European Residential Real Estate Investment Trust

Thank you for your patience, everyone. The European Residential Real Estate Investment Trust First Quarter 2023 Results Conference Call will begin in one minute's time. If you would like to ask a question, please press the star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Hello everyone and welcome to the European Residential Real Estate Investment Trust first quarter 2023 results conference call. My name is Nadia and I'll be coordinating the call today. If you would like to ask a question at the end of the presentation, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I will now hand over to your host, Nicole Dolan, Associate Director, Investor Relations to begin. Nicole, 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 eREDS, which are subject to certain risks and uncertainties. We direct your attention to slide 3 and our other regulatory filings for important information about these statements. I will now turn the call over to Mark Kenney, Chief Executive Officer.

Good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to be joining you today. With me is Jenny Chu, our Chief Financial Officer. As this is my first conference call as the CEO of eRES, I'd like to start by looking back on the REIT's four years of strong performance. Looking at slide five, eRES had its beginnings when we entered the Netherlands back in 2016. From this point, the company grew exponentially, leading to the creation of eRES on March 29, 2019, with an initial 2,091 suite. Today, eRES remains Canada's only European-focused residential REIT. We own approximately 6,900 residential suites, well diversified across the Netherlands. About half of our properties are located in the high-growth Randstad region, and the remainder in other strong, more suburban markets. We are also split with two-thirds of our portfolio being non-regulated, And on top of that, one-third of our portfolio is comprised of single-family homes, also known as Dutch row houses, or what we commonly refer to as townhouses here in Canada. On slide six, you'll see eREZ's first quarter snapshot. Our closing unit price was $3.25 a period end, which remains below our NAV per unit of $4.91 Canadian. This provides investors with the opportunity to capture what we consider to be strong value play, and it also provides investors with one of the highest distribution yields in our peer universe. Strong rental demand in the Netherlands has driven consistent rent growth for eRES, as you can see on slide seven. Since inception, we've achieved a constant annual growth rate of 4% in occupied AMR. which is at the upper end of our target range. In the first quarter, . At the same time, occupancy remained high and stable at 98.7%. On top of this, about three quarters of our residential vacancy is intentional, as we temporarily keep units offline on turnover in order to further invest in value-add upgrades and renovation. This improves the quality of our suites, the enjoyment of our residents, and our future operational and environmental performance. Importantly, eREDS has been accomplishing these strong operational results within a fluid and uncertain regulatory regime. In fact, this represents one of our primary competitive edges. We have a deep understanding of the regulatory framework but we also are strategic, adaptable, and experienced at working within changing parameters. Turning to our other quarterly updates provided on slide eight, as you can see, I am presenting this to you today in my new capacity as CEO of eRES, which became effective at the close of Q1. I'd like to acknowledge my predecessor, Philip Burns, for his strong leadership throughout the REIT's first four years. Other significant developments for this past quarter include the $25 million increase in our credit capacity, which Jenny will speak to shortly. On the valuation side, the fair value of our portfolio decreased to 1.78 billion euros at March 31st. This was mainly due to cap rate expansion in the Dutch market, partially offset by higher forward NOI on our portfolio. Our diluted FFO per unit was 0.04 euro for the quarter, trickling into an AFFO payout ratio of 85.2%, which is right in the middle of our long-term target range. I'll now turn things over to Jenny to go through our financial results in detail.