Good morning. I would like to welcome everyone to the Canadian Net REIT's fourth quarter and year-end 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising that your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. I would like to advise everyone that this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ben Gazith, Canadian Net REIT's Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead, Mr. Gazith. Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us on our Q4 2022 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 Canadian Net'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 Canadian Net's most recent annual information form for the year ended December 31st, 2021, and management's discussion and analysis for the period ended December 31st, 2022, which are available on our website at www.cnetreit.com and on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. We will also refer to non-IFRS financial measures today, which are widely used in the Canadian real estate industry, including FFO, AFFO, and NOI. Canadian Net believes these financial measures provide useful information to both management and investors in measuring the financial performance and financial position of Canadian Net. These financial measures do not have any standardized definitions prescribed by IFRS and may not be comparable to similarly titled measures reported by other entities. For more information, please refer to the section Non-IFRS Financial Measures of our MD&A for the period that ended December 31st, 2022. I will now turn the call over to Jason Parravano, Canadian Net REIT's President and Chief Executive Officer. Jason? Thank you, Ben. Good morning. In the fourth quarter of 2022, we continued to execute our business strategy. We've maintained a portfolio of 101 properties. We worked diligently to optimize the REIT's portfolio, ensure a smooth year-end process, and lay the groundwork to start 2023 strong. In addition, we leased out the only vacancy in the portfolio, bringing our occupancy level back to 100%. We completed the development of a QSR in the city of Jonquière, which opened in mid-December. We currently have ongoing projects will be coming online within the next few weeks, which is the development of a previously announced Benny&Co. in the city of Mont-Laurier. In the next quarters, we also plan to begin the development of two previously announced additional locations for the Benny&Co. banner. The REIT has a 40% interest in all of the projects mentioned. Shifting to what we're seeing in the market and the macroeconomic landscape, the popular topic of conversation right now is inflation and interest rates. Our business, which is focused on owning and acquiring properties on a triple net lease basis, allows us to be somewhat immune to inflation, as higher operating costs are borne by the tenant. The REIT's operating costs for our properties are almost exclusively charged back to our tenants under the structure of the leases, with a few exceptions. As the year progresses, this continues to be the case. With respect to interest rates, we had no renewals in Q4 2022 and completed the refinancing of only one property. We saw a dip in bond yields at the end of 2022 and a spike in the first quarter of 2023. Another dip following the collapse of certain financial institutions in the U.S.A. This allows us to take advantage of favorable renewal rates for two properties during Q1 2023, where the rate reset was within approximately 100 basis points from the original rates. In 2022, the REIT has put two properties for sale, which are still being marketed. Volatility in the interest rate environment has made it difficult for buyers to underwrite assets with such significant swings in the bond yields, even on a daily basis. In addition to the 2 properties mentioned, we will be closing shortly on the sale of a KFC property in Timmins, Ontario. The property was sold at a cap rate, which was about 100 basis points lower than our IFRS cap rate for the property. It continues to show the disconnect that still exists between the public and private markets. We continue to survey the market for opportunities, but volatility in the bond market make it difficult to underwrite assets at this time. We hope to see some stability return in the short to medium term, but different macro environment catalysts out there are working against the sector as a whole. I will now turn the call back over to Ben Gazith, who will discuss our financial performance. Ben? Thank you, Jason. We had another great quarter. For the 12-month period ended December 31, 2022, Canadian Net reported an FFO per unit of CAD 0.636, compared to CAD 0.581 per unit for the same period in 2021, which represents an increase of 9%. FFO reached CAD 13 million compared to CAD 10.8 million for the same period, which represents an increase of 21%. These increases were primarily due to the impact of newly acquired properties, partially offset by interest on mortgages associated with these properties, as well as increases in floating interest rates on the REIT's various lines of credit. During the same period, the trust's property rental income was CAD 24.7 million, compared to CAD 19 million for the same period in 2021, which represents an increase of 30%. NOI reached CAD 18.4 million, compared to CAD 14.3 million for the same period in 2021, which represents an increase of 28%. These increases were also primarily due to the impact of newly acquired properties. The IFRS value of our adjusted investment properties, which is the total of our wholly owned investment properties and our proportionate share of the investment properties held in joint ventures amounted to CAD 326.9 million, an increase of 10% compared to CAD 298.5 million a year earlier. We continue to maintain a conservative approach with respect to our leverage and our payout ratio, having a debt to gross assets ratio of 59% compared to 52% at the same time last year. The primary reason for the increase is due to fair market value write-downs during the year on the value of our investment properties. Our FFO payout ratio, which increased slightly to 53% from 52% a year earlier, has remained consistent quarter-over-quarter. With respect to our leasing for the year, as mentioned on our previous call, we completed all of our 2022 renewals, which represent approximately CAD 200,000 of NOI, with no tenant turnover. The leasing spreads on those renewals, which included contracted renewals as well as new lease agreements for existing properties, was approximately 20%. We have 10 leases expiring in 2023, which represents approximately CAD 800,000 of NOI, of which 90% have either been renewed or we were able to enter into new leases in spaces where the previous tenants was not renewing. The remaining lease renewals should be completed by the end of Q2 2023. Looking forward to 2024, we have 12 leases coming up for renewals, representing approximately CAD 1.7 million of NOI. Approximately 40% of these renewals have already been completed. The portfolio's WALT on our leases is currently 6.9 years. Our properties are typically financed with fixed rate amortizing mortgages. There are three properties in the portfolio which are on variable rate mortgages as well as the REIT's line of credit. As Jason had mentioned, we are in the process of selling two properties, both of which have variable rate mortgages. In addition, bridge loans on our development projects are at variable rate until converted to take out financing. Over the year, our preference has been to take out the longest term available to us on our mortgages in order to mitigate our rate reset risk. We have CAD 15 million of mortgages rolling over in 2023, excluding mortgages in our JVs. The bulk of our renewals are not before 2027. Included in the mortgages rolling over are CAD 3.5 million of mortgages associated with the properties held for sale. The current average term to maturity on our mortgages is five years. That summarizes our key results for the quarter. We will now open the lines for any questions. Operator? Certainly. As a reminder to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. One moment for our first question. That question comes from Mark Rothschild of Canaccord. Your line is open. Thanks. Thanks. Morning, guys. Maybe starting off with regards to the leases that were renewed already, the 90% for 2023. Can you talk about the spread you're getting on the change in rental rates and if there's been any changes in escalations that you get through the terms of the lease? Hi, Mark. Jason here. Yeah, sure. The leases that were renewed in 2023, we have some on the low end which were... Well, we have one of them, which was a flat renewal, and, you know, that represented around CAD 80,000 of NOI. Then we have some on the high end, with a tenant replacement. We had mentioned that we had one tenant that vacated their space and, actually about three weeks ago. The leasing spread on that property on the higher end of 15%. Then the others float around between 5% and 8%. You know, aside from the one which was the replacement, which is a fair market value, kind of new lease, the remainder are contractual rental escalations for the terms of the lease. Okay, great. Thanks. On the acquisitions, been lately a little slower. To what extent is that just the market being a little more difficult on pricing or you being maybe a little bit more careful with just how you spend your capital at a time when equity is a little more expensive or difficult? I think you hit the nail on the head. It's a mix of both, I would say. You know, you do have to be a bit more cognizant and careful with your capital when equity or debt is even very volatile or tougher to get. Also we are seeing a significant level of, you know, in the assets that we tend to purchase, vendor resistance in pricing. Just like if we were to sell something right now, just because the rates are higher than they were, doesn't mean that we'd be dropping our pants and selling stuff for eight caps, right? Vendors don't need the capital. Typically, the vendors that own these type of properties don't need the capital. It's not even a question of price discovery, it's just the gap is too wide, to be honest with you. As I mentioned, we're in the process of selling a property right now in Timmins, Ontario for a six cap or a 6.1% cap rate. That property is on our books at an IFRS cap rate of 8%. You know, we're seeing some stuff hit the market. You know, H&R is in the process of selling a portfolio of assets right now in Quebec. It's under contract for what I heard, somewhere in the mid six range. Is it gonna close? We'll see. It just goes to show what people are willing to pay and what people are willing to sell assets for. Okay, great. Thanks so much. One moment for our next question. Our next question will come from Kyle Stanley of Desjardins. Your line's open. Thanks. Morning, guys. You mentioned 12 leases up for renewal in 2024, and I think kind of 40% of that's been done, CAD 1.7 million of NOI. Can you talk about what the spread achieved was on that, you know, similar to kind of, I guess, the guidance you provided for 2023? Yeah, they vary. I would say that on one of them, we sacrificed a little bit of spread to get some terms. You know, if you can sign a 10-year lease with the best credit in the market, you sacrifice a bit of the spread. That was probably on the lower end of around 3.5% spread. A couple others on land leases, about $250,000 of NOI on land leases. The average spread on those was 5%. Another one. Sorry, one of them that has a CPI link, so we don't even know what the increase is going to be yet. The other one, the remaining one at 7%. Okay, fair enough. You mentioned, you know, having the ability to refinance debt, early in Q1 at better rate. Could you just you know, disclose how much debt and maybe what that rate would have been? We just did two renewals last week, actually, literally three days after the SVB crash when the bond yields dropped down, and we early renewed a couple of properties. That was on a five-year renewal term at 5.2%, which is, like I said, not horrible, not great. Had we not had that financial kind of breakdown in the States, the bond yields were trading 60, 70 points higher, so the renewal rate would have probably been exactly that, 60, 70 points higher, closer, just sub 6%. That being said, we're in the process of doing a couple other bridge to take out financings as we speak right now. I suspect the rates to be somewhere in the low to mid 5s. We'll see how the bond yields maintain their, you know, current position where they're at right now. I think this morning we were at the five year was at 2.90%, and at some point yesterday, it even dropped to 2.75%, if I'm not mistaken. Still, we're still seeing 15, 20 BP changes on a daily basis, which is unheard of historically. You know, if you would have asked me six months ago, I would have said that most of the renewals this year would have been done closer to a 6%. I'm extremely happy to see renewals being done in the low fives right now. Fair enough. Just one more for me. Just, do you have any thoughts on what your capital budget for 2023 is? I mean, including, I guess, the new Benny& Co. that you're hoping to start in the near term and any other spending that's required. Yeah. So the Benny& Cos.'s, that are actually slated to start in the near term, the capital is actually funded, given the fact that we've already purchased the land and the remaining costs will be mortgage debt to cover the cost of completion. I don't suspect any material amounts of capital required for those. If I'm not mistaken, we have about a CapEx budget of approximately CAD 1.1 million-CAD 1.2 million this year. The beauty of it is, if I'm not mistaken, CAD 800,000 of that is recoverable CapEx from our tenants due to the lease structure. We're actually gonna make a couple bucks on that CapEx due to the leasing. Well, I'm sure you're familiar with, like, the CT and LAVA spreads on the deferred maintenance chargebacks, how we make a spread on the interest rate. Right. We'll make a couple bucks on some of those. It's the same style structure. Okay, perfect. That's it for me. I'll turn it back. Thanks, guys. One moment for our next question. Our next question will come from David Chrystal of Echelon. Your line is open. Thanks. Good morning, guys. Hey, David. In Q4, your maintenance CapEx and AFFO ticked higher, and I think there's a note there highlighting it's tied to an expansion. Is the expansion complete? Can you maybe comment on what that property is, what the return is, and if there's any more opportunities like it in the portfolio? Sure. I can give you exact details of it. This is a property that was probably one of the first developments that the REIT did back in 2013. It's a Petro-Canada property with a Tim Hortons and another QSR called Amir. This is a very strong performing site for us. Very consistent, great tenants. It's under the Petro-Canada banner, as I mentioned. C-store does great. This was a site that had 3 pumps at the time that it was built, given the market study that was done at the time. The beauty of this site is that it's far exceeded our expectations and our tenants' expectations in term of volume. As a result of the nature of the site, the traffic is very concentrated at one point in time, so they required additional pumps. What we did is we actually spent about $200,000 or about $190,000 to add an additional pump to increase volume. Since the additional pump has been added, we're seeing about 20%-30% year-over-year volume increases as a result. Our return on this can vary just because of the structure of the lease compensation that we put in place. On the low end, returns is 10%. On the high end or my expectations, the returns are probably gonna be about 30% on that CAD 180 that we spent. That's just based on volume or sales? It's based on volume. The variance. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and I, I- At a minimum, 10% return. Okay. Fair. I guess, I mean, it's a somewhat unique opportunity. Is there any more room for expansion or any other tenants that are looking for more space or more pumps in the portfolio? I would say for the most part, the rest of the properties are really well done or serviced to the need that they have. At the end of the day, like in this situation, it's not us that's gonna go out there and say, "You need another pump." It's the tenant that's gonna come knocking on our door and say, "We need another pump." There's probably a couple other situations like that, but I wouldn't be jumping around to go do these things. Actually, what we're seeing in the portfolio, believe it or not, aside from this, is the amount of capital that our tenants are spending on renovations. We currently have, if I'm not mistaken, 6 grocery stores which are under full renos right now. When I say full renos, I mean, like, you know, full-fledged CAD 3 million-CAD 4 million or CAD 5 million renos, depending on the size. It just goes to show the quality of the site and the need for our tenants to invest capital in the properties because they believe that the returns are there with the capital injection. We're seeing on four, sorry, three of our properties, conversions right now from the traditional food banner to a discount banner. If you look at like, we have a Metro property, which is being converted into a Super C, which is the discount banner for Metro here in Quebec. I'm not gonna talk about the other ones 'cause I think they're still in the process and might be confidential from the tenant side. Other similar type situations where property conversions are being or grocers are being converted, converting the locations to their discount banners. Are there any opportunities given the shortage of, you know, attractive acquisition opportunities, are there any opportunities? Mm-hmm. You know, source of capital for some of these conversions, renovations, or CapEx that tenants are putting in and maybe get term or return on those? I think our cost to capital is a little bit more expensive than Loblaw and Metro right now. That being said, if it were to be done, it probably be at a rate that they wouldn't find very interesting, in my opinion. I could be wrong, and maybe Eric or [Fl`eche] will knock on our door and say, "We need X amount of dollars for Metro renovations or Food Basics renovations." I highly doubt it. At that same time, I see the plus side of this is when I have a grocery store franchisee or a grocery store corporate store spending CAD 3, 4 million, CAD 5 million on a conversion or a renovation, and there's only two, three years left on the lease, in my head, well, they just renewed for 10 years because they're not renovating or putting capital into a store for the short term to write it off in two, three years from now. I see it more as that's the benefit I see from these types of renovations. Okay, great. Appreciate the color. I'll turn it back. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one one. One moment. Our next question will come from Manish Garg of LBS. Your line is open. Hi, good morning, guys. Congratulations on the results. My first question is on the development side. As you've mentioned the yield on cost basis contracts, just a bit of a color over there. Are you seeing any pushback from the contractors on these fixed cost contracts? Just a bit of a comment on the pipeline, if you guys are looking to expand on the development pipeline or stay on the sidelines a bit, till there is more clarity. Yes. I guess just a clarification. The yield on cost is not with the contractor. The yield on cost agreement is with the tenant. Regardless of what the cost is, we adjust the lease as a result after to achieve the same yield on cost and hopefully a similar return as we originally budget when we start the project. In terms of other development projects that we're looking for, like, we don't label ourselves as developers. That's not what we do. We are consolidators. We are a financial partner. We are an equity partner to developers. I would say what we're seeing right now out there is a lot of uncertainty, a lot of uncertainty of people wanting to take on new capital projects. People wanting or looking for labor. There's still labor shortage everywhere you look right now. It hasn't disappeared yet. I would say that, we are, you know, looking at the landscape and keeping our eyes open if projects come up. We're always chasing because at the end of the day, like, if we were to see something tomorrow, we wouldn't be starting to build this summer, right? These things take years and years. You know, we have a project right now that we're hoping to start in the fall. We'll see city permits if it allows us to do it. If not, it goes into the next year. That being said, you always gotta keep that pipeline, that pipeline growing and the, and try the time when you do it. We are experiencing, as you know, a kind of slowdown in the market, but it's not gonna last forever. It's just about being ready to gear up as quick as possible when things go back to the way they were. Thank you. Just one more for me. In terms of refinancings, so I see CAD 15.5 million debt maturing this year. From what I know, about CAD 5 million is tied to some dispositions. You guys talked about two refinancings in this call. Just on the math over there, would that take care a bulk of remaining CAD 10 million, or there'll be, you know, just a bit more color on that. Yes. Remaining, I would say as of today, excluding the ones that we're taking care of and as well as the ones that are held for sale. With the joint ventures, it's a little bit higher. Yeah, it's I would say probably closer to CAD 12 million, CAD 12 million-CAD 13 million. Okay. Thank you. I don't. I'm showing no further questions. I would like to hand the call back to management for closing remarks. Great. Well, thank you very much, everyone, for joining us this morning. If anyone has any further questions, everyone knows my number. Thank you very much and have a great weekend. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.