This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
JAPARA Healthcare has suffered a $292.1 million loss after a massive write down stemming from the pandemic and the royal commission into aged care, and will not pay out a dividend.
The group’s net loss after tax was mainly attributed to a non-cash impairment charge of $291.9 million and followed a profit last year of $16.4 million.
“The non-cash impairment charge primarily concerned goodwill and followed a review of the carrying value of its assets, taking into account the impact of the COVID pandemic, the ongoing royal commission into aged care and ongoing occupancy pressures,” the group said.
COVID-19 impacted Japara’s facilities in Brighton, Doncaster East, Mount Waverley and Sunbury.
Total revenue increased 6.9% to $427.5 million while EBITDA was down 33.6% to $32.9 million.
“The 2020 financial year was a difficult period across the aged care sector with the COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacting the final quarter and compounding the earlier disruption caused by the summer bushfire,” Japara’s recently installed chief executive officer, Chris Price said.
“In addition to the COVID-19 pandemic, the sector continues to face ongoing margin compression combined with declining occupancy due to elevated levels of supply.”
Net RAD1 and ILU2 cash inflow grew to $55.8 million from $44.7 million. Total operational places increased 6.2% to 4,496. New homes opened at Robina and Mount Waverley, and extensions took place at Kingston Gardens, Brighton-Le-Sands and Mirboo North.
Japara Healthcare listed two new aged care facilities in Melbourne’s bayside region in June for sale with leaseback agreements, hoping for nearly $20 million. The listings followed Japara’s sale in March of a 71 bed facility in Springvale for $13.38 million on a yield of 5.6%, with a new lease to wholly owned subsidiary, and of a vacant site in Geelong for $4.6 million.
The group’s development pipeline has 656 net new aged care places and three co-located senior living developments.
Japara has $154 million of available liquidity.
