Choice Properties Real Estate Investment Trust

Good morning. My name is Rob, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Choice Properties Real Estate Investment Trust fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again, press the star one. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Simone Cole, General Counsel and Secretary. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to Choice Properties Q4 2025 conference call. I'm joined this morning by Raelle Diamond, President and Chief Executive Officer, Aaron Johnson, Chief Financial Officer, David Mualem, Senior Vice President, Leasing and Operations, and Niall Collins, Executive Vice President, Development and Construction. Rael and Erin will provide a recap on our fourth quarter operational results and annual highlights before we open the lines for Q&A, where Niall and David will join to answer your questions. Before we begin today's call, I would like to remind you that by discussing our financial and operating performance and in responding to your questions, we may make forward-looking statements, including statements regarding choice properties, objectives, strategies to achieve those objectives, as well as statements with respect to management's beliefs, plans, estimates, intentions, outlooks, and similar statements concerning anticipated future events, results, circumstances, performance, or exceptions that are not historical facts. These statements are based on our current estimates and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the conclusions in these forward-looking statements. Additional information on the material risks that can impact our financial results and and the assumptions that we are made in applying and making these statements can be found in the recently filed Q4 2025 financial statements and management discussion and analysis, which are available on our website and on CEDAR Plus. And with that, I turn the call over to Ram.

Thank you, Simone, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our Q4 conference call. Before I begin my comments, I want to provide an exciting update on our team. I'm pleased to share that David Muallem has returned to Choice Properties as SVP Leasing and Operations. David brings exceptional experience back to Choice from his time at Love Law overseeing their real estate leasing and new store development. Previous to that, David spent a decade with our organization, and we're very excited to welcome him back. With David's return, Niall Collins is transitioning back to his primary role of EVP development and construction, where he will be focused on delivering a robust development pipeline. I want to thank Niall for his leadership and the stability he provided leading both our operational and development teams over the past two years. This transition underscores the depth of our leadership team as we continue to execute on our strategy for unit holders. With that, are now focused on our results. We are pleased to deliver another strong year of operational and financial results as our team continues to execute on our strategic priorities. Our full year performance in 2025 demonstrated the strength of a necessity-based retail portfolio, a well-located industrial portfolio, and our ability to create value through development. Together, these factors enabled us to once again meet our earnings outlook, delivering same asset cash NIR growth of 2.2% and FFO per unit growth of 3.6%. We completed this while further strengthening our industry-leading balance sheet, ending the year with leverage at 7.0 times. During the year, we remained extremely active in our capital recycling, completing 801 million of real estate transactions. This included 460 million of acquisitions and $341 million of dispositions for net acquisition activity of 119 million. We also continued to create value through our development, transferring 17 new commercial projects totaling 836,000 square feet These projects were completed at an average yield of 7.4% and resulted in $47 million of value creation. Given the strength and stability of our business and our strong performance in 2025, our Board of Trustees has approved our fourth consecutive distribution increase, effective March 2026. This increase reflects our ongoing commitment to returning capital to unit holders. Turning now to our fourth quarter results. The momentum in our business continued, and we finished the year in a solid position. Our portfolio occupancy increased 20 basis points to 98.2% in the fourth quarter, primarily due to new leasing in our industrial portfolio. Combined with favorable renewal spreads of approximately 22%, this drove healthy same-asset NOI growth of 2.4%. Our leasing spreads in the quarter were completed on 1.6 million square feet, representing very strong retention rate of 92.4%. We also completed 233,000 square feet of new leasing, highlighted by positive absorption in Ontario retail and Alberta industrial portfolios. In retail, we continue to see robust demand for necessity-based sensors nationwide. In the quarter, we completed 596,000 square feet of renewals and 89,000 square feet of new leasing. This drove our retail occupancy of 20 basis points, ending the year at 98%. Renewal activity was particularly strong, with leasing spreads of 16.8%, led by Atlantic and Quebec regions and tenants in the dollar store, liquor, and office supplies categories. Looking ahead, our team views vacancies and potential backfalls as opportunities to release space at both higher rents and to higher covenant tenants. Beyond our existing portfolio, we remain active in advancing retail intensifications and new greenfield developments and attractive risk-adjusted yields. Erin will speak more about our development completion shortly. Our industrial portfolio has remained remarkably resilient, with occupancy increasing another 50 basis points in the quarter to end the year at 98.8%. The leasing progress is consistent with what we outlined at the beginning of the year. During the quarter, we had a very strong retention rate of 93.8%, completing over 1 million square feet of renewals at a spread of 26%. Included in our leasing activity was 514,000 square feet of renewals in the GTA where the tenant had a fixed rate option resulting in a spread of 17%. Excluding this renewal, our spread averaged 40%. Our team also completed 138,000 square feet of new leasing at rents 31% above our average in-place rents. This leasing activity highlights the significant market to market and embedded growth in our industrial portfolio. We continue to see a stabilizing industrial market broadly for high quality generic assets in the right markets and remain focused on advancing our industrial development pipeline at Choice Caledon Business Park. Lastly, in our mixed use and residential portfolio, we delivered stable performance in 2025, reflecting the high quality of our office assets, which are primarily leased to affiliate entities. While select residential properties have experienced some pressures from new supply, they remain supported by strong long-term fundamentals in urban markets, and we remain committed to a pipeline of high-quality, transit-orientated residential developments. Finally, touching on transaction activity in the quarter. We remained active on our capital recycling program, completing approximately $261 million of real estate transactions during the quarter. This included $67 million of acquisitions and $195 million of dispositions. Our most significant transaction in the quarter was a new 50-50 joint venture with Wellington across two office towers at Young and St. Clair in Midtown Toronto. This transaction included the third-party acquisition of 2 St. Clair Avenue East for $43 million at Choice's 50% share, excluding costs, while concurrently selling a 50% interest in the Western Center to Wellington for $76 million. Overall, the transaction represents a net $33 million office disposition for Choice. This was a strategic transaction as the two buildings are directly adjacent and operate as an integrated complex. with shared common areas, including a shared loading dock. Choice will manage both properties going forward. During the quarter, we also disposed of a non-strategic industrial asset for $18 million and $101 million of retail assets that we disclosed last quarter. All dispositions were completed above IFRS values. We also acquired a retail center for $23 million in Peterborough, and subsequent to the quarter, completed $28 million of additional retail acquisitions. Overall, 2025 marked an active year of capital recycling, as our team remained focused on maintaining the quality of our market-leading portfolio while leveraging our balance sheet to grow our business through net acquisitions. With that, I'll turn the call over to Erin to discuss our financial results and additional capital allocation activity. Erin?