With me today is Artis' President and CEO, Samir Manji, CFO Jaclyn Koenig, COO Kim Riley, and Executive Vice President U.S. Region, Phil Martens. In a few minutes, I'll be turning the floor over to Samir for opening remarks, after which there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please click on the Raise Hand button at the bottom of your screen. You'll then be placed in a queue, and when it's your turn, you'll be brought into the meeting to ask your question with audio only. Your camera will not be enabled. Our third quarter 2021 results were disseminated yesterday and are available on SEDAR and on Artis' website. Before we get started, please be reminded that today's discussion may include forward-looking statements.
Such statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied today. We have identified such factors in our public filings with the securities regulators and suggest that you refer to those filings. As we discuss our performance, please also keep in mind that all figures are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise noted. I would also like to note that today's webcast is being recorded, and a replay will be available on our website later this afternoon until Wednesday, March 9, 2022. With that, I will turn the discussion over to Samir.
Thank you, Heather. Good morning to those in the West, and good afternoon to those of you in the East, here from sunny, beautiful Winnipeg. Welcome, and thank you for joining us for our Q3 2021 results webcast. As we've done in previous quarters, and in being mindful of your time, I'm gonna keep my comments today brief before transitioning to our Q&A session. It's been a busy few months for us here at Artis. During the quarter, we closed the sale of 32 properties for CAD 761 million in aggregate. This includes the sale of our GTA industrial portfolio, which was a significant milestone in the implementation of our business transformation plan, and which we feel demonstrates the significant value that exists within Artis' diversified portfolio.
The remainder of the assets sold during the quarter were considered to be non-core to the REIT and to our long-term strategy. We were able to achieve attractive cap rates on these dispositions by taking a measured and patient approach, which we feel validates that there is continued demand for quality commercial real estate assets despite the current pandemic environment that we still find ourselves in. These asset sales, along with the sales we completed since the announcement of our business transformation plan, have been calculated and integral in providing Artis with the financial flexibility it has today to meaningfully reduce our debt to gross book value to 44% and to increase our net asset value per unit to CAD 17.45 at September 30th.
They have also provided us with a healthy level of liquidity as we focus on our return of capital and value investing strategies, including our October 24 announcement related to our participation in the investor group to acquire Cominar REIT. Before I move on, I should note that as mentioned last quarter, the sale of the GTA industrial portfolio will generate an increase to our taxable income for 2021. We expect to make a special distribution to unit holders, which may be in the form of or a combination of cash or common units. The special distribution will be declared later in the year and will be based on the amount that the REIT's taxable income is expected to exceed its regular annual distributions in 2021.
In terms of our day-to-day operations, we continue to identify and improve operational efficiencies and are making strong progress in advancing our ESG program and in our commitment to creating an ESG-minded culture at Artis. This initiative is very important to our board of trustees and our management team, and we look forward to providing updates on this in the quarters to come and in our upcoming 2021 ESG report. To conclude, our business transformation plan has progressed nicely to date. We are pleased with what we've accomplished so far and are confident that if we continue to stay focused on our strategy with the same diligence and discipline, our owners will be rewarded with net asset value per unit growth and long-term value creation in the quarters ahead. I will now turn it back to Heather to moderate our Q&A session.
Thank you, Samir. Just as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please click the Raise Hand button at the bottom of your screen, and you'll be placed in the queue and brought into the meeting when it's your turn. There will be a momentary delay while your audio is connecting, and please remember to unmute your line at the appropriate time. Our first question is from Jonathan Kelcher from TD Securities.
Thanks. Good afternoon.
Hey, Jonathan.
First question, just on the Cominar deal, what percent will you guys own of the JV with Canderel?
Thanks, Jonathan. We, at this point, are not gonna be providing any further color on the details of the transaction. We will wait for the unit holder vote slated for late December for Cominar's unit holders, and then either just before or post-completion of the transaction, subject to, again, a positive vote. We'll be happy to provide certainly more color and details, including answering the question you just asked. Suffice it to say we've made a significant capital commitment, and we look forward to working with our partners in the consortium following a successful vote and completion of the transaction.
Okay. Fair enough, I guess. I guess just then Switching gears, the special distribution you talked about, I know the amount's obviously not set yet, but can you maybe give us a ballpark, maybe a range of what it might be?
I can take that, Samir. I think, just based on the information that we still have to put through in order to determine our taxable income, we're not in a position right now where we're able to kinda give a range on the special distribution.
Okay. I'm zero for two on questions so far, I'll go one more. I guess just on operations, and I guess this one's maybe for you, Phil. The U.S. same property NOI was weak in the quarter. Can you maybe give us some color on that and then your near-term expectations for it?
Hey, Jonathan. Yeah. The hard thing with measuring by quarter is that you get a little snapshot, and yet what we're seeing generally was this decrease in the NOI came from an asset in North Scottsdale and that's temporary. We had two tenants in this particular asset. One went to another one of ours, the other one left. Yet before they even left, we had re-signed the entire building. This particular new tenant, which is a credit tenant, will be taking the entire building, but that's only until June of 2022. We have that asset handled. Another asset is in Minneapolis, and I can't yet report, but I would like to at least make a comment about the quality of our leasing team in Minneapolis, both office and industrial, as well as Madison office and Phoenix office.
We've got a really great team, and I'm looking forward to sharing some good news in the upcoming quarters on how some of those vacancies are being handled. Suffice to say, despite the concerns of the pandemic and how it impacts our office users, we're seeing that some of the bigger users are coming off the sidelines and starting to make decisions. We're quite pleased, I'm quite pleased right now on how our assets are performing in that environment.
Okay. That is timing related, I guess, on the Phoenix one and then. Okay. That's helpful. Thanks. I'll turn it back.
Okay. Our next question is from Matt Logan from RBC Capital Markets.
Thank you, and good morning. In terms of your investment in Cominar, or at least the continuing entity, while you can't provide any details, could you maybe speak to the type of assets that are in the continuing portfolio and, you know, some sort of general range on what sort of leverage the consortium plans to employ?
We are not going to comment on financial metrics at this point, Matt. Again, as I mentioned to John, we will be happy to provide more details post-transaction. As it relates to the portfolio, as has been disclosed, the industrial portfolio is being forward sold. A portion of the office and retail have been committed, and that leaves us with still a sizable portfolio of retail and office assets that are, in our view, good quality assets that we look forward to owning and stewarding with our consortium partners.
Would these be principally enclosed malls with some value add on the office side? Or how should we be thinking about kind of the operating strategy for this entity?
Well, if one knows the details of the Cominar portfolio. Matt, can you just go on mute just while I'm answering? That'll be helpful, I think, for sound purposes. Thank you. If you look at the overall portfolio of 310 assets, it's already been noted that the industrial has been forward sold, and that will reduce your asset base to just south of 120, and then a portion of those 120 are being sold to Groupe MACH. That leaves still a sizable portfolio, which includes everything from a value- add retail, which could include enclosed malls to office assets. It's a sizable portfolio, including the key portfolio at the back end of the transaction that includes a mix of assets.
On a go-forward basis, what sort of percentage do you think private investments such as this could make up, perhaps as a percentage of your balance sheet?
I think it's difficult to say at this point, Matt. It's early days. We haven't even hit the one-year mark of our business transformation plan announcement, and we feel, alongside our board of trustees, we feel very good as a management team, with what we've been able to achieve to date from an implementation and execution standpoint. The fact that we enjoy today the level of financial flexibility we have on our balance sheet will allow us on behalf of our owners, the unitholders, to be opportunistic as we have been, with the Cominar transaction, to be able to pursue opportunities of varying degrees. We announced in our quarter, the development in Blaine, which is a suburb of Minneapolis. We were there a few weeks ago, the entire executive with Phil. It.
You know, these are opportunities and initiatives that we are both excited about, but also confident are going to create and add significant value for our unitholders.
With respect to the Cominar investment, is that a transaction that will result in fees paid to Sandpiper? If so, what role did Sandpiper have in underwriting that investment?
There are no fees that Artis will be paying to Sandpiper. The details of, again, the transaction, Artis' ownership position, Sandpiper's ownership position, we will be happy to provide those details on the other side of the transaction. Suffice it to say that, together, Artis and Sandpiper will have a meaningful ownership position in the new entity that will own Cominar, and alongside that ownership will have a meaningful role to play in the governance of the private entity. Again, alongside our consortium partners at Canderel and FrontFour.
Last question from me, just on the disposition front, how should investors be thinking about the cadence of potential asset sales in Q4 and over the coming year?
As we conveyed in the last quarter call, at this point, we anticipate that further dispositions in the near term, including Q4, will be at a single asset level, opportunistic. There's no near-term intention to undertake a sizable portfolio disposition similar to what we did in the GTA with our industrial assets.
Okay. I appreciate the commentary. Thank you very much. I'll turn it back.
Thanks, Matt.
Okay. Our next question is from Sumayya Syed from CIBC Capital Markets.
Thanks. Good morning. Not sure I'll get far, but just wanted to ask about the Cominar transaction. Mostly to just get more color on your broader, I guess, investment framework and philosophy, and if you can pinpoint where you see the biggest value creation opportunity, and any thoughts so far on returns and the hold period.
Thanks, Sumayya, and good afternoon. I think you prefaced your question appropriately. We're not gonna comment at this point on those sorts of details, but look forward to sharing some thoughts and context around those specifics and others that have been raised by your colleagues in the analyst community post-transaction.
Okay. Just to switch over to your current portfolio and I guess on the remaining industrial, you do have some decent footprint in Winnipeg, Twin Cities and Houston. Just given the demand, what you think are the prospects for selling more industrial and the timeline for that.
Again, we were very pleased with the progress we're making operationally on both sides of the border across the portfolio within each of our three asset classes. Sumayya, you're right. Our industrial in particular, as we know in the broader industry context, is where we're seeing the strongest demand and commensurate results operationally and financially. At this point, again, there's no near-term intention to do anything of a substantive nature on the M&A side with respect to disposing of industrial assets.
Okay. Can you give us an update on how the Calgary office sales are progressing?
We've been at it for a couple of months now with respect to our five remaining Calgary office properties. While we've seen interest, this is a market and an asset class within that market, more specifically, that we all know continues to face significant headwinds. We are navigating that accordingly and anticipate that we should be able to have some transactions under our belt in Q4. Otherwise, the balance will, we expect, complete in Q1, 2022.
How is the pricing measuring up against your expectations of value?
Again, you know, it's a market that has faced significant challenges. Fortunately, you know, these five assets represent a very small proportion of our overall asset base. In fact, less than 2% of our IFRS real estate portfolio is represented by these five properties. Whether we hit our IFRS value or not will not move the needle in any significant way when it comes to the completion of these transactions.
Yeah, makes sense. Thank you.
Thanks, Maya.
Okay. The next question is from Mario Saric from Scotia Capital.
Hi. Good afternoon. Can you hear me okay?
Yes. Hi, Mario.
Hi. I promise I will not ask a question on Cominar. I wanted to focus a bit more initially coming back to the office market, and kind of, Phil, you kind of highlighted the transitional nature of some of the weakness there in the U.S. The occupancy in Canada also came down by a similar amount quarter-over-quarter. Can you maybe talk to what you're seeing in the Canadian office market with respect to your portfolio and when we can see those occupancy levels tick back up again?
I can take that one, Mario. For the Canadian portfolio, it was really related to one property. Similar to the U.S., it was just two. In Canada it was just one. We saw a tenant vacate in Q3 for one office building that we own in Edmonton. Subsequent to that, we've been able to re-lease around 25% of it to occupy before the end of the year. I would say as we come through the summer and you know the pandemic keeps dragging on, activity is picking up, but it is slow, and we're working hard to lease the vacancy as best we can, as indicated by the leasing that we did in this property.
Continue to work market by market, picking up the leasing where we can, and hopefully it'll pick up throughout the balance of the year as people get back to the office. We're starting to see activity pick up in Winnipeg in terms of occupancy in the space. We're optimistic that by early 2022 activity will start to pick up and we'll start to see some of those vacancies improve.
Okay. From a capital allocation perspective, what are your kind of higher level holistic thoughts on office, going forward coming out of the pandemic, coming out of work from home, hopefully in 2022? Is that an asset class where you see yourself adding capital given valuations, or is it an asset class where you'd like to reduce exposure over time?
Thanks for the question, Mario. We, post our GTA industrial portfolio sale, did see as one can do the math on an uptick in the office representation as insofar as overall proportion of our GLA within our roughly 20 million sq ft of operating assets. That is a ratio that we would like to see be brought down to where we were pre the GTA sale, if not even a bit lower, relative to our industrial and our retail assets. We certainly aren't gonna see that ratio grow in the near term from a capital allocation standpoint. That's not our plan. On the contrary that we should see that reduce over the next few quarters.
Okay. Just maybe an associated broader question with the GTA industrial portfolio, you showed a willingness to kinda sell something that's in very strong demand, achieving a very good price. The equity securities balance is inching up quarter-over-quarter consistent with your business transformation plan. When you sit back, without giving away any of your secret sauce, maybe, when you look at asset classes, where do you see the best risk-adjusted return today from a value perspective?
Well, Mario, I think we could ask you the same question, along with your contemporaries, but that's not for today. We'll save that for an offline conversation. Look, I think we all know that industrial pure-plays, as it relates to the public equity side in particular, are seeing incredible momentum and very strong tailwinds, as is multifamily right behind that. Whereas the diversified and then other pure-play asset classes are not seeing that same level of momentum and hence, you know, that's generally speaking where one probably could identify opportunities that could represent a meaningful value play or investment opportunities.
Outside of that, public securities bucket, I would say that at least insofar as our own experience as a management team and a board at Artis, where we see very compelling opportunities are in the development bucket, and again, particularly as it relates to industrial. We have a strong team in the U.S. We were there visiting multiple markets last month. In three of those markets, as you know, we've got sizable developments underway in Greater Minneapolis, in Houston and in Scottsdale. We'll continue to evaluate development opportunities, particularly as it relates to industrial, from a capital allocation standpoint.
Thank you for that. I mean, yeah, the question wasn't necessarily solely confined to the public markets, just more so in terms of asset classes, whether it's public or private. If there's anything that sticks out in terms of looking pretty good. Then maybe just as a follow-up, geographically, you can go anywhere and do anything. Is there anything that sticks out geographically for the team that's more of a focus today than it was six months ago in terms of opportunities?
Well, Quebec certainly is, as you know. We, beyond that, we're not looking to venture as it relates to our direct property investments and developments. We're not looking to venture into any new markets, but instead to harness the boots on the ground presence we have in existing markets. Again, where opportunities surface that our team has underwritten and believes represents an attractive opportunity from a capital allocation standpoint, we will continue to present those to our investment committee and our board for consideration.
Okay. My last question just comes back to operations, with the budgeting process, I'm sure, well underway for 2022. Is there a target, organic same property and wide growth that you're looking to achieve within the existing portfolio for 2022?
I'll pass that over to Kim and Jackie.
Sure. I can jump in first. Yeah, we are completing the 2022 budgets right now. We're kind of just getting through the end of that process. Evaluating, and we'll probably have more to report by the end of next quarter. I don't know if Jackie has anything to add.
No, I think that's a good representation of where we're at right now.
Okay. Thank you for your time.
Thanks, Mario.
Okay, our next question is from Kyle Leeson.
Hey, guys. How's it going? Can everyone hear me?
Yes, we can. Hi, Kyle.
Awesome. Thanks for taking my question. I buy Artis along with a number of other retail investors. Now, we've been following you, Samir, for quite some time. We know pre-pandemic you know, were making certain purchases through Sandpiper, and obviously we're consulting with Sandpiper on Artis in a number of purchases on the public market. You had mentioned that there were two companies in particular that haven't been declared, so we presume that those purchases haven't exceeded 10% of the total value of those companies. I guess the question is, knowing that you just said you're trying to lower the ratio of office to the other, sorry, other asset classes, are you continuing to purchase those companies on the open market?
We have one in mind that I won't say here, but you've had an interview in which you had said the NAV was considerably higher than it is trading at now. We're wondering if purchases will exceed that 10%, because you had said in the past that, you know, the idea is to close that gap to net asset value. Knowing that there are a few companies out there that are still trading at a significant discount, is that still the game plan? Will you guys exceed that 10% threshold? Are you willing to disclose that information, or is that stuff that you're keeping pretty close to the chest?
Thanks, Kyle. I'll keep my comments limited to what we are focusing on at Artis. From a strategic standpoint, as it relates to our public securities investing, we continue to evaluate opportunities with our investment committee and our board. Where we believe it makes sense and represents an attractive and compelling situation or opportunity for our unitholders, again, with the support and approval and direction of our investment committee and board of trustees, we will look to allocate capital accordingly. It could be to own a ownership position in an entity sub 10%, and where we cross the 10%, we will disclose it accordingly at that time. There's no, at this stage, clear position where we will or will not look at owning greater than 10%.
It really will be case by case, and again, in conjunction with the direction of our board of trustees.
Thank you.
Okay, our next question is from Michael Markidis from Desjardins.
Hi there. Thanks for taking my question. Apologies if I missed this, but Samir, I think you mentioned earlier that your intention was to get your office exposure back down to where it was pre the industrial sale. I'm just curious if when you think about your asset allocation in that manner, are the investments in securities and subsequent, I guess, ownership structures, if it gets to that point, viewed holistically in that light, or are you simply referring to things where you have a direct asset ownership interest?
Thanks, Mike. That's a very important question. The commentary that we provided earlier was related to the 100% owned GLA within our portfolio. Hopefully that helps clarify.
Yeah, that does. Thank you very much.
There are no further questions at this time, so we will conclude today's webcast. If you have any further questions after the call, please don't hesitate to reach out to me or Samir. Thank you all for joining us. We wish you a wonderful rest of your day.