Plaza Retail REIT (PLZUN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon. I would like to welcome everyone to the Plaza Retail REIT Fourth Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would also like to advise everyone that this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Kim Strange, Plaza's General Counsel and Secretary. Please go ahead, Ms. Strange.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on our Q4 2021 results conference call. Before we begin today, we are legally obliged to advise you that in talking about our financial and operating performance and in responding to questions today, we may make forward-looking statements, including statements concerning Plaza's objectives and strategies to achieve them as well as statements with respect to our plans, estimates and intentions or concerning anticipated future events, results, circumstances or performance that are not historical facts. These statements are based on our current expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from the conclusions in these forward-looking statements. Additional information on the risks that could impact our actual results and the expectations and assumptions we applied in making these forward-looking statements can be found in Plaza's most recent annual information form for the year ended December 31, 2020, and management's discussion and analysis for the period ended December 31 and 2021, which are available on our website and on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. We will also refer to non-GAAP financial measures during the call today. For more information, please refer to the non-GAAP financial measures discussed and explained in Parts 1 and 8, respectively, of the MD&A for the period ending December 31, 2021. I will now turn the call over to Michael Zakuta, Plaza's President and CEO. Michael?

Thank you, Kim. Good afternoon. We were very pleased with our strong results for the year. We generated solid growth in our key performance measures, including FFO per unit, which is up significantly over both 2020 and pre-pandemic 2019. Our performance in 2021 was driven by the resilience of our tenants, our portfolio and our team. Plaza has established itself over 2 decades ago by identifying and executing development and redevelopment opportunities, primarily for grocery pharmacy and essential needs, anchored open-air projects in primary, secondary and tertiary markets throughout Eastern Canada. Positive strategy of being diversified across a wide geography includes having a dominant presence in secondary and tertiary markets. Although our properties performed particularly well over the last year, our pursuit of assets in this market was not born during the COVID-19 pandemic. We have long been a forward-thinking developer that sees the value in these markets and recognize there's still untapped potential. Plaza knows these markets well and has an established track record of securing dominant locations for retailers. Plaza has and will continue to capitalize on opportunities to develop assets in primary markets when they arise. However, our focus on investing in strong secondary and tertiary markets has served Plaza well, and we believe it will continue to do so in the future. Plaza is seeing more opportunities than ever across Eastern Canada. We have the capital, infrastructure, experience, team and vision necessary to realize on these opportunities. We are observing growing interest from investors for essential needs, value and convenience assets such as ours. Capitalization rates for these assets are compressing, and we will continue to see further write-ups in our IFRS values as transaction data establishes lower cap rates for our assets. These value increases, combined with our development program, will lead to continued per unit growth in our NAV. As a result of our strategy, we have irreplaceable assets leased to strong covenant retailers in a combination of primary, secondary and tertiary markets. These assets have long been underappreciated. It has taken an unprecedented pandemic to start to highlight their value. We are very optimistic about our future for a number of reasons. First, leasing activity for our developments, redevelopments and existing centers is strong, especially with essential needs and value retailers as well as quick service restaurants. Year-to-date, we have leased over 1.34 million square feet, 1.47 million square feet for renewals, 180,000 square feet for new projects and 115,000 square feet for backfilling a vacant space. Second, our current development and redevelopment projects are progressing well. You can see a sampling in our Q4 presentation that is now posted on our website. Third, our development pipeline has grown largely due to new demand from our core retailers and the availability of opportunities. Fourth, the attrition of weaker retailers and the resulting decrease in occupancy that we experienced in 2020 -- early 2021 is largely complete. Our committed occupancy now exceeds pre-pandemic levels. Fifth, we continue to finance our projects and refinance our existing properties at historically low, long-term interest rates. Finally, we are being opportunistic as we sell noncore assets at robust prices and invest the sales proceeds into much higher-yielding, new projects. There's a lot of positive momentum for our business. We're looking forward to an exciting 2022 and beyond. I will now turn the call over to Jim Drake, Plaza's CFO. Jim, you're on.

Thank you, Michael. Our operating environment has continued to improve, and we are effectively at levels equal to or exceeding pre-pandemic. Occupancy, annual same-asset NOI, FFO and AFFO per unit and payout ratios have all improved versus pre-pandemic levels. Overall occupancy -- sorry, overall committed occupancy is up 80 bps versus last year, now at 96.5%. Same asset NOI is up 1.2% over the prior year. Annual FFO and AFFO per unit, which benefited from growth from same assets and developments, lease buyouts, lower admin expenses and finance costs, were up 21% and 15%, respectively, over last year. And our annual payout ratios have improved significantly as well at 65% of FFO and 77% of AFFO. Our rent collection remains high at over 99% for the entire year, and we took a small bad debt provision of just over $100,000 during Q4. Liquidity at year-end totaled $65 million, including cash, operating line and unused development and construction facilities. We also had $21 million of unencumbered assets. For long-term debt, we placed $74 million of mortgage during the year at a weighted average interest rate of 3%. We have $38 million of long-term mortgages maturing in 2022 with a weighted average rate of approximately 4%. Of these mortgages, we already have $6 million committed with closing shortly, and $18 million relate to freestanding pharmacies. The loan-to-value on these mortgages is also below 40%. So we are very confident we will be able to refinance these mortgages at very attractive rates. We have $6 million unsecured debenture maturing at the end of this month, and we will renew approximately $3 million of this issue for 5 years on the same terms. Under our development program, we continue to advance a number of projects. And during the year, we completed a few expansions and pads as well as Phase 1 of Hogan Court, a grocery-anchored development at Halifax. In Q4, we closed on 2 new projects in Quebec, a grocery-anchored strip in Drummanville, where we will lease up space and expand the building; and a new ground-up development in Chicoutimi with significant pre-leasing in place. On asset sales, we generated net proceeds of $13 million for the year from sales of noncore QSRs and excess land. And subsequent to year-end, we sold an additional noncore QSR for proceeds of $2 million. We are seeing very strong demand for our small noncore assets at very attractive pricing and, in certain cases, reflecting a higher and better use. Our capital recycling program remains a very efficient source of equity, allowing us to reinvest the proceeds in new projects, which are generally grocery-anchored strips, had very healthy spreads over the hurdle rates on the sales. Finally, on fair value, we recorded a $30 million gain on investment properties during the quarter as a result of cap rate compression and appraisals obtained. Our weighted average cap rate is now 6.9%, which we believe remains conservative. And as Michael mentioned, with increased interest in assets such as ours, we expect further fair value write-ups in the coming quarters. Those are the key points relating to our results for the quarter and the year. We will now open the lines for any questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Jenny Ma with BMO Capital Markets.

Congrats on a strong quarter and a strong year. I wanted to dig into the portfolio. You mentioned some of the freestanding drugstore assets. I'm just wondering if you could remind us how much of your portfolio you would classify as purely triple net?

Triple net, most of the leases are triple net. If you're referring specifically to freestanding pharmacies, I don't have the number in front of me, but it'd be 50 or 60 freestanding pharmacies.

Okay. And what about the rest of the portfolio? Was that more characteristic of a typical strip center than on the leases?

Yes, absolutely. And the leases are -- even in the script center, they're still triple net in the vast majority of cases.

Okay. Would you be able to put a percentage of your portfolio? Like is it more than 90% or more than half? So give us a range of what's it then.

It's over 90%, I would think.

Yes, absolutely. Yes.

Okay. Perfect. Okay. That's helpful. And you mentioned a lot about cap rate compression in your asset types and looking at some potential opportunities in primary markets as they come up. But maybe if you could -- could you talk to us about whether or not you've seen a change in the spread between cap rates on primary market assets versus the secondary tertiary market assets that specializes in? Like has there always been a specific gap? Or do you find that with the increased interest in this asset type that, that spread is starting to close in?

I think the spreads, first of all, have followed downward. The primary market spreads are a little tighter today? Maybe because they're so little available, but I think you've seen it. In all the market sizes, you've seen cap rate compression, and you're probably seeing a little tightening between a tertiary, secondary market and a primary market, but it's hard to make that calculation.

Okay. Do you see more interest in the secondary and tertiary market assets because of the high demand for primary and maybe some investors are still looking for a little bit of a higher yield?

Yes, I think that's a fair statement. I think there is greater interest as long as you have the right tenancy, the right product and at a strong location. I think that's the point that we're trying to make, that we do have some very, very strong locations. Just because you're in a secondary, I call it a strong secondary market, that's very hard to put sites together and make financial sense of a deal. Land can be expensive in the order of what you might see in a primary market. And very often, we're giving a mandate to go out and find a site. It's a lot more challenging than a lot of people would believe.

Okay. That's fair. And then my last question before I turn it back is I look at the geographic distribution, and Western Canada has never been a big focus for Plaza. I think it's always been in the low single digits, but now we're kind of at that 1-ish-percent mark. I'm just wondering how you think about those assets that are out there. Are you happy to keep them as is? Or does it make more sense to cleanly focus on Eastern Atlantic Canada?

So we're very focused on our geography of Ontario all the way through Newfoundland. And if you recall, over the years, when we acquired KeyREIT, we acquired a number of Western Canadian assets and we progressively disposed of those assets. A lot of them were KFC QSRs. There were some small strips that we didn't feel that we were well-placed to operate effectively, and what we have left with in Western Canada are 3 freestanding Shoppers Drug Marts. And that to us is very, very core. I think we have 75 or 76 Shoppers Drug Marts, and we're not in the business of selling that type of asset. So we've kept them, and they're very good locations.

Okay. I assume they're not terribly management-intensive.

No, no. There's no management.

Okay. I mean if cap rates continue to compress, is there a point where you might consider selling those ones? I know we're talking small potatoes here. I'm just wondering when you look at a portfolio focus. Is this something that you wouldn't mind disclosing of? Or you want to keep a bit of a presence and perhaps it's an area you could continue to grow in down the road?

Well, again, our strategy has always been to keep these types of assets. Because we know -- because we develop so many of them, we know how hard it is to put together. And once you have it, they're very, very good -- very, very good real estate. So I don't think that we would be a seller of those assets. We certainly have not considered that to date. And we've always looked at Western Canada, looked at opportunities but never felt comfortable. And then we sort of also looked at the opportunities that we have, whether it's cross Atlantic Canada, Quebec or Ontario. We say why should we go into an area in which we don't have expertise when we can -- we have lots of growth opportunities within the geography that we have a lot of strength and a lot of market knowledge. So that's been the strategy to date.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from Sumayya Syed with CIBC.

Michael, as you're acquiring and sourcing land and redevelopment properties and looking at the supply side, is there a continuation of activity that was sort of on pause during the pandemic? Or from your viewpoint, has the size of the opportunity actually expanded as a result of the pandemic?

I think there are more opportunities as a result of the pandemic. So the recent deals that we've acquired are all deals that would have originated during the pandemic. I think that whatever we were running with before the pandemic, we did, we closed on, we did our thing. And now we're definitely seeing more opportunities across a very wide geography for the types of deals that we wish to do. Is it because of the pandemic? Probably to a certain extent. It's also probably about a shift in focus for a lot of large landlords who are very, very, very focused on urban style properties. I think that benefits us. Also, the volatility of retail certainly has probably driven some people out of the market and, therefore, creating more opportunity for us.

Okay. So there are net new opportunities, great.

Definitely net new opportunities, yes.

Okay. And then I just wanted to ask about the 2 replacement government support programs, the tourism-related and the hardest hit business recovery. Just wondering what's the participation like there with a similar group of tenants from the previous programs or if it's different or just a smaller number there. Any color there?

There's -- I don't -- we don't see through the government support programs anymore. If you recall early on, the things were -- the government support programs are run through the landlord. Now they're done directly between government and the tenant. So we do have some communication with them and some tenants saying, "I'm waiting on my government funding." But it's been pretty much not an important part of the business over the last few quarters. You've definitely seen a serious rebound. I was looking at sales figures out for 12 months running to end of January, and there's definitely been a significant improvement in many, many areas, even some of the areas that were hit hard by the pandemic over the last year. So I don't -- we don't have a strong feel. Jim, I don't know if you have anything -- any other insight?

I think you've covered it, Michael, but I would agree that participation is probably much lower than it was in the more widespread programs that preceded these programs. And given that we're not seeing any real impact on our tenants either, we're not seeing increased bankruptcies, we're not seeing increased AR. So that's a great sign, and it plays into Michael's comment on tenant sales.

Okay. Sounds good. And just the last question from me is on G&A. I guess, costs were a bit lower due to the pandemic. So just wondering for '22 and '23 how to think about modeling G&A. And does it revert back closer to the, I guess, $9 million a year level?

No. I mean maybe I'll let Jim comment. But I don't think it's going to go back up. I think we -- the pandemic has changed things. We did an early retirement program, which led to savings. We're definitely doing less travel for business. There will be an increase in G&A for sure, but it won't be anywhere near the levels that we would have seen pre-pandemic. Jim, I don't know if you have anything to add.

Yes, absolutely. Yes, absolutely agreed. 2021 is really sort of a normalized year. We'll see a little bit additional travel, but the dollar amount is going to be nominal. .

Your next question comes from Jim Wilson with CIBC.

My question was in regards to the cost of development. All we hear about is how costs are rising in construction materials and so on. And are your returns going to be the same because of these rising costs? Or you're able to pass that on in rents to the tenants?

Yes. It's very, very much deal-specific. So we've had some bad surprises. We've had some good surprises on cost. And I've said this many times, we do work over a very large geography, and it's really interesting to see how costs for a similar product can vary. So it depends how hungry some of the contractors are. We're clearly budgeting much higher numbers, and we're getting better rent. So returns are decent. I don't think that the -- are they weakened a little bit? Maybe. It depends on the final outcome. But we've definitely had discussions with some of our key retailers, and we say, "Guys, you got to pay more." And they say, "We understand." And you are seeing some higher rent because of higher costs. So...

And maybe I'll just add, Jim, maybe there was a bit of a bit of pressure on the unlevered return. But we -- as I mentioned, we're borrowing money at extremely low rates. We wouldn't have underwrote a project 2 years ago over the 3% interest rate. So our leverage returns have been pretty stable.

And that's ultimately what we're looking at, is our levered return success.

Okay. The last question would be in regards to -- you're speaking about lots of opportunities coming out of the pandemic. Quite a few enclosed malls are suffering and probably lots of empty space. Do you envision ever taking a plunge into that and taking advantage of some of the distress that's in the closed mall area?

I think I've said this previously on these calls, I think that's a domain for private equity and not a public REIT. And when I say that, I mean operating an enclosed mall as an enclosed mall. So we're always looking, and we're pursuing opportunities to acquire an enclosed mall but transform it or simplify it into an open air center. That to us is a very good business, and we're chasing that. We're always chasing that. But the majority of malls would not fit for our strategy of making that transformation. There are still a number of them that shouldn't be enclosed malls, they should be strips, and that's the kind of product we want to buy. But are we going to go and buy malls and operate fashion malls? I don't think that's where we want to be. That's not -- it's not our core business. And I think it's highly volatile, and I'd rather stick to our solid essential needs, open air center business. That's rock solid, and we'll leave the enclosed mall volatility to others.

[Operator Instructions] Next question is from Mike Markidis with Desjardin.

I have just one question here on the cost recovery clauses. So the MD&A discloses cost recovery causes linked to CPI, so I'm just wondering if there are any caps to those recoveries. And if so, if that would be expected to be a headwind in '22 with CPI running at these elevated levels.

If there are any caps, they're not material. There might be 2 -- out of our, I don't know, 1,000-plus leases, there may be 1 or 2. So that's generally not how it's structured.

There are no further questions at this time. Please proceed.

Thank you, operator.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines. Have a great day.