The fallout from the Adele Ferguson / ABC media pile on targeting Victoria’s largest land lease operator, Lifestyle Communities, continues with its share price maintaining its downward drift.
In three weeks it has shrunk from $12.56 to $8.53, a 32% drop valued at $500 million.
The ABC News has run six negative stories between 7 June and 29 July, pulling in the full land lease sector – see below.
The ABC is making bold statements like this on the land lease sector:
This is not true, but neither the ABC nor the sector can quantify resident satisfaction, or dissatisfaction.
The problem is that the sector does not have an established, valid and reputable source of independent research on the sector’s performance, especially around resident satisfaction.
If it did it would not be as easily attacked and the response could be instant and from a higher ground than a simple “but our residents love us”.
The aged care sector has StewartBrown’s benchmarking data that everyone accepts as gospel, even Governments.
But while the good times roll, operators believe things won’t change, and this is high risk.
For the record, we approached Lifestyle Communities’ Co-Founder and CEO James Kelly, and Simon Owen, then CEO of Ingenia, in 2020 to ask if they would join our Retirement Living Resident Survey. Both said they did not see the value.
Valid research and facts, not the fiction that "we are doing a great job", is insurance for all boards.
This risk is summarised well by the segment from this Lifestyle Communities notice to the ASX last week.
Reiterating, in three weeks they have lost $500M to investors and there is likely a kick-on impact on the values of their 5,000 residents’ homes.
Not good for the sector.
