Sonida Senior Living Puts Its Operating Model to the Test at Scale
When Brandon Ribar joined Sonida Senior Living, Inc. (NYSE: SNDA) in 2019, the company owned senior housing communities across the country but lacked a unified way to run them. A reset in the company’s strategic direction sought to remedy that, laying an operational foundation that was required for planned future growth.
“My goal when I first came on board was to build an operational platform that could scale,” says Ribar, now Sonida’s president and CEO. “Every time the company would do an acquisition, they would leave a lot of the previous systems in place.”
That platform faces its largest test yet. In March, Dallas-based Sonida completed its $1.8 billion acquisition of CNL Healthcare Properties (CHP), a public, non-listed REIT with 69 senior housing communities. The purchase brought 14 property managers, new markets, and a broader shareholder base into Sonida’s orbit. As of October, Sonida owned, managed, or held investments in 164 communities with more than 16,500 units across 35 states.
The deal marks a turnaround and presents a more demanding task: applying Sonida’s operating methods across a national portfolio. Sonida is a publicly traded C-corporation, rather than a REIT. It is betting that ownership and direct operation of more communities will help improve both the resident experience and the returns from acquisitions.
From Survival to Scale
Sonida and its predecessors have provided senior housing since 1990. Originally known as Capital Senior Living, the company was founded at a time when families were looking for choices between living at home and moving into a nursing home. The goal then, Ribar says, was creating a setting that felt less institutional while offering services, social connections, and access to care.
“The philosophy today maintains some of that original goal of creating an enjoyable environment that people feel is like their home,” Ribar says. “We’ve developed and expanded on that as an industry, but also as a company over the last couple of decades.”
The company’s later growth left it with a collection of communities using different systems. Ribar joined as COO in 2019 and became CEO in 2022. Between those appointments came the pandemic, pressure on the balance sheet, and a $154.8 million recapitalization in 2021. Capital Senior Living adopted the Sonida name that year.
The financial realignment had to be matched by investment in people and operations. Sonida built executive and regional leadership teams, connected community systems, and developed the capacity to bring acquired buildings onto a shared platform.
“When did we feel like we had the people to do it?” Ribar says. “Building leadership teams that could handle growth is what set the story up to accelerate.”
Taking On the CNL Portfolio
The CHP purchase supplied more than properties. Ribar notes the acquired company had only 17 employees, while its communities were overseen by 14 outside operators. The arrangement offered Sonida a chance to apply its sales, staffing, purchasing, and pricing systems to buildings that had not all operated under one playbook. It also broadened Sonida’s shareholder base and improved the trading liquidity of its stock, he says.
Sonida did not plan to bring every building under direct management at once. Its team ranked the communities by performance and potential, then chose to tackle some with the greatest room for improvement early. A transition can mean connecting six or seven separate software systems at one property, Ribar says. It also means winning the confidence of the people who work there.
“We keep all of the people in place when we bring a community on board,” Ribar says. “Then we work with leadership at the building to really ensure that they feel good about the support that they’re receiving.”
Sonida’s default is to operate a property itself. Direct control lets it decide where to invest, introduce common systems, and offer employees incentives tied to company equity. But Ribar does not view every outside manager as temporary. He says Sonida is open to longer-term partnerships where a manager brings a clear strategic benefit.
“We’re not saying that we can run every community everywhere in the country better than anyone else,” Ribar says. “There are managers that we are working with that have really good expertise in the regions that they operate in.”
Sonida expects more value from communities it can improve through its own team, while retaining outside partners where their expertise strengthens the portfolio. Management must demonstrate that transitions improve performance without disrupting care.
Making Data Useful on Site
Sonida calls the system behind its operating model SPIN, short for Sonida Performance Insight Navigator. It draws information from sales, staffing, resident care, nurse call, and other systems into a model that community leaders can use each day. Ribar says newer AI tools can help flag unusual changes, but the practical value lies in putting relevant information in front of staff quickly.
“The biggest thing that SPIN allows us to do is see changes in real time that are occurring with the resident health profile, that are occurring with our staffing models,” Ribar says. “It puts that information in front of your team instead of making them dig through dashboards.”
A resident who suddenly needs assistance more often than usual may need a clinical check. A change in movement or behavior can prompt an alert. The system also shows how long employees take to answer a call for help.
