T. Andrew Smith
Analyst · Jefferies.
Well, Brian, that's a good question. The way that we think about it is what we're really trying to do is to hit that efficient frontier of maximizing revenue, to state the obvious, right? And that's -- that obviously has 2 primary drivers to it, which is occupancy and rate and how they relate to one another. We have consciously, in the Brookdale portfolio over the last several years, we have been really trying to capture rate, which, in many ways, is the more powerful driver, at least over time, to capitalize the -- on the investments that we've made in the Brookdale portfolio. We expect to do the same thing in the Emeritus portfolio. Now obviously, you've got a balance. The -- there's an integral -- there's an obvious direct correlation in many cases between rate and occupancy, and we are always conscious of that because, again, we're trying to get to that efficient frontier in terms of maximizing revenue. And -- but we really do believe, over the longer run, getting rate is really going to be an important driver for this business as we move forward. Now, right now, in all frankness, in the many market where Emeritus and Brookdale directly competed in the past -- well, for the past many years, we are trying to get much more sophisticated and much more -- well, just much more sophisticated on our pricing methods, our pricing methodology and our pricing tools with respect to those markets. And I'd remind you that the way the laws work in this country, we couldn't -- the folks who do this work, both in the field and here at our corporate office, they couldn't even access the detailed sales data or marketing data for the Emeritus communities or vice versa until after we closed because of the way the antitrust rules work. So we've just begun that, this effort, to really finally get to a place where we feel like we can really maximize pricing while, at the same time, maximizing occupancy in these shared markets. And again, that's a unquantified but, in our view, huge upside to this merger which we expect to realize over time.