Boardwalk Real Estate Investment Trust

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the BoardWalk Real Estate Investment Trust third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we'll conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on November 9th, 2022. Now I'd like to turn the conference over to Eric Bowers, VP of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, David, and welcome to the BoardWalk REIT 2022 Third Quarter Results Conference Call. With me here today are Sam Collius, Chief Executive Officer, James Ha, President, Lisa Smandich, Chief Financial Officer, and Jeff Klaus, Vice President of Asset Management and Development. Please note that this call is being broadly disseminated by way of webcast. If you have not already done so, please visit bwalk.com slash investors where you will find a link to today's presentation as well as PDF files of the trust financial statements, MD&A, as well as supplemental information package. Starting on slide two, we would like to remind our listeners that certain statements in this call and presentation may be considered forward-looking statements. Although the expectations set forth in such statements are based on reasonable assumptions, BoardWalk's future operation and its actual performance may defer materially from those in any forward-looking statements. Additional information that could cause actual results to defer materially from these statements are detailed in BoardWalk's publicly filed documents. I would like to now turn the call over to Sam Collius.

Thank you, Eric, and welcome everyone to our Q3 2022 conference call. Starting on slide four, our performance with our gap and non-GAAP measures of FFO per unit, net asset value, and unit holder equity, and fair value of investment properties, all seeing an increase from the prior quarter last year with the exception of profit as a result of non-cash accounting adjustments for fair value relative to the prior quarter last year. Slide five, our Q3 2022 FFO per unit growth is at 7.6% from the same quarter last year, reflecting stronger apartment rental fundamentals in our core markets. Slide six, our strategy to create value for our stakeholders begins with our people. We are so grateful for our extraordinary team who continues to innovate and deliver our places, homes for our resident members. In turn, this leads to leading earnings performance, which we believe will continue to result in strong total returns for our stakeholders. Our strategic focuses are significant organic growth from utilizing our proven platform that focuses on operational excellence to optimize NOI growth. When we pair this with the current improvement in apartment rental market fundamentals on a solid foundation of some of the most affordable rents in Canada, we are well positioned to continue to accelerate on our organic growth trend. Accretive capital recycling focuses on opportunistic investment into acquisitions, development, and investment into our own high-quality existing portfolio with a tactical unit buyback. These opportunistic investments, combined with our operational optimization, have positioned BoardWalk for increasing asset values within BoardWalk's diversified and high-quality multifamily portfolio. Our solid financial foundation provides flexibility on our balance sheet with our growing free cash flow and with CMHC insurance on 95% of our financings, which provides access to low-cost mortgage capital with reduced renewal risk. Slide 7, we are delivering solid growth. Boardwalk's existing exposure to strong rental demand, non-price-controlled markets with increased immigration, significant organic growth as Alberta and Saskatchewan have some of the most affordable rental rates in the country with limited new supply versus demand in both international and interprovincial migration. Rising interest rates, making homeownership more expensive, and rising construction costs are all widening the gap between our replacement cost of our assets and our current evaluation construction levels remain low relative to historical levels supported by a stronger demand for housing our largest market edmonton has seen significant occupancy gains contributing to our solid performance apartment rental fundamentals continue to improve with lower vacancy and new and incentives almost disappearing, along with a continued drop in existing incentives. All of our other markets have high occupancy and strong apartment rental fundamentals. Slide 8, Alberta continues to have a significant amount of job vacancies in several sectors. Housing affordability continues to attract companies and contributes to significant positive in-migration. Headlines continue to reflect a diversifying economy that some economists predict will avoid recession. Slide 9 shows our large presence in affordable and non-price-controlled markets, with Alberta and Saskatchewan representing 62.5% and 10.4% of our portfolio. Boardwalk's current mark-to-market, which includes the reduction of incentives, averages $143 per suite and equates to a significant $55.6 million revenue opportunity. Slide 10, occupied rents in Alberta adjusted for inflation are at the same levels of March 2016. There remains a significant gap between occupied rents and the change over consumer price index over the last eight years. Slide 11 shows our high affordability in our core Edmonton and Calgary markets of rent below 30% of medium rental household income. This slide also shows how balanced our supply is with higher demand of in-migration in our core markets. Slide 12 shows our improving occupancy as a result of improving apartment rental fundamentals in all our key markets. Move outs versus last year are also dropping as our retention increases. Slide 13 shows our key operational metrics with higher occupancy, lower incentives, higher occupied rents, resulting in higher revenues for the quarter. Slide 14 shows continual improvement in net new and renewal rental rates. Year over year, we have seen a significant improvement. Slide 15 shows a 2.3% sequential quarterly revenue gain, up from 2.2% last quarter, reflecting strong apartment rental fundamentals for all our markets. We would like to now pass the call on to Lisa Smandich, who will provide us with an overview of our portfolio performance, balance sheet, and repositioning results. Lisa?