Canadian Apartment Properties Real Estate Investment Trust

Good morning and thank you for attending the Canadian Apartment Properties REIT Third Quarter 2024 Results Conference Call. My name is Alyssa and I will be your moderator today. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. I would now like to pass the call to your host, Nicole Dolan, Investor Relations. Nicole?

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 Schoenfeld, our Chief Investment Officer. Starting with slide four, you will see for our Canadian apartment properties, occupancy remained high at 98%, across which our average rent was $1,617 per month. Turning to slide five, strong rent growth drove the 5.2% increase in total portfolio operating revenues for the third quarter. Combined with prudent cost control measures, NOI was up by 6.1%, and our margin expanded by 60 basis points to 67.1%. This was achieved despite higher repairs and maintenance costs, which we've intentionally incurred as we scale back on certain discretionary capital expenditures, as Stephen will soon speak to. This healthy organic growth was partially offset by higher interest expense, and our diluted FFO per unit increased by 3.3% to 65.9 cents. for the current quarter end. Results for the nine months ended September 30th are shown on slide six. Again, strong rent growth of 6.4% and high occupancy of 98.1% positively contributed to 50 basis points in margin expansion on the same property portfolio. On the total portfolio, our margin grew by 100 basis points. Our nine-month diluted FFO per unit increased by 6.5%, and our payout ratio remained conservative at 57.3% for the period. Julian will soon elaborate on our capital recycling progress, but referring to slide seven, I want to take a moment to highlight again our strategy of buying recently constructed, high-quality Canadian apartment properties and selling our non-core, older legacy and ancillary properties we've covered a lot of ground on our repositioning objectives so far this year we've transacted on nearly 1 billion dollars in canadian rental properties in 2024 we've also completed 219 million in european property sales and have announced over a billion dollars in additional dispositions of residential properties in the netherlands which we expect to complete by no later than Q1 2025. The previously announced sale of our MHC portfolio for approximately $740 million is also set for closing in the fourth quarter of 2024. These dispositions will generate significant incremental capital which we plan to redeploy into paying down debt and lowering our leverage, as well as for the purchase of more on-strategy rental properties in Canada. Importantly, these strategic sales also achieve a broader objective in the simplification of the CAPRE business. We're looking forward to reallocating additional resources back into our core portfolio in Canada, where our competitive advantage are the greatest. With that, I will now turn the call over to Julian.