I am pleased to welcome you to Omega Healthcare Investors’ sustainability website. With this website, we aim to provide a comprehensive review of our efforts to enhance our environmental stewardship, social commitment, and corporate governance.
The sustainability landscape is fast-moving and ever-changing, and we intend to continuously advance and refine our environmental, social and governance (“ESG”) efforts to reflect this evolving backdrop. As such, this website will serve as our sustainability report, which we can update periodically as we continue to evolve our policies and disclosures.
We have consistently valued long-term investing through our history, and this applies to how we run our business just as it does to how we allocate capital. We invest in our team members, we invest in our corporate infrastructure, we invest in our communities, and we invest in our environment. We believe it is only through investing in each of these areas that we can truly achieve a sustainable business model.
We are fortunate to have a team that deeply believes in the importance of this model. This begins with our board of directors. Our Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee maintains primary oversight over our sustainability efforts, while our entire board is engaged in this effort and updated quarterly on our progress. The Company has also established an ESG Steering Committee, with senior representation from all divisions of the Company, to support an approach that is both holistic and comprehensive.
While our net lease operating structure limits our control over the operation of our properties, we still believe we can play a positive role in improving their environmental footprint. We recently began implementing a capital expenditure sustainability initiative, which financially incentivizes operators, through discounts on our standard cost of capital, to invest in sustainable capital projects that also provide a favorable return on investment. We also continue to focus on developing new properties to green certification standards, and we seek to achieve carbon neutrality for our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by the end of 2023.
Our social focus starts with our team members. They are the life blood of our business, and as they succeed and grow, so does the Company. As such, we offer opportunities for training and professional development, as well as a robust benefits package, to support our employee base and attract and retain the highest caliber of talent. We recognize that this talent comes from varied backgrounds and therefore have implemented a number of diversity and inclusion initiatives to ensure we find and develop a broad range of exceptional people.
While we believe we have implemented strong corporate governance practices, we continue to enhance them as we felt appropriate, introducing proxy access for shareholders in 2021 and expanding the diversity of our board over the last several years. As with all aspects of our business, we continue to dialogue with our investors on areas where we can meaningfully enhance our corporate governance practices.
We thank you for taking the time to learn more about our sustainability efforts and encourage you to reach out if you have any questions or comments at investorrelations@omegahealthcare.com
Sincerely,
Taylor Pickett
President & Chief Executive Officer