Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Melcor REIT Second Quarter 2023 Results Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen only mode, and the Conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press Star, then 1 on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing Star then 0. I would now like to turn the Conference over to Naomi Stefura, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead. Thank you, Charisse. Good morning, welcome to our conference call and webcast for the second quarter of 2023. With me on today's call is Randy Ferguson, our Senior Vice President of Investment Properties for Melcor REIT. I will begin today's call with some mandatory statements, then I'll walk you through a few financial highlights. Afterwards, I'll turn the call over to Randy to walk through our operational highlights. Our goal is to keep our remarks to a brief, high-level review of the quarter and then open up the call for your questions. If you have not reviewed the materials related to this call, including the MD&A and the financial statements, they are available on the Investor Relations section of our website at melcorreit.ca and on SEDAR.com. Certain statements made during this call may be forward-looking. For a complete discussion of items that may cause actual results to differ, please refer to the Business Environment and Risk section of our annual MD&A. Second, we report our financial results in Canadian dollars and in accordance with IFRS. To supplement our financial reporting with non-standard measures, including FFO, AFFO, ACFO, and NOI. We believe these measures are important in evaluating our performance, but caution listeners that they may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other companies. These non-standard measures are defined and reconciled in our press release and in the MD&A. First, I'd like to apologize for the mix-up last week with our earnings announcement and originally scheduled call. Unfortunately, with the changeover to SEDAR+, we had some technical difficulties loading our materials onto the website, which pushed the electronic filing of our materials by one day and thereby forced us to reschedule this call. Thank you all for your understanding in this matter. I will now walk everyone through some of the financial highlights of our results for Q2 2023. Our portfolio continues to produce stable results despite rising costs and inflationary pressures. In the quarter and year-to-date, rental revenue remains steady. Comparative to Q2 2022, NOI increased 3% and remains stable year-to-date. In the quarter, FFO was up 1% to CAD 6.17 million, or CAD 0.21 per unit. Management believes FFO best reflects our true operating performance. ACFO was down 7% at CAD 4.2 million, or CAD 0.14 per unit. ACFO in the quarter continues to be impacted by increases made at the end of 2022 to our normalized capital expenditures and normalized tenant incentives and leasing commissions. ACFO was also impacted by increases in finance costs correlated with higher interest rates. We've held our monthly distributions at CAD 0.04 per unit to date since August of 2021. Based on ACFO, this represents a quarterly payout ratio of 83% in the quarter and 88% year-to-date. As of June 30th, 2023, we had CAD 3.18 million in cash and CAD 8.6 million in undrawn liquidity under our revolving credit facility. During the quarter, we successfully secured financing on one of our larger Calgary office assets at a fixed rate of 4.62% for 5 years. We also renewed one of our Class C mortgages for 2 years at a rate of 6.68%. We continue to work with our lenders on a proactive basis on renewals and continue to stagger maturity dates to reduce risk in this uncertain financial market. During the quarter, we listed our properties in Regina, Saskatchewan, for sale. This was part of a strategic decision to focus on our core Alberta markets and focus on debt repayment. Under the rules of IFRS, 3 of these properties met the criteria as properties held for sale and were reclassified on the balance sheet. These 3 assets, classified as held for sale, are retail properties and have a combined square footage of 198,000 sq ft. The asset sales would generate net cash proceeds, which would be used to pay down our revolving credit facility. I will now turn the call over to Randy to speak to our portfolio's operations and performance. Thank you, Naomi. I'm very pleased to share Melcor REIT's second quarter 2023 operational results. Well, our efforts have produced some stable financial results. We've also achieved some success in a challenging market. To date, in 2023, we have 418,000 sq ft in renewals and holdovers, which yield a retention rate of 92%. We've also signed 49,000 sq ft of new leasing. Weighted average base rents improved 2% year-over-year, notwithstanding the challenging conditions of the market. Occupancy remains strong at 87%, with commitment on an additional 40,000 sq ft, bringing committed occupancy up to just over 89%. Our leasing efforts over recent months will definitely show some benefits later in the year. The REIT's navigating inflationary pressures on financing costs, operating costs, and leasing costs. Notwithstanding, we're proud that our team has accomplished what they have so far in 2023. Office space, specifically in Edmonton downtown employment district, continues to be challenging. However, we've managed to hold our weighted average base rents at a steady 13.15 per sq ft, and have improved occupancy in this asset class to almost 80%. As we move through 2023, we remain focused on our primary goals of value add through our leasing programs and strong stewardship through our property management services. I'd like now to open the call to take questions. Charisse, please open the lines. Absolutely. We will now begin the question-answer session. To join the question queue, you may press Star, then One on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press Star, then Two. We will pause for a moment as callers join the queue. The first question comes from Tom Callaghan with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Thanks. Good morning, guys. Good morning. Just morning. Just first question on the non-core dispositions there in Saskatchewan. Just trying to get a better sense, so I think the retail properties are classified as held for sale and have a value of about CAD 32 million. What would the value on the office assets look like for the Saskatchewan side? The, just give me a, a second to recollect. Around 10, Tom. Okay. Okay. Then, and then broadly speaking, across that portfolio, do you have any rough sense on, on LTVs or, or leverage for those assets? I do not. We do have that information. It's just not at my fingertips for this call. Yeah, no problem. I can, I can follow up after the call there on, on, on that side of things. Maybe just switching gears to mortgage maturities. Naomi, just curious on, on your thoughts for, for where financing rates could land for, for those that are coming up on the, on the back half of the year. I guess, just secondly, is the expectation there, broadly speaking, that, that kind of, maturing amounts will largely be matched, with proceeds on, on refinancing? Yeah. So we only have 1 mortgage left, in the current year, and that 1 is likely gonna be a sort of a 1-year renewal at this point, while we just sort of work through some tenant renewals. There's that 1, I think, sort of will renew on a sort of floating interest rate for 1 year. Sure. The rest of the, sort of looking at next year, they're all sort of, retail assets that have relatively low leverage, kind of like 45-50. I think our current sort of feeling would be that on the 2024 renewals, you know, we'd likely go to market and bring those back up to potentially 55-60 kind of LTV. There should be some net proceeds achieved on some of the 2024, renewals. Perfect. That's good color. Maybe just a segue there on, on the retail side. Randy, can you just talk kind of about how those assets are, are performing today relative to, to your expectations and, and kind of outlook over the next 12 months? You know, kind of a quick follow-up on that, but have you started to notice any impacts from, from Alberta's immigration with these assets, or, or still a little early on that front? It's still a little bit early on that front, Tom. Our, our overall, our Alberta retail is very, very strong. You know, we're, we're pretty much high 90s everywhere. We're... You know, there's been an evolution, as you well know, in the last 10 years or so, where the strip centers, especially grocery-anchored or ghost-anchored strip centers, are really becoming service nodes for communities. While retail in the traditional sense is there, it's really evolving toward those personal services that include pharmacy, QSR, includes things like neighborhood gyms and medical facilities, the kinds of things that the neighborhood appreciates and wants to have nearby. That, I think that has really, really played well into our overall plan of master planning communities and building these commercial centers on the edges of them. In, and specifically in terms of our retail assets in Regina, those assets have a very high occupancy. The assets are of an age. We have recently renewed the major tenants in Towers Mall, both Giant Tiger as well as Saskatchewan Health Authority. The timing is good for us, where we want to make sure that the assets that we have are getting the intensity they need when you're working through down markets or, or financial times. We're really putting under a microscope those assets that are of an age and will start to attract a requirement for further capital. You know, the assets will, in, in the hands of someone local in the community, will be able to work through those in an effective manner. As a result of that, they're, they're very attractive to the market right now, and it's very attractive for us to sell. It's, it's a perfect, perfect time. Perfect. That's, that's very helpful. Thanks. I will, I'll turn it back, guys. Thank you. Once again, if you have a question, please press star, then 1. The next question comes from Alexander Augimeri with the CIBC. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning, everyone. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Yeah, I just wanted to start with the comment on tenant retention through lease amendments. Any color on what assets are affected and if it's a one-time amendment or a broader issue? Well, I think probably one of the, one of the key renewals was, in our Lethbridge property, where we just concluded a renewal with a 76,000 sq ft tenant. The, that number would also include the renewal of The Bay in, in the same property. Generally, it, a lot of it has been, well, the non-core office assets have seen some success in renewal. It is businesses who-- everybody's kind of digested the, the economic changes in the world and the, the changes in their costs, and we're finding a lot of businesses are now just saying, "Okay, we're all in this together. Let's get back to work." We're seeing that, that kind of, pick up in volume as a result of that. People are being careful, but, if, if for those that, that have, got a good experience from their landlords, they're stepping up and renewing. Just a follow-up. Would you say it's sort of lower rents for a set amount of time for the amendment, or? Interesting, we're, we're, you know, because you're renewing a five-year deal or a seven-year deal, and you're renewing it at the same rent, you know, we walk around with our face a little long, because after five years, you think the rent should go up. The supply and demand pressures mean, for the most part, we're renewing at very, very similar rates. Sometimes we'll get a little bit more rent and sometimes a little bit less, but more or less, the rents are remaining stable. Thanks for the color on that. Yeah, a little further on SPNOI, it was a strong year to date. Mainly on the timing of expenses and recoveries, it seems. Should we expect the full year number to be more in line with historical values? Hmm. Sorry. Yeah, I think that's probably realistic. I think, you're right. There is definitely, like, timing differences quarter, quarter-over-quarter from, like, an operating expense perspective. I think in line year-over-year is probably realistic. We are seeing, you know, some increased utility costs going forward, you know, which will probably start to hurt NOI a bit. Obviously, utilities are recoverable, but, you know, insofar as, you know, we don't have occupancy at 100%, you know, that could potentially start to impact NOI a little bit. I think all in all, flat is probably fair. Okay, great. Yeah, just the last question here. On the assets held for sale, do you have any update on interest received on them or buyer profiles? Yeah, it's, it's early days, Alexander, because we just, just recently listed those assets. I can say that, you know, in those early days, the brokers will firstly go to their pool of investors who they know are attracted by those kinds of assets. As a result of that, we have what I would call two strong and two weak offers for our retail assets, but it's a work in progress. A couple of those offers we're going to be working this week. The broader market is still looking and contemplating, but I'd characterize the retail as strong interest, out of the gate and the office as soft interest out of the gate. Okay. Okay, good to hear. Sorry, the last follow-up on that is, the fair value changes, were they mostly related to the held-for-sale assets, or was that something else? No. There was a, there were some small, small changes to the held-for-sale assets. Larger changes would have included a, a sort of 75 basis point change in cap rate on our Lethbridge asset. It's because it's a large asset, with cap rates increasing there, that probably had the biggest impact on the fair value in the quarter. Okay, great. Thanks for answering my questions. I can hand it back now. Great. Thank you. This concludes the question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Randy Ferguson for any closing remarks. Thanks, Tom and Alexander, for your questions. In closing, we'd like to thank our leasing operations and management teams for the hard work they've done this past quarter. We're very proud of them. Also, our finance, admin, and HR, communications, and IT teams, who, without their support and enthusiastic support, we wouldn't be as far along as we are. Thank you all for taking time with us and for reviewing our results. We know your time is valuable. We appreciate your participation. We look forward to reporting on the year as a whole when we meet next. Thank you for today's call. Have a great day. This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.