InterRent Real Estate Investment Trust

Ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the inter-entery third quarter earnings conference call and webcast. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. I would now like to turn the conference over to Renee Wei. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining Interim Reads Q3 2024 earnings call. My name is Renee Wei, Director of Investor Relations and Sustainability. You can find a presentation to accompany today's call on the investor section of our website under events and presentations. We're pleased to have Brad Cutsey, President and CEO, Kurt Miller, CFO, and Dave Nevins, COO on the line today. As usual, the team will present some prepared remarks and then we'll open it up to questions. Before we begin, I want to remind listeners that certain statements about future events made on this conference call are forward-looking in nature. Any such information is subject to risk, uncertainties, and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially. For more information, please refer to the cautionary statements on forward-looking information in the Reeds News release and MDNA, dated November 4, 2024. During the call, management will also refer to certain non-IFRS measures. Although the REIT believes these measures provide useful supplemental information about its financial performance, they are not organized measures and do not have standardized meanings under IFRS. Please see the REIT's MDNA for additional information regarding non-IFRS financial measures, including reconciliations to the nearest IFRS measures. Brad, over to you.

Thanks Renee and thank you everyone for joining us today. We've had a great quarter with strong year-over-year increases in our key operating numbers, translating into solid top-line growth. By leveraging our strong operating platform, we've successfully converted that growth into meaningful bottom-line gains. Over the busy summer leasing season, the rental market conditions remained very tight as shown by our occupancy rate increasing by 120 basis points year-over-year and 20 basis points quarter-over-quarter, reaching 96.4% in September. We signed 1,279 new leases during the quarter, basically matching our Q3 2023 number, which was the highest Q3 in our history. This increase in occupancy rates is accompanied by steady growth in rental rates. Average monthly rent for our total portfolio reached 1,687 in September. showing a year-over-year growth of 7% and same-property AMR growth of 5.6%. This growth has moderated compared to last year and remained above our 10-year average of 5.5%. We've seen strong opportunity rate gains in AMR growth across all the regional markets, particularly in Montreal, where we saw same-property opportunity improved by 300 basis points to reach 96.3% by achieving an AMR growth of 6.4%. and is bringing strong demand for centrally located high-quality communities. Dave will share more regional details later in the call. Moving to the next slide, same property revenue increased by 7.9% June Q3. We are proud to have achieved a same property proportionate NOI margin of 68.2%, which is close to our historical all-time high. This marks an improvement of 40 base points year-over-year. We achieved this by focusing on what we can control, resulting in lower property operating costs and utility costs as a percentage of revenue. Proportion of NOI for the same portfolio increased by 8.7% to reach $41.5 million. As highlighted on the right-hand side of the slide, strong AMR growth combined with interest rate tailwind on a debt stock has translated into substantial FFO and AFFO growth, driven by a 6.4% new over-year reduction in financing costs. We focused on strategically using the proceeds from the capital recycling efforts and refinancing activities, which effectively reduced our outstanding mortgage balances and kept our barrel rate debt exposure at below 1%. With our weighted average interest rate at 3.3% compared to 3.48% last year, we were able to bring our financing costs down by 210 basis points to 22.7% of our revenue during the quarter. In Q3, we achieved a 9.7% increase in FFO, reaching $23.4 million and an 8.9% increase in FFO per unit, now standing at $0.159. delivered 20.9 million AFFO, or 14.2 cents per unit, an increase of 10.3% and 9.2%, respectively. Our solid financial position has continued to strengthen. Year-over-year, our debt-to-growth book value ratio has decreased by 10 base points to 38.5% as of September 30th. As of the end of Q3, our credit facilities of $225 million remain undrawn, and we had $193.4 million in unencumbered properties and approximately $295 million in available liquidity. Our strong balance sheet and financial flexibilities have enabled us to explore both internal and external opportunities that will set us up for sustainable long-term growth. One such opportunity has materialized with our acquisition of a new-build community in Montreal, which we'll discuss in more detail later. As we continue to carefully evaluate future opportunities, I want to reiterate our commitment to disciplined capital allocation. Our ongoing disposition program will allow us to recycle capital effectively. We have a strong track record of upholding the integrity of our balance sheet and it remains a top priority going forward. Now I'll let Dave take it from here for a look at some of our operating highlights.