Greg Silvers, president and CEO of EPR Properties (NYSE: EPR), joined REIT.com for a CEO Spotlight at REITWISE 2016: NAREIT’s Law, Accounting and Finance Conference at the Marriott Marquis in Washington, D.C.
EPR Properties holds assets in areas such as entertainment, recreation and education.
Silvers has been at the helm of EPR for the past year, succeeding co-founder David Brain. He remarked that one lesson he has learned in that time is the importance of identifying and retaining highly qualified staff.
Turning to the state of the economy, “there’s no doubt that the economy is not as strong as most would like,” Silvers said. From EPR’s standpoint, however, the economy still has a degree of resiliency, and “our businesses are doing fine,” he said.
Silvers noted that EPR, especially in the lower-cost portion of its entertainment property portfolio, has been the beneficiary of lower gasoline prices.
Silvers also commented on the particular challenges EPR faces as it meets with investors. Because of EPR’s diversity, “our story is a little more difficult to tell,” he said.
Silvers stressed that unlike other commodity players in the triple-net lease space, EPR takes more of a portfolio manager approach. “We buy a lot of things we know a lot about,” he said.
When meeting with investors, “we spend a lot of time trying to give them confidence that we understand not only the real estate side, but also the industry metrics,” Silvers said.