Plaza Retail REIT (PLZUN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. I would like to welcome everyone to the Plaza Retail REIT First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would like to advise everyone that this conference is being recorded. And 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 morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on our Q1 2023 results conference call. Before we begin today, we are 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, which 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 recent information form for the period ended December 31, 2022, and Management's Discussion and Analysis for the 3 months ended March 31, 2023, which are available on our website at www.plaza.ca, and on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. We will also refer to non-GAAP financial measures widely used in the Canadian real estate industry, including FFO, AFFO, NOI and same-asset NOI. Plaza believes these financial measures provide useful information to both management and investors in measuring the financial performance and financial condition of Plaza. These financial measures do not have any standardized definitions prescribed by IFRS and may not be comparable to similar titled measures reported by other entities. They should be considered as supplemental in nature and not as a substitute for related financial information prepared in accordance with IFRS. For definitions of these financial measures and where to find reconciliations thereof, please refer to Part 7 of our MD&A for the 3 months ended March 31, 2023, under the heading Explanation of Non-GAAP Measures. I will now turn things over to Michael Zakuta, Plaza's President and CEO. Michael?

Thank you, Kim. Good morning. Plaza's business and tenants focused on essential needs, value and convenience offerings in open-air centers remain strong and resilient and will continue to perform well. This quarter is a building block for future growth with record committed occupancy level, healthy renewal spreads and robust development pick line, which will contribute incremental income and value over the next 2 years. We completed 2022 with the most robust development pipeline in our history and our focus for 2023 is the execution and delivery of these projects. During the first quarter, we began seeing the results of these efforts with Mark's opening a new store at our project in Bedford, Halifax, Nova Scotia; Princess Auto opening stores at our centers in Chicoutimi, Quebec, and Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario; Dollarama opening at our center in Cambridge, Ontario. Further construction is underway with new grocery-anchored centers in Stewiacke, Nova Scotia, community just outside of Halifax; in Dieppe, New Brunswick, and Oshawa, Ontario. We have delivered new Winners stores in Sault Ste. Marie and Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec, that will be opening soon. We're also in the final stages of planning new grocery-anchored centers in Barrie, Ontario, and Welland, Ontario, both of which we expect to start constructing in the next 12 months. Demand from grocery and other essential needs as well as value retailers remains strong and our development projects have generated significant pre-leasing activity. Our existing portfolio continues to benefit from strong demand, which is reflected in our widening renewal spreads and the highest occupancy level in our history. In the quarter, excluding the renewal of 1 larger-sized and closed-mall tenant, rents for renewals increased by 7.3%. Over the last year, we continued to face inflation in construction cost and supply chain challenges that delayed delivery of new stores and the resulting revenues. Our last 2 construction tenders that recently closed showing much better pricing than anticipated, 10% and 6% below budget, respectively, leading us to believe that we have finally turned the corner on construction inflation for open-air style centers. We are still experiencing delivery delays for certain critical building components. However, we anticipate that these delays will dissipate as demand for construction materials softens through 2023. Our underlying business remains very strong. It's interesting to note that our portfolio quality is improving in a meaningful way. We have and continue to successfully shed noncore assets at robust selling prices. We are then redeploying the capital from these sales to develop new, high-quality grocery-anchored essential needs and value open-air centers across our geography. We are very confident that our business strategy and our tenants will withstand the macroeconomic challenges that everyone is facing. I will now turn the call over to Jim Drake, Plaza's CFO. Jim?

Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. Although our results were muted for the quarter, as Michael mentioned, this quarter is setting us up for future growth. On those results, same-asset NOI, which was impacted by minor bad debt allowances at a few properties this quarter, was up 0.8%. FFO and AFFO per unit were down versus last year, in part due to an allowance provided to a tenant at a development property for late delivery of their premises. Higher interest rates also had an impact this quarter, but the repayment of our $47 million convertible debentures at quarter end will save us $2.4 million in annual interest costs going forward. For our development program, during the quarter, we completed the redevelopment of a QSR in London, Ontario. We also anticipate further completions in Q2, including Tri-City Center in Cambridge, Ontario, and 2 new buildings in St. Jerome, Quebec, which will contribute to earnings growth going forward. The committed occupancy level Michael mentioned, which was 97.6% at quarter end, is a record level for the third consecutive quarter and up 130 bps over last quarter. Combined with the higher renewal spreads, this will also contribute to NOI growth going forward. On the balance sheet, the notable news this quarter was our $40 million equity issue and the repayment of our $47 million convertible debentures at quarter end. This was a significant transaction, particularly in this market and our first equity issue since 2016. It has allowed us to reset our balance sheet, avoid additional floating rate debt, and provide additional flexibility. As a result, our debt to total assets ratio decreased considerably from approximately 56% at year-end, now at 52%, including land leases, or 49% excluding land leases. Although our unit price was impacted shortly after our equity issue, a result of the U.S. regional banking failures and fear of contagion, we remain very confident in our business. Our liquidity remains sufficient and at quarter end totaled $71 million, including cash, operating line and unused development and construction facilities. We also had $18 million of unencumbered assets at quarter end. For mortgage rollovers, we have only $13 million of fixed rate mortgages maturing for the remainder of 2023 with an overall loan-to-value of 38% and a weighted average rate of 5.1%. This rate is slightly above current rates, which we are generally seeing at around 5% or under. We continue to see strong interest in our mortgage offerings for both construction financing and term debt. We utilized various sources of debt, including banks, life cos, funds and others. We are not experiencing any material tightening of credit availability or terms at this point, and secured debt remains readily available for Plaza. Finally, on cap rates and valuation. We continue to see strong demand for essential needs and convenience assets such as ours and the sales of noncore assets during the quarter were at prices 16% above IFRS values. Cap rates were essentially flat quarter-over-quarter, and we took a $1.3 million write-up this quarter. Our weighted average cap rate is now 6.75%. Those are the key points relating to the results for the quarter. We will now open the lines for any questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Gaurav Mathur from iA Capital.

Just looking at the rent spreads this quarter, would that be a fair run rate for the year ahead? Or are you expecting any moderation?

I think I don't expect any moderation in run rate. I see spreads getting a little better going forward.

And just staying with the tenant base for the moment, we have seen some tenants stabilizing their revenues. And in certain cases, we've seen some tenants be in trouble as well. Any read-throughs to net new store openings or closures across the portfolio?

We're definitely seeing, as we've said, very, very strong demand for, again, essential needs, the value guys. You look at some of the stores we've recently opened or about to open, the Princess Autos, the Dollaramas, the Winners, those businesses are performing very well. The grocers, particularly in the discount sector, are performing very, very well. So again, the QSRs continue to perform well as people trade down, looking for value propositions, whether it's at a restaurant or at a grocery store or using a dollar store or any of those value proportions. There's a lot of runway for that presently. And again, a lot of our stuff that's coming due, we're a lot more sensitive about driving rents forward. And hopefully, you'll see -- I think we'll see some better spreads going forward. There always are exceptions. There always are some -- always a tenant or 2 that's struggling, whether in good times or bad from our experience.

Okay. Great. And just switching gears here towards the dispositions done in the quarter. Could you perhaps provide a cap rate or a range at which these assets are disposed of? And how the buyer pool has been acting to transactions in the market?

Maybe Jim will talk about cap rates, but the buyer pool is private money. These are small transactions. There's lots of demand. We just had a deal with unconditional bids on a small single-tenant asset, sub-5 cap rate. So we're seeing that in our world. But these are very bite-sized deals, $1 million to $2 million. Again, there's lots of demand for that. And we've sold all the way up to like $14 million or $15 million noncore to private investors, and there seems to be solid demand and clearly a very, very large disconnect between public market pricing of certain types of these assets and what people are prepared to pay for the $1 million, $2 million, $3 million sort of management free style assets. That demand remains strong and present. I don't know, Jim, do you want to give any color on cap rates?