The Pennant Group, Inc. Common Stock 2026 Jefferies Healthcare Services and Technology Conference

Yeah, sure. Well, excited to be here today. A lot of what I will focus on a little bit is just obviously there has been a lot of conversation around the transition of the Amedisys and LHC Group assets. We have been really excited about the performance in our same-store or existing operations. Anytime you do an acquisition that is the size of what we have been in the midst of the last year, it can be really disruptive. Yet in the middle of all of that, our operators, because of our model, their drive to be successful, have continued to drive value. We have seen improvements from a margin front. We have had a major focus on operational excellence, creating productivity gains, and just really driving value across the business lines. That is tough to do when you are in transition mode.

In our model, we require a lot of our local teams to support anytime we do an acquisition. I think that same-store improvement and growth, and we have seen census growth, we have seen margin improvement, we have seen revenue, and then bottom-line performance as well. In addition to that, obviously, we have also been transitioning these new assets in the Southeast, and so far so good. We have been a little bit ahead of schedule. As a result of that, our performance has been stronger in 2026. Now we are cautiously optimistic. As I think as we look to the end of the year and then going into 2027, what you are really seeing is significant momentum across our businesses, whether that is home health, hospice, in these new acquisitions, existing operations, but also in our senior living business as well, as we have done a number of acquisitions there too.

We have got leaders in place. We have got momentum in the business. We recognize, though, that there is still some waves going on within the transition of these assets in the Southeast. We want to make sure we are conservative enough through looking through the end of the year to acknowledge that there might be some lumpiness in the results there too.

Yeah, Brian, thanks for the question. And like Brent said, we're really excited to be here. I think when you look at our core business, there's a couple of things that are really important. I think first, our operating model is based on this principle that if you empower local leaders, you give them transparent data, you give them decision-making, and then you support them with cluster accountability, so peer accountability in the right way, they're going to be able to make decisions that are in concert with their aligned incentive programs. And so when you look at how do you achieve 9, 10, 11% same-store growth over the course of the last three years, it really comes back to how do you meet the needs of the local community in a way that differentiates you.

And I think what our teams have been able to do is they've been able to recruit talent, they've retained that talent, and they have set themselves apart by being willing to adapt to whatever the unique needs of the particular community they're serving is. And that's really our recipe. It's really about empowering local leaders, aligning their incentives, and then facilitating their growth by giving them transparent data and best practice sharing across the organization.

Yeah. The demand environment, obviously, we are in the early stages of what we call the silver wave. That means that our average home health patient, 77, 78 years old, our average hospice patient, 82 to 83 years old, our senior living patient is sort of right there in that middle area. You think 80 years ago, World War II is ending, the baby boom is beginning, and we've got approximately 4,000 seniors every day aging into a need for our services. From a demand standpoint, particularly in certain communities, there is more volume than we can service with the staff we have. It is more a workforce question than it is a volume availability question.

But I think as you sort of zoom out, the ability to grow comes back to meeting the needs clinically, and I think that's where we've been able to sort of differentiate ourselves and set ourselves apart, is just in producing clinical outcomes that health systems, that payers, they have wanted to partner with us. That's opened avenues for our local leaders to take more volume, and has helped us take market share.

I would just add, we are a leadership company first. The reason for that is we fundamentally believe if we have the right leaders in place in our local operations, they're going to create an environment where employees want to work, and by extension, we'll have opportunities to serve the communities in a greater way. Really, our growth is tied to the leaders that we have in place. It's why we've invested in our leadership training programs. It's why we've continued to focus on our core value of customer second, creating an environment where employees want to be. Because if the demand is there and it's just a function of having the staff, if we can be the best employer in the markets that we operate in, then naturally we'll be able to meet the demands as well.

Well, there's a number of different things. One is, obviously you've got the transition. We've got to move all of the teams onto our systems and create the value that's there. We think we have a technology stack that is at the top of the market, and so therefore it allows us to drive better efficiencies through our services. We can have higher productivity. It's also a matter of providing clarity to the leaders that are in place and the teams that are in place. What we've found is what we measure, we improve. We scoreboard and we work together closely. Those clusters work together to establish goals and expectations and commitments, and then we hold each other accountable to achieving those things. That's just our operating model going into effect, and then we're overlaying that with this technology stack that's driving the value.

From that standpoint, that's one of the levers. The other thing that I would think about, John referenced this earlier in our model, in many cases, we're either bringing in new leaders that have gone through our CEO and training program, or we have existing leaders that maybe were managing to budgets and just had surface level targets that they had to achieve. Whereas now we're turning over the entire P&L and all decision making at the local level. So they're working in their communities. They're understanding how to pull the right levers, which partners in the community to collaborate with. They can come up with real time solutions for challenges in those communities. They can be selective about which payers to work with, if there's better MA rates with one payer versus another.