Senior Care Centers LLC

December 4, 2018

Ok, we take it back. We’ve been saying how healthcare distress was overhyped in the beginning of the year and now a mini-wave of healthcare-related bankruptcy filings has hit dockets across the country. It’s cool: we don’t take it personally.

Here, Senior Care Centers LLC and its bazillion affiliated debtors, filed for bankruptcy in the Northern District of Texas. The debtors are one of the largest skilling nursing services providers in the US, providing care for approximately 9k patients in Texas and Louisiana. They operate 97 skilled nursing facilities, 9 assisted living facilities and 6 hospice facilities. The company notes:

Like much of the healthcare sector, the operators of skilled nursing facilities (“SNFs”) are and have been experiencing significant challenges and financial distress in recent years. The challenges faced by the Debtors are similar to those experienced by other SNF operators and widespread within the skilled nursing industry. The Debtors faced increasing financial pressure in 2017 and 2018 cause by, among other things, declining reimbursement rates, difficulties in collecting accounts receivable, declining census, and occupancy rates, increasing lease obligations, tightening terms with various trade creditors, and a significantly reduced working capital loan facility. All of these factors have combined to negatively impact the Debtors’ operations.

Getting more specific, the company adds:

Since 2017, the Company experienced significant liquidity constraints caused by, among other things: (a) increasing rent and “above-market” leases with various Landlords; (b) declining performance within the current portfolio for a variety of industry-wide developments; (c) tightening terms with various trade creditors; and (d) declining census. The Company has struggled to respond to liquidity issues for several months. In July of 2018, Administrative Agent began establishing Borrowing Base reserves, resulting in reduced availability under the Credit Facility.

The immediate cause for the filing of these Chapter 11 Cases was due to liquidity issues resulting from reduced Borrowing Base availability. This problem was compounded when certain of the Debtors’ landlords issued termination and/or default notices (the “Landlord Notices”).

Certain vendors demanded modification to payment terms, which restricted or eliminated the Company’s trade credit. Moreover, relationships with current and prospective Employees and Patients have been affected by the uncertainty. For example, several recent candidates have rescinded their offers to join the Company and expressed concern regarding the Company’s financial stability.

That story should sound wildly familiar by now.

Of significance, however, is the company’s relationship with Sabra Health Care REIT Inc. ($SBRA), which is one of the major landlords who issued termination/default notices (over which there is some dispute as to whether they were subsequently withdrawn). Sabra owns CCP which is the debtors’ second lien lender. More importantly, Sabra is the landlord on approximately 40 of the debtors’ facilities. The debtors owe Sabra $31.78mm in unpaid rent, common area maintenance charges and taxes.

Interestingly, Sabra’s own commentary about the debtors’ situation probably didn’t help matters much. On its Q3 earnings call on November 6, Sabra said a number of things about the debtors’ inability to pay rent, a potential sale of the debtors, its efforts to obtain financing, and management’s skittishness about any go-forward transaction that would endanger their jobs. On that last point, Sabra indicated that it was discussing go-forward options directly with the debtors’ board as a result. The debtors’ various constituents could obvious see/hear these comments and react accordingly.

But the Sabra commentary also demonstrates how difficult the current environment is for SNFs right now. Some big takeaways from their earnings call:

• It is reducing its exposure to Texas, its largest state, “which also happen to be the one state where there is an oversupply of skilled nursing beds in a number of markets due to new product. And Texas also has one of the weakest Medicaid systems in the country.” (PETITION Note: scour the Googles for other SNFs highly indexed to Texas for future distressed/bankruptcy candidates).

• Skilled operators (read: private equity) are in acquisition mode and, therefore, pricing is high even for product that isn’t of the highest quality. (PETITION Note: “too much money chasing too few deals.” This should, theoretically, bode well for the debtors’ proposed sale, if so). Sabra’s CEO Rick Matros said, “we're not seeing much good skill product and I really believe that that's a function of the skilled operators are buying everything all of us are selling, but they're not putting reasonable assets on the market because everybody sees the light at the end of the tunnel both in terms of the demographic in terms of decreasing supply and in terms of the positive benefits of PDPM reimbursements system that’s going go into effect next October.”

• Smaller SNFs will succumb to bankruptcy. Matros added, “My guess is over the course of the next year particularly with the mom-and-pops, we'll probably see more products come to market as a number of the smaller providers determine that they don't have the wherewithal or the desire to go through the transition that is going to be required to go through to be successful post-PDPM.”

In other words, there should be a healthy amount of M&A and distressed activity in the near future in the SNF space.

Anyway, back to the debtors: they hope to use the automatic stay provided by the filing to transition underperforming facilities to new operators in coordination with its landlords and sell their profitable facilities. They will use cash collateral to fund the cases.

• Jurisdiction: N.D. of Texas (Judge Houser)

• Funded Capital Structure: $33.06mm RCF, $9.53mm HUD RCF, $4.3mm CCP (second lien) Loan   

• Company Professionals:

  • Legal: Polsnielli PC (Jeremy Johnson, Trey Monsour, Stephen Astringer, Nicholas Griebel)

  • Conflicts Legal: Huntons Andrews Kurth LLP

  • CRO & Financial Advisor: Newbridge Management LLC (Kevin O’Halloran) & BDO USA LLP

  • Communications Consultants: Sitrick and Company

  • Claims Agent: Omni Management Group LLC (*click on company name above for free docket access)

• Other Parties in Interest:

  • Large Creditor: Sabra Health Care Reit, Inc.

  • Sponsor: Silver Star Investments LLC

  • Admin Agent & Lender: CIBC Bank USA

    • Legal: Duane Morris LLP (John Weiss, Rosanne Ciambrone) & (local) Haynes and Boone LLP (Stephen Pezanosky, Matthew Ferris)