Morguard Real Estate Investment Trust (MRTUN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. My name is Joanna, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Morguard REIT Annual Meeting Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Mr. Rai Sahi, Chairman and CEO, you may begin your conference.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I would like to welcome all unitholders, trustees, staff and other attendees to our annual meeting today. My name is Rai Sahi, and I'm Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of the trust. Thank you for joining us today by teleconference and webcast. Here with me is Beverley Flynn, Secretary of the company; Andrew Tamlin, Chief Financial Officer. The meeting will now come to order. I will act as the Chairman and Ms. Flynn will act as the Secretary of the meeting. I appoint Mark Thompson of the computer (sic) [ Computershare ] Trust Company of Canada to act as the Scrutineer. The notice calling this meeting of unitholder was mailed on April 6, 2020. I would ask the Secretary to read out the report.

There are 2 unitholders present in person, representing a total number of 44,716,562 units, which is 73.62% of the issued and outstanding units of the trust.

Okay. I propose to adopt the Scrutineer's report and declare this meeting is actually called and properly constituted for the transaction of business. The Secretary will annex the declaration of the mailing to the minutes. The first item of the business is to review -- receive the financial statements. Will someone move the motion?

I move that the annual report of the trust containing the audited financial statements of the trust for the year ended December 31, 2019, and the auditor's report thereon as presented to this meeting be and they are hereby received.

I second the motion.

Thank you, Bev and Andrew. You've heard the motion. All in favor? [Voting]

Contrary, if any? [Voting]

I declare the motion carried. The next item of business is the appointment of the auditor.

I move that Ernst & Young LLP be and they are hereby appointed the auditor of the trust until the close of the next Annual Meeting of the Unitholders or until their successors are duly appointed, and the trustees are hereby authorized to fix the auditor's remuneration.

I second the motion.

Thank you. You've heard the motion. All in favor? [Voting]

Contrary, if any? [Voting]

I declare the motion carried. We can now deal with the election of trustees. The meeting is now open for nominations. There are 7 trustees to be elected by the unitholders at this time. I would ask a unitholder to nominate the persons named in the management information circular.

I nominate Michael Catford, Bart Munn, Timothy Murphy, Rai Sahi, Antony Stephens, Donald Turple and Timothy Walker as trustees of the trust to hold office until the termination of the next Annual Meeting of Unitholders or until their successors are duly elected or appointed, subject to the provisions of the trust's declaration of trust.

Thank you. Are there any further nominations? If not, I declare the nominations closed. Is there a seconder from the motion?

I second the motion.

Thank you. You've heard the motion. All in favor? [Voting]

Contrary, if any? [Voting]

I declare the motion carried and that all persons previously nominated have been properly elected as trustees for the ensuing year, subject to the trust's declaration of trust. With all the formalities of the meeting now concluded, I'm pleased to share with you some of our strategy and accomplishments from 2019. And a question-and-answer would follow. [Presentation]

We will now open the floor to questions.

[Operator Instructions]

It looks like there is no questions.

There are no questions on the phone. We will now go to any questions that may have arrived from the webcast.

I have one question. What percentage of tenants not paying rent have business interruption insurance that will cover all or a portion of their outstanding rent? [indiscernible] Andrew?

I don't think we have an answer to that.

Yes. We -- so we don't really have that answer, unfortunately.

And the follow-up question is, does the REIT expect to participate in the Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance plan to assist smaller businesses with rent? And if not, why not?

I can take that. So we're still understanding that program. And we'll have a better answer once we get to the second quarter results.

[ Thank you ].

The next question. For the next few months, will the current estimated cash flow be enough to cover overhead, et cetera and distributions? And if so, by what margin?

Yes. We've reviewed that, and we're comfortable that there is not an issue in that regard.

Thank you. Next question: How many of the tenants have defaulted?

None...

As we said in our presentation, we've been working with tenants on deferrals, rent assistance, but we have not issued any default letters as such. Next question, from [ Maple West Capital ]. Rai, what is your long-term view of your enclosed malls? Will they have to be refigured or -- reconfigured or redeveloped?

Well, I think we're looking at that. Some of them may. And right now, we need to figure out when the economy opens up. At this stage, that's an ongoing process. We're continuing to see wherever there development opportunities are. Some of them have and some of them don't. So we'll continue to look at that. We're just hoping that the market gets [ regularized ], then we'll start looking at that. Thank you.

Final question. Do you expect Morguard REIT can continue to pay the dividend in the next couple of months? From an investor.

I think I can say that, for sure, the next couple months -- that we're quite confident and comfortable that we're not expecting anything worse could happen, that we can pay the next couple [indiscernible] longer [indiscernible] Thank you.

That's all the questions. So you can...

Okay. If there are no -- if there's no further business, I declare the meeting terminated. And thank you for attending the meeting.

This concludes the Annual Meeting of Morguard REIT. After a short break, we will resume for the Annual Meeting of Morguard Corporation at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time.