Company: EPR-PE
Filing Date: 2025-02-27
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001045450-25-000051
Chunk: 0

Company: EPR PROPERTIES
Filing Date: 2025-02-27
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 0
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Item 1. Business

General

EPR Properties (“we,” “us,” “our,” “EPR” or the “Company”) was formed on August 22, 1997 as a self-administered Maryland real estate investment trust (“REIT”), and an initial public offering of our common shares of beneficial interest (“common shares”) was completed on November 18, 1997. Since that time, we have been a leading net lease investor in experiential real estate, venues that create value by facilitating out-of-home leisure and recreation experiences where consumers choose to spend their discretionary time and money. We focus our underwriting of experiential property investments on key industry and property cash flow criteria, as well as the credit metrics of our tenants and customers. 

We believe that our position is further supported by the fact that our customers offer popular and affordable entertainment and social outlet options, particularly through our theatres, eat & play and cultural venues. Additionally, we believe we benefit from the regional destinations offered by our experiential lodging, ski, attractions and gaming properties, which are drive-to locations that do not require air travel.

The Company remains focused on future growth targeted in experiential property types. Experiential properties have proven to be an enduring sector of the real estate industry and we believe our strategy of diversified growth, industry relationships and the knowledge of our management team, provides us with a distinct competitive advantage. This strategy aligns with the long-term consumer trends of the growing experiential economy and offers the potential for higher growth, increased diversification and better yields. Our Education portfolio, consisting of early childhood education centers and private schools, continues as a legacy investment and provides additional geographic and property diversity. It is our intention to ultimately dispose of our Education portfolio over time and recycle the proceeds into other experiential investments. 

Our theatre customers were more severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and have seen a slower recovery than our non-theatre customers due primarily to changes in the timing of film releases, production delays and experimentation with streaming during this period.  Further slowing their recovery, our theatre customers were negatively impacted by labor disputes which caused more production delays. Going forward, we intend to significantly reduce our investments in theatres, thereby increasing the diversity of our experiential property types. We expect this to occur as we limit new investments in theatres, grow other target experiential property types and pursue opportunistic dispositions of theatre properties. 

The current environment for REITs is marked by both challenges