Good morning. My name is Joelle, and I will be your conference coordinator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Minto Apartment REIT 2023 first quarter financial results conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. Before we begin, I want to remind listeners that certain statements about future events made on this conference call are forward-looking in nature. Any such information is subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially. Please refer to the cautionary statements on forward-looking information in the REIT's news release and MD&A dated May 9th, 2023 for more information. During the call, management will also reference certain Non-GAAP financial measures. Although the REIT believes these measures provide useful supplemental information about this financial performance, they're not recognized measures and do not have standardized meanings under GAAP. Please see the REIT's MD&A for additional information regarding Non-GAAP financial measures, including reconciliations to the nearest GAAP measures. Thank you. Mr. Li, you may begin your conference. Thank you, operator, good morning, everyone. I'm Jonathan Li, Chief Executive Officer of Minto Apartment REIT. I'm joined by Eddie Fu, our Chief Financial Officer. I will begin the call by providing an overview of our first quarter financial performance as well as other corporate developments. Eddie will review our financial results and liquidity in detail, and I will discuss our property development pipeline and business outlook. We will be pleased to take your questions. The first quarter represented a strong operational start to the year as robust demand in urban rental markets drove high growth in rental rates and continued strong occupancy across our portfolio. We generated double-digit growth in both same-property portfolio revenue and NOI compared to Q1 last year. Average monthly rents for the same-property portfolio reached CAD 1,755 at the end of the quarter, a year-over-year increase of 5.7%. Average occupancy in the quarter increased to 97.2% compared to 94.2% in Q1 2022 and 97.1% in Q4 2022. We signed 343 new leases in the quarter, achieving a strong gain to lease of 16.9% over expiring rents. Market rents continued to increase in all of our markets, increasing our estimated embedded gain to lease potential to 15.3%. Same-property portfolio NOI increased by 13.3% compared to Q1 last year, while same-property NOI margin grew by 150 basis points to 59.2%. Same-property portfolio annualized suite turnover in the quarter was 13.9% compared to 20.5% in Q1 2022. The lower turnover can be explained by a seasonal slowdown typical for Q1 and because of very tight rental market conditions resulting in more tenants choosing to stay in place. AFFO and AFFO per unit were both lower compared to Q1 2022 due to the impact of high interest rates on variable rate debt, which offset the growth in NOI. We are actively pursuing initiatives to reduce variable rate debt, which we will discuss shortly. Moving to slide four, we repositioned 32 suites across our portfolio in Q1, generating an average annualized return of 10.3%. On March 7th, we completed the sale of High Level Place, a property in Edmonton, for a sale price of CAD 9.9 million and net cash proceeds of CAD 2.9 million. This was the first property to be sold under our capital recycling strategy. On March 23rd, we announced amendments to the loan agreement for the Fifth and Bank property, which provide us with greater flexibility. The amendments extend our exclusive purchase option to December 31st, 2023, and adjust the coupon to be equal to the all-in interest rate of the REIT's credit facility beginning July 1st. Moving to slide five, as I noted, we are working to reduce our variable rate debt exposure and increase our FFO and AFFO per unit and have made progress in this regard. In March, we committed to refinance CAD 136.9 million of mortgages maturing in the next year, with all-in interest rates ranging from 3.87% to 3.95%. We estimate the upward refinance potential of these maturing mortgages to be between CAD 60 million and CAD 70 million, which we intend to use to repay a portion of the revolving credit facility once funded. In addition, subsequent to Q1, we made progress on the refinancing of the variable rate mortgages on our two most recently acquired properties, Niagara West and The International. For Niagara West, we refinanced a 7.7% variable rate mortgage with a new CAD 61.2 million 10-year CMHC insured mortgage with an annual interest rate of 3.87%. We will imminently refinance the 7.44% variable rate mortgage at The International with a new 10-year CMHC insured mortgage at an annual interest rate that we anticipate will be approximately 4%. The chart on this slide shows the variable rate debt made up about 26% of total debt at the end of the first quarter, with much higher rate than our fixed rate debt. After the refinancing of the two variable rate mortgages, this percentage will drop to approximately 16% total debt. I'll now invite Eddie Fu to discuss our first quarter financial and operating performance in greater detail. Eddie. Thank you, John. Turning to slide six. Same-property portfolio revenue increased by 10.5% year-over-year, reflecting higher occupancy and higher average rates. Same-property portfolio NOI increased 13.3% from Q1 last year with a margin of 59.2%. The increase reflected revenue growth, which outpaced higher operating expenses, generating margin expansion. FFO per unit was CAD 0.177, a reduction of 7%, and AFFO per unit declined 8.1% to CAD 0.151, reflecting higher interest costs due to the impact of higher interest rates on variable rate mortgages, increased usage and costs on the REIT's credit facility, as well as higher general and administrative expenses, partially offset by higher NOI. The AFFO payout ratio was 81% compared to 72.1% in Q1 last year. Turning to slide seven, the chart shows a strong positive trend in our gain on lease and average monthly rent over the last several quarters as rental market conditions have consistently strengthened. Moving to slide eight, as John noted, we generated double-digit gain on this. The average rent on new leases increased 16.9% to CAD 2,118 per suite, with gains realized across all markets. The embedded gain to lease potential at quarter end increased to 15.3%. On slide nine, you can see that strong rental demand is driving higher occupancy for the REITs. Turnover was relatively low in the quarter and is likely to remain below the historical average due to a tight rental market and the lack of affordable housing alternatives. Moving to Slide 10, operating expenses for the same property portfolio increased 6.7% compared to Q1 last year. Property operating costs increased due to higher salaries and wages from a tight labor market, as well as one-time severance costs as we continue to pursue efficiency. Natural gas costs were up due to a 24% increase in overall average rates. Natural gas rates have fallen materially from their peak in the fall of last year. Water expenses increased over last year due to higher consumption from higher occupancy and rate increases across the portfolio. On Slide 11, we repositioned a total of 32 suites in the first quarter, generating an ROI of 10.3% on our proportionate share. We expect to reposition 80 suites-120 suites this year, a reduction from 259 suites last year due to lower anticipated turnover. I will now turn it back over to Jonathan. Thanks, Eddie. Moving to Slide 12, I will review our development pipeline. Three of the projects involve intensification of properties we currently own, while the other five are convertible development loans or CDLs with exclusive purchase options upon stabilization. All of our developments are progressing very well with key updates provided on Slides 13 and Slides 14. Our CDLs represent an excellent opportunity to add brand-new assets in our target growth market. Having said that, we will continue to be disciplined and evaluate each opportunity in the context of prevailing market conditions, access to capital, and cost of capital. Now I will turn it back over to Eddie to review our debt financing and liquidity. Turning to Slide 15, we show a snapshot of our key debt metrics. The implementation of certain debt refinancing initiatives discussed earlier by John will reduce our variable rate debt exposure while improving our term to maturity and our debt maturity ladder going forward. We will repay CAD 108.4 million of variable rate mortgages with proceeds from the refinancing of the mortgages at Niagara West and International. On completion of these refinancings, the fixed rate portion of our total debt will increase to 84%, and the CMHC insured portion will rise to 71%. In addition, we are working to further mitigate our exposure to variable rate debt from our credit facility by using proceeds from upward mortgage refinancing and other deleveraging strategies. I want to note that total liquidity was approximately CAD 92 million at the end of March 2023, and Debt-to-Gross Book Value was 41.2%. I'll now turn it back over to John. I'll conclude with our business outlook on Slide 16 before we take your questions. Canadian urban rental market conditions are currently very robust, as demonstrated by our strong gain on lease and our high occupancy in the first quarter. We expect to continue generating strong operating performance as the key fundamentals driving our sector are expected to persist. Housing affordability has been a growing crisis in Canada for decades. We expect it to remain challenging given persistent high interest rates, rising levels of immigration, and the inability of new construction to keep pace with demand. Renting a home is an affordable alternative to ownership, and in this environment, we are not surprised to see increasing numbers of Canadians opting for it and driving higher demand in our sector. We are confident that the REIT is well positioned for long-term success with our best-in-class portfolio. We will strive for strong growth in FFO and AFFO per unit by executing on the following. One, growing NOI. Two, reducing exposure to variable rate debt. Three, generating capital by selling assets to fund our growth. Four, continued execution of our intensification and development pipeline. Finally, prudent balance sheet and liquidity management. We expect that executing on each element of this strategy will deliver strong returns for unitholders amid these volatile capital markets. That concludes our presentation this morning. Eddie and I would now be pleased to answer any questions you may have. Operator, please open the line for questions. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. Should you have a question, please press star followed by one on your touchtone phone. You will hear a three-tone prompt acknowledging your request, and your questions will be pulled in the order they are received. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star followed by two. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, for your first question. Your first question comes from Jonathan Kelcher with TD Cowen. Please go ahead. Thanks. Good morning. first, just on the, I guess on the two loans you're doing for CAD 108 million, What are you getting in terms of loan-to-value on that, and how would that compare to the acquisition price a year ago? Good morning, John. This is Eddie here. Thanks for the question. In terms of loan-to-value, they're around the range, around, like a 55%-60%. With regards to Niagara West, as we announced, we had secured the $61.2 million mortgage, which replaces the previous $46.2 million. There is a little bit of up, obviously upside there on the rates on the spread between the 3.87% that we got versus the 7.7% exit. On the international, the property was coming out of the renovations and carrying higher leverage. We're gonna refinance that one imminently. If we're gonna look at them as a bundle, we are terming out $108 million. In terms of the upper refinancing, it's actually pretty thin. We're just getting tick over that. The real upside is the difference in the spread of the rates, you know, a combined, say, 7.5% for the two mortgages compared to just, I would say, 4% if we looked at Niagara West as well as the international. International, we're estimating around 4%. That's based on CMB and where that's at. Okay. fair enough. Secondly, you're also going to... I guess the two related questions here. One, do you have a target where you wanna get your variable rate debt to? I guess it goes to 16% once you get the international funded and then after that. The related part is you're gonna do obviously some of that with the CAD 60 million-CAD 70 million you expect to up finance. What's kind of the timing on that up financing? Is that sort of a Q2, or does it take most of the year for you to get that money? Well, we'll let Eddie answer the second question first, and then I'll handle the first question, Jonathan. Okay. Yeah. We announced that we're committed to refinance CAD 137 million of mortgages, ranging from, you know, 3.87%-3.95%. Those are currently under review with CMHC, and we'd be looking to fund those, I would say, towards the end of Q2. Okay. You think you'll get somewhere between CAD 60 million and CAD 70 million in up financing by the, by the end of by the end of Q2? That's correct. Okay. On your question about target variable rate debt. You know, I think our target is as low as possible. You know, our peers are anywhere from 0% to... I think Killam just paid it down to kind of 6%, you know. For us, the low-hanging fruit on the refinancings, we've kind of done them already. Really the only other lever that we can reasonably pull are asset sales in order to pay down our variable rate debt. There's still a big, pretty big chunk of variable rate debt that we can pay down, kind of call it CAD 160 million-CAD 180 million. There's a lot of room to go still. Depending on our success on selling assets, I think you'll see virtually all of those proceeds go to paying down that variable rate debt. You know, we don't want it to be an overhang on our numbers. We don't want it to consume some of the strong NOI growth that we expect over the near term, and therefore it is pretty much our top priority to pay down our variable rate debt. Will it get all the way down to zero? Probably not. Because as you know, we have a lot of developments in the ground, and we have some CDL commitments that we've also committed to. So we will run a little bit on our revolver. To the extent we can pay it down materially even from where it is after the up financings that we talked about, I think that's our goal. Okay. When you're looking at asset sales, what do you have in terms of unencumbered assets? Would you be targeting those first so that it could be a little bit more effective on paying down the line? Yeah. You know, I think when we looked at all of our assets, we looked at a bunch of different strategic reasons in order to identify the ones that we wanted to sell. Their capital structure was one of the things that we considered. On the properties that we have identified for sale, there is a range of capital structures on those, and there are some that are higher leverage and some that are lower leverage. You know, the liquidity in the market is gonna be the number one determining factor of whether or not we'll be successful to sell. Obviously, selling our lower levered ones would be great, so we can get some big equity proceeds and pay down our line. You know, it's gonna be somewhat not fully in our control. Okay. Thanks. I'll turn it back. Thanks, Jonathan. I should mention that Paul Baron as well is here, as well as John Moss, our General Counsel. Your next question comes from Kyle Stanley with Desjardins. Please go ahead. Thanks. Morning, guys. Just looking at, you know, we talked about turnover slowing. I'm just curious, you know, on the proportion of the units that are turning, you know, how many of those require material CapEx to hit the leasing spreads you've been achieving? I guess another way, you know, like, are you having to spend a ton to hit these leasing spreads or, you know, how is that looking? Hey, Kyle. Thanks for your question. No, we don't have to spend a lot of money to hit our leasing spreads. I mean, these are market rents for us, in terms of with being able to lease it up and how we measure it. Now, through the pandemic to now, like we have renovated a bunch of suites that were vacant and now are renting. That lifted in some of our gain on lease numbers that you're seeing. I'd say for the rest of them, it's a mix of non-renovated and renovated suites, but we're able to get close to market on all of them. Okay. Perfect. You did mention, you know, the impact of higher water expenses, and I mean, it's not a huge line item, at the moment. I'm just wondering, you know, what are you doing or could you be doing, to help mitigate some of that cost inflation over time? Thanks, Kyle. I mean, Paul is our SVP Operations. He spends a lot of his time trying to be more efficient from a utilities perspective, and so I'll let him talk to a couple of things we're doing on water. Yeah. Kyle, a number of projects that are underway as well as a few pilot projects. One example that comes to mind is the installation of shower heads with thermostatic shutoff valves. They minimize the energy and water consumption while the shower starts up. We also have a few pilot projects that are underway. You know, things to more easily identify leaks in toilets that are running continuously, things of that nature. Really using technology to try to minimize that cost in the long term. For us, it's super important, you know, from a water perspective in particular, because, A, we're more full, and B, we're finding that people are working from home one, two, or three days a week. The consumption of water throughout the day is a lot higher overall in our portfolio than it otherwise would be had we not been working in a hybrid environment. Right. Okay. Understood there. Just the last one. I mean, it was good to see the purchase option on Fifth and Bank extended, and I know you're working through, I believe it's four other projects within the CDL program. Just curious, to your knowledge, is MPI looking at any new projects that you might look to partner on, as part of kind of the CDL program at this point? Yeah. I mean, good question, Kyle. The private company has access to capital. They are very active in developments, either condo or rental. The math for them is skewing much more towards rental on a lot of their projects now. They have a number of extremely exciting developments in Vancouver in the Cambie Corridor as well as Kitsilano. There's three separate developments that they're looking at very early stages of land assemblies with partners, and they're going through the zoning process. We have waived on those as the REIT. I think we don't have the capital to lend to them today. Having said that, you know, they are a fairly good partner of ours, and I think they're gonna look for a way to get those to us over time should our access to capital, you know, change from what it is currently, from what it looks like today. Super exciting stuff they're working on in Vancouver. They've got a couple of really, really large ones in Toronto as well. You know, again, we're super excited about the partnership. We think it works. Obviously, in today's market window, doesn't really work very well. We're aware of that. We're being very disciplined, and I think you're gonna see us continue to be disciplined, at least in as so long as the market kind of chugs along like it's running now. Okay. Great. Thanks for the color, guys. I will turn it back. Thanks, Kyle. Your next question comes from Jimmy Shan with RBC. Please go ahead. Thanks. I just wanted to clarify the CAD 60 million-CAD 70 million of upward refinancing. Should we expect that the full amount will be used to pay down the credit facility once you receive it, at the end of the quarter? Good morning, Jimmy. It's Eddie here. Yep, that's the plan. Our intention is to use the upward refinancing to repay part of the credit facility once funded. Okay. All right. I just wanted to touch on the development yield on Richgrove and Leslie York Mills. It looks like they've stayed about the same or even went up a tad bit. Is that really just the development charges going down that's making the big difference? Or that the rents have moved up quite a bit and you've kind of trended the market rents higher? Just kind of curious about the economics on the development deals today. Yeah, sure. The rents have gone up relative to the pro forma. There's no doubt about that. That has offset virtually almost all of the schedule increases and the cost increases and the interest rate increases. Not quite fully offset, but very close. What has taken us over the line in terms of that yield are the development charge reductions from the new bill in Ontario. That was a nice favorable move for us. It has kept our yields constant, consistent with the pro forma, but even improved them a little bit. How much have the development charges declined? 40%-50%. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. You're welcome. Your next question comes from Matt Kornack with National Bank Financial. Please go ahead. Hey, guys. Just with regards to occupancy, Toronto, Ottawa, Alberta, you're above or at 98%. Montreal is moving in the right direction, but still a little bit below 94% on the same property side. Would you expect that that's an opportunity going through the spring leasing market? Or how should we think about that at this point? Hey, Matt. Thanks for your question. Yes, we do think that there is some occupancy upside in Montreal, pretty consistent with what we've been telling the market and expecting. Our more expensive building as well as some of our more expensive units, have been the ones that are a little bit vacant. Our team is now working really hard. Our leasing momentum in April and the beginning of this month has been quite strong in that market. We're cautiously optimistic about further upside in Montreal in terms of occupancy coming into the spring and summer leasing season. Okay. Nope, that's helpful. Then with regards to turnover and kind of the propensity to turn at this point, is it fair to say that it's shifted to some extent from shorter duration leases to people staying in place longer, and that the suites that are coming up now are those with more rent upside? Any color to that effect across the portfolio would be interesting. Yeah, look, I actually think it's probably working the other way. If you just think about our turnover broadly, historically, it kind of fluctuated. It's quite seasonal by quarter, as you know. It would fluctuate between the high teens to the high 20% range on an annualized basis. I think for us going forward, you're going to see both the lows and the highs come down. We're expecting our turnover to range between, you know, kind of where it is today. That 13.9% likely is near the low, and then it'll go up to maybe low 20s. On average, you can see our turnover probably be in the sort of high teens on average for the year. We are still experiencing a mix of the leases that are turning, starting to skew towards the folks who have recently moved in. Because the people who have been there for three, four, five, six, seven years are the ones that have the largest gap to market. Therefore, it is very expensive for them to move. You know, we're not seeing a sea change, we are seeing kind of it's the ones who have been in place for a year or 18 months, those are the ones where, okay, well, if it's another, like, CAD 400 or CAD 500 a month and they want to move, then they can still make that math work. That's kind of what we're seeing. Okay. No, that's fair commentary. With regards to the up financing opportunity in 2024 and 2025, I understand, like, it's a smaller amount of maturities, but would you expect that you'd continue to kind of grind away at variable rate debt with those maturities as well, getting some up financing there? Maybe Eddie can get into some of the details, but I would say the more low-hanging fruit from an economic perspective would for us to sell some assets and pay down the variable rate debt before getting into the rest of the 2024 maturities and 2025. Because, you know, if you bring those in, you got, you got breakage costs. It's, it's not as ideal. One of the loans of the five that we locked is actually an early 2024 maturity. We already are creeping into 2024 to try to bring in the ones that make sense. Absolutely, we will start looking at future maturities. Obviously, though, you know, for us, again, I think the biggest bang for the buck will be to sell some assets and pay down some variable rate debt. I should clarify. I just meant as they come to maturity in those years, so in the future. Oh, yeah. Just maybe if you could give a sense as to, like, I mean, I understand that underwriting standards are a bit different from CMHC, but presumably, you've got a fair bit of potential upside to potentially up financing in the future as maturities come due. Yeah. There would be. You know, we'll look at the maturities at the time. We'll look at the underlying assets. I would think that there would be upside potential. It's just difficult to quantify what that would be today. Okay. Fair enough. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. Thanks, Matt. Your next question comes from Brad Sturges with Raymond James. Please go ahead. Hi there. Just to follow up on Matt's question there. Just on the, I guess the existing mortgages you're refinancing and up financing, particularly as it relates to some of the loans you're pulling forward, are you expecting some prepayment penalties with that, or are you within a window where that would be fairly minimal? I would say that we would be in that window where it's fairly minimal. You know, there'd be some potentially three months of interest, but it's pretty nominal. As we disclose, you know, the five that we have that are rate locked, you know, we'd be lucky to fund that by the end of Q2. To answer your question, it's minimal. Okay. Then, just to go back onto the variable rate exposure between the refinancing activities with the mortgages and asset sales. Is it fair to say that by the end of the year, you think you'd be, at the very least, back in line with your peers at this point? You know, based on what you're looking at potentially selling, could that get you to a point where you're getting closer to the, to the zero than the, let's say, the 6% of debt? Yeah, I'd say that's aspirational. You know, like, we would love to be in that position. 'Cause just if you think about our approach to capital structure in a market like this, we're okay being very lowly levered, even way below our target, when the cost of debt is so high. It gives us optionality going forward if we wanna lever up later or if we wanna use the money to buy something. It just gives us that flexibility, and we can always put more debt on the portfolio at a time when the cost of that debt is a lot cheaper than it is today. you know, when our variable rate loans are costing us 6.5%, it is the most accretive thing for us to do to pay that down as quickly as possible. you're gonna see us trying to be laser focused on translating some pretty nice NOI growth into FFO and AFFO per unit growth by being, you know, smart and hopefully be able to execute in terms of paying down some of that variable rate debt. Okay. last question for you. Just as you continue or start to re-explore some of the asset sales and maybe potentially put assets on the market for sale, are there any green shoots you're seeing in the transaction market now that give you comfort that you're gonna have some success in achieving fair values? Or just give some context in terms of, you know, where you're potentially selling assets and the activity levels you're seeing today. Yeah, You know, I think even comparing today's private transaction market to what it was, like, three months ago, I think we're starting to see green shoots. You know, we're seeing a little bit of activity from some of our REIT peers. You see InterRent do a very nice deal with Crestpoint, V estcor. You see CAPREIT doing some selected acquisitions. We saw Boardwalk buy something in Victoria recently. You know, some of the buyers that have been completely on the sidelines are coming back. Access to capital and access to CMHC financing is still quite robust, even though it's slow. Private buyers still have good access to capital. We're seeing more activity for the asset sales that we've launched. you know, we're seeing a pretty good amount of the typical buyers who are at least looking, right? Like, we don't know if there's lots of tire kickers. We'll see if it, if it comes to fruition. The activity level and the folks looking are, I think we're pleased with the process or the progress to date. Okay. Thanks. I'll turn it back. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, should you have a question, please press star followed by the 1. There are no further questions at this time. Please proceed. Well, thank you very much, operator, and appreciate everyone's time, and we're glad we can be really efficient and keep this to 36 minutes, which I think everyone will be happy for going forward. Take care. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.