BTB Real Estate Investment Trust (TSX:BTB.UN) Q2 2025 Earnings Call

0:00 Good morning, my name is Joelle and I will be your conference call facilitator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the BTB Real Estate Investment Trust 2025 Second Quarter Results Conference Call for which management will discuss the quarter ended June 30, 2025. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. Should you wish to follow the presentation in greater detail, management has made a presentation available on BTB's website at www.btbreach.com forward slash investors forward slash presentations forward slash quarterly meeting presentation. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer period reserved exclusively for analysts. If you would like to ask a question during this time, please press star followed by the number one on your keypad.

0:50 Before turning the meeting over to management, please be advised that some of the statements... that may be made during this call may be forward-looking in nature. Such statements involve numerous factors and assumptions and are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties, both general and specific, which give rise to the possibility that predictions, forecasts, projections, and other forward-looking statements will not be achieved. Several important factors could cause BTV real estate Investment trusts' actual results differ materially from the expectations expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could influence actual results are described in BTB Real Estate Investment Trust Management Discussion and Analysts in its annual information form, which were filed on CEDAR Plus and on BTB's website at www.btbreit.com forward slash investored. Investors forward slash reports.

1:50 I would like to remind everyone that this conference is being recorded. Thank you. I will now turn the conference over to Mr. Michel Léonard, President and Chief Executive Officer, accompanied by Mr. Marc-André Lefebvre, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Ms. Stéphanie Léonard, Senior Director of Leasing, and Mr. Charles Doré-Bédard, Senior Director of Finance. Mr. Léonard, you may begin the conference.

2:15 Thank you very much and good morning, everybody. We have stated that we have provided a presentation that is filed on our website. So the quarter at a glance is very, it's a simple quarter where there was relatively no investment activity, densification, no change as far as what we had reported in the last quarter. On the ESG front, we did release our second ESG report outlining our sustainability activities for the year 2024. And the full report is available on our website. Regarding our dispositions, we did speak about during Q1 that we had initiated the disposition of a strategic portfolio in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, including the property located at 145 Saint-Joseph Boulevard, 315 McDonald Street, and 1000 Semilair Boulevard North, that's called Les Galeries Richelieu.

3:12 We did receive LOIs, for some and all of the properties. And we are now in discussion with the offerors in order to see where this process is going to lead us to. On June 16th, we dispose of a small industrial property located in Saskatoon for $6.1 million, recording a profit on the sale versus the fair market value of the property. This property was on the market for leasing, and unfortunately, we did not have tenants that were interested in this property. However, we had a good number of investor users that were interested in the property.

3:59 So at one point, we made the decision to sell the property. After the quarter, we did dispose of the property located at 1170 in Quebec City for $1.5 million as we had previously disclosed. Regarding our real estate portfolio, the portfolio for now is relatively stable. Our office in 2021, the office segment was at 47%, we're down to 42%. The necessity based retail was at 30%, we're now at 22%. And the industrial went up from 23% to 36%. As far as our geographical diversification, 21% of our properties are located in Quebec city, 51, sorry, 54% in Montreal, 2% in three rivers, 13% in Ottawa, 3% Saskatoon and 7% Edmonton.

4:56 Regarding our key metrics, we still stand at 6.1 million square feet. The value, the fair value of our investment property, $1.2 billion. That regarding our activity in these renewals and the conclusion of new leases it's totaling a 172,000 square feet and the average rent renewal rate was 4.7% our occupancy rate is that that 91.2% and if we take into account the disposed disposition of the property in Quebec City after the end of the quarter. our occupancy rate would have been 92%. The main event of the quarter is really the NOI and the rental revenue that were affected by a non-cash straight line adjustment caused by the lease of Lyon Electric.

5:51 And Marc-André is going to go through the details of the non-cash adjustment that was made regarding this. We did conclude at least for two years with the new investors in Lyon Electric that provides a cancellation right after six months with three months notice. So the minimum term is nine months and this is a right that we have requested in order for us to give us time to find a new tenant for the property. There was a reduction in rent that was initially at $12 a square foot, or a little bit more than $12 a square foot, to approximately $7.50 per square foot, still a triple net lease.

6:39 The payout ratio, again, on an ASFO basis at 75.8% for the first six months of the year, and we did see a reduction in our debt ratio. With this, I'd like to ask Stephanie to take you through our leasing and our lease renewal activities.

6:58 All right. Good morning, everyone. Just a reminder for those of you following us on our presentation online, we're currently at page eight. So as Michelle mentioned, our total leasing activity, which is the combination of new leases and lease renewals, totals roughly 173,000 square feet for the quarter, of which approximately 50,000 square feet were new lease transactions, again, rounding up. In terms of our noteworthy lease transaction, we concluded a new long-term lease with XCMG Canada Limited in one of our properties located in Edmonton, representing 30,297 square feet. So this transaction is actually already recorded in place and was the result of the Swiss replacement.

7:43 of a tenant who was in default of their lease obligations and we re-let the property to a new company. So there was no downtime between the tenancies, so therefore the impact that you see in our occupancy rate for our Edmonton portfolio, I'll touch base on that in a couple of minutes, but it was not caused by this property. In terms of our occupancy rate, our committed occupancy rate at the end of the quarter stood at 91.2%. a 340 basis point decrease compared to Q2 2024 or 130 basis point decrease compared to the previous quarter. So this decrease is primarily attributable to three events. So the first event, we're still carrying the effects of the industrial bankruptcy which we reported in Q3 2024. This represents 132,000 square feet and it accounts for 220 basis points or a 2.2% impact on our occupancy rate.

8:36 So just a note regarding the leasing velocity for the property. So the building is still showing for lease. We had a great transaction at the end of the first quarter, but unfortunately due to zoning constraints, we weren't able to proceed with our prospects. However, we're continuing discussions with a couple of prospects that we have right now, different options that we're looking at for a full tenancy, so a single user, as well as multi-tenancy options. The second event that impacted our occupancy rate for the quarter, in addition to impacting our lease renewal rate, is one of our tenants in our industrial segment, and more specifically touching our Edmonton portfolio. So we had a tenant that occupied roughly 32,000 square feet who was in recurring default of their lease obligation. As the term of the release ended on June 30th, we elected not to renew the release to avoid future issues with this tenant.

9:30 So this departure mainly explains our 46.1% renewal rate for the quarter, and the departure at the end of the second quarter impacted our renewal rate by 54 basis points. The third and final event, which explains, oh, I just wanted to give actually a quick note regarding the space that this tenant occupied. So in the difference between the space, whether in respect to the bankruptcy that we had announced, this is not a single user property, it's a multi-tenancy, multi-tenant property, should I say. It needed a lot of cleaning, it needed emptying and for us to demolish some of the trade fixtures. We've completed this. The space is currently showing very well for lease and it is currently listed with a national brokerage firm out in Edmonton.

10:16 The third event that impacted our occupancy rate, in addition to impacting our renewal rate for the quarter, is due to three suburban office tenants who elected to not renew their lease. So more specifically, we're looking at a 12,602 square foot office tenant located in Quebec City. We signed a short-term, it was a short-term lease that we signed with a government entity, and we knew that we'd be leaving at the end of the quarter, so this impacted our renewal rate by 21 basis points. In addition to an 8,429 square foot tenant located in Montreal, again in our office segment, that was planned to leave at the end of their lease and this impacted our renewal rate by 14 basis points. And the last tenant who elected not to renew their lease is for 6,800 square feet in Ottawa. And unfortunately, this tenant, their government contract was cut short. However, this tenant still does occupy space with us. So it was a renewal, but also they gave back part of their space. So the space that they did give back to us impacted our renewal rate by 12 basis points. So as Michelle also previously mentioned, following the end of the third quarter, we sold a suburban office property located in Quebec City.

11:33 So the property showed historically low occupancy rates for us, and if we remove the property from our statistics, we show an increase of 80 basis points compared to last quarter, bringing our committed occupancy rates to 92%, which you can also see detailed on page nine of our presentation. So in terms of our lease renewal activity, because we did conclude some transactions this year, we renewed 81,622 square feet, with clients whose leases came to maturity throughout the quarter. The most significant renewals for us were concluded in our necessity-based retail segment, specifically in Quebec City, with Avril, which is a grocery store based in Quebec, similar to Whole Foods, for about 20,000 square feet. La Slip, which is an outdoor clothing and equipment store similar to sale for 18,000 square feet, and Michaels, which is a craft store for about roughly 18,000 square feet as well, all again in our necessity-based retail segment.

12:28 So in addition to our contractual renewals, we renewed roughly 41,000 square feet with existing tenants whose leases come to maturity in 2026 and the years after. Again, our necessity-based retail segment still showing its strength. We renewed Trévis. which is a pool supply store. They also build pools, sell pool equipment for roughly 25,000 square feet. In addition to a 16,000 square foot transaction with our office tenant called Field Effect in Ottawa in our suburban office segment, also important to note that we concluded a long-term lease renewal with them in addition to a 3,000 square foot expansion. So, we're going to be expanding their floor print to a total of roughly 19,000 square feet with us. So for the quarter, we recorded, as I mentioned, a 46.1% lease renewal rate. As previously explained, the non-renewal of our industrial tenants located in Edmonton impacts our lease renewal rate by 54 basis points.

13:26 And in addition to the three suburban office non-renewals, which I discussed, together we have a 47% basis point impact on our lease renewal rate. So these events explain our lease renewal rate for the quarter. So in terms of our lease renewal spreads, we managed to achieve a 4.7 lease renewal spread for the quarter across all business segments. On page 9 of our presentation, you can see the historical data of our average lease renewal rates, which we presented on a yearly basis. So just a note that we, for our year to date, we achieved a 4.8% renewal spread, and we're comparing the last... compared to the quarters for the last years in respect to our current court. Our increase in renewal rates are largely supported by our necessity-based retail segment, which I previously discussed, and which contributed to 58% of our total lease renewal activity for the quarter. So, on this note, I'd like to turn the presentation over to Makan Ali for our financial overview.

14:25 Thank you, Stephanie. Good morning, everyone. So the financial results for the second quarter once again reflect the resilience of our business. The second quarter was impacted by two straight line rent adjustments, as Michelle mentioned, and that caused a negative non-cash adjustment to rental revenue of $1.8 million. The first adjustment is related to the purchase of Lion Electric by a group of investors. BTP negotiated a new lease with them for a two-year term. Recall that the original lease was a 20-year term. And that caused a negative impact of $1.6 million in straight-line rent. The second adjustment was caused by the early departure of an industrial tenant in Edmonton, which had a negative impact of $0.2 million in straight-line rent.

15:11 As Stephanie mentioned, this property was rapidly released to a new tenant, XCMG Canada, with a 10-year lease term. As a reminder, straight-line rent adjustment is an IFRS accounting requirement of evenly spreading out rent payments over the term of the lease to reflect, amongst other things, annual rate increases in rent. So if a lease is to end prematurely, the full amortization must be recorded in the same period at the end of the lease, which then creates a negative non-cash adjustment. So for the three-month period ending June 30th, 2025, rental revenues decreased by 5.3% compared to the same quarter last year.

15:56 Excluding the said straight-line rent adjustments, rental revenue would have increased by 0.3%. Looking at NOI now, the NOI decreased by 9.2% compared to the same quarter last year. The decrease in NOI is driven by, again, the said straight-line rent adjustments. And if we look at cash NOI, then it's a different story. It increased by 0.5% compared to the same quarter last year. The increase in cash NOI is related to several factors, including number one, operating improvements, number two, higher rent renewal rates, number three, increases in rental spreads for in-place leases, also known as step-ups, and number four, the lease with Winner's HomeSense, which began to produce rental revenue as of February 25th.

16:44 Now, if we turn our attention to organic growth, cash same property NOI decreased by 1.5% for the quarter compared to the same period last year. The decrease in cash SP NOI is driven by the previously reported tenant bankruptcy in Q3 2024 and the early departure of an industrial tenant in Edmonton, as I stated before. FFO adjusted per unit was 8.3 cents for the quarter, a decrease of 2.1 cents from the same quarter last year. However, AFFO adjusted per unit was 9.5 cents for the quarter, an increase, a slight increase of 0.1 cents from the same quarter last year. The increase is mainly explained by, one, the previously stated increase in cash NOI and also a decrease in administrative expenses.

17:34 Note that the net financial expenses before non-monetary items were stable. We maintain our distribution to unit holders at 7.5 cents per unit for the quarter, which represents an annualized distribution of 30 cents per unit. The AFFO adjusted payout ratio was 79.2% for the quarter, a slight improvement from 80.2% for the same period last year. Looking at our investment property, the value remained virtually unchanged at $1.2 billion at the end of the second quarter. We did not make any portfolio-wide changes to our cap rates this quarter, and the weighted average cap rate for the entire portfolio stood at 6.7%, or the same cap rate as at the year-end 2024.

18:23 The sale of the property located at 3911 Miller Avenue in Edmonton resulted in a gain in fair value of $0.7 million, which represents a premium of 13% versus our book value. We concluded the quarter with a total debt ratio of 57.1%. The weighted average term and average interest rates on our mortgage portfolio was 2.5 years and 4.36% respectively. Finally, at the end of the quarter, we have $5.7 million in cash and $28.5 million was available under our credit facilities for total equity of $34.2 million. This is an improvement of $16.5 million compared to the end of 2024.

19:11 So this concludes our presentation and we will now open the call to questions. Operator, can we please have the first question on the line? This is the conference operator. At this time, I would like to remind everyone that the analysts may now ask their questions by pressing star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and the number one. We'll now pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from Matt Cornack with National Bank Financial. Your line is now open.

19:46 Good morning, guys. I understand the straight line rent adjustments, but could you give us a sense, it doesn't sound like there was any downtime on Edmonton, but for Line Electric, would the new rental rate have been in effect for the entire quarter, or should we expect kind of a little bit of a drag on Q3 as a result of that? And also,

20:08 Just to answer your question, the new rate applied as of May 20th of this year. So until May 20th, we receive all payments under the, let's call it the old lease, except for a fraction that was unpaid from December 1st to December 15th of 2024 that's already been recorded. And so there was no down time between the trustee process and the new lease in place.

20:43 And when you think of that lease rate on that property, I know when you bought the property, you thought there was optionality around potentially moving rate higher. Obviously, the industrial market's a little bit thin at the moment, but still, Should you think that at the end of the two-year term, or if it does in fact get terminated early, that there's potentially some upside to the rents on leasing that? Absolutely. Okay. And then also, as you think of kind of the tenant turnover that you've had, particularly it sounds like the property and the industrial property in Montreal, You've made some progress, but how should we think of the timing on potential lease-up for that and some of the other vacant space in the portfolio?

21:32 I think that we were quite ecstatic with the potential tenant that we had, and unfortunately the city did not allow the use that the tenant would have required on the property. So we do have currently two prospects. for the property that would basically come into fruition relatively rapidly. But if you want to be conservative, give us four to six months for the resupply.

22:06 And still call it low double digits or maybe low teens in terms of rent expectations in terms of what you were seeing for the property there?

22:18 Yeah, call it $12 if you'd like.

22:22 Right. Okay. On the disposition front, both what was done in the quarter, it sounds like that was maybe vacant, but also for the Quebec City one done subsequently. Was there any NOI generated by that property? I know it sounds like it also had some vacancy in it.

22:42 It was very little. I believe it was around $300,000 of NOI that was generated from this property.

22:51 Okay. And then maybe last one for me on the capital allocation front. It sounds like you're still in process on a few other potential dispositions. Can you give a sense of the – I think you kind of – hinted at it, but you're making some progress there. What would be the quantum and the timing of potential additional dispositions?

23:14 Yeah, sure. Morning, Matt. So right now we have five properties on the market. The estimated gross proceeds that ranges from $80 to $100 million. Looking at it on a net proceeds basis, we could fetch $15 to $35 million. In terms of timing, I'll let Michel answer that part.

23:34 We are in careful negotiations regarding the acquisition of an industrial property located out west. So obviously everything is sort of dependent on our disposition. It's again the same principle where If we dispose too fast and acquire too late, then there's a problem. And if we acquire too soon and dispose too late, then also we're creating a problem for ourselves. So it's this timing issue that's always in the way of transactions. But we are advancing on this transaction carefully in order to...

24:23 to be able to announce something maybe by the end of next quarter.

24:31 Perfect. Thanks, guys. Your next question comes from Tao Luli with CIBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

24:42 Hi. Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Just a follow-up on – It's been about four months since all of the tariff drama began here. I'm wondering if you can just speak a little bit more to demand across the asset classes for leasing new space. Now that some time has passed, do you have a better sense of what kind of impact it's maybe having or not having?

25:11 Well, I think it's the latter. It's not having. Internally, we did look at our portfolio, look at the tenancy. and whether we thought that if, you know, whether a certain tenant would be affected by it. And what we're seeing is that, you know, the free trade agreement is still in place. Maybe that's a question for next year when it comes to renewal or renegotiation. But so far, I mean, we're touching wood and as everybody is touching wood because it doesn't seem that on any of our segments or investment classes, that we do have impacts. The tenants that are defaulting on their leases is definitely not linked to any kind of tariff discussion. It's mainly linked to things that their operation per se and has nothing to do with the tariff imposed by the Americans.

26:18 And then, you know, you'd mentioned, you know, you're in the market marketing the Central Service Studio portfolio, and you mentioned you're looking at an industrial property in Ottawa to buy. Again, sort of a similar question, but just in the transaction market, like, are you finding, like, are you seeing the volume of interest on the dispositions? And when you're looking at properties right now, is it still quite competitive?

26:51 Regarding the disposition, the brokers that we had retained signed confidentiality agreements with more than 30 possible buyers. And we had eight purchasers that submitted paper on all or part of the portfolio. So I would say that I think that the trend is reversing regarding purchasing. I think that the major investors are looking at the markets in order to position themselves. Even in the office segment, we're seeing interest in the office segment that we have not seen in the previous years. Obviously the cap rates are higher than they were in 18 or 19. However, the interest is there and it's basically people that want to basically conclude great transactions in order to eventually profit from these transactions.

27:53 So I wouldn't, you know, in the past, I called the people that have interest in office bottom feeders, and now we're sort of out of that process, and I think that it's more serious buyers that are in the market looking at acquisitions.

28:15 And then, you know, when you guys were looking to buy, you know, obviously you guys are very much interested in the industrial. Are you finding these processes still very competitive, and you're competing against

28:27 I think that, you know, cap rates have moved up, let's call it substantially, from the times of the pandemic, and it gives great opportunities for BTB to position itself in the industrial segment.

28:49 Okay. That's great. Thanks very much, gentlemen. This is the conference operator again. If analysts would like to ask a question, please press star, then the number one. Your next question comes from Pammy Beer with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

29:07 Thanks. Good morning. Michelle, can you maybe just provide a bit more color on the industrial acquisition that you're looking at? And then secondly, how did the sale price of 1170 Boulevard in Quebec City compare to the book value? Thanks.

29:23 Do you have that number?

29:26 By 1170, we already had reset book value in line with the price of the contract.

29:32 I think the adjustment to the book value was done in Q4 or even earlier in the year. In Q2, yeah, Q2 2024. Because we had received the offer and the offer was firm in Q2 2024. And, you know, we had... issues regarding closing that eventually were solved and the issues were mainly linked to the mortgage financing for that property and the this issue was recently solved so you know we we were at a closing on a weekly basis uh that you know and eventually it got closed and we were you know very happy for this transaction to occur so the adjustment to the book was already done uh and i think From memory, this is a property that we had purchased back in 2010 for $13 million.

30:35 Got it. And then, sorry, just on the first part of the question, any additional color on the industrial acquisition that you're looking at? I think you said it was in the west, but... Yeah, it is in Edmonton.

30:49 And right now, I can't disclose anything more because there's nothing firm at this point. But I anticipate that within the next few weeks or a month or so, we should be able to get closer to something that's firm.

31:06 Okay. All right. Thanks very much. At this time, there are no further questions. Please go ahead, Mr. Leonov.

31:17 Thank you very much for joining us today. I realize that most of you were on holiday yesterday, so it's quite an awakening to join a call like this this morning. So thank you for participating. And I think that most of our results were affected by non-cash adjustments that had to be made in accordance with IFRS principles, accounting principles. And as a result, I think that, again, we're very resilient. And we're looking forward to seeing you again or speaking with you again for our third quarter results. Thank you very much for joining us today.

32:03 This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.