By

Dave Kingsley

The Market has Tanked but Most Nursing Home Stock Made Significant Gains or is Holding Steady At or Near its High of Late November

According to the American Health Care Association (AHCA), the nursing home industry lobbying and propaganda organ, providers struggle to squeeze out a tiny profit from a very tough business. As anyone who reads this blog will surmise, I don’t believe that and have an abundance of evidence to debunk the “low margin/profit big lie.”

One place to look for evidence of the industry’s big lie is the network of stock exchanges and indexes: the NYSE, NASDAQ, DOW, and S&P 500. The performance of nursing home industry shares in relation to these exchanges and indexes are indications of how they are viewed by major investors such as BlackRock, Vanguard, Charles Schwab, and other asset managers for institutional investors such as pension, college endowment, sovereign wealth, and family office funds.

At the close of the market on Friday, May 20th, 2022, the value of assets on the NASDAQ had dropped by 30 percent from its high on November 29th, 2021. The DOW was down by 11%, and the S&P closed 16.2% lower. As the table below suggests, the stock of the small number of publicly traded nursing home corporations has overall fared very well in a market downturn of major proportions. Seven of the 10 corporations that are players in the nursing home industry have minor to very large increases in their share prices since November 29th.

Genesis corporation is no longer listed on a major exchange such as the NASDAQ. At one time, Genesis was the dominant player in the industry. Due to a private equity takeover and subsequent looting, its value (market cap) sank so low that it is now traded over the counter (OTC) as “penny stock” worth 10 cents a share. Hence, a drop from 22 cents a share in late November to 10 cents at the close on Friday, is a 55% drop that has little to do with the overall value of the industry.