Brookdale Senior Living Inc. (BKD) Earnings Call Transcript

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the Brookdale Senior Living Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions]. I will now hand the conference over to Mike Grant, Brookdale's Vice President of Investor Relations. Mike, please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on Brookdale Senior Living's third quarter 2026 earnings call. Participating on today's call are Nick Stengle, Brookdale's Chief Executive Officer; Dawn Kussow, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and Chad White, our Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary. On today's call, we will discuss third quarter 2026 results as well as our financial guidance for the 2026 year. We'll also provide other general business updates. During today's call, our remarks, including our answers to your questions, will include forward-looking statements pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These statements are made as of today's date, and we expressly disclaim any obligation to update these statements in the future. Actual results and performance may differ materially from forward-looking statements. Certain of the factors that could cause actual results to differ are detailed in the earnings release we issued after market yesterday as well as in our Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including the risk factors described in our annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. I direct you to the earnings release for the full safe harbor statement. Also, please note that during this call, management will discuss non-GAAP financial measures. For reconciliations of each non-GAAP measure to the most comparable GAAP measure, I direct you to the earnings release and to the company's quarterly supplemental financial information, which may be found at brookdaleinvestors.com and was furnished on an 8-K yesterday. With that, I'll turn the call over to our CEO, Nick Stengle.

Thanks, Mike, and thank you all for joining us today and for your interest in Brookdale. I joined Brookdale a little over a year ago because I saw the compelling opportunity of the senior living industry as it enters the early stage of a highly favorable supply-demand imbalance. Coupled with this, I saw a company with a strong reputation for providing exceptional care but with significant room for operating improvement alongside a stock that was depressed relative to its peers. In short, I joined Brookdale for the same reasons that many of you are shareholders, a compelling multiyear equity opportunity. During this past year, we have made numerous changes to Brookdale, both structurally and organizationally, and those have impacted nearly all parts of the company, the operations, the portfolio and most importantly, the culture. These changes have been absolutely critical to position the company to take full advantage of the industry tailwind that is behind us, and these changes are now beginning to bear fruit. That said, in any large organization, in our case, an organization with over 500 communities and 28,000 employees, progress is never linear or across the board. Third quarter adjusted EBITDA met our expectations, while RevPAR growth fell short, directly reflecting slower occupancy growth. That weaker-than-expected occupancy growth during the summer selling season will negatively impact our fourth quarter and full-year performance. We now expect full year 2026 adjusted EBITDA of $495 million to $502 million and are lowering our RevPAR growth guidance to a range of 7.4% to 7.9%. In her remarks, Dawn will discuss the revised guidance and underlying assumptions. As we will describe in greater depth later in this call, the primary shortfall in our results during the third quarter has been on occupancy, which has created a headwind on census and revenue, which in turn, impacts our fourth quarter expectations. Our revised guidance also includes a strategic decision to increase our marketing investment in the fourth quarter as well as the revenue and expense impact of the fire at our Clinton, Mississippi community in October. From a broader perspective, we have continued to make strong progress on every element of the 5-point strategy we laid out at our Investor Day in late January of this year. At a high level, Brookdale's 5-point strategy is to: number one, improve operating performance; number two, optimize our real estate portfolio; number three, reinvest capital into our communities; number four, reduce leverage; and number five, elevate quality for residents and associates. On the first point of improving operating performance, Brookdale's occupancy improved sequentially by 70 basis points on both a consolidated and a same-community basis. While this was our sharpest improvement this year, it was lower than our internal expectations for reasons I will discuss in a moment. At the same time, we were able to drive significantly improved performance within our community occupancy bands as the number of Brookdale communities above 90% occupancy increased to 186 communities from 167 in the prior quarter and the count of communities below 70% occupancy decreased to 69 communities from 85 in the prior quarter. Concurrently, we took actions during the third quarter to bolster our labor management discipline that has steadily eroded through the COVID recovery. This effort, which was specifically focused on administrative roles, alongside our renewed emphasis on operational performance allowed us to achieve our adjusted EBITDA expectations for the quarter. We also expanded our adjusted EBITDA margin by over 300 basis points compared to the prior year quarter. Although the implementation of these actions was another meaningful disruption to the company, it was a critical change in order to allow us to operate each of our communities more effectively going forward and acknowledging the variability we have within our portfolio around building size, building in care types, census and overall resident needs. Beyond the labor productivity improvements, we have made significant changes this past year across our entire company, which, while disruptive in the moment, are critical in enabling the operational pivot we have embarked on. First, we named a Chief Operating Officer, a key position for any operating company, a role that previously did not exist. We have a new Chief Sales Officer, who joined us in June 2026 after having a gap in this role since February. We also added a Senior Vice President of Strategic Operations, who is squarely focused on pricing, community CapEx deployment and labor. We realigned our entire organizational structure to create a single and clear line of enablement, empowerment and accountability from me through the COO and into each of our communities. For our second strategic priority, since start of 2025, we have exited 60 leased communities. And starting last year and continuing into this year, our lease portfolio is solidly accretive to EBITDA and cash flow while also having annual rent escalators of 3% or less. We have also largely exited the third-party managed business, and we are down to just 4 remaining managed communities. Concurrently, of the 42 communities we announced that we would sell, only 5 remain and all are under contract with closings expected by year-end. With these remaining sales, we will have substantially completed our previously announced disposition program, concentrating Brookdale in geographies and communities where we can compete most effectively. The other side of optimizing our real estate portfolio is the deliberate actions we have taken to increase the owned proportion of our consolidated community count. At the end of the third quarter, we completed the previously announced acquisition of 17 communities that we had leased. Furthermore, we recently announced that we have entered into a definitive agreement to acquire 30 communities that we currently lease. Upon completion, we will own approximately 80% of our consolidated portfolio. Finally, we also agreed to amend a master lease to extend the term and accelerate our ability to exercise the option to acquire an additional 39 currently leased communities. Increasing ownership reduces lease expense and renewal uncertainty, increases cash flow and gives us greater participation in our communities' future economic upside. We firmly believe ownership of our communities adds long-term value to our shareholders as we own the full future cash flow generation of a community rather than splitting the gains with a lessor or REIT owner. From this base of a stronger portfolio across both owned and leased communities, we have the latitude to further assess future portfolio optimization opportunities. Brookdale's revenue-enhancing investment into our communities has also increased both in total dollar spend and more importantly, in concentration. Brookdale's previous CapEx approach had been tied mostly to an allocation methodology based on community size. We have changed our approach. So rather than allocating smaller amounts to all communities enough to make modest improvements, we now concentrate our investment into communities where we see the greatest opportunity to transform and comprehensively upgrade the community. We are investing more in community CapEx this year than previously, and you will note that third quarter community CapEx rose to $47 million, our highest quarterly investment level in several years, and the majority of this is designed to drive significant returns through improved revenue and adjusted EBITDA. Finally, Brookdale continues to elevate the resident experience, which is central to the value we create as a company. We diligently assess our resident experience using a Net Promoter Score methodology, or NPS, a measure of residents' overall satisfaction. NPS has increased every year since 2022, and NPS continued to increase through the end of the third quarter of 2026 versus the same period of 2025. So even as we made significant and temporarily disruptive changes to our business, we continue delivering an outstanding resident experience. The metrics and changes I've just shared are proof points of the progress we are making as a team as well as the scope and pace of change here at Brookdale. Compared to where we were a year ago, the changes are profound, and we are a better company because of these changes. Now I want to return to occupancy. Occupancy growth remains our greatest operating challenge and the primary reason for our lower full year outlook. Brookdale's occupancy growth in July and August improved from earlier in the year, but that growth accelerated in September and fell short of our expectation for the quarter. During the quarter, our move-ins were higher than in the prior year on a same community basis, but still fell short of our expectations associated with the summer selling season. Concurrently, third quarter move-outs, including for mortality and other reasons, were slightly higher than both our expectation and our run rate from earlier in the year. There are several factors at work. Some are Brookdale specific and others may relate to the overall macro environment. The many changes we have implemented this year to Brookdale's operation structure, including in sales, have undoubtedly caused disruption, and that disruption has impacted our occupancy performance. Those substantive changes are nearly complete. We now have the right portfolio of communities with the right leaders and organizational structure in place. Lead volume during the quarter was below where it needed to be, particularly during the key selling months of August and September. Our sales leads come from multiple channels, both internal and external. During the COVID pandemic years, Brookdale's internal lead generation muscle atrophied as we became more dependent on external sources. Recently, and in relation to the shift from traditional web search to AI-powered search, the lead volume from external sources has declined across the industry, a change that impacts Brookdale more heavily given the weight of external sources within our lead mix. Conversely, internal leads coming direct to our call center and communities are steadily increasing as we benefit from the AI transition and our own deliberate and renewed strategic focus on internal lead generation that has been launched by Margaret Cabell, our new Chief Sales Officer. Under her leadership, we are rebuilding our internal lead generation muscle, it takes time as this involves communities building relationships with local professionals in the medical, legal, religious and community spaces. Margaret has created the structure, the process and the expectation with her team in order to take specific steps to foster these relationships, and we expect to see steady improvement and a continued shift in the mix of our leads toward internal sources. In the near term, we have recently taken action to modestly increase our marketing investment in order to drive additional internal lead volume in the fourth quarter. Longer term, we are excited for this transition as internally sourced leads have higher conversion rates, lower customer acquisition costs and typically longer lengths of stay. Even while our lead volume has been strained, one very meaningful silver lining in sales performance is that our third quarter lead to move-in conversion rate was near a record high level as compared to performance over the past few years and significantly ahead of industry conversion benchmarks. This success is directly attributed to our improved sales leadership and operating structure. While we are not pleased with our occupancy, our 70 basis point sequential improvement in same-community occupancy during the third quarter exceeded that of the overall industry as measured by the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing and Care, or NIC. These slowing occupancy growth trends from NIC and some of our peers may suggest that other temporary macro effects are impacting lead volume within the broader senior living industry, but the reality is that we own our lead generation. And after many months of near constant change across all facets of our company, we are now structured to make occupancy our clear #1 operational focus for everyone with minimal distraction. In short, our third quarter performance achieved most of our internal goals, specifically around our 5 strategic objectives, but fell short of expectations on occupancy growth, which impacts guidance for the fourth quarter and for the year. Through this year, we have made meaningful progress in strengthening Brookdale, and our focus is now on translating this organizational strength into more consistent occupancy growth, which will drive even stronger adjusted EBITDA and cash flow growth in the quarters and years to come. Despite some near-term headwinds, we believe Brookdale is now a stronger, more valuable company than it was a year ago, and we remain confident that we can drive durable mid-teens annual adjusted EBITDA growth in 2027 and beyond. I will now turn the call over to Brookdale's CFO, Dawn Kussow, for more details on our financial performance and outlook.

Thank you, Nick. In my prepared remarks, I'll review 4 key topics: Brookdale's third quarter financial results, recent balance sheet improvements, progress we're making on our portfolio optimization initiatives and our revised outlook for 2026. Let's first look at our financial performance during the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter was $124.3 million, up 12% versus the prior year quarters and in line with our suggested pacing of low double-digit growth. RevPAR for the quarter increased 7.5% over the prior year, which is less than the approximate 8.2% level we anticipated for the quarter. RevPOR year-over-year growth on a same-community basis accelerated over the first half of the year. On a same-community basis, labor as a percentage of revenue improved 120 basis points year-over-year, reflecting the actions we took during the quarter to bolster productivity. And same-community operating income growth accelerated to 7.4% year-over-year. As Nick described, occupancy increased 70 basis points sequentially, but fell short of our expectations during the third quarter, traditionally our peak summer selling season. On a consolidated basis, occupancy increased 130 basis points year-over-year to 83.1% -- on a same-community basis, occupancy grew 50 basis points over last year to 83.6%. Also impacting our RevPAR year-over-year growth compared to expectations was timing around our expected dispositions and a higher level of incentive programs in the quarter. As we reported in our earnings release this morning, occupancy growth remained subdued in October. For October, consolidated occupancy was 83.5% and same-community occupancy was 83.9%, representing a monthly sequential growth rate of 10 basis points, both on a same community and consolidated basis. Based on current occupancy trends, we now expect full year consolidated occupancy to come in below 83%. I'll circle back to guidance later in my remarks. Brookdale residences for the third quarter were $707 million, a decline of 8.7% from the third quarter of 2025. The year-over-year revenue decline reflected a 15.3% reduction in consolidated average units driven by our portfolio optimization activities, partially offset by a 7.5% increase in RevPAR. On a same-community basis, which excludes the impact of changes in our portfolio, RevPAR increased 5.4%. Third quarter revenue per occupied unit or RevPOR, improved 5.8% versus last year on a consolidated basis and 4.8% on a same-community basis. Improved RevPOR reflects the strong in-place rate increase we took in January of this year, as well as tighter pricing discipline in the ensuing quarters. Sequentially, third quarter RevPOR improved 5 basis points on a consolidated basis, but weakened by 20 basis points on a same community basis, driven by incentive programs we implemented in September to help drive additional move-in activity. As anticipated, our consolidated RevPOR year-over-year growth accelerated sequentially and occupancy and RevPOR are both running positive compared with last year. However, we do not expect to achieve the 8% to 9% RevPAR growth we had originally anticipated for 2026, mainly due to our lower occupancy achievement. Now let's turn to expenses, where we saw improvement in the quarter. On a consolidated basis, third quarter expense per occupied unit or ExPOR, increased 2.9% over the third quarter of 2025, resulting in a positive RevPOR over ExPOR spread of 290 basis points. On a same-community basis, ExPOR increased 3.9%, generating a 90 basis point positive RevPOR ExPOR spread. On a same-community basis, our operating margin for the quarter was 29.2%, an improvement of 50 basis points over the prior year. Same community labor expense performed favorably as our labor as a percentage of revenue improved 120 basis points year-over-year. As Nick mentioned, during the third quarter, we took actions to bolster our labor management discipline, specifically in administrative roles and these labor productivity improvements are beginning to be visible in our results. For the fourth quarter, we expect to realize more year-over-year improvement to labor as a percentage of senior housing revenue as the impact of these actions will benefit the full quarter. Notably, these labor productivity improvements will be a tailwind for 2027 as they only have a partial year impact in 2026. We expect our fourth quarter labor as a percentage of revenue to slightly improve from the third quarter level, and we would generally expect that percentage to hold steady or improve in 2027 with further rate and occupancy growth. Against that, the increase in other facility operating expenses on a same community basis, although slightly improved from the second quarter, remained elevated in the third quarter and increased 70 basis points as a percent of revenue from the third quarter of last year. A number of different expenses are grouped together in other facility operating expenses. And for some like marketing and repairs and maintenance, the level of spending is within our control, while others like utilities, insurance and property taxes are not as directly in our control. We're making progress on managing our other facility operating expense and anticipate slightly less of a headwind in the fourth quarter, followed by more meaningful improvement in 2027. Other facility operating expense increased 9% year-over-year in the second quarter and 8% year-over-year in the third quarter. We expect that improving trend to continue into the fourth quarter, and we anticipate a reversion to the longer-term mean starting next year. This year, we've seen an overage from a few specific areas, which we have been intensely focused on, repairs and maintenance and ongoing costs stemming from the ERP implementation. First, repairs and maintenance or R&M. R&M expense was elevated in the third quarter, but somewhat improved versus the second quarter. During the quarter, we began to drive changes in capital decision-making, essentially whether to repair or to replace down to the district and community levels. In recent years, communities have emphasized repairs, whereas today, we are taking a more proactive approach to emphasize the longer-term cost benefit analysis of replacement instead of repair. We believe several million dollars of annual R&M expense could be reduced through our tightened capital decision-making process. Second, we've experienced ongoing costs stemming from the 2025 ERP implementation. We've incurred elevated consulting and operating costs as we continue to improve the system's efficiency and manage the transition to the new platform. We expect this period of elevated implementation-related expenses to end by early 2027. General and administrative expense, excluding noncash stock-based compensation expense and transaction, legal and organizational restructuring costs declined 15% year-over-year to $36.6 million for the third quarter. The G&A expense reduction for the third quarter results in part from the actions we took in the second quarter to scale our G&A cost base to reflect both disposition activity and the reduction of our managed community portfolio. We now expect our full year G&A cost to be approximately $154 million. Cash facility operating lease payments during the third quarter of 2026 were $43.2 million, down $13.4 million year-over-year, primarily due to the Ventas lease dispositions, which occurred in the second half of last year, coupled with the contractual step-up on lease payments on the retained Ventas leases. We also received a modest initial benefit from our recently completed acquisition of 17 previously leased communities. Now let's turn to the balance sheet. During the third quarter, our adjusted annualized leverage improved to 8.3x from annualized leverage of 8.4x at midyear. Total liquidity declined slightly to $524 million as of September 30, 2026, down from $566 million at the end of last quarter, reflecting lower cash balances resulting from the net of cash used for acquisitions and sourced from dispositions proceeds. At the end of the third quarter, we obtained $108 million of debt secured by first priority mortgages on the 17 previously leased communities that we acquired. The loan bears interest at a variable rate and has an initial 5-year term and two 1-year extension options. Additionally, in July, we obtained $249 million of fixed rate debt secured by nonrecourse first mortgages on 45 communities, which effectively refinanced $244 million of existing debt. As a result, Brookdale has no mortgage debt maturities until 2028. Next, I want to discuss our continued portfolio optimization progress. During the quarter, we continued to execute on our capital recycling strategy, which includes the disposition of nonstrategic or underperforming owned and leased communities. As a reminder, we entered 2026 with the expectation of selling 29 communities comprising approximately 2,400 units this year. Through September 30, 2026, we have sold 23 owned communities comprising 1,767 units for proceeds of $169 million net of transaction costs. And we also exited 2 leased communities with 152 units. Since the end of the quarter, we've continued to close transactions. And as of November 6, we have closed on the sale of an additional one community with 197 units for net proceeds of $10 million. Today, just 5 of the planned 29 communities identified for disposition remain, and those are all under contracts expected to close by year-end. These sales will bring our previously announced disposition program to completion. In total, we expect proceeds for 2026 community dispositions, including completed transactions to generate net proceeds of approximately $190 million. In addition to our disposition activities during the quarter, we also continued taking steps to increase the owned proportion of our portfolio. As a reminder, as recently as 2017, Brookdale owned only 49% of its consolidated units. Following the transactions I will highlight, we expect to own about 80% of our consolidated units. At the end of the third quarter, we completed the acquisition of 17 communities that were previously leased by the company for a purchase price of $160 million, including the transaction costs. We funded this acquisition through proceeds from nonrecourse mortgage financings and cash on hand. After the quarter, we entered into a definitive agreement to acquire 30 communities that we currently lease for a purchase price of $290 million. We expect to complete the acquisition in the fourth quarter of 2026 and expect to fund it through proceeds from nonrecourse mortgage financing and cash on hand. The 2027 annual triple net lease cash rent for these 30 communities would have been approximately $18 million. The communities are subject to an existing lease that expires in 2032. Continued upon the close of that 30 community acquisition, we also entered into a 4-year lease extension for an existing 39 community lease through June 2036. Notably, via the lease amendment, the lease's existing fair market value purchase option would become exercisable at any time at our election rather than only in connection with the leases maturity, subject to a floor of 6.5% yield on in-place rent. We believe these acquisitions are priced significantly below replacement cost, and we expect them to improve our immediate and longer-term adjusted EBITDA and cash flow. Let's turn to our financial outlook for the remainder of 2026. We now expect full year adjusted EBITDA of $495 million to $502 million and full year consolidated RevPAR year-over-year growth of 7.4% to 7.9%. On a consolidated basis, this implies fourth quarter RevPAR growth in the high 6% range. Factors included in this assumption are that occupancy growth remains muted during the fourth quarter. Rate remains relatively firm in the fourth quarter and the impact of the remaining dispositions will be minimal. Adjusted EBITDA of $495 million to $502 million implies a low double-digit to mid-teen year-over-year growth rate for the fourth quarter. Included in this assumption is the aforementioned RevPAR growth, continued labor expense improvement, including the full quarter realization of our labor actions taken in the mid-third quarter, slightly elevated other facility operating expenses, though we expect to see continued improvement in repairs and maintenance and other areas, general and administrative expense for the full year of approximately $154 million, cash facility operating lease payments of $172 million for the full year and approximately $7 million of management fees for the full year. Please note that the updated guidance includes our current estimates of the fourth quarter revenue and expense impact of the recent fire at our 97-unit Clinton, Mississippi community, which is currently vacant, though those estimates are subject to change as we continue to evaluate operational plans for that community. Now to close out our prepared remarks, third quarter adjusted EBITDA met our expectations, but occupancy and RevPAR growth fell short. Our fourth quarter outlook carries that lower occupancy forward, which is reflected in our guidance range as well as the impact of the modestly increased digital marketing investment to help further drive additional occupancy improvement as well as the impact of the recent fire at our Clinton community. As we look ahead to 2027, I want to reiterate a few points I made earlier. First, the labor productivity actions taken mid-quarter will provide a tailwind to 2027. Secondly, other facility operating expenses year-over-year growth has been high this year due to a number of resolvable short-term factors, and we would expect a reversion to the historical mean over the next year. Finally, other 2026 activities, including the purchase of previously leased communities and reductions in G&A will also benefit growth in 2027. For these reasons and to reiterate what Nick said earlier, we remain confident in our ability to create durable mid-teens adjusted EBITDA growth in 2027 and beyond. Operator, we will now open the call for questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. [Operator Instructions]. Your first question from the line of Brian Tanquilut from Jefferies.

Sorry to hear about the facility that burned down and -- but also thank you for adjusting the guidance as most people had expected. So maybe with that in mind, Nick, I'll start first by asking on occupancy. I appreciate all the color that you shared in terms of how you're thinking about it. But given the trend that we've seen all year where it's been relatively soft or softer than you had expected, how do we think about, number one, the occupancy path or cadence into next year? And then the other maybe more fundamental question on this is, why do you think that is? I mean is this structural in terms of the assets? Or is this more just industry? Or is there anything you can do lever-wise, pulling levers to drive occupancy acceleration?

Brian, thanks for the question, and I appreciate the kind words. Yes. So for sure, as we mentioned, both Dawn and I in the prepared remarks, Q3 definitely came below expectations when it came to occupancy growth, specifically in light of kind of the peak summer selling season. But as you mentioned, it's been kind of touch and go even prior to that, some great months and then some softer months. And I think there are 2 things really going on here. And one, for sure, very internal, and we want to own that because we also own the solution, but we have gone through a lot of changes. We have not had a Chief Sales Officer from basically the month of February through June. New Chief Sales Officer came in and has already been implementing a lot of changes. But change is disruptive even if you feel it is the right decision, and we definitely feel it is the right decision. Concurrently, I think there is -- it'd be hard-pressed to not say that there's some macroeconomic drag that potentially is impacting people making life-changing decisions whether they're going to move into senior living or not. And as you can imagine, when you're contemplating those choices and you're seeing 30-year fixed mortgage rates of over 7% and you're seeing $6, $7 gas depending on where you live, those types of things do create a drag. Now the good thing in our industry is we are in the needs-based side of the equation, potentially deferring the decision to go to senior living, but you cannot -- the alternatives are not any better. So if anything, there could be some pent-up demand that will slowly unlock as these overall macroeconomic environmental things start going further behind us. The other part of this is -- and again, I mentioned this, but I'm happy that you asked the question so we can talk about even more detail. As a company, Brookdale specifically, we, over the last several years, have steadily had to rely on external sources for our lead generation. Now the majority of our leads do come from internal sources. So I want to be clear. It's not a massive number, but a meaningful minority do come from external sources. And really, I'm describing all the third-party aggregators that exist out there. And it's very obvious that their business model has been upended a little bit, and they've been pretty vocal about it as well within our trade publications that AI has changed consumer behavior and the strength that they had with their marketing spend has been truly diluted. And unfortunately, it's showing up overall in the overall industry. So leads coming from external sources in general are down this year. They were also down last year, and that trend continues. And for us, again, unfortunately, we over-indexed. Now the good thing is we fully acknowledged it, and we're leaning in with Margaret Cabell as our Chief Sales Officer to really push hard in changing behaviors within our communities, changing our own behaviors to drive those internal leads. And in fact, part of our guide down for Q4 is this idea that we're going to spend a bit more money on marketing to continue nurturing these internal leads, which we have to do. And by the way, a better lead. So overall, I think this year has been kind of defined by some internal, all the changes we've gone through. It has been defined by a macro external environment. But if anything, it strengthens who we are today to set us up for the remainder of the year and going into 2027.

I appreciate that. Maybe I'll use that, Nick, as a segue to my second question, which is, as we think about increased marketing expenses, I know you said probably temporary here and also on the other side of that, the labor adjustments that you guys have made. I mean investors are asking us the question in terms of the sustainability of the labor spending levels as we look into next year and maybe the carryover impact of that marketing expense adjustment. Just how do we think about these expense levels?

Yes. Let me tackle the labor side of it and then Dawn will probably chime in on the marketing. So for the labor, we implemented kind of a bolstering a redisciplined approach to our existing approach with our staffing model and our labor management. And again, I sort of alluded to this, but I'm glad we're talking about in a bit more detail here. Through COVID, so coming out of 2020, we had allowed that discipline to erode ever so slightly year after year after year. And so it, in effect, became kind of the new norm. In some ways, for us, COVID kind of never ended and never -- there was no definitive line to say, hey, look, our staffing model now needs to reflect what life was like before COVID. And because of the strength of our new operating structure, because of the strength of our operational team, we have the structure, we have the fortitude, we have the wherewithal to first identify and then second, do something about it. And we very deliberately adjusted our labor, and it is enduring. It is sustainable. And it is going to be kind of the way forward starting in Q3 into Q4 and into next year. And really, it's just this idea that we have a fixed -- mostly fixed cost base to our labor. We reset that fixed cost base, specifically around administrative roles. That's where a lot of the -- that lack of discipline had grown. So that's a long way of me saying, Brian, this is an enduring kind of way forward as opposed to a one-off thing that we will allow to erode again, again, because of the team we have and the focus that we have.

Yes, Brian, and I'll -- a couple of comments around our marketing expense. But first, I'll point you to our supplemental Slide 8. We did add some bar graphs in that slide that really kind of showed or the charts in that slide that show where our labor costs were, where other expenses were. And you can really kind of see, as I said in my prepared remarks, that we're seeing a higher other expense, but you can see that improvement in the labor most notably in that table, and that was added this quarter. As it relates to your question around our marketing expense, what I would say is it is really a nominal dollar amount to the year overall. It is impactful to the quarter as we thought about the occupancy miss in relation to our guide. We also said in our prepared remarks that the fire at our Clinton facility impacted our guide. And then these marketing expenses kind of on top of that, all coupled together is the impact to our guide, most notably the occupancy. But I wouldn't expect our marketing costs are not the largest dollar amount on our expense base. So as we're increasing that more moderately, I wouldn't think about that coming into and impacting 2027 significantly. But we'll add more color when we give our 2027 guide next call.

And let me add one more comment. A lot of kind of going back to this idea of external versus internal generated leads, some of it does come from marketing to do that shift that we are on. And by the way, we had a remarkably strong internal lead generation performance this year, unfortunately, did not offset fully the external drop. But a lot of it is not -- it's not more spend. It's more just changing behaviors and expectations of our sales force within communities. So it's more of a go out there and actively nurture and build relationships and build those leads. There's no incremental dollars associated with that. And really, it's just a behavior change from being a bit more passive waiting for the lead to come to you from an external source but rather go build your lead and generate more internal leads, which again, no incremental cost other than a behavior change, the change in the expectation of our sales force and really our entire -- all our community leaders.

Your next question is from the line of Andrew Mok with Barclays.

There's a few moving pieces in the updated guidance. Can you walk us through the $10.5 million reduction at the midpoint, including the impact of the Mississippi fire, continuing performance as well as the offset you're assuming from the 4Q transaction?

Yes, Andrew, the -- absolutely. We brought down our guide mainly due to the pull-through of the third quarter occupancy. That is the largest piece of the guide bring down. The fire impacted our occupancy. It wasn't meaningful for the full year, but it is a few million dollars in the fourth quarter. And that few million dollars is inclusive of the fact that we had a 97-unit AL memory care that was highly occupied and well performing. And so the NOI that will come out of our fourth quarter as well as our current view on the insurance expense related to that fire. Now I will say that we are adequately insured, but we do have things like self-insured retention that we're thinking about. And so -- that's going to be a few million dollars and then the additional marketing spend. But really, I'll point back to the most impactful is the occupancy and the fact that we didn't grow our occupancy as well as we had expected during the peak summer selling season.

Got it. That's helpful. And then you called out some of the macro and affordability concerns potentially impacting your softer occupancy results. How does that influence your pricing strategy for next year? Do you need to reconsider pricing and contemplate lower increases in response to that environment?

Yes. Good question, Andrew. So the short answer is no. We feel very strongly that our pricing power, in fact, if anything, maybe a little bit stronger this year than it was last year. Now we will be monitoring. We are in the process of figuring that out. But the reality is the environment, the overall environment is improving steadily. So we are anticipating another meaningful in-place rate increase, and we'll talk through more details when we have our next call. And again, let me -- in fact, let me say one more point. We -- and hopefully, it shows -- you can see it in our RevPOR numbers, 5.8% up year-over-year in the third quarter. We are continuing this very strong and deliberate focus on threading the needle. And it's not an either/or conversation. It's an and conversation where we're concurrently driving occupancy and concurrently driving rate and in effect, taking a bifurcated approach between our lower occupied communities and our higher occupied communities, the pricing decisions we make. And as I shared and it shows up in our numbers, the number of communities that are more highly occupied increasing, the number of communities that are more lowly occupied decreasing. So in effect, that also helps inform what type of in-place rate increase we can achieve as we thread the needle to really drive RevPAR at the end of the day, but balancing both rate and occupancy.

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