Canadian Apartment Properties Real Estate Investment Trust

Good morning. Thank you for attending today's Canadian Apartment Properties REIT First Quarter 2024 Results Conference Call. My name is Megan, and I'll be your moderator for today's call. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. I would now like to pass the conference over to Nicole Dolan, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Before we begin, let me remind everyone that during our conference call this morning, we may include forward-looking statements about expected future events and the financial and operating results of CAPRI, which are subject to certain risks and uncertainties. We direct your attention to slide two and our other regulatory filings for important information about these statements. I will now turn the call over to Mark Kenney, President and CEO.

Thanks, Nicole. Good morning, everyone. Joining me this morning is Stephen Coe, our Chief Financial Officer, and Julian Schoenfeldt, our Chief Investment Officer. Let's turn to slide four and begin with our operational performance. We've experienced another quarter of low turnover and vacancy, and our Canadian apartment portfolio was 98.4% occupied on March 31st, 2024. Across that, our average monthly rent was $1,552, which is meaningfully lower than the national average. These stats reflect the ongoing high demand for Capri's rental accommodation, as we remain the provider of affordable living in many of Canada's least affordable cities. We're proud of this positioning, especially as we continue to experience one of the worst housing crises our country's ever experienced. On slide five, we summarized our financial results for the first quarter as compared to Q1 of 2023. Operating revenues were up by 5.7% due primarily to strong rent growth. In addition, operating expenses as a percentage of operating revenues were down, mainly driven by our lower utility costs given the milder winter weather experience throughout the country. As a result, NOI grew by 8% and our margin expanded by 140 basis points to 64.2%. This growth offset elevated interest, which we're continuing to absorb on our credit facilities and mortgages payable. And FFO was up by 6.4% to 103.4 million. Combined with accretive purchases made under our NCIV program, which decreased our weighted average unit count by 0.9%, our diluted FFO per unit increased by 7.4% to 60.9 cents. On slide six, we have an illustration of our repositioning strategy. At CAPRE, we're focused on getting better, not bigger, and that means a laser focus on improving quality and growing earnings. To achieve this, we're purchasing new purpose-built rental apartment properties across Canada. We're proud of the progress we've made so far, with new construction assets now representing 11% of our total portfolio. We're funding these acquisitions through the sale of our older non-core legacy buildings, which we've identified to be approximately 22% of our portfolio. Our goal is to replace non-core with new build and you can see that this recycling excludes our high quality legacy apartments that comprise about half of our total portfolio. These properties have historically produced predictably higher growth returns and they remain core to our business. I will now turn things over to Julian to provide a more detailed update on our capital allocation progress.