Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Tribe Property Technologies Third Quarter 2023 Results and Corporate Update conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there'll be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star, then zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jennifer Laidlaw, Vice President, Marketing and Communications. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you all for joining us today. On our call, we have Tribe CEO, Joseph Nakhla, and our CFO, Angelo Bartolini. Yesterday, after market close, Tribe issued a news release announcing our financial results for our third quarter, 2023. This news release is available on Tribe's website under the Investor tab and is filed on our SEDAR profile. Please note, portions of today's call, other than historical performance, include statements of forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. These statements are made under the safe harbor provisions of those laws. Forward-looking statements that are based on management's current views and assumptions, and that this discussion is qualified in its entirety by the cautionary note regarding forward-looking statements appended to our news release.
Please review our press release and Tribe's reports filed on SEDAR for various factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the projections. We use terms such as gross profit, gross margin, Adjusted EBITDA, and MRR on this conference call, which are non-IFRS and non-GAAP measures. For more information on how we define these terms, please refer to the definition set out in our management discussion and analysis. In addition, reconciliations between any Adjusted EBITDA and net income is included in the press release issued yesterday. The company believes that Adjusted EBITDA is a meaningful financial metric as it measures cash generated from operations, which the company can use to fund working capital requirements, service future interest and principal debt repayments, and fund future growth initiatives. Adjusted EBITDA should not be construed as an alternative to net income or loss determined in accordance with IFRS.
Please note that all financial information is provided in Canadian dollars, unless otherwise noted. Following the prepared remarks by Joseph and Angelo, we will conduct a Q&A session, during which questions will be taken from analysts. With that, I'll turn the call over to Tribe CEO, Joseph Nakhla.
Thank you so much, Jennifer. It's my pleasure being with all of you. Good morning, good afternoon for all of you that have taken time out of your busy schedule to be with us. We had a great quarter. I'm pleased to speak to you today about one of the big initiatives we've spoken about historically about getting the company to profitability. You'll have seen a 34% improvement in our Adjusted EBITDA, which is obviously something that anyone that's been listening to us knows that while we're experiencing national growth across all the different verticals that we play in geographically and service delivery-wise, we're very, very pleased with our ability to have improved much, much number of projects that we embarked on from a cost reduction and workflow optimization.
That's really helped us and we believe Q3 was the massively big step towards the right direction. We've obviously made it clear internally for our operations that our goal of 2024 drive towards profitability is still intact. We're still very much looking at the same trajectory that we've communicated historically. We understand that the world we live in right now is really looking for companies, you know, in some cases, willing to sacrifice some growth for profitability. In our case, we're actually driving on both fronts, with a very strong steadfast strategy, and I think it's working quite well. My expectation for next year is that you'll see serious revenue growth, both organically and through our M&A activities.
Specifically to the M&A side, we, you know, have always described our M&A opportunity in North America as a working way through a pyramid. The base of the pyramid is a lot of property management companies that are kind of smaller and perhaps less sophisticated. And our company now, Tribe, has been able to establish itself as a major player in all eight markets we operate in. And that is really opening up the door for us to be able to make bigger transactions, work our way up the pyramid in terms of the type of quality companies we wanna transact with and bring them to our service delivery model. So look for us in 2024 to be very active. We're incredibly close, imminently close to bringing the Meritus transaction over the line.
This is, by way of reminder, our kind of landing the plane and our Tribe plane on the GTA market. We've been very active in the GTA. On the software licensing side, we have a long list of customers that use our software. They're mainly developers, and now it's, you know, we've had a lot of interest in getting our ability to deliver full property management services on our platform in that market. Obviously, the Meritus transaction is the one that gives us that base that we can build on from there. Through activities in the past few months, we were able to secure a CAD 50 million loan with a major Canadian bank. That really allows us to go and be very, very active.
With our M&A, I've been asked before, and it's no surprise for anybody else that we feel incredibly undervalued as a stock, and we're hesitant to give too much of our stock in any of the deals that we're working on. So senior debt, despite the interest rates, looking at the accretiveness of the deals that we're looking at, it still actually makes sense for us to be very active with it. And, thankfully, a major bank believes in that, being looking at some of the quality of transactions that we've got on the docket. So you'll see us be very, very active in leveraging that, that essentially loan that we will make available.
Another big obviously news is we continue to be high on the radar of tech companies growing. We're very pleased, and this is really a massive achievement by our team that we were awarded the Fast Fifty. This is our second year in a row as a Fast 50 company. So we went from a watch companies to watch to Fast Fifty in a year - last year, and then another award for us this year. Again, it's just a reflection on in an incredibly difficult market in the middle of post-pandemic, our ability to still continue to grow the business. And then obviously a big announcement that we've made, and it's been an absolute pleasure having added Angelo Bartolini, our new CFO, to our midst at the C-suite.
Angelo, welcome all of you that aren't familiar with Angelo's background to go read about the press release, but to bring somebody within our midst that has the incredible experience of doing 50, that's 50, plus transactions with Altus Group, in addition to obviously back, quarterbacking all of their, you know, capital markets activities with the great C-suite that existed in that company. So just a massive boost to our ability to execute on the future for us here, which is probably a good segue for me to hand him over the mic, so he can tell you a little bit more about our Q3 financial performance.
Thank you so much for your kind words, Joseph. Since joining Tribe, I've been very impressed by the strong potential within the business and the exciting trajectory it has in transforming the property management industry. Despite market challenges, Tribe once again delivered a strong financial performance in Q3 2023, with revenue of CAD 4.8 million, an increase of 6% compared to CAD 4.53 million in Q3 2022. Revenue for the first nine months of 2023 was CAD 14.28 million, an increase of 9.3% compared to CAD 13.06 million for the first nine months of 2022. Gross profit for the third quarter 2023 was CAD 1.87 million, compared to CAD 1.59 million in the third quarter of 2022, representing an increase of 17.6%.
Gross profit for the first nine months was CAD 5.65 million, compared to CAD 5.12 million for the first nine months of 2023, an increase of 10.4%. Gross margin percentage was 39% in Q3 2023, compared to 35% in Q3 2022. Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter of 2023 was an outflow of CAD 1.44 million, an improvement of 34% compared to an outflow of CAD 2.19 million in the third quarter of 2022. Adjusted EBITDA for the first nine months was an outflow of CAD 5.51 million, compared to an outflow of CAD 6.1 million for the first nine months of 2022. I would now like to take a deeper dive into the company's revenues. Q3 2023 revenue was up 6% on a year-over-year comparison with Q3 of last year.
However, Q3 revenue was essentially flat compared to prior quarter in Q2 of 2023, which was due to the removal of certain lower margin property management contracts. And we saw that as we're you know really making a strong effort to improve our gross profit and EBITDA margin profitability. When we make an acquisition, we often inherit a wide range of property management contracts from the predecessor company. Over the past two quarters, we have been reviewing a number of these contracts and have chosen to transfer some of the lower margin-producing property management agreements to other management companies. So we essentially traded off some revenue growth for margin improvement. This is reflected in the company's overall margin improvement over the past year. Moving to the graph on the right, average MRR, or monthly recurring revenue per community.
I'm pleased to note that in Q3, our MRR per community was CAD 2,738, which is an improvement of 21% compared to our MRR community in Q3 of last year. Just as a reminder, when we acquire companies, they often do not generate as much revenue per customer as we do. We basically take these assets, digitize them, and onboard them into the Tribe service delivery model, resulting in improved churn and revenue per door. In addition, the increased scale leverages our digital marketplace, allowing us to generate even more revenue per door. And as you can see in the table below, total average revenue per home, or in other words, revenue per door, has increased 18% year-over-year.... On to the balance sheet. We continue to have a very clean balance sheet.
As at September 30, 2023, Tribe had CAD 1.5 million in cash and cash equivalents. Furthermore, we recently announced an acquisition facility of up to CAD 15 million with Canadian Schedule A Bank. The facility consists of CAD 3 million operating lines to support the company's working capital requirements and an M&A facility of CAD 7 million, with an additional accordion feature of CAD 5 million, for a total of CAD 15 million non-dilutive capital. This year, we were also fully dedicated to improving pro-profitability by reducing costs and optimizing efficiencies within our operations. Tribe's commitment to achieving pro-profitability is unwavering, as strategic steps are being taken every day to position the company for sustainable financial success. Last quarter, we continued to make significant improvements in additional cost reduction strategies, which included employing process improvements, cost optimization, headcount reduction, and consolidation of back-office systems.
These expense reductions proved to be effective, as shown by the company's impressive 34% year-over-year improvement in Adjusted EBITDA. We expect these reductions to continue benefiting Tribe's financial performance in the final quarter of 2023 and heading into 2024. In summary, Tribe remains in a solid financial position with growing revenue and improving profitability. We remain excited about the company's growth prospects and continue to be committed to improving our profitability while increasing revenues and strengthening our market leadership position. That concludes my financial update, and now I pass the call back to Joseph. Joseph?
Thank you, Angelo. This is fantastic, having you with us again. Just to... Before I get into, you know, the outlook for the company, for next year, I did want to just speak a little bit more about the importance of this acquisition we've made with Meritus. I commented on it earlier, but just to give everybody a perspective, it's approximately 5,000 homes under management with a great leadership team and staff that really have figured out the kind of how to navigate through a lot of the new regulation coming into Ontario. That was one of the big areas we were looking for. For those that don't know, Ontario introduced a significant amount of condo regulations in the past.
In the past 3-4 years, it got slowed down a little bit in terms of implementation with COVID. But really, a lot of the property management companies that operate in Ontario have some struggles there in terms of getting their staffing licensed, in terms of catching up to the disclosure requirements, being able to tell their condo boards where every dollar goes and the level of scrutiny that financials and service delivery is gonna go under. So it was a really this is something we're accustomed to coming out of the British Columbia market, simply because these regulations have been here for almost a couple of decades. Obviously, it's constantly changing.
So we were very always very comfortable that we will be able to take the service delivery that's required based on the new regulation on Ontario, specifically. And actually I would argue, you know, deliver even better service than what's expected. But we needed that base, and we feel incredibly excited about the ability for that group to be able to help us navigate through these new changes and also attract the talent that's required for us to deliver the service at a high high level in a essentially a greenfield market. Next slide, please. So let me get a little bit more into the business weeds here in terms of our accomplishment of the last quarter. It's pretty straightforward, obviously, on the revenue side.
For those that don't know, the overwhelming majority of our CAD 4.8 million in revenue is monthly recurring revenue. It's very, very sticky business. We added four new property developers that have agreed to utilize our software and all the suite of products and services that come with it. These are four new property developers that are new to us, meaning they're, you know, weren't necessarily customers of ours before. And this speaks to our holistic approach. There is no property management company/software provider/digital strategy company or data aggregator in the globe that can actually deliver the service that we offer to a one-stop shop to the property developers.
So when a developer calls us and sits with us and looks at the suite of products and services that we offer, really it is, it is one phone call into us, and we can support them in what would have been historically 10 or 15 calls if you really wanna take a massive step towards a digital strategy for their community, especially with the operation costs as high as they are. We've added 15 Tribe Home Pro software agreements. These were the existing customers of ours in BC and Ontario. That was a great quarter for us and brings us to almost 29 for the year, 29 for the year. Nine full projects using our Tribe Home are actually operating, onboarded and operating.
That means the full communities have been onboarded, and thankfully, we were able to assist the developer in completing and getting people into these communities. And as those people move in, we start generating revenue per door through our MRR service fees. And we have 12 management agreements. This would be for existing or brand-new communities that wanna come on board, but they haven't been onboarded yet, the 12 agreements. You know, for those that don't know, an existing building that's being managed by a traditional property management company, when they decide to come to us, there's obviously a sales cycle, then RFP cycle. But once you go all through that and you receive the agreement, it takes a little bit of time for them to essentially move away from the existing company that they're with.
We onboard them, digitize them, and then actually onboard and get them on board. So we've signed 12 more of those communities in Q3, and we've onboarded an additional 12 that we actually started generating revenue from in that quarter. So they're not the same 12 on the left-hand side. These are the ones that were actually closed maybe the quarter before, and they're actually coming on board now. So to orient you a little bit on how we make money, there's 3 major revenue streams that we have as an organization. Software and service recurring revenue. In the case of condos, we charge a monthly fee, and that includes all of our software services and all of...
In the case of rental, all of our software services and all of the service delivery commitments that we make to that community. That's what we get paid for there. We also have transactional revenue that you'll see, we keep adding to it. This is a long list of items. This can actually be in the tens. But think of it as in-app purchases or in-app transactions. Once we are in the community and people download the app, they need to interface with their community. They need to make payments. In the case of rental communities, they need to make rent and some cases upgrade in terms of size or downgrade. And there's all kinds of long list of items associated with that.
That transactional revenue is, even though it is not contractual, it is contractual in terms of dollars, but it's not contractual in terms of it coming back every month. It's very steady, and it's almost treated as MRR. And then there's the digital services and partnerships revenue. And I do want to pause it for half a second on this because this has been our marketplace, and we— You know, for us to be very effective with our marketplace, we needed scale. And anybody who's been following us knows we've done a good job becoming a national player. And with that comes, obviously, the ability to optimize costs, but it also really allows us to negotiate massive deals across the country on behalf of our homeowners and our condo communities.
That number continues to grow, but I anticipate in 2024, we're going to put a serious focus on that because that type of revenue that's coming through is really, it's, it's, it's the epitome of a traditional win-win-win statement. When we go and negotiate a deal on behalf of the massive communities we're in, we're able to bring in really specific, specialized products and services. Could be as basic as insurance or lending or service delivery associated with, you know, a handyman or... You'll see a lot of these types of deals.
But really, we don't do a deal unless we can get an absolute guarantee that the cost of that offer to our homeowners will be lower than anything available on the street, that also can generate revenue for us. We disclose that. We fully disclose that to our homeowners and our communities that we manage. But what it also is doing for us is it's actually very, very, very high gross margin business. So even though we may make, you know, CAD 2 per transaction, CAD 3 per transaction, whatever the number is, it's really high gross margin, simply because there's no cost of goods associated with it, and it is just leveraging our scale and engine. So you'll see us be very active in 2024 with this line of business.
We went from trying to explain this to service providers in the past three or four quarters. Now, you know, essentially our phone is ringing and people are coming in with some really interesting products and services. Look for us to be active, specifically with lowering the consumption metrics of and the capital expenditure requirements of these buildings, and you'll see more on that in the near future as we go out to the market with some really exciting products. Won't spend too much time on this. We spoke for our goals in 2023, that we wanted to increase our monthly recurring revenue through both organic and acquired means.
Obviously, we've done to a high degree that expanded our acquisition pipeline, and we did want to get presence in Toronto, where we're very close to closing on that transaction whereby we will be very active there. You know, obviously drive efficiencies in the business and drive towards improving our gross margin and EBITDA, invest in our products and innovative solutions. And I'm quite pleased with the work that's been done with the team, and you'll see more on that in 2024, specifically as we work towards now taking the data that was accumulated. And we've got, you know, hundreds of millions of points of data with the communities we manage and actually starting to drive some really cool solutions there.
I do believe AI plays a role in driving further efficiency. So a lot of the efficiencies that you've seen in terms of us being able to drive, we haven't. We're just piloting some AI solutions, but we're really looking at how AI can do a lot of heavy lifting in terms of the front line associated with the homeowners that we work with. And then, obviously, continue to drive additional services. Q4 is shaping up to be arguably our best quarter ever when it comes to digital services. But 2024 is going to be a fantastic year, which I'll speak to in the next slide here. We may be taking six or seven of those big initiatives, and we're just driving to really towards three here.
One is to continue to drive towards profitability. We spoke plenty about that today. Number two, leverage national footprint and really start delivering significant digital service revenue, which is high gross margin business, as I just indicated... and then expand our acquisition pipeline, work our way through the permit, work our way through the middle tier, and look for high revenue, high EBITDA generating or cash-generating businesses, and that either improve our geographical footprint in Canada or beyond. And, you know, the outlook overall is, of course, what everybody is speaking about when it comes to real estate, interest rates and inflation and lack of or shortage of trades. And these are all things that are kind of hovering around us.
We are seeing these points of pain associated with some of the developers and some of the people that are closing on their communities, whether it's the homeowners, you know, the cost of the mortgage is going a little bit more than they anticipated, or a developer just struggling to get over the line, over the hump of delivery because, you know, once again, we're still dealing with some challenges in terms of them getting either occupancy permits. What I hoped 2023 was gonna be full ease of that. We're seeing some delays, 30 days, 60 days here and there. But overall, I have no concerns whatsoever about the availability of the addressable market that we can go and win. It's just reflected in the number of proposals.
We've never had as many proposals out as we do on deals, whether it's new construction or existing communities that wanna come to our service delivery. Obviously, you're gonna see, we're gonna get the Meritus acquisition closed very shortly here, which will provide some boost in Q4 and beyond. We have a strategy of how to drive a lot of the business demand that we've had in Ontario to our team there that's gonna be able to convert a very, very, very healthy pipeline in terms of proposals. As I mentioned earlier, we will laser focus on a number of projects on cost saving strategies and improvement of the EBITDA. And on the M&A side, I've said enough.
I think it's pretty evident that we, we will be very, very active, moving ahead next year. That concludes, all the, all the items that I wanted to share with you today. I'm happy to take any questions.
Thank you. We will now begin the analyst question and answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. You'll hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Once again, to join the question queue, please press star then one now. Our first question comes from Kiran Sritharan of Eight Capital. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Let's start here. Just curious if you've seen any changes to the sales cycles with the new contracts? Or the contracts that you've signed lately, have there been any commonalities to call out? What does it take in this environment to get a customer over the line?
Yeah, no, that's a great question. Thanks, Kiran. Regarding developers, people that are building brand new communities, we've never been invited at the outset of the design of what this community looks like. I'm talking specifically about master planned community. Just historically, property management companies used to be called 6 months, 4 months, 5 months before the sales center, sorry, 5, 6 weeks before the sales center is about to be built and come in and say, "Here's the logo. Here's what we need you to do.
Give us a cost for this community so we can just go to the street and tell them, 'Hey, if you buy a condo here, your cost will be X per square foot.'" You give them a number, then they call you back and tell you, "Make it lower, lower, lower, so we can make it attractive, so we can sell those units quickly." And that's pretty much the conversation. It's a complete world, different world now when it comes to Tribe. They're, they're coming to us, sharing with us everything they've got.
We have input on this, not only from a digital strategy point of view in terms of the data. We even give them input on you know giving them surveys about the size and what rental could look like and whether it should be one-bedroom, two-bedroom, three-bedroom, in the case of rental community, in the case of condos. Here's the amenities, here's the usage. Here's the best way for you to set this community up for success moving forward in terms of operating expenditure. Don't use this equipment, use that equipment, and it's all data-driven. So the sales cycle, arguably, is a little bit longer simply because we're brought in earlier. So when you see all those numbers that I shared with you guys earlier about what we've secured, this didn't happen this quarter.
We were brought in, we came in, we put our digital strategy for them and how you should manage, you know, hundreds of items associated with the community living, and then agreements come and get put in place. So I would say the cycle, I mean, there's more and more developers seeking our services, but I'd say the cycle is just longer by way of the fact that we're starting earlier. In the case of existing communities, maybe I'll call out some of our competitors on this call. I don't usually do that at all, but we're seeing more and more and more of our competitors making it incredibly difficult for their customers to move away.
We've been the company. I've shared that before, but we've been the company it's really easy to do business with, and it's really easy to leave. Meaning, if you ever came to us and said, "We're not happy with the service," we let you go. We do not hold data hostage. We do not make it difficult for you to go, thankfully, and you know, people lie, numbers don't. Our churn numbers are very, very low, and our team has done a fantastic job keeping our customers simply not because we have power over them. It's just simply because we deliver good service, and we're seeing quite a bit of resistance in the space.
The reason I share that is because what used to be as quickly as 30-day turnaround for a customer coming to us, we actually now are probably closer to 60, and not all the data is coming across. So our digital strategy in terms of getting these buildings ready to go for a better future just taking a little bit more work. We're not complaining. It's just being honest and direct and you know essentially some of those players are getting caught, you know, getting called out on it. It just speaks to the fact that obviously people are frustrated with our disruption in the space, and for that, I make no apology.
That's very helpful, Joseph. Thank you. And then on margins, I mean, there was meaningful correction on OpEx sequentially, and some of them closed in the gross margin, but within the expected range. Just curious what caused the sequential dip on the gross margin? And then on OpEx, would this be a good run rate for us to model?
Hi, Karan.
I'll be next. Well, you go ahead.
Yeah.
Go ahead. Yeah, no, I'll, I'll take that, and then Joseph can, can jump on as well. Look, sequentially, you know, there's always things that happen quarter-over-quarter, but if you look at the trend, consistently from, from a year ago, we had a really nice increase going from 35 to 39. The trend, we expect it to continue to increase. We're getting into the, you know, we're getting into the 40s. I think probably you'll see some flat lining there. But as we, you know, continue to bring in the higher margin type revenue streams that Joseph talked about earlier, you know, we'll be able to continue to, to increase it overall.
I wouldn't be so concerned over, you know, one particular quarter sequentially, but I'd, I'd look at it over, you know, a number of quarters in the trend that we're seeing. So I, I expect continued improvement in the gross margin and in the EBITDA, as well. I mean, you saw a dramatic increase this quarter where, you know, we, we went from, you know, over CAD 2 million of loss last year in adjusted EBITDA to CAD 1.5 million, and you'll continue to see that improve quarter-over-quarter as well.
Thanks, Angelo. That's helpful. And for my last one here, can you please talk about some of the traction with your digital assets outside the core platform? For example, how have the developer tools performed against expectations? And I'll leave it there.
Yeah, you know, Kiran, if you're referencing like digital services outside of our service delivery, meaning we do property management, but I think you're-- I just want to make sure I understand the question. You're asking about our actual digital services, how-- what are we working on that can generate that extra gross, high gross margin items? Is that a correct reading of the question?
Exactly.
Okay. Yeah, we've got a team that's gone out and, you know, it's funny. Nobody's really done what we're doing. This concept of creating a... I mean, a lot of people create marketplaces, so I just want to make sure that I didn't get misquoted here. But nobody's really gone out and actually tried to take the data of the communities we live in and the consumption and all that stuff, and really try to identify the sweet spot from a service delivery associated with the homes that are there. And nobody's done it in condos, and few tried it in rental with moderate success. The reason that's relevant is because we don't just want to go and grab, like, clippable transactional items and keep putting them out there.
Some of it is low-hanging fruit, obvious stuff like insurance, as I mentioned earlier. You know, condos in Canada, 60% of them are underinsured. That's a big problem. It's almost, you know, irresponsible on behalf of either the homeowner and/or the community. I'll even call out our regulatory bodies for not making that a complete requirement. You can drive a, you know, a CAD 2,000 car, and you have to get it insured, but you can have a CAD 2 million condo, and you don't have to get it insured, you, by law anyways, which is an issue. So education is a big part of it, what have you. So these are transactional types of stuff. But there's actually infrastructure plays that I think are completely underserved, and I'm incredibly excited about for 2024.
Very specifically, I find overwhelming majority of communities or buildings in Canada just not running optimally. And I don't. I'm not referencing property management. I'm just talking pure consumption per square foot for different categories of what this community looks like. And it's just who is making those decisions? And nobody knows about it. You know, it's not bubbling up.
And I think a company like us, with the amount of datasets we have and partnerships with, you know, other AI companies and/or, great solution providers that are coming in with systems that can really catch these, anomalies in terms of, you know, benchmarking how you're spending way more gas per sq ft compared to a building similar to yours in the same neighborhood with the same pricing, and then, you know, zero down on that, and then deliver an ROI-centric solution to the community. I am expecting 2024 to be the year where we, I know we're already on the bleeding edge of what this industry is doing, but I expect us to be massively out there touting these solutions. And actually, they're all revenue-generating for both, you know, either cost, cost-saving for the community and, and revenue-generating for us.
So you'll see us be very, very active, that in addition to other financial services products. And, and I think you'll see a bit of that in Q4, but you'll see a lot more activity in that in Q1 and Q2.
Thanks, guys. I'll pass the line.
Once again, if you have a question, please press star then one. Our next question comes from Fred Blondeau of Laurentian Bank Securities. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and good morning. Two quick high-level questions for me. Just looking at 2024, I was wondering from what you see on the ground, how should we view, I guess, development starts and Tribe's penetration of those projects?
Yeah, it's a great question. It's you know, Fred, I know you cover a lot of real estate and look, the more basic fundamentals of housing needs in Canada are pretty evident to everybody. We're bringing in way more people into our country than we are making homes available to them. I won't spend any more time on you know, that issue with all its affordability, you know, complexities on this call because I think everybody's pretty well aware of the problem. We are still seeing serious activities around you know, or at least serious planning around people bringing in communities. But we can't put our head in the sand and act like this interest rates have not introduced some headwind towards new starts specific to developers.
You know, you should think of developers, and again, this is just one man's observation, but an educated observation. We should think of developers as twofold. One is, you know, old school, been around, bought land over the years, accumulated it. Cost per square foot on the land is really, really low. Those guys will continue to build. The guys that have came into most recent years, that bought the land at a really high level buildable costs, it's gonna be difficult for them to stay competitive, and I think those guys are gonna start slowing down some of the projects. What we're seeing more and more of is, you know, hasn't fully translated into action yet by the government, but what we're seeing is developers that are saying, "Look, we're in the middle of construction. I happen to be a multifaceted developer.
I do have condos. I do have some commercial real estate that frankly, in some cases, empty or not being used, and I am, I am contemplating, you know, going to a legacy mode so I can leave something for the kids and the grandkids. Hey, government, can you help me out and give me a path towards turning some of these assets that I started, instead of needing to sell all of them as condos? Can I go out there and convert some of them into, you know, into rental for 5 years, 10 years? We'll do an agreement with the, you know, city or the county or, or with the, with the province to ensure that our rates are reasonable.
But as long as you're giving me a chance to take some of those assets and convert them into a sale in five years or three years, once, you know, interest rates kind of come back to normalization." You know, we're seeing more and more of that. We're seeing in British Columbia, actually nationally, we're seeing some obviously GST deferrals. And in British Columbia, we're seeing, you know, finally a push towards these, you know, cities to approve a lot of new, you know, give the rezoning and give the new construction permits a lot quicker than they've given them a year and a half to make changes, which is somewhat laughable.
Like, I don't know why it takes 1.5-2 years to make changes so you can give, you know, you know, permits quicker. But, so, you know, to summarize everything I just shared with you, this is just color on my takeaway. This country is in desperate need for new homes, and we, in our view, do not see anything really affecting that massively other than just construction cost, loans that are gonna be worth a little bit more, but we're not seeing a softening of the pricing, so the developers are gonna be okay. It's just developers that acquired massive, expensive lands are probably gonna put the brakes on it for a while.
Okay, got it. But last time I was in Vancouver, that market is absolutely on fire. Like, I assume this last comment that you just made does not apply to Vancouver, or you're starting to see cracks in Vancouver, too?
Yeah, listen, I'm nobody to give an outlook in Vancouver. I've been somewhat wrong in Vancouver for the last 20 years. It's just proven to be a complete bubble of its own behavior. I mean, look, the bottom line, it's an incredibly desirable market. You know, the comment does apply to those developers that bought incredibly expensive land here in Vancouver, and that is a long list. But there's also some massive anchor developers in Vancouver that have-
Mm-hmm.
just bought those lands in the 1970s and the 1980s and early 1990s, and I don't need to tell you, like, they'll be fine. Whether they're selling at $2,000/sq ft or $1,200/sq ft, there's the math will still work for the overwhelming majority of those, so we're not really feeling any slowing down in-
Yeah. Okay, and then very quickly, in terms of your growth profile in Ontario, how would you qualify your pipeline today? And in parallel, how would you qualify, I guess, vendors and your own appetite for VTB type of transactions?
The Ontario market is, for us, just absolute greenfield. It's massive. There's a handful of sizable players in the space. I mentioned earlier the regulation headwind that came towards some of the existing operators there, and their need to be able to navigate through it. We think we have a monstrous advantage with our technology and our processes. We're not a perfect company, but we're really good at what we do. So I'm incredibly bullish in our ability to get bigger in the Ontario market. In terms of M&A, you know, no surprise, we really like that market. There's opportunities there. The appetite for vendor takeback is there. Our appetite to give away stock is not.
So we're frankly structuring deals that require very little stock on our end, if any. And thankfully, we were able to negotiate a proper, you know, senior debt deal that gives us quite a bit of muscle to be able to navigate through the deals that we're working on. And you'll see that reflected in the next couple of transactions that we'll announce.
Yeah, that's fair. And is it fair to say also that at the margin, your focus will largely be on Ontario, and then the U.S. is absolutely not a focus right now? Is that fair to say?
I wouldn't say absolutely not in focus. We do keep a very, very close eye on it. I am still, you know, I don't know if happy or surprised. You couldn't name a single player in the US that's playing in or taking our approach to service delivery. You could name a few-
Mm-hmm.
You know, maybe three or four that are tech- backed services around the rental space. But on the condo side, you know, it still hasn't been sorted, and I think it's just a pure function of how difficult it is and how easy your tech stack has to be. Don't count us out for 2024 in the US, but, you know, we're just a fraction of Canada market. We love the Canadian market. We're very good at it. We'll be very active here, but we're with a very close eye to the US.
Mm-hmm. Thank you. That's very helpful. Thank you.
This concludes Tribe's third quarter financial results conference call. A replay of this conference call will be available on the Tribe website in the coming days. Thank you for attending today's call, and enjoy the rest of your day. Goodbye.