: I will now provide more details on our first quarter financial performance. I’m pleased to report total revenue 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 401(k) contributions, and employer tax payments. On a year-over-year basis, G&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 2 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 AFFO in the first quarter of 2025 and the fourth quarter of 2025, respectively. That concludes our prepared remarks. Darwin, we are now ready to begin the question and answer session.

David H. Dupuy, Moderator/Operator, Community Healthcare Trust: Our first question comes from Alexander Goldfarb with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Alexander Goldfarb, Analyst, Piper Sandler: Oh, thank you, and good morning down there. Darwin, 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?

Darwin, Chief Executive Officer, Community Healthcare Trust: Hey, Alex. Thanks for the question. We are feeling like 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. In particular, as it relates to Ohio Medicaid firming up the amount that is owed. We do feel like we’re making good progress. The company is highly engaged. The buyer is highly engaged in the process. We do feel like we’re hopefully gonna get final confirmation on timing and everything very shortly.

We do Like I said in the prepared remarks, we are currently trading, you know, documents and purchase agreements, and we would anticipate getting this thing in a good place, hopefully in the next quarter.

Alexander Goldfarb, Analyst, Piper Sandler: Okay. That’s certainly good to hear. Second question is, you know, obviously senior housing is all the rage these days, and MOB, and I think your traditional property types may not be as in vogue, at least, you know, 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 Basically, what I’m asking is, your acquisition pipeline is coming down. I realize that you’re managing that relative to your cost capital, I’m also trying to understand what’s going on in valuation land.

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, you know, everything is once again getting bid up, and therefore there’s less product that’s of interest to you.

Darwin, Chief Executive Officer, Community Healthcare Trust: 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. 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, ’cause we don’t wanna raise capital through our ATM, we would definitely see the types of properties and the types of opportunities that we like to invest in. So, you know, what we are doing in terms of focusing on capital recycling is we’re using this as an opportunity to do 2 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 5 properties in 2025. We sold another 1 in 2026. We’re using this as an opportunity to really prune the portfolio and improve the portfolio. It’s not the most fun in terms of selling a property in order to buy properties, but that’s what we’re gonna focus our time and efforts on.

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.

Alexander Goldfarb, Analyst, Piper Sandler: Great. Thank you, Darwin.

Darwin, Chief Executive Officer, Community Healthcare Trust: Thanks, Alex.

David H. Dupuy, Moderator/Operator, Community Healthcare Trust: Our next question comes from James Kammert with Evercore. Please go ahead.

James Kammert, Analyst, Evercore: All right. Good morning. Thank you. guys, notice if I’m pronouncing that properly, acquisition, that was quoted as about a 9.3% yield, I believe. Is that a GAAP or a cash yield? If GAAP, I’m just trying to understand perhaps what are the representatives in annual escalators on that long lease.

Darwin, Chief Executive Officer, Community Healthcare Trust: That is a cash yield, that 9.3% cap rate. What, what are the bumps on that? Jim, you weren’t coming through very clear. Are you asking what are the escalators on that property?

James Kammert, Analyst, Evercore: Yeah. I’m sorry, Dave. Yes, yes. Thank you. Because you clarified it’s cash yield going in. Thank you. Yes, what are the representative escalators, and are they then representative of, say, the other four assets in the pipeline?

Darwin, Chief Executive Officer, Community Healthcare Trust: Yes. They’re 2% escalators and it would be consistent with the other, what we would anticipate with the other ones that are in the pipeline.

James Kammert, Analyst, Evercore: Great. That’s all I had. Thank you.

Darwin, Chief Executive Officer, Community Healthcare Trust: Great.

David H. Dupuy, Moderator/Operator, Community Healthcare Trust: 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, Chief Executive Officer, Community Healthcare Trust: Great. Thanks, David H. Dupuy. Thank you, everybody, for dialing in. We hope to see many of you at NAREIT coming up in June. Thank you.

David H. Dupuy, Moderator/Operator, Community Healthcare Trust: The conference has now concluded. Thank You for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.