Good morning and welcome to PROREIT's third quarter results conference call for fiscal 2024. At this time, all lines have been placed on mute to prevent background noise. Management will make a short presentation, which will be followed by a question-and-answer session open exclusively to financial analysts. To ask a question, simply press the * key, then the number 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the * key followed by number 2. For your convenience, the results released along the third quarter financial statements and management's discussion and analysis for fiscal 2024 are available at proreit.com in the investors section and on SEDAR+. Before we start, I have been asked by PROREIT to read the following message regarding forward-looking statements and non-IFRS measures.
PROREIT's remarks today may contain forward-looking statements about its current and future plans, expectations, intentions, results, levels of activity, performance, goals or achievements, or other future events or developments. Forward-looking statements are based on information currently available on management and on estimates and assumptions made based on factors that management believes are appropriate and reasonable in the circumstances. However, there can be no assurance that such estimates and assumptions will prove to be correct. Many factors could cause actual results, levels of activity, performance, achievements, future events, or developments to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. As a result, PROREIT cannot guarantee that any forward-looking statement will materialize, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements.
For additional information on the assumptions and risks, please consult the cautionary statement regarding forward-looking statements contained in PROREIT's MD&A dated November 13, 2024, available at www.sedarplus.ca. Forward-looking statements represent management's expectations as at November 13, 2024, and except as may be required by law. PROREIT has no intention and undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. The discussion today will include non-IFRS financial measures. These non-IFRS measures should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for or in isolation from the IFRS results. For a description of these non-IFRS financial measures, please see the third quarter earnings release for fiscal 2024 and non-IFRS measures section in the MD&A for third quarter of fiscal 2024 for additional information. I'll now turn the call over to Mr.
Gordon Lawlor, President and Chief Executive Officer of PROREIT.
Thank you, Nelson. Good morning, everyone, and welcome. Joining me today is Alison Schafer, our CFO and Corporate Secretary, and Zach Aaron, our Vice President of Investments and Asset Management, is also joining us for the Q&A period. I will start with an overview of our performance for the third quarter of 2024. Alison will then provide a more detailed review of our financial results. I'm pleased with our overall progress as we advanced our strategic priorities in line with our ambition to become a pure-play industrial REIT in Canada. During the quarter, we continued to strengthen our portfolio through accretive opportunities while managing our balance sheet soundly. In September, we disposed of two previously announced legacy office properties in Ottawa, totaling approximately 163,000 sq ft for gross proceeds of CAD 26.6 million.
Proceeds from these two dispositions were used to repay CAD 18.7 million in related mortgages at a rate of 6.64%, with the balance used for general business and working capital purposes. In September, we also completed the previously announced acquisition of 100% interest in an industrial property strategically located next to the Montreal International Airport. The property, totaling approximately 134,000 sq ft, was purchased for gross proceeds of CAD 32.6 million. It was financed through a new CAD 21.2 million mortgage at a rate of 5.1%, with the remaining balance funded by proceeds from the sale of previous non-core properties and a draw on our operating facilities. September 30, 2024, our portfolio included 116 properties, compared to 126 at the same date last year. Both periods include our 50% ownership interest in 42 properties. Our industrial segment accounted for 85.6% of our GLA, up from 81.3% a year ago.
With four office properties remaining in our portfolio valued at less than CAD 30 million, our office segment accounted for only 2.5% of GLA. In October, subsequent to quarter end, we completed the sale of a non-core retail property located in Alberta, totaling 11,000 sq ft for gross proceeds of CAD 5 million. Net proceeds were used to repay CAD 3.4 million of an unrelated mortgage, with the balance allocated to repaying a portion of our line of credit and general business purposes. I'm pleased to highlight that we continue to benefit from steady organic growth. In the third quarter of 2024, we achieved an 8.1% increase in same property NOI, or an increase of 4.4% when excluding the impact of a temporary property vacancy in 2023. This marks 15 consecutive quarters of same property NOI growth, with an average annual growth rate of over 3%.
From an operational standpoint, our strategic focus on small and mid-bay properties continues to demonstrate its value, consistent with market status. For the third quarter of 2024, Canadian vacancy rates remained low at 2.5% for small bay and 3.5% for mid-bay spaces, compared to an overall industrial vacancy rate of 4.3% per JLL Q3 stats. In terms of geographic focus, Halifax, where we're one of the lead industrial landlords, experienced the strongest rent growth in Canada again this quarter, according to CBRE's Q3 Canadian industrial market stats. CBRE also reports that Halifax was the only market to see year-over-year decline in sublets, with no sublet space available for Q3 2024. At September 30, 2024, the weighted average in place rent on our industrial portfolio was CAD 9.05 per sq ft, an increase of 10.2% compared to the same date last year.
To date, we've successfully renewed or replaced 83.6% of our GLA maturing in 2024 and 38.5% average spread across the entire portfolio, and a robust 50.4% for our industrial properties. For our overall GLA maturing in 2025, 27.3% has already been renewed at an overall positive spread of 26.7%. As mentioned on our last call for 2025, we secured a lease for 128,000 sq ft space with a new quality international tenant for a 15-year term with annual rent steps and base rent in excess of 30% over the expiring lease. That lease starts in February 1, 2025. At September 30, 2024, our portfolio occupancy rate stood at 97.2%, compared to 98.2% the same date last year. The decrease in occupancy is primarily due to three industrial spaces totaling approximately 100,000 sq ft as transitional vacancy in Woodstock, Ontario, a property in Halifax, and one in Montreal.
We continue to have leasing momentum on these spaces. I'll now turn the call over to Alison for a more detailed review of our financial results. Alison, over to you.
Thank you, Gordon, and good morning, everyone. We are pleased with our third quarter results achieved while owning 10 fewer properties compared to the same period last year. Property revenue for the third quarter amounted to CAD 24.0 million, comparable to the same period last year. This is due to the change in the number of properties in our portfolio, partially offset by contractual rent increases and higher rental rates on lease renewals and new leases. Net operating income increased by 1.5% from CAD 14.1 million to CAD 14.3 million due to these same factors. Net cash flows provided from operating activities decreased to CAD 9.9 million, compared with CAD 11 million in the equivalent quarter of last year, largely as a result of the timing of cash receipts and the settlement of payables.
FFO reached CAD 6.5 million for the quarter, relatively flat year-over-year as higher debt settlement costs related to the property sales were offset by general increases in contractual base rent, higher rates on renewals, and new leases. Our basic AFFO payout ratio was 97.7% in Q3, compared to 96.9% last year, resulting from an increase in stabilized leasing costs, partially offset by general increases in contractual base rent and higher rates on renewals and new leases. Since the start of the year, we continued to manage our balance sheet prudently. We efficiently recycled capital and increased our holdings in quality industrial properties. Our liquidity position remained healthy, with CAD 24 million available through our credit facilities, in addition to CAD 10.7 million in cash at September 30, 2024.
Our total debt, including current and non-current portions, totaled CAD 501.1 million at September 30, 2024, a reduction of CAD 18 million compared to the same date last year. We maintained our debt-to-gross book value on target at approximately 50% at the end of the quarter, which is comparable to the same date in 2023. Our weighted average interest rate on mortgage debt was 3.87% at September 30, 2024, compared to 3.76% at the same date last year. We had CAD 2.4 million of remaining mortgage expiring in 2024, and that mortgage was renewed this week on market terms. The weighted average cap rate for the portfolio was approximately 6.7% at September 30, 2024, up from 6.1% at the same date last year. Finally, we maintained our distributions of CAD 3.75 per unit for each month in the third quarter of 2024. Gordon, back to you for closing comments.
Thank you, Alison. Although the Canadian industrial market continues to face some temporary headwinds, particularly in the larger metropolitan cities, our strategy to focus on light industrial and primary and secondary markets has proven beneficial. We remain actively engaged in seeking rate opportunities while managing our balance sheet with discipline. As we approach 2025, we're well positioned and committed to advancing our long-term goal to reach 90% industrial base rent and creating additional value for our stakeholders. Finally, I'd like to conclude by thanking the entire PROREIT team for another quarter of solid execution. That concludes our remarks, and then over to you for the Q&A.
Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin a question-and-answer session. Should you have a question, please press *, followed by 1 on your touch-tone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press *, followed by 2. If you're using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. First question comes from Gordon Nguyen Half Yard with TD Securities. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone.
Good morning.
Morning. So my first question, on capital recycling, nice to see more progress on the disposition front. Just wanted to ask what you're seeing today in the transaction market and maybe how that outlook has changed in recent months. And now that you've been, or now that you've made good progress on deleveraging, do you expect to maybe be a bit more active on the acquisition front?
It's Gordon. I'll start, and then maybe Zach can chime in. But as far as acquisitions, we sold CAD 71 million this year. That gave us some room for the acquisition that we just did. We're trying to stay around our 50% leverage amount here and hoping to trend it down in the next couple of years. So unless we have some more acquisitions, which we've got a few discussions ongoing in that, we probably wouldn't. We'd only have some other acquisitions if we had other dispositions, put it that way. Zach, do you just want to comment on the market as far as buyers and sellers?
Yeah, sure. Thank you. I would describe it as still quite choppy in terms of the transaction market. I think we had a period, perhaps over the summer, end of summer, where things started to stabilize and bid-ask spreads started to kind of narrow a little bit, and then since kind of the election noise and interest rate noise, bonds have kind of jumped up again, and there feels to be more uncertainty out there, where I think vendors have perhaps now retreated once again with the hopes of kind of just waiting it out to 2025 at this point, so there are still deals out there being marketed on and off-market, but we're still really not seeing any larger sizable portfolio deals on the market coming from institutional vendors right now.
Perfect. Thank you both for the color. I'll turn it back now.
Thanks.
Next question comes from Brad Sturges with Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning.
Good morning.
Good morning, Brad.
Maybe just starting on the transaction discussion there, just from a disposition point of view, is there anything else we should expect in terms of what you're planning to get done this year, or is it more about thinking about dispositions for next year?
Yeah, I think you'd probably wouldn't see any more at the end of the year. We've got a couple of smaller deals that we're working on, but they wouldn't close until the new year. Is that right?
Yeah.
Yeah, and as far as next year, I mean, we don't have a need to dispose of well-performing assets or anything like that. As you know, we've been culling some of our single-tenant pharmacy stuff that we had out west that was part of a 19-asset portfolio. We've been doing that. Got some one-off deals here and there. A couple of potential sales with our JV partner in our JV that we have with Crestpoint, although they're small assets. There's still an office asset left in that group and a very small retail asset. So those kind of things we're looking at. Zach and the group, we identified CAD 40-plus million of potential sales for next year, but that'll depend on pricing and just the sense of the market. So we'll just be cognizant of that. But I mean, we did CAD 71 million this year.
When we look at the portfolio, I think we're like CAD 110 million left in retail and under CAD 30 million in office. So I kind of get a kick out of this reweighting to get to 90% cash flow or whatever. But at the end of the day, we'll sell assets when we're happy with the price and then go from there, being mindful of our payout, obviously, as well.
I guess with those retail assets, there's still some debt term on those assets too. So I guess it's also a function of when debt maturities come up too, correct?
Yeah, exactly. There's about CAD 25 million of assets that are retail that the debts due in 2025. So obviously, we're going to look at those rather than renew or renew on a short-term basis or something like that rather than put long-term money on them. So that's really what's driving the 40 is two or three smaller assets and then about CAD 25 million of bigger assets that the debts come into.
Okay. Maybe switching over to leasing, just looking at your lease maturity schedule, is there anything that stands out at the moment in terms of non-renewals you're expecting?
As far as in the next two quarters, no. I mean, Zach's been working on renewals for 2025. So there's nothing there other than we've got 100,000 sq ft this quarter in three spaces. So if we've talked about it before, 39,000 sq ft in Woodstock, Ontario, one of our better buildings down there. We've got another 29,000 sq ft here on the island of Montreal. Zach's got a couple of offers on that space right now, so we'll probably have something for the next time we chat on that. And then in Halifax, there's 30,000 sq ft came up this quarter, which is half of the 60,000 sq ft building we own jointly with Crestpoint. That building we bought ourselves back in 2021. 10 Vidito Drive, actually, is the address, but in Burnside.
We only put three-year money on it back then because when we bought it, the single-tenant occupier was interested in buying it. So they actually left in July, and we didn't negotiate a deal with them to buy. But another tenant came in, an owner-user came in. So we've got a tentative offer on that building. So that'll likely be sold in probably close Q1. Like I said, it's in our JV. We only own half of it. But that was kind of one that we always had targeted that potential sale, and that would be a significant premium to what we bought it at back in 2021. Then looking out, we don't see anything until I mean, there's still some things we're working on for Q3 of 2025, but Q1 and Q2 are pretty solid.
Okay. That's a lot of great color. I'll turn it back. Thank you.
Thanks.
There are no further questions. Please continue.
Okay, well, thanks, everybody that did attend, and we'll be talking to you, I guess, next quarter, everybody. Happy holidays. Thanks very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.