First Capital, Inc.

Good afternoon. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Quarter 3 2024 conference call. During the presentation, all participants will be in listen-only mode. Afterward, we will conduct a question and answer session. At this time, if you have a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. I would now like to turn the conference over to Alison. Please proceed with your presentation. Thank you.

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. In discussing our financial and operating performance and in responding to your questions during today's call, we may make forward-looking statements. These statements are based on our current estimates and assumptions, many of which are beyond our control and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in these statements. A summary of these underlying assumptions, risks, and uncertainties is contained in our various securities filings, including our Q3 MD&A, our MD&A for the year ended December 31, 2024, and our current AIF, which are available on CDAR Plus and our website. These forward-looking statements are made as of today's date, and except as required by securities law, we undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any such statements. During today's call, we will also be referencing certain financial measures that are non-IFRS. These do not have standardized meanings prescribed by IFRS and should not be construed as alternatives to net income or cash flow from operating activities determined in accordance with IFRS. Management provides these measures as a complement to IFRS measures to aid in assessing the REIT's performance. These non-IFRS measures are further defined and discussed in our MD&A which should be read in conjunction with this conference call. I will now turn the call over to Adam.

Okay, thank you very much, Alison. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our Q3 conference call. At our investor day earlier this year, we outlined the key objectives that we aim to deliver over the long term. They include consistent growth in FFO, net asset value, and distributions, each on a per-unit basis. Following another strong quarter, we remain well-positioned to deliver on all of them. I say this for two reasons. Firstly, the strong fundamentals for grocery and retail real estate. Demand for retailers is robust and rents are rising. The second reason is the continued successful execution of our strategies. 2024 is shaping up to be a year of great progress. Our third quarter results were solid across the board, with a major highlight once again being the strength in leasing. Portfolio occupancy and same property NOI were both up. We also saw strong growth in rental rates on lease renewal spreads. We continued to secure higher contractual growth rates during the renewal terms. Last quarter, we had a number of questions on this topic, so I'm going to take a moment to provide clarity. Our lease renewal spread metric is calculated by measuring the increase in net rent per square foot from the last year of the expiring term to the first year of the renewal term. In Q3, this spread or lift was 12.4%. Again, this only reflects the lifted rents during the first year of the renewal term. But as I mentioned, in most cases, we have been successful in negotiating contractual rent steps beyond the first year and throughout the renewal term. Historically, those rent steps typically averaged between 1 to 1.5% per annum. Year-to-date in 2024, those growth rates have more or less doubled. This can be seen through the second lease renewal lift metric that we measure and provide to our investors. For this metric, we similarly calculate the rent increase from the last year of the expiring term. But instead of measuring the rent increase to year one of the renewal term, we use the average net rent throughout the renewal term. In Q3, this number was 16.9%, which is 450 basis points higher than the 12.4% spread calculated only on year one rent. The important takeaway is that both of these renewal spread numbers are tracking higher this year than our long-term average. The positive environment has also helped our leasing team to secure improved cost recoveries in several of the renewed leases, We have also been successful in obtaining qualitative improvements. For example, no build and use restriction relaxations. In short, the leasing environment remains very healthy. We continue to be active on new deals across all of SCR's core tenant categories. I want to come back to and briefly comment on the objectives our strategy is designed to deliver. Two of the key ones are stability and growth in FFO and NAV. I'll start with FFO, or more specifically, operating FFO, which is more indicative of FCR's underlying earnings. Year-to-date, through the first three quarters, the headline OFFO is $1.04 versus $0.87 per unit over the same prior year time frame. This represents year-over-year growth through the first nine months of the year of 20%. OFFO is typically, or at least is intended to be, a normalized earnings metric. But this reported 20% growth rate includes several non-recurring items. Therefore, it's important to drill a bit deeper in order to understand the trend of the underlying business. Once these adjustments are made, the adjusted OFFO growth rate is approximately 7%. Now, in this regard, there are four major adjustments to OFFO as reported. Two items relate to 2023. The first is a $3.8 million legal settlement in FCR's favor. The second is an expense of $6.9 million relating to costs associated with unit holder activism. The net negative impact of these two items lowered 2023 OFFO by $3.1 million which, of course, makes for an easier comp this year and a higher growth rate, all other things being equal. The remaining two items relate to 2024. On a nine-month basis, they have both increased that OFFO. The first is a $9.5 million property sale assignment fee reported in Q1. The second is an $11.3 million density bonus included in Q3 which relates to a development property we previously sold. In substance, both of these are better characterized as disposition proceeds. However, the accounting requirements include them in and consequently increase OFFO. Excluding these four items provides a more trendline view of the underlying business. By doing so, our year-to-date OFFO growth rate changes from 20% to just over 7%. Although it's obviously important for us to provide the headline number for OFFO growth, I don't want to take anything away from the lower adjusted number. So to be clear, we are very pleased with the strong year-to-date adjusted OFFO growth rate of 7%. At our investor date earlier this year, we laid out our three-year plan for investors. In that plan, with a key objective to deliver an OFFO CAGR of at least 3%. That's not to say that we will have greater than 3% OFFO growth every year, but our objective is to average a greater than 3% CAGR over the course of the three-year timeframe. With our Q3 results and after adjusting OFFO growth down to 7%, we remain nicely ahead of our internal plan for the year and we are also tracking favorably against our three-year plan. Moving to net asset value, NAV was relatively flat this quarter at close to $22 per unit. The things that are largely within our control, such as leasing, asset management, and dispositions, have gone very well this year and have had a positive impact on our NAV. However, IFRS property values have taken a bit of a hit as a result of higher interest rates, and their lag effect on the property investment markets. That being said, the Bank of Canada is now clearly in an easing cycle, and if interest rates continue to decline, as most economists forecast, cap rates could be favorably impacted, and consequently, so could our NAV. On to our current investment activities. We continue to be active on real estate investments in development and dispositions, which Jordi will expand on. Starting with dispositions, we continue to make very good progress in a market that has been far from easy. Since late 2022, we were tracking our results against our optimization plan. Earlier this year, we moved on from our optimization plan and introduced our three-year objectives at our investor date. In essence, the strategy underpinning the optimization plan was applied to a longer-term plan. However, it's worth noting that with both plans, both plans involve the sale of low and no-yielding assets in which our value-enhancing objectives have been achieved. Since we launched this asset divestiture plan two years ago, interest rates have increased significantly, which has made execution more difficult. We have made significant progress nonetheless. totaled or announced asset sales totaled over $750 million. These had an average yield of less than 3%. We achieved sales prices with an average premium to IFRS values of over 20%. We recognized with hindsight that we were fortunate to start when we did. These dispositions have meaningfully improved both our FFO and our balance sheet. We're pleased to report that we continue to have active deals at various stages of the transaction process, and we remain focused on and committed to premium pricing for the assets we sell. Year-to-date 2024, we have closed or announced approximately $275 million of dispositions against our full-year plan of roughly $400 million. I noted that we're working on new dispositions, some of which we expect to get done in Q4, and some that may occur next year. Given our notable progress year-to-date, and therefore regardless of where our final tally for the year comes in from here, there will not be a significant variance to our 2024 plan or our three-year plan. We continue to be confident that the combination of above-average earnings growth coupled with an even stronger balance sheet will be a unique and compelling offering across the Canadian REIT landscape. We believe we are well positioned for continued outperformance as it relates to total unit holder returns. Earlier this year, as part of our three-year plan, we summarized the opportunity for investors, which include the unit price target in the low to mid-20s as we continue to execute. We're now nine months into our three-year plan. Our actual results so far have been slightly better than the plan. So while still early, I am pleased to say that we are on track to deliver what we presented. Neil will now expand on our Q3 progress and our results. So Neil, over to you.