Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Chartwell Retirement Residences Q3 2022 Financial Results Conference Call. I would now like to turn the meeting over to the CEO, Vlad Volodarsky. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Paul. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. There is a slide presentation to accompany this conference call available on our website at chartwell.com under the Investor Relations tab. Joining me are Karen Sullivan, our President and Chief Operating Officer, Sheri Harris, Chief Financial Officer, and Jonathan Boulakia, Chief Investment and Chief Legal Officer. Before we begin, I direct you to the cautionary statements on slide two, because during this call, we will make statements containing forward-looking information and non-GAAP and other financial measures. Our MD&A and other securities filings contain information about the assumptions, risks, and uncertainties inherent in such forward-looking statements and details of such non-GAAP and other financial measures.
More specifically, I direct you to the disclosures in our 2021 MD&A under the headings "2022 Outlook" and "COVID-19 Business Impact and Related Risks," and in our Q1, Q2, and Q3 2022 MD&As under the heading "2022 Outlook" for a discussion of risks and uncertainties relating to the pandemic and its ongoing effect on our business. These documents can be found on our website or at sedar.com. Turning to slide three. I believe the third quarter of 2022 marks the turning point in our recovery from the impacts of this long-lasting and unfortunately still ongoing pandemic. This recovery has not yet been as robust as we had hoped for. It's been slow, laborious, and uneven. Having said that, we are making progress.
Our same property retirement occupancy increased 60 basis points in Q3 compared to Q2 of this year, with another 40 basis points increase in October. From April to September, our Residences in 11 of our top 15 markets gained 280 basis points of occupancy. Our Residences in 4 most competitive markets, Ottawa, Durham Region, Calgary, and Quebec City, continued to experience occupancy declines of 130 basis points. While November and December occupancy forecast is flat, based on the known leases and notices on hand, we have consistently outperformed our forecast due to mid-month move-ins not accounted in the current forecast. Our initial contacts and personalized tours, leading sales indicators, continue to trend positively. There is no question that the economic environment is challenging with rising inflation and interest rates, slowdown in housing sales, declining housing prices, and the threat of potential recession.
We believe our business can withstand these challenges as the majority of our move-ins are needs-driven. People we serve have accumulated significant equity in their primary residences over decades living there, so even substantial declines in house prices would leave them with sufficient capital to finance their access to retirement living. In addition, seniors are likely more conservative investors, and now they're making much better returns on their investments in interest-bearing accounts and instruments like GICs and T-bills, also enhancing their ability to finance retirement living. In the last three months, I visited over 30 of our Residences from Quebec to Alberta, meeting with our residents, managers, and staff. These visits reinforced my confidence that we are on the right path. First and foremost, our dedicated teams are fully committed to delivering exceptional experiences to their residents.
Even when some residents were bringing their concerns to me, always they took time to recognize and praise our people who serve and care for them every day. Second, it was very clear to me that our focus on occupancy recovery and growth is shared by everyone at Chartwell. Our Residences teams know what they need to do and how to do it. Using this opportunity, I want to give a shout-out to our team at Chartwell St. Albert, who last week celebrated their achievement of 100% occupancy. They promised they would do it when I saw them in August, and it did not take them very long to deliver. Last but not least, I'm confident that operationally we have all ingredients, motivated people, deep expertise, innovative strategies, and processes in place to accelerate our recovery and growth.
There are two key priorities that our organization has, recover occupancy and solve staffing challenges. Our teams are working collaboratively and effectively on delivering on these priorities. I will now turn this call to Karen to talk about specifics of this work. Karen?
Thanks, Vlad. Moving to slide four, in September, we had a sales call blitz encouraging prospects to attend our September national open house and take advantage of a variety of move-in offers, specifically chosen by our homes from a toolkit of options to meet their unique needs. This event, which also included VIP experiences for our local business partners to familiarize them with our products and services to promote to their clients, was highly successful with over 1,000 new prospects. Based on this success, in an effort to continue to encourage prospects to come out to our Residences, we decided to add another two-day open house event in November. We have coincided this with an upgrade to our customer relationship management system that was launched this week.
Our sales force across the country is not only excited about the new features of the system, but they are also using this as an opportunity to test out these new features by contacting prospects in their database to attend the November open house events. We expect that this strategy, which also includes enhanced commissions for our retirement living consultants, will assist us with move-ins in Q1, 2023. Our agile and adaptable marketing team put together a multi-channel campaign to support the open house, including over 1 million direct marketing invitations delivered in our communities across the country. Overall, our marketing efforts, which include organic and paid web search, social media, marketing, radio, TV, newsprint, billboards, and bus shelter ads, have shifted towards individual residences and regional advertising from generic brand awareness campaigns. The local campaigns focus on unique features, service offerings, pricing, and promotions available at specific residences.
Our advertising campaigns are designed to drive traffic to our website, which saw growth in visits of over 25% over the past three months and a 56% increase year-over-year. We're also expanding our relationship with paid referrals in Quebec and have recruited additional retirement living consultants in our larger properties as well as corporately to assist residences that have RLC vacancies or large volumes of activities. We now have 12 business development managers assigned to geographic clusters of residents who are responsible for increasing referrals, brand awareness, and grassroots business development, including interacting with hospital discharge planners within their regions. BDM referrals have the highest closing ratio after resident referrals and have steadily increased over the last three years. Business development referrals continually account for a significant portion of our overall prospect traffic and even higher portion of our permanent move-ins.
As part of our agile and scalable approach to operations, we've streamlined our brand standards and corporate processes to become more responsive to the needs of our residences. We also completed a reorganization of our Quebec operations platform in order to provide additional focus on sales efforts as well as to reposition specific homes in their local markets. This is on the heels of a similar reorganization in Ontario in Q2. We are also in the final stages of developing an operating model for our smaller properties to improve personalization of services to residents in a more cost-effective manner, which will be rolled out to approximately 20 homes throughout 2023. Turning to slide 5, our other main focus has been and will continue to be recruitment and retention of staff and controlling the use of staffing agency workers.
This latter included a comprehensive RFP to reduce the number of agencies we are working with in Ontario from 30 agencies, which accounted for 80% of our Ontario spend, to just 9 agencies. This has allowed us to negotiate better rates, reduce surge pricing, and introduce standard contract language, including a formula to move an employee from agency status to full-time employment. A similar process is now underway in Quebec. We have also introduced new accountability processes for utilizing agency workers in our homes. We've expanded our recruitment team by adding 4 professional recruiters to support our retirement residences, including a dedicated, experienced recruiter in Quebec City, where we have our highest agency use.
We continue to hold a number of hiring events in key locations across the country, and our marketing team is assisting us with an employment marketing campaign, which includes expanded digital marketing outreach for care and dietary roles. We're using new tools for our online interviewing and shift call-out software and have revamped our postings for frontline positions. In order to ensure competitive compensation in our homes, where appropriate, we are working with our employees and/or their union representatives on compensation enhancements. Not unlike our resident referral program, some of our best new hires come from recommendations from our current staff. To date, we have hired 300 new staff as a result of our paid employee referral program.
We're now taking a page from our sales team and holding a hiring blitz in the coming months with enhanced payments for employee referrals that join us by the end of Q1. Other recruitment efforts include the development of programs and partnerships to attract students, new immigrants, and people with special needs, as well as investigating a foreign workers program. Finally, we're also focused on retaining our employees, which starts with making day one and the overall orientation process welcoming, effective, and enjoyable. I'd now like to turn it over to Sheri to discuss our financial results.
Thank you, Karen. As shown on slide 6, in Q3 2022, net income was CAD 4.3 million compared to CAD 0.1 million in Q3 2021. We use groupings of properties to evaluate and monitor our financial and operating performance, and we believe that this additional disclosure enhances the ability to understand and assess our results of operations, and particularly to compare such results from period to period. In Q3 2022, we changed our portfolio groupings to present separately our properties acquired subsequent to January 1 of the preceding fiscal year and development properties not yet achieving stabilization by January 1 of the preceding year from properties that we have definitive plans to either sell, reposition, or otherwise make significant capacity changes to within the next year. As the financial and operating performance trends in these two types of properties vary.
The groups now presented in our MD&A are as follows: acquisitions and development; dispositions, repositioning, and other; and same property, with same property now only our retirement operations. Further details of the composition of our portfolio can be found in our Q3 MD&A. For Q3 2022, FFO from continuing operations was CAD 28.3 million or CAD 0.12 per unit, compared to CAD 28.8 million or CAD 0.13 per unit in Q3 2021. The decrease in FFO from continuing operations was primarily due to higher G&A expenses of CAD 1.6 million due to higher severance, cloud-based information technology system implementations, education and travel expenses, partially offset by lower performance-based compensation expense. We also had higher finance costs of CAD 1.5 million. This was offset by contributions from our continuing operations NOI, which increased CAD 2.3 million. This is comprised of changes as follows.
Higher adjusted NOI of CAD 4.6 million due to contributions from our acquisitions and development portfolio. Lower same-property adjusted NOI of CAD 0.5 million, and lower NOI of CAD 1.8 million from our dispositions, repositioning, and other portfolio. Total FFO was CAD 31.9 million or CAD 0.13 per unit for Q3 2022, compared to CAD 33.9 million or CAD 0.15 per unit in Q3 2021. Long-term care discontinued operations contributed CAD 0.01 per unit to total FFO for Q3 2022, a decrease of CAD 0.01 per unit compared to Q3 2021 due to lower preferred accommodation revenue, timing of flow-through funding envelope expenditures, and incremental pandemic expense funding, which was partially offset by higher retirement accommodation and ancillary revenue. Slide 7 summarizes our same-property operating platforms results.
Our same-property adjusted NOI decreased by CAD 0.5 million or 1.1% in Q3 2022 compared to Q3 2021, primarily due to the following factors. We had higher net pandemic expenses of CAD 3.7 million due to lower government reimbursements as most government programs for retirement residences have come to an end. In addition, we continued to have elevated pandemic expenses due to increased agency staffing used to augment vacancies due to isolation requirements and continued staff shortages in select markets in Ontario and Quebec. We also had higher utilities and food expenses in Q3 2022. Our same-property revenue growth was CAD 7.3 million or 4.8%, primarily due to higher revenue from regular, annual, and market-based rental and service rate increases combined with higher occupancy.
Same-property occupancy was 77.6% for Q3 2022 compared to 77.1% for Q3 2021, or an increase of 0.5 percentage points. Our Western platform achieved strong growth of 3.4 percentage points, and Ontario increased 0.9 percentage points. Quebec, which had continued to decline through 2021 and into the spring of 2022, decreased 1.5 percentage points. Compared to Q3 2021, move-ins were higher by 6%, and move-outs were lower by 3.3%. All platforms experienced occupancy gains in Q3 2022 compared to Q2 2022. Turning to slide 8, you will see our monthly same-property retirement occupancies. Same-property occupancy increased to 77.7% or 0.2 percentage points in September 2022, and a further 0.4 percentage point gain to 78.1% in October of 2022.
November and December 2022 occupancy based on known leases and notices on hand are forecasted to be higher than October 2022 by 0.1 percentage points. We have consistently experienced mid-month move-ins, particularly in our Ontario platform. These mid-month move-ins are not accounted for in our forecasts and may result in better than currently forecasted occupancy over the next two months. Moving on to slide 9, our trend on retirement operations net pandemic expenses remains elevated, in part due to significantly reduced government supports. Net pandemic expenses relate to temporary costs associated with restrictions or requirements imposed by public health authorities on residences with outbreaks that typically result in additional staffing requirements, including agency staffing, to fill some of these gaps, along with additional PPE costs.
Through the course of the pandemic, these expenses have ranged from a peak of CAD 5 million per month in the early days to CAD 0.9 million per month in the fall of 2021 prior to the Omicron-driven pandemic waves. Currently, these expenses are trending at CAD 1.5 million per month, and we estimate that for Q4 2022, our pandemic expenses could range from CAD 3 million to CAD 5 million for the quarter, depending on outbreak activity and labor markets. As Karen Sullivan outlined in her remarks, we continue to focus on reducing our reliance on agencies through our staffing optimization and recruitment initiatives as well as new technology solutions. We expect G&A for Q4 2022 will be approximately CAD 10 million to CAD 11 million. Turning to slide 10, our mortgage maturities remain well staggered with an average term to maturity of 6.2 years at September 30, 2022.
At September 30th, 2022, we had CAD 30.6 million in remaining mortgage maturities in 2022. Subsequent to September 30th, 2022, we refinanced a CAD 6.6 million mortgage with CMHC insured debt bearing interest of 4.28% and a term to maturity of 5 years. As at November 9th, 2022, the remaining maturities of CAD 24 million are expected to be refinanced in the normal course. 10-year CMHC insured mortgage rates are estimated at approximately 4.5%, and 5-year conventional mortgage financing is available at 5.6% presently. At November 9th, 2022, liquidity amounted to CAD 182 million, which included CAD 25 million of cash and cash equivalents, and CAD 157.5 million of borrowing capacity on our credit facilities.
In addition, our share of cash and cash equivalents held in our equity accounted JVs was CAD 11 million. I will now turn the call back to Vlad to wrap up.
Thank you, Sheri. Throughout the pandemic, we prioritized the needs of our residents and support for our employees while balancing interests of our stakeholders, including unit holders, and chose to maintain our distributions. The impact of the pandemic on our occupancies, NOI, FFO, and cash flows has been significant. As a result, our current cash flow from operating activity does not fully cover our finance costs, capital investments, and distributions. We believe that operational sales, marketing, and portfolio optimization strategies we have put in place will result in improvements in our occupancies and cash flows in 2023 and beyond. We believe that with the available capacity on our credit facilities, access to CMHC insured and other financing sources, and the expected proceeds from the previously announced sales of assets in BC and our Ontario long-term care platform, we have sufficient liquidity to finance our planned business activities and distributions.
The lessons we learned over the last 2.5 Years are invaluable. We learned that we must be bolder in our operating strategies and faster in execution, not only in crisis, but always. We learned the things that served us well during the peak of the pandemic, decision-making, centralized strategies, and broad corporate support provided to our Residences teams, must be better balanced with stronger empowerment and autonomy of our people closest to the customer, our residence managers and frontline staff. Applying our learnings from the pandemic years, we are building on the strength of our management platform to create an even more agile and scalable organization which can successfully support growth of our portfolio in the future. These efforts are already delivering results. Karen provided you with some examples of this agility. I want to highlight another one.
Our teams just rolled out our new customer relationships management system, Yardi CRM. Normally at Chartwell, a system implementation of this scale would take 6-12 months. Our multidisciplinary project team delivered this tremendous value to the business in less than 4 months. We're clearly putting our learnings to good use. Our real estate group has refocused their efforts on putting in place concrete portfolio optimization and asset management strategies. Our decision to transition our Ontario long-term care portfolio into British Columbia long-term care homes are examples of that. Repositioning and potential divestiture plans for 4 other residences with 625 suites are being executed, and several other properties are currently under review for the development and execution of property-specific strategies, which may include service model changes, capital upgrades, asset class repositioning, or dispositions.
The rise in construction costs and uncertainty created by the pandemic resulted in a slowdown in our development and acquisition activities in recent years. We believe that our national management platform will continue to be our competitive advantage in pursuing new growth opportunities through acquisitions and development in the future. We have a number of potential acquisition opportunities of newly developed residences through our partnership with Batimo in Quebec, and continue to evaluate a number of development opportunities on the lands we control. We are working to build new relationships with reputable developers and investors to avail ourselves of future growth opportunities that are complementary to our portfolio. We'll now be pleased to answer your questions. Paul?
Thank you, Mr. Volodarski. We will now take questions from the telephone lines. If you have a question and you're using a speakerphone, please lift your handset before making your selection. If you have a question, please press star one on the device's keypad. There will be a brief pause while participants register. We thank you for your patience. The first question is from Jonathan Kelcher from TD Securities. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thanks. Good morning.
Morning.
Just starting on the operations, I guess the MD&A it talked about Western Canada not being as impacted with regard to agency usage as Ontario and Quebec. Could you maybe just tell us the difference between, like, why Western Canada isn't being as impacted?
I think a piece of it has to do with how much care we provide. We do have more independent IL properties. One of the hardest types of employees to get are our care staff and nurses, and nurses are the most expensive. That would have something to do with it. I think it also depends on the location of where our homes are.
You know, Quebec City, as an example, was struggling even before the pandemic. It's our most difficult city for finding staff.
That's just been a historical norm?
I don't wanna suggest it's been going on forever, but for sure for a couple of years even before the pandemic, yes.
Okay. The four weaker markets out of the 15 that you cited. First, Vlad Volodarski, when you said it was +280 basis points, I missed. That's from since the end of Q1 or year to date? I missed that.
That was from April to September.
Okay. What is the delta in occupancy between the sort of 11 better markets and the 4 weaker markets?
We'll have to get back to you, Jonathan, because it varies market to market, but it's substantial.
Okay. I think if I recall last quarter, I think the weaker markets were in the 60%, and the others were well into the 80%. Does that sound about right?
Okay. Lastly for me, can you just remind us when you expect the LTC portfolio sale to close and your expected net proceeds from that?
We still expect both of those transactions to close more or less as we announce. The BC LTC sale is expected to close this year, and the Ontario LTC sale is expected to close in the first half of next year.
Okay.
The combined proceeds, including Ballycliffe sale that will happen probably Q3 of next year is CAD 330.
CAD 265.8 plus BC.
Okay. Thanks. I'll turn it back.
Thank you. The next question is from Tal Woolley from National Bank Financial. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Good morning, everyone.
Morning, Tal.
Just on the service price hike that was implemented in August, was there any significant pushback from tenants or anyone decide to change service packages, as a result?
No, I think the current environment in terms of what our residents would be hearing on the news and talking about gives us the opportunity to be able to have increases that are maybe higher than typical. It has gone quite well, actually.
Okay. Just thinking about the next couple of quarters it seems we're gonna have a flu season this year, and obviously the risks of COVID outbreaks are been accelerating a little bit. You know, should we expect maybe a little bit more return to the sort of more normal seasonality we would have seen pre-COVID as we move through the winter season here?
I think historically, as you know, we've always had some winter dip. In some years it's more, some years it's less in terms of the occupancy changes. This is primarily because fewer people are looking for retirement accommodation during winter months because the weather is not very conducive to that. Karen spoke about a number of initiatives that we put in place to try to change that pattern, and we do believe that there is pent-up demand in the system. Majority of our move-ins are needs-driven, and our hope that between that pent-up demand and the initiatives that we're putting in place to help people to make that move, we should see if there is a dip, then it's smaller than what we've historically seen.
Okay. I guess this is just a broader question. Obviously, like hindsight is 20/20 and in your preamble, you discussed it's been a slower grind higher in occupancy than maybe you would have liked to have seen. If you go back and look like now, is there anything you think you would have tried to do differently, over the last year since the market started to open up again?
I think the initiatives that, again, Karen spoke about and I touched on, those are exactly the right ones. Could we have done them earlier? Maybe, maybe not. It's really hard to talk about this with 20/20 hindsight. I do believe that what we have in place now or are putting in place now is going to help us to recover this occupancy faster and move towards growth and getting to our targets of 95%. By the way, 95% is not the end of it. The real target is for every home to be at 100% with a long waiting list, and our people are driving towards that. The example I gave of Chartwell St. Albert is an example of one of those.
Okay. You know, in your press release, you sort of mentioned four things, you know, that you were evaluating with your team. You're looking at service model changes, capital upgrades, changes in use, and maybe some more dispositions. I'm just wondering about the service model changes and the changes in use. Can you just add a little bit more detail about what you might be contemplating there?
Sure. The first point you mentioned was targeted capital investments. Again, I'll go back to Chartwell St. Albert that I mentioned on this call now 2x . This will be the third time. We've actually put quite a bit of capital renovating that building in the last couple of years, and we now are seeing results in it running at full occupancy. These targeted capital investments, which we've done quite a bit over the years and will continue to do, part of that analysis that the properties are going through would include addition of that capital to upgrade homes. Service model changes includes anything from.
Karen spoke about small homes strategies that we're implementing, where we're going to target to deliver kind of more intimate, personalized services to our residents, and at a more cost-effective manner that is more conducive to the sizes of these homes. We're looking at some potential conversions to apartments in some of our homes or phases of the homes that are on large campuses. The other change might be the further implementation of the care services that we might not have everywhere just yet. This Care Assist program that we spoke about for a couple of quarters now to you that Karen's team put together is really making difference in terms of our ability to serve our residents' needs, when they live with us and also attract the new ones who have additional care needs.
We do believe that these needs will continue to grow as there continues to be a shortage of long-term care beds across the country, and the hospitals are looking to, you know, free up their beds for people who need hospital-type care. Those service model changes is what we mean when we talk about that part. Alternative uses, I just mentioned to you, it could be conversions to other uses of the properties that we consider non-core, that we either can dispose as retirement residences or dispose as an alternative use or potentially redevelop on-site.
Okay. That's great. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from Himanshu Gupta from Scotiabank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you, and good morning.
Good morning.
First on the pandemic expenses and agency staffing. I think, Karen, you mentioned something like CAD 3 million to CAD 5 million in Q4, which is somewhat similar to Q3. Would you say the first half of the next year will also look very similar in those pandemic expenses?
I think it could be, Himanshu, in terms of, you know, just making sure that we have the resources in place to deliver operationally in that flu outbreak season.
I n terms of any expectation of NOI margin recovery, we should, you know, push out to more like second half of the year and not before. Maybe related question is, even if I add these CAD 4.5 million to CAD 5 million to NOI in this quarter, the NOI margin is still way below, like, pre-pandemic levels. Basically, the question is that even if this expenses goes away, how do you get back to or even near to pre-pandemic levels on margin side?
Well, it's a function of occupancy, right? W very incremental unit that we rent, the revenue from that falls almost fully to the bottom line once you cross over the threshold. At occupancy of 77%, we're pretty close to that, where you can start actually seeing the incremental revenues just going to the bottom line. That will drive margins back up. Clearly the cost escalation that we have seen in the last year, in particular, agency costs contributing to that a lot as well. As these costs are taken out of the system, again, through all the strategies that Karen spoke to you about on the recruitment side as well, that will add to the improving margins. Then the other component of this is revenue growth.
C learly, it costs us more to deliver services to our residents. As Karen spoke, there is a good level of understanding from the residents about that. In my remarks, I talked to about how much appreciated that our staff efforts to deliver that are delivering services to them. There will be probably a bit higher than usual rent increases to our residents and market rates over time as our occupancy recovers. All these things will over time contribute to improvements in margins.
Got it. Fair enough. Really, occupancy is key. Maybe let's talk about occupancy here. Occupancy in top 11 markets, it moved like 280 basis points, as you previously mentioned, from I think April to September. Was it in line or above or below your internal expectations?
Well, we all wanted everything to move a lot faster and a lot higher. I think you can maybe sense from this call and discussions that we had before that we are looking to drive occupancy faster. You know, it's pretty good numbers to 280 basis points. Since April to September, we're looking to do more. I think the environment out there with the pent-up demand, the growth of seniors population, the slower construction starts, and all the strategies that Karen spoke about, and our people out there being focused on this occupancy recovery like they've never been before will help us to get there.
Got it. Okay. I think, Vlad, in your prepared remarks, you did mention about distribution. Obviously you have the sufficient liquidity for everything. Are you expecting a certain level of occupancy gains next year? I mean, is that tied to any of your distribution strategy there?
Well, for sure. I mean, we are watching our progress on recovery, our occupancies, our cash flows, the liquidity situation, and that certainly drives the decisions on distributions that the board makes. We look at it quarterly, we continue to do so. Our expectation is that as our occupancies continue to recover, with the changes that we're gonna be making to our staffing levels in the homes and a reduction of agency costs, that we'll be able to sustain the distributions and continue going down the path of recovery and occupancy and cash flow growth.
Got it. Okay. Fair enough. Vlad, again, you know, you also mentioned about a portfolio optimization strategy, which could include potential divestiture program. Question is how advanced you are in that conversations. I mean, is this just starting, or have you identified certain properties? Or, basically getting a sense that when or how should we expect some kind of disposition program then later?
Well, the long-term care dispositions, that's clearly been announced, and that's ongoing.
Yeah.
The other properties that we've identified, there's four properties that we moved into this repositioning disposition and other buckets. Some of them may be sold, as is. Some of them will require additional efforts. There's one property that we're just renovating and upgrading and changing capacity while we're doing that. The analysis of the rest of the portfolio continues in depth to develop specific strategies for specific assets. These are a bit too early to talk about just now.
Sure. Would you look to exit some markets as well, or it's more property by property basis, the program?
We're getting a lot more sophisticated in how we're looking at our portfolio. Again, early days. We are analyzing property-specific situation right now. We will also expand this analysis to a broader market. At this point in time, there is no intent to exit any specific markets.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you, guys. I'll turn it back.
Thank you. Once again, as a reminder, please press star one on the devices keypad if you have a question. The next question is from Pammi Bir from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thanks. Good morning. Vlad, you mentioned Q3 marked a turning point in your remarks. Can you maybe just expand on that? I mean, is it based on occupancy? I guess maybe not so much on margins, but FFO or some other metrics that you were looking at.
I'm talking about occupancy primarily, but certainly cash flow is also very high on the agenda, and my comments are driven by a couple of factors. One is we began to see more tangible, I would say, occupancy recovery in Q3. We continue seeing very good traction in leading indicators. I think this is a direct result of the strategies that Karen spoke about that we might have talked to you about in some ways before. Now they're firmly in place, or a lot of them are firmly in place, and we believe that they're producing results. My comments are coming from those three areas.
Got it. Just on the use of more, I guess, the paid referrals in Quebec, what sort of impact do you think this could have, you know, next year? I'm just curious if you've used them in the past and what success you've had?
The paid referrals in Quebec that Karen spoke about, it wasn't just Quebec. It was on the employee side, I think.
No, this is the paid referrals for residents. We have used them in the past, but always a bit sparingly, and more so for needs-based referrals. We're more open now to using them a little bit more broadly for sure.
Sorry, was that on sort of using these referral agencies or we're talking about resident referrals?
They're agencies.
Right.
R esident referral agencies.
Okay.
Resident referral agencies. You then pay typically a month's rent for that.
Got it. Okay. And then just on the Vlad, the dispositions that you mentioned, the 4 properties. Which markets are those properties in? And just, would the occupancy be in that sort of 60% range that I guess is in that new line item that you've disclosed?
These are primarily Ontario properties, and occupancies will be very low in these properties right now. They're being marketed either as existing use or maybe alternative use.
Is this something that may transact, like in your mind, sort of within the next 12 months or possibly even sooner?
Within the next 12 months, yes.
Okay. Just on the Batimo agreements, just some of the language there, and I guess a couple more properties are stabilized. Are you expecting to actually acquire any of these properties in the next few quarters?
We continue conversations with our partner on these particular properties. At this point in time, I cannot give you the timeline for acquisition.
Well, I guess certainly you do have, you know, the proceeds coming back on the dispositions. I presume that would be the primary source of funding for those.
Yes.
Just lastly, on the covenant amendments that you have in place, or that you've done so far this year, are those expected to be extended into 2023?
Many of those are already extended to the end of 2023.
Okay. Are you anticipating any other covenants that would need to be adjusted?
I mean, there's a need and there is a sort of protection just in case. There may be additional covenant protection, not that we, based on our forecast, would require it, but just to be safe so that we're not even close to those. We might have some additional extensions and additional amendments. We've been working very closely with our lenders since they're very clear on the path that we're on and our projections and where we think we're gonna get to. That close relationship is very positive and continuous, and we're grateful to our partners for being understanding.
Got it. Thanks very much. I will turn it back.
Thank you. There are no further questions registered at this time. I will turn the call back to Mr. Volodarski.
Thank you very much. Thanks for joining us. As always, if you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact any one of us. Have a great day.
Thank you. The conference call has now ended. Please disconnect your lines at this time, and we thank you for your participation.