Good morning, and welcome to Primaris REIT's Q1 2022 financial results conference call. At this time, all lines have been placed on mute. After the prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. During this call, management of Primaris REIT may make statements containing forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking information is based on a number of assumptions and is subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Many of which are beyond Primaris REIT's control that could cause actual results to differ materially from those that are disclosed in or implied by such forward-looking information. Additional information about these assumptions and risks and uncertainties is contained in Primaris REIT's filings with securities regulators. These filings are also available on Primaris REIT's website at www.primarisreit.com. Your host for today's call will be Mr. Alex Avery, Chief Executive Officer of Primaris REIT. Mr. Avery, please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today to discuss Primaris REIT's quarterly results. Joining me on the call are Patrick Sullivan, President and Chief Operating Officer, Rags Davloor, Chief Financial Officer, and Leslie Buist, Senior Vice President of Finance. The team and I have lots of interesting updates to share. Q1 results are strong and reflect the business running ahead of our prior expectations. Pat and Rags will provide further details on our recent performance and our prospects over the remainder of 2022 in a moment, but I'll share a few thoughts about how our team and business are progressing. Two weeks ago, we completed our first company-wide asset management conference since becoming a standalone company, bringing together general managers and property managers from across the country with our asset management team to review and assess business plans for each of our assets.
This was the first asset management conference that I've participated in since joining Primaris, and I was struck by how passionate our team is about our properties. There is clear positive momentum in our business at the property level, with committed occupancy rising, rental rates growing, and significant room for further growth. As we explore the opportunities embedded within our portfolio, it was clear that by transitioning from a subsidiary of a larger company where we represented 20% of the asset base to becoming a standalone company where our business represents 100% of management's focus, we now have 5x the attention being paid to each asset. That means 5x the focus on opportunities embedded in our portfolio as we see the cyclical recovery unfolding over the next few years. This is reflected in our raised guidance detailed in section 15 of our MD&A.
We continue to make progress, significant progress, finding our stride organizationally. With these, our second set of financial statements now reported, our asset management conference under our belt. We're building out our financial reporting team and our financial planning and analysis team, and working on continuing to expand and refine our disclosure package in keeping with investor demand and best practices. We continue to see very attractive opportunities to deploy capital and leverage our management platform. These opportunities span acquisitions of leading shopping centers from Canadian institutions and intensifications and redevelopments of our existing shopping centers to buying back our units for cancellation and deploying capital to lease-up space in our owned portfolio. Pretty much everywhere we look, there are significant opportunities that we can act on to create value for our unit holders.
I'll now turn the call over to Pat to discuss our platform operating and leasing results, followed by Rags, who will discuss our balance sheet, financial results, and provide you with an update on our disclosure package. Pat?
Thank you, Alex, and good morning. Our teams have diligently integrated the H&R properties, reviewing and identifying opportunities to increase value in these new centers. We've been applying our management techniques to decentralize services by empowering our general managers to actively manage these properties. Specifically, we target lowering costs to align with the core focus of Primaris, providing affordable space for our retail partners, increasing occupancy by leveraging our relationship with retailers, and the identification of development opportunities on excess lands. During the Q1 , sales averaged 91% as compared to the same period in 2019. While January sales lagged at 78% of 2019 sales due to the rise of the Omicron variant, portfolio-wide sales increased to 97% of pre-pandemic levels in both February and March.
Food courts, typically a barometer for mall traffic, continue to show rising sales activity, with the February and March sales being at 80% compared to pre-pandemic figures. Q4 2021 portfolio food court sales, by way of example, were 75%. Leasing activity continues to be strong, continuing the trend from Q4 2021. Several large renewal transactions were completed during the quarter, specifically Sport Chek at Place d'Orléans, where they occupy 68,500 sq ft, and Cineplex at Devonshire Mall, where they occupy 58,000 sq ft. In addition, we completed a transaction with Sephora to open a new store at Place Ste-Foy, a highly productive international tenant owned by LVMH.
With new Sephora stores opening at Stone Road Mall in Guelph and McAllister Place in Saint John later this year, Primaris has grown its partnership with Sephora to 11 locations, with several more locations currently under discussion. Overall, renewal rents were up 2.5%. CRU renewal rents were modestly lower by 3.7%, while large format renewal rents grew by 15.4%. If we exclude four CRU tenants totaling 7.5% of the total square footage renewed during the quarter that were renewed at lower rents and on a short-term basis, CRU renewal rents would have increased by 1.5%. With sales increasing in positive absorption, we expect metrics to continue to improve.
In-place occupancy for the combined portfolio was 85.9% at the end of March 2022, with the original Primaris portfolio at 87.2% and the six acquisition properties at 83.5%. The original Primaris occupancy figure is relatively flat to Q4 2021 and Q1 2021, and includes Northland Village Shopping Center, which is in the process of being converted to an open-air center. If we exclude Northland Village from the in-place occupancy statistics, the original Primaris occupancy would have been 89.9% as at Q1 2022, compared to 88% in Q1 2021. Committed occupancy would have been 92.2% as compared to 90.6% in Q1 2021.
Primaris properties are located on more than 900 acres of land, typically located on main commercial thoroughfares and proximate to public transit. We continue to review options with regard to excess density. We have received conditional approval at Dufferin Mall in Toronto to construct approximately 1,200 residential units as part of the redevelopment of a four-acre parcel primarily used for parking at the north end of the property. Approval is conditional on working through administrative process with the city of Toronto, and we anticipate unconditional approval by the end of June 2022. We are considering options to develop or monetize all or a portion of this land. Northland Village in Calgary is scheduled for redevelopment, with plans to demolish the interior mall this spring and convert the property into a mixed-use, open-air retail center.
Approximately two acres of land was recently severed and sold to a residential developer for CAD 5.8 million. The developer has commenced construction of 240 residential units, which are anticipated to be ready for occupancy Q1 of 2023. Redevelopment plans for the shopping center are conditional on pre-leasing efforts, and we expect the development to be constructed in phases over a three-year period. Additionally, we have commenced construction on several other development projects being the redevelopment of the former Sears store at Quinte Mall in Belleville. 30,000 sq ft of this space is then leased to Winners, and they are expecting to open in Q1 2023. The remaining 60,000 sq ft of space being demolished in favor of constructing outparcel retail on the periphery of the property. Pre-leasing efforts are underway.
At Cataraqui Centre in Kingston, we have commenced construction on the redevelopment of the Sears store, which will incorporate a first to market 15,000 sq ft L.L.Bean store. At Medicine Hat, construction has commenced for a new 35,000 sq ft FreshCo store with an anticipated opening date of Q2 2023. Lastly, we are completing the redevelopment of the former Sears at Lansdowne Mall in Peterborough. Sport Chek is relocating and expanding into 24,000 sq ft and is expected to open in December 2022. We are in discussions with several large format retailers to lease the remaining 20,000 sq ft of space and anticipate announcing a transaction shortly. With that, I'll turn the call over to Rags to discuss our financing and financial results.
Thanks, Pat, and good morning, everyone. Our financing strategy, built upon our differentiated low leverage balance sheet, is based on the approach of disconnecting the right side of the balance sheet from the left through the use of unsecured debt. This allows us to actively manage our property portfolio while providing maximum flexibility to produce a well-laddered debt maturity profile and optimize our cost of capital. This strategy, combined with our scale, enabled the achievement of an investment-grade credit rating of triple B with a stable trend by DBRS Morningstar in early March. Shortly thereafter, Primaris successfully issued its inaugural investment-grade debenture offering, which has met the strong and broad demand from institutional investors.
We issued CAD 350 million aggregate principal amount of senior unsecured debt in two tranches, with a combined weighted average interest rate of 4.46% and a weighted average term to maturity of 3.9 years. By locking in these rates, we have reduced our interest rate risk in a rising rate environment, while the two tranche structure enhances our debt maturity profile. In addition, at March 31, we had no floating rate debt, and the proceeds from the bond issuance was used to pay down our operating loans. We have a stated secured debt as a percentage of total debt target of 40%. As at Q1, this ratio stands at 62.2%.
With a solid investment-grade credit rating in place and our first unsecured issuance now in the books, we plan to further advance our unsecured financing strategy, lowering our secured debt ratio to target as existing mortgages payable mature. In the near term, we plan to use our operating facilities to retire our upcoming debt maturities. At present, our most attractive use of capital is buying back units at a deep discount to net asset value per unit on a leverage neutral basis. Our NCIB is in place, and we are buying back and canceling units daily.
As of today, we have bought and canceled approximately 600,000 units for CAD 9.4 million at an average price of CAD 14.80 per unit. As Alex has already mentioned, we're building out our financial reporting, planning, and analysis team and working on continuing to expand and refine our disclosure package to create useful and insightful financial and operational information to help you understand and evaluate our business. New disclosure additions for the quarter include details around our redevelopment and development projects, leasing activity, including rents and spreads, more details around our debt maturity schedule, and an easier ability to measure us against our stated balance sheet targets.
We have updated our forecast for the current year based on our Q1 results and our outlook for the balance of the year, and a CAD 2.7 million impact on interest expense as a result of the January 4th conversion of the exchangeable units. Overall, we have increased our forecasted net income by CAD 4.1 million. We also added new metrics including FFO, AFFO, and their respective payout ratios, same property NOI, debt to adjusted EBITDA, and the composition of FFO and AFFO on a per unit basis, among others. In order to give additional clarity and information on the total portfolio results, we have produced a supplemental where we benchmark Q1's actual results versus the 2021 pro forma for the combined property portfolio.
If you have not already done so, we encourage you to review this document in addition to our report to unit holders. Now to our financial results. Same-property net operating income was up 8.2% in the quarter, reflective of post-pandemic recovery and improving tenant sales. In our 2022 forecast, we've increased net operating income by CAD 5.1 million or 2.7%. Interest expense was lower during the quarter versus forecast as we have extended one of our loans by six months at a rate of 2.6%, and as previously mentioned, the positive impact of the exchangeable unit conversion. The creation of Primaris as a standalone entity necessitated the addition of startup costs, including hiring key team members and other public company costs.
Salaries and benefits costs for certain positions were historically paid by a former parent and are now costs of the REIT. G&A for the quarter was CAD 5.7 million. Consistent with the financial forecast published in the MD&A, we expect this number to grow as we onboard key members. In the forecast, we increased our G&A by CAD 2.8 million, primarily to reflect unit-based compensation that was not previously budgeted. FFO and AFFO per unit was CAD 0.38 and CAD 0.30 per unit, respectively. As mentioned earlier, we've included a table in the disclosures that enables you to quickly understand the composition of FFO and AFFO on both a total and per unit basis. Primaris FFO and AFFO payout ratios were 52.5% and 66.1% respectively, slightly above our FFO payout target ratio of 45%-50%.
We expect this payout ratio to normalize as we move through 2022 and 2023 and capitalize on the occupancy improvement opportunity in the portfolio. Primaris fair value of investment properties was essentially flat during the quarter, with external valuations received for three properties with fair values totaling CAD 517 million or 16.1% of the portfolio. The small adjustment was due to CapEx incurred in the quarter that was written off. We are conservative in our fair value modeling and will reevaluate our valuations in the following quarters. Assuming continued improvement in NOI, we're expecting the values to increase. Obviously, any impact on the current economic environment on cap rates may also have an impact.
Based on the appraised value of our assets, we ended the quarter with a NAV of 22.05 per unit and debt to total assets of 28.4%. Primaris REIT's scale and highly differentiated financial model acknowledges both the clear preference public investors have for REITs with conservative financial models and the advantages of having the lowest leverage among Canadian REIT providers. We are committed to our differentiated financial model, enabling Primaris to self-fund its growth. In conclusion, we have a wide breadth of attractive investment opportunities. Our excess retained cash flows allows for internally funded growth and reduces our reliance on external capital sources. We believe that this structure should support a reasonable cost and access to capital. As we move through the year, we will continue to build out our financial and operating disclosure and welcome your feedback.
We endeavor to provide you with the information you require to assess and value our business and its progress. With that, I'll turn it back to Alex.
Thank you, Rags. In a complicated public markets environment, we are focused on delivering on our stated business plan as we have detailed publicly. We anticipate that over the next several months, we will have a number of opportunities to enhance investor confidence, including continuing to build out comprehensive reporting and disclosure package, reporting successive quarters of financial and operating performance, supporting broader research coverage and investor awareness. Demonstrating disciplined capital allocation and capital recycling, as well as further unit repurchases. Building out and communicating our ESG strategy. Supporting our retail partners as they optimize omni-channel business models. Benefiting from further normalization of consumer behavior. We believe there's a great opportunity to deliver compelling investment returns to investors and look forward to delivering on that potential. We'd now be pleased to answer any questions from the call participants. Operator, can you please open the line for questions?
Thank you, Alex. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. We have our first question from Sam Damiani of TD Securities. Your line is open, Sam.
Thanks. Good morning, everyone, and congratulations on your Q1 for Primaris REIT. Just on the raised NOI guidance, you know, I guess could you point to, you know, specifically what new information during the quarter, you know, led you to make that decision? Just, you know, we look at occupancy is fairly flat. Just wondering what drove the push to raise the guidance?
Well, Sam, I noted that we had just recently completed our first asset management conference you know, following the spin-off. Included in that process is a reforecast and an update of the budgeting at each of the properties. You know, I can't really point to one specific thing, but I would say that in general, we've just had better than expected experience in terms of the you know, lease negotiations and recoveries and just a refining of forecasts. It's a whole bunch of little things, but we've had you know, I think if you were looking for some examples, better percentage rent in lieu performance you know, slightly better outcomes from lease negotiations, better recovery of costs. Pat, anything else to add on?
I think in general that, you know, as we went through the pandemic and it had quite a dynamic impact, especially in enclosed malls. When our forecasts were first done, we were in a bit of a different environment and acted with more conservative approach. As we came out of the pandemic and now that restrictions are completely lifted, we're realizing much stronger sales, and we're more optimistic about where sales are going and about where the rental growth is gonna go.
Yeah. I think one of the big areas, Sam, is just on the bad debt expense. We've sort of dialed that back because we were fairly conservative given the environment. You know, a lot of the tenants, the failures have been flushed through the system in the last two years. We're not seeing sort of that type of stress and taking on significant bad debt provisions. That has definitely helped the numbers.
Yeah. I guess just to add one further thing. The prior forecast was the forecast that was prepared in late summer, early fall of last year. Last quarter with Q4 results, while we did change the presentation, we didn't change the substance of the forecast. This was the first comprehensive review of our forecast since then.
Yeah, that's a good point, Alex, and I appreciate it. Certainly, the outlook has brightened over the last sort of nine months. Maybe just moving on to occupancy, and we've seen the GLA for the portfolio be revised or lowered by about 230,000 sq ft. Some demolitions done or planned here, specifically in Ontario and Alberta. Is that Quinte and Northland Village that we're seeing reflected in the stats this quarter?
Yes.
Okay. Is there any other, sort of revisions planned in the near term as we look to the balance of the year?
You know, as we move through a couple of the other Sears developments, specifically Devonshire, where we have a 200,000 sq ft Sears box, I think the plan right now is we'll eventually look to demolish that and redevelop that into the shopping center. That's the most notable one. Other than that, nothing of any great significance.
I guess when we just wanna look at the in-place occupancy, you know, it was down only 10 basis points on the quarter. When you factor in the reduced GLA, the occupied GLA is actually down by over 200,000 sq ft. Is there any context to share there as to why that transpired in the first quarter?
I think as we move from Q4 to Q1, we naturally see a dip in occupancy just because of the seasonality of our business. I think as we move to MTO Northland Village, that has an impact as well. I think it's just really driven by the seasonality for the most part.
Seasonality. Okay, last one for me, and then I'll turn it back, is just, you know, Rags, you mentioned possibly using the credit facilities to deal with some near-term mortgage maturities. Is that a reflection of the market pricing you're seeing for unsecured right now? Or is that just sort of building up some, you know, some size before you come to market with another offer?
Yeah, it's, you know, we wanna get the secured debt ratio below 40%, which, you know, through a couple of these refis, taking it out through the op line will get us there. Then we just sort of wanna build up that bucket a bit before we flip it into an unsecured takeout. There is, You know, just to your point, there's a considerable difference in spreads between secured and unsecured, so we are monitoring.
Yeah.
That and trying to figure out how to, you know, what the right mix is. The first thing we wanna do is sort of hit our targets, get everything lined up, and then we'll start to play with the mix of secured versus unsecured.
Got it. Thanks. I'll turn it back.
Thank you, Sam. The next question comes from Sumayya Syed of CIBC. Sumayya, please go ahead when you're ready.
Thanks. Good morning. Just to follow up on the increase in your NOI guidance and noting your comments about the recovery happening on in-place rents, is your guidance incorporating any gains on the occupancy side as well? Or that, you know, sort of going to stay more stable? Just wondering what your input on occupancy and your guidance there.
Yeah. Our guidance reflects an end of year occupied guidance of 87.3%, which is slightly lower than the committed occupancy, and that's on a portfolio-wide perspective. But you know, as you can imagine that the committed space that's gonna take occupancy between now and the end of the year is spread relatively evenly throughout the year. The NOI guidance increase isn't really primarily driven by an occupancy improvement. It's some of the reforecasting, some of the percentage rent in lieu and other contributions.
There is no question that sales improved, we're getting a lift. You don't necessarily have to see big occupancy gains as the sales start to rebound, and we're geared a little bit more today to percentage rent because of some of the percentage rent in lieu deals. That's having an impact.
Okay. Then just looking at the leasing spreads in the quarter and specifically the 15% lift for the large format tenants. Do you think that's a number you could sort of repeat with the other large format renewals? Or was it something specific to the four tenants that renewed in the quarter?
It's gonna always be dependent on which tenants are expiring, if they have fixed rate renewals or whether they don't have fixed rate renewals and what they might be at, what those rates might be at. In this case, we had tenants with fixed rate renewals that drove the number, and they were coming off low bases. In the future, with the majority of our former large format anchors gone being Sears and Target, we have a lot of our majors are smaller, and they have step-ups in their rent built into the renewal options.
I think we're gonna continue to see good spreads on the large format tenants, whereas historically, we really didn't see any lift, due to the nature of the anchor leases that were in place.
Okay. Just lastly from me, from your commentary and given the increased confidence and visibility in the business, what can we expect from a fair value update, going forward?
We do have sort of the new forecast numbers. You know, we wanna just get through Q2, make sure we have the strong confidence in those numbers, and then through that process, we look at the, you know, valuation. There is potential as the NOI grows to see you know some positive impact. Obviously, the big unknown right now is you know where discount rates and cap rates are going. We'll hopefully have some clarity around that over the next few months. But certainly on the NOI front, we're you know set up to see positive increases.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask any further questions, please press star then one on your telephone keypad. We now have the next question from Mike Markidis of Desjardins. Please go ahead when you're ready, Mike.
Thanks, everybody, and good morning. Congrats on the strong quarters. A few housekeeping questions on my end. Thanks for your patience. With the property under redevelopment that you disclosed separately in the NOI reconciliation, I just wanna confirm that solely relates to Northland Village?
That's correct. Yeah.
Okay. Would that reflect the entire property? Would be question one. Number two, are you capitalizing the operating costs on the interior mall yet?
Yeah. Answer is yes to both.
Answer is yes to both. Okay, great. Thank you. On the leasing disclosure, thanks very much for the incremental color there. With the percentage of gross leases in the portfolio or sorry, with the gross leases that you have in the portfolio and splitting that out, do you have a sense of how much of your portfolio would be covered by gross leases as opposed to net?
In terms of percentage rent due in gross leases. It's in and around the 10%.
We've got 10% of your portfolio would be gross leases, not net leases?
Gross. Yeah. Percentage rent leases-
Roughly that.
Percentage rent, gross leases. Yeah. Other than that.
Okay. Okay, great. Thank you. Do you happen to know what the average contractual rent step would be in your portfolio?
No. Not at this point. We will look to enhance that disclosure, but at this point, we don't have those numbers in hand.
Okay. Sorry, go ahead.
I was just gonna say the preferred form of lease that we've been using for the last few years has a 2% annual escalator. We're just in the process of trying to track down exactly what share of all leases have that built in at this point. We've been transitioning to that format.
Okay. Just maybe following up on that comment, Alex, I know that things are improving, there still is a recovery element to it, but with the inflation that we're seeing generally across, well, the world, I guess, has there been any effort to try and push that number higher, or is it still too early to look at that, just given where the fundamentals are for the business?
Well, from a business perspective, you know, I think, it's worth noting that 14% of our portfolio is vacant right now. We have effectively 14% of the portfolio at market, and we have the opportunity to capture that as, you know, as we lease the majority of that space back up.
Yep.
You know, I think, as we get our occupancy higher, we get, better negotiating tension with the tenants. You know, as was noted in the disclosure around this quarter's lease renewals, depending on the nature of the tenant, you've had some, you know, pandemic boom type of retailers that were doing extremely well over the last couple of years. You've had, you know, on the flip side of that, tenants that have suffered through the pandemic. You know, it's really quite a dynamic situation. Pat outlined that, you know, there were a few leases where the tenants were pushing for lower rents and, wanted, you know, term commitments.
As a compromise, you know, we wanted to keep them in the portfolio, have high degree of confidence that their sales are, you know, either have already begun to recover or, are in the process of recovering. Our solution for that has been to do short-term extensions because we believe that we'll have better ability to capture higher rents, you know, a year from now, two years from now. You know, with a weighted average remaining lease term of five years and 14% of the portfolio unoccupied right now, we've got, I think, a pretty strong position to be able to capture inflation over the next few years.
Yeah, that's a good point. Thanks for that. Okay. Congrats again on the strong, I guess, inaugural quarter reporting with the HOOP results. Thanks again for your commentary.
Thanks, Mike.
Thank you, Mike. As a reminder, if you would like to ask any further questions, please press star then one on your telephone keypad now. That is star followed by one to ask any questions. We have no further questions, so that does conclude today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.