SmartCentres Real Estate Investment Trust

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Smart Center's REIT Q4 2024 conference call. I would like to introduce Mr. Peter Slam. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, and welcome to our fourth quarter and full year 2024 results call. I'm Peter Slam, Chief Financial Officer. I'm joined on today's call by Mitch Goldhar, Smart Center's Executive Chair and CEO, and by Rudy Gobin, our Executive Vice President, Portfolio Management and Investments. We will begin today's call with some comments from Mitch. Rudy will then provide operational highlights, and I will review our financial results. We will then be pleased to take your questions. Just before I turn the call over to Mitch, I would like to refer you specifically to the cautionary language about forward-looking information, which can be found at the front of our MD&A materials. This also applies to comments that any of the speakers make this afternoon. Mitch, over to you.

Thank you Peter. Good afternoon and welcome everyone. The retail sector in Canada continues to power along with strong fundamentals in the basics. Food, general merchandise, fashion and household value, pharmacy, general value, dollar stores. If smart centers has historically dominated the slice that is value and convenience on weekly needs. It is now supercharged in that regard. Rental growth was up 8.8% on lease extensions, excluding anchors and 6.6% overall. Cash collections are above 99%. And then same property NOI continued to deliver with 3.8% growth, all driving occupancy to a new five-year high of 98.7%. It is one thing for us to say Smart Centers has real estate of strategic appeal with a retail that serves value to Canadians. But there's another thing for the retailers themselves to say. Some, world's largest, with its 98.7% occupancy across the Smart Center's portfolio. For the quarter, we executed 192,000 square feet of deals for vacant space. And for the year, we executed 253,000 square feet of deals for new retail construction. With Walmart, as with all of our great national brands, our tenant partners' relationships continue to deepen with same-store expansions and new stores. In that respect, I am proud to say that after the year end, the REIT executed a new Walmart lease for our South Oakville Center location. This represents just one of the opportunities we are working on with Walmart and with others to more conveniently serve markets that have steadily, even rapidly grown in population over the last 10 years, but have not grown proportionally or at all in retail. Walmart will take possession of the South Oakville store later this month and we'll open this new store in late summer. In addition, I'm also pleased to announce our new Costco lease deal at Winston Churchill and 401 in Mississauga in the vacant ex-Rona store. And while we are satisfied with what the contracted rents will contribute financially in both locations, It is their non-financial contributions that are the most valuable. The enormous amount of additional shopping traffic to these two large centers will ultimately spread much additional economic activity across each center, filling vacancies, improving renewal rates, providing further expansion opportunities. In addition, We have a number of new build locations underway or to begin construction shortly with names such as Canadian Tire, Winners, HomeSense, LCBO, Sobeys, Loblaws, Dollarama, Golftown, Banks, and more. This higher level of construction activity has not been seen for some time, and we believe it will continue to spread a wide array of tenants in our Smart Center's locations. As we work closely with our tenants, every detail matters, and it is this attention to detail that enhances our tenants' and customers' experience, which by year-end has resulted in another metric, attaining a five-plus-year milestone, that is, extending over 91% of the 5.4 million square feet of tenant maturities in 2024. Rudy will have some further color in a minute, but here are a few more operational highlights and some worthy of repeating. Same property NOI excluding anchors for the three months ending December is up 6% and including anchors 3.8. Our Millway apartment leasing has reached a 95% occupancy level, well ahead of budget from a rental and time perspective. Cash collections remain strong at over 99%, again, reflection of the quality of our income and strength of our 10MX. We expect this momentum to carry on through the year and into 2026. Built on the top of this strong retail platform, we continue to build and secure significant mixed-use permissions, with over 59 million square feet already zoned, and as you know, on lands we already own. We will continue to be careful and strategic in executing the project, that is, when market conditions permit, and with appropriate financing in place. You can read about many of our future mixed-use development potentials in our MD&A, but here are a few highlights. Our development teams continue to secure residential and other mixed-use permissions across the country, and we're successful achieving 1.8 million square feet of permissions in Q4, bringing the year to a total of 9.8 million square feet. These and our other 50 million square feet of residential and mixed-use zoning achieved allow us to immediately launch when market conditions permit. In the meantime, we will continue adding these higher and better uses to our properties, improving NAB flexibility and readiness for execution. And someday, somebody other than us may care. SiteWorks and excavation were completed and construction and advancing for our 36-story artwork project here in the VMC comprising of 320 sold-out condominium units continued. To our smart living brand, the Millway, our 458-unit apartment rental project, which was completed late last year, was 95% leased at quarter end. and above planned rental rates. Construction of our Vaughan Northwest townhomes with our partner is progressing well, with 11 more closings taking place in Q4, bringing the total to 96% of the 120 pre-sold units now closed. In Leeside, construction is continuing for a 224,000-square-foot retail center, comprising primarily of a 200,000-square-foot flagship Canadian tire store. opening remains on schedule for early 2026. Our self-storage portfolio comprises 11 operating units, which now accounts for over 1.4 million square feet at 100%, with three remaining projects under construction, which on completion will bring the total to 1.9 million square feet. This portfolio continues to excel, and we intend to continue expansion as we are doing with our two new locations, one in Laval East, adjacent to our shopping center, and the other in Victoria, BC, just off the downtown core. Overall, the business continues to expand and strengthen, and we continue doing so with a strong balance sheet, while carefully managing our overall debt and the amount of floating rate debt We have increased our unencumbered pool to $9.5 billion and maintain our conservative metrics, which Peter will speak to in a moment. But before that, let me turn it over to Rudy for some more operational highlights. Rudy?