Dream Office Real Estate Investment Trust (DUN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Annual Meeting of Unitholders for Dream Office REIT. Your host for today's call is Mr. Michael Cooper, Chair and CEO of Dream Office REIT. Mr. Cooper, please go ahead.

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. As this meeting is held virtually via live audio webcast, for the purposes of the meeting today, voting on all matters will be conducted by electronic ballot. Registered unitholders and duly appointed proxy holders will be asked to vote on each business item. Unitholders and proxy holders may ask questions at any time during the meeting by submitting the question right into the text box labeled Ask a Question. We will respond to questions received on the matters of formal business just prior to closing the polls for voting. If unitholders or proxy holders wish to ask questions about the REIT's business, you may do so at any time during the meeting or during the question-and-answer session following the conclusion of the formal business of the meeting. We will now proceed with the formal portion of today's meeting. To expedite the meeting, I will move and Shannon Macri will second. I will act as Chair of the meeting. Robert Hughes will act as secretary of the meeting. For the purpose of this meeting, I appoint Leanne and Rosemary of Broadridge Financial Solutions to act as scrutineers. The Board of Trustees fixed May 21, 2020 as the record date for determining unitholders entitled to vote meeting at this meeting. An affidavit has been delivered attesting to the mailing of the notice of availability of proxy materials and the voting instructions form or form of proxy. Our circular and other material were made available through the notice and access system. I would ask the secretary to place the affidavit before the meeting and to keep the affidavit with the corporate records. I am pleased to announce that there are present by proxy a sufficient number of voting units of the REIT to constitute a quorum. Accordingly, this meeting is duly called to order and properly constituted for the transaction of business. After our formal business is concluded, I will provide a few brief remarks. The first item of business is the presentation of the REIT's 2019 annual report, which contains the REIT's audited financial statements for 2019. I note that the secretary has placed before the meeting the 2019 annual report. The next item of business is the election of trustees, the 7 trustees to be elected by the unitholders of the REIT shall hold office until the close of business of the first Annual Meeting of the Unitholders of the REIT following election or until their successors are elected or appointed. The 7 nominees are Detlef Bierbaum; Donald Charter; Jane Gavan; Robert Goodall; Kellie Leitch; Karine MacIndoe; and myself. Each of the persons nominated has confirmed that he or she is prepared to serve as trustee. Mr. Hughes, have we received any other nominations?

No. We have not.

Since there are no other nominations, I declare the nominations closed, and I move a motion to elect the trustees. The next item of business is the appointment of auditors. The Audit Committee and the Board of Trustees have recommended the reappointment of PwC as auditors. I move that PwC be appointed auditors of the REIT until the next Annual Meeting of Unitholders and that the Board of Trustees be authorized to fix their remuneration. May I have a seconder?

I second the motion.

Thank you, Shannon. The next item of business is to vote on a resolution to amend the REIT's deferred unit incentive plan to increase the number of deferred trust units and income deferred trust units that may be granted or credited under the plan by a further 500,000 units. I move to approve the resolution amending the deferred unit incentive plan as set out starting on Page 23 of the Dream Office REIT's management information circular. May I have a seconder?

I second the motion.

Thank you. We will be closing the polls for voting momentarily. Before we do so, I will ask Mr. Hughes, whether we've received any question relating to the formal business of our agenda today.

No. We have not.

Now that everyone has had the opportunity to vote, I now declare the polls for the 2020 Annual Meeting of Unitholders of Dream Office REIT closed. I've been advised by the scrutineers that a significant majority of the proxies received by management prior to the meeting have been voted for the election of trustees, the appointment of auditors and the amendment of the deferred unit incentive plan. I, therefore, confirm that the 7 nominees for election of trustees have been elected as trustees; the motion to appoint the auditors is carried; and the motion to amend the deferred unit incentive plan to increase the number of deferred trust units and income deferred trust units is carried. I would ask that the scrutineers compile the report regarding the results of voting on all business matters and results will be published on SEDAR and by press release later today. The formal items of business as set out in the Notice of Meeting have now been dealt with. As there is no further business to come before the meeting, I declare the formal part of the meeting to be concluded. I just have a very brief update on the business because we have provided updates throughout COVID over the last 3 months. I would like to thank all of the employees for doing an amazing job to care for our tenants and take care of each other through this difficult period. We're collecting rents, as we disclosed, at a good rate. We're leasing space. I think we've announced about 5% of the square foot of our entire portfolio has been leased since COVID started, and we've got another 5% of the whole space that we're currently negotiating. So that would make 10% which is a significant amount of leasing we've been doing through this period. The leasing numbers are really quite fine. We're hopeful that we can get people back to work, both from our offices, both our employees and everybody else. We will feel much more certain about the future when we see our offices being used fully again. There's a lot of uncertainty. We're -- we've got a great balance sheet. We sold 140 buildings to focus on 32 that we really liked. I'm really glad we did that work. Our buildings are competitive and desirable. We think they're going to underperform the market, both on occupancy and rental rates. And for now, we're doing our best job to support our tenants. And it will be a while before we see more information. We'll keep you informed with our continuing updates through press release. And that is the end of the presentation. It appears that there are no questions. Thank you, everyone, for joining us. And with that, we conclude today's meeting. Thank you.