Morguard REIT (TSX:MRT) reported second-quarter financial results on Thursday. The transcript from the company's second-quarter earnings call has been provided below.

This content is powered by Benzinga APIs. For comprehensive financial data and transcripts, visit https://www.benzinga.com/apis/.

The full earnings call is available at https://link.meetingpanel.com/?id=04934

Summary

Morguard Real Estate Investment Trust reported strong second quarter 2026 results with same-asset growth of 7.5% and net operating income of $27.1 million, a 5.5% increase from 2025.

Retail and office segments showed solid growth, with Penmas Plaza achieving 80% occupancy and ongoing positive lease negotiations at St. Laurent Centre.

The Trust maintained $61 million in liquidity, with strategic plans for UP financing and new tenant additions at various properties, including a focus on re-tenanting former Sears spaces.

Occupancy levels improved to 85.2%, with significant leasing activities and tenant renewals expected in the latter half of 2026.

Management expressed optimism about the retail leasing environment and office market recovery, highlighting strategic development projects and tenant expansions as key growth drivers.

Full Transcript

OPERATOR (Operator)

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Morguard Real Estate Investment Trust 2026 Second Quarter Results conference call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Thursday, July 30, 2026. I would now like to turn the conference over to Andrew Tamlin, your Chief Executive Officer.

Please go ahead.

Andrew Tamlin, Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. My name is Andrew Tamlin, Chief Financial Officer of Morguard REIT. Welcome to the Morguard REIT second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. I am joined this afternoon by John Ginis, Vice President of Retail Asset Management, Tom Johnson, VP of Western Office Asset Management, and Tom Prevot, Senior VP, Office Asset Management of Eastern Canada. Thank you all for taking the time to join the call. Before we jump into the call, I would like to point out that our comments will mostly refer to the second quarter 2026 and MD&A and financial statements which have been posted to our website.

I refer you specifically to the cautionary language at the front of the MD&A which would also apply to any comments that we make on this call. Our second quarter results have exceeded expectations and reflect solid combined same-asset growth of 7.5% for the quarter. We continue to see a rebound in our office results and our retail results have continued to produce solid growth in the resilient sector. The REIT's net operating income for the second quarter was $27.1 million, which was up 5.5% from $25.7 million in 2025.

Year-to-date 2026 net operating income was up 2.5% over 2025. While our office results include a couple of large vacancies in two of our Ottawa and Vancouver assets, they continue to reflect the increased demand for office space as companies continue to look for return-to-work options. There also continues to be solid growth in our Penmas Plaza results as we move past the initial period of 2025 inducements provided for the lease-up of this building.

Penmas Plaza's NOI grew $1.2 million in the second quarter and remains at approximately 80% occupancy. As mentioned, our office net operating income includes the decrease of 84,000 square feet in space that was returned to the landlord in two separate occasions at the beginning of the year. We believe these two vacancies will be short term in nature as both buildings are well located and in favorable, in-demand urban areas. All of our other individual office assets are seeing either similar or improved occupancy from a year ago and this is consistent with the larger trend of companies imposing back-to-the-office policies.

From a retail perspective, we have had good success in continuing to add other quality retail tenants in the last 12 months throughout the portfolio. Further positive leasing spreads throughout 2025 have also helped to improve the retail NOI into 2026. Our community strip portfolio continues to produce solid same-store growth of 5.9% for the quarter and 2.4% year to date and are effectively operating at 100% occupancy. Our enclosed malls have seen improved same-asset growth of 2.5% for the quarter and 3% year to date.

Looking at the remainder of 2026, we do expect our retail results to remain stable. While we are working through the missing pay income, we are still seeing positive retail fundamentals. Further, we are working on some retail developments which I will touch on in a few minutes. Both traffic and sales per square foot numbers in our portfolio have been solid. Turning to financing and liquidity. The Trust has $61 million in liquidity at the end of the quarter, which is unchanged from Q1 and down slightly from $68 million at the end of 2025.

The Trust has also $219 million in unencumbered assets along with some UP financing opportunities into 2026 and 2027. The Trust interest expense declined $240,000 in the second quarter of 2026 over 2025, mainly due to some lower interest rates on mortgage renewals and short-term interest rates. During 2026, the Trust has renewed four mortgages totaling $103 million with a slightly higher average rate upon renewal. The Trust has approximately 22% of its debt as variable at the end of the quarter, which has increased slightly from 21% at the end of the year.

We do expect to see an opportunity for additional UP financing in 2026 as we are currently in discussions with lenders about some upcoming mortgage renewals. In general, we have seen the lending market open up more in the last couple years with lower spreads, especially on attractive assets, along with lenders being more open to looking at office finance opportunities. As mentioned in past quarters, the Trust's operating capital reserve has been established to be $35 million in 2026, which is unchanged from 2025.

This equates to $17.5 million for the six months year to date. Actual cash spent for the quarter amounted to only $11.4 million, which is typical to have slower capital spending during the first half of the year. We do expect to spend the full amount of the reserve by the end of the year, though. Our overall occupancy level of 85.2% at the end of the second quarter 2026 has increased 40 basis points from 84.8% at the end of Q1. The retail occupancy has increased 60 basis points and the office occupancy has increased 100 basis points since the first quarter.

We continue to expect this percentage to rise in the coming quarters as additional leasing deals get booked. We believe that the decline in industrial occupancy is temporary and will be reversing in the short term. Looking at the 764,000 remaining square feet that is coming up for renewal in the last two quarters of 2026, we feel good about the vast majority of this space. For tenant renewals greater than 10,000 square feet, there is only one small tenant that is at risk of not renewing.

Looking quickly at 2027 for the same tenant threshold, it is a similar story with only a couple of smaller office industrial type tenants that are at risk, none of which will be overly impactful. As mentioned in past quarters, we are now embarking on a strategic merchandising program for St. Laurent, which will see the addition of some new nationally recognized brand names being added to the tenant roster along with expansion plans for other tenants on the existing rent roll.

Current development spend in the amount of approximately $6 million to date includes build-outs for tenants such as Sephora and H&M. These are all now open and we have received very positive reviews about their impact. We ultimately expect to spend in the range of $25 to $30 million as we look to add more discriminating tenants and also look to activate the former Sears space at St. Laurent. This work will also include the demolition of the former Sears parking deck which is no longer needed and has exceeded its useful life.

We are now pleased to announce the following mix of tenants which will be opening between now and the end of 2027. Currently we are nearing completion of the new UNIQLO premises which is 12,600 square feet and is scheduled to open early in 2027. We are also pleased to announce that the former Sears box will be re-tenanted and will include a new Sport Chek and Splitsville. The Sport Chek is a relocation of an existing tenant and will be a great complement to Splitsville, who is opening a new entertainment option at St. Laurent. This work has begun and both tenants are scheduled to open in approximately one year from now. The Trust has also had two No Frills grocery deals which have been undertaken. During the fourth quarter of 2025, a new No Frills grocery store opened at Parkland Mall in Red Deer and we are now seeing the income for that space. The cost was $1.6 million and activated previously vacant space. We are quite pleased with this outcome. There is also a new No Frills opening at The Centre in Saskatoon in early 2027 with a cost of approximately $5 million.

The Trust believes that both of these new and popular grocery options will be strong additions to these malls. The Trust will also be re-tenanting the old Peavey Mart box at our open-air retail asset in Airdrie. The new tenant will be a timber operator and this will represent a combined spend of approximately $1.5 million and will be quite accretive to the income of the REIT starting in 2027. Wrapping up, we continue to believe that there are strong fundamentals in the retail leasing environment and that the office market is in full rebound mode.

We are looking forward to continued positive leasing conversations for all of our assets. Most of our enclosed malls remain dominant in their geographical area and our strip malls, which are largely grocery-anchored, have performed very steady. Beyond our retail assets, we have high-quality office buildings in Canada's largest markets with a high degree of government office tenants. We continue to be positive about our business and the objective of building value for our unitholders, and we look forward to continuing to execute our strategy.

Thank you for your continued support. We will now open the floor to questions.

OPERATOR (Operator)

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Should you have a question, please press the star followed by the number one 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 the star followed by the number two. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any key. One moment, please, for your first question.

Your first question comes from the line of Jonathan Pelcher. Your line is now open.

Jonathan Pelcher, Analyst

Thanks. Good afternoon. First question just on the St. Laurent Centre with, I guess, the new tenants, and you're saying that's going well. How is that impacting your negotiations with other tenants on renewals and getting new tenants into some of the empty spaces there?

Andrew Tamlin, Chief Financial Officer

Do you mind taking that, John?

John Ginis, Vice President, Retail Asset Management

Sure, no problem. Thanks, Andrew. And thanks, Jonathan, for the question. So, St. Laurent Centre has been a key center for the REIT from a retail perspective for an extended period of time. And as Andrew said in his opening remarks, we've initiated a re-merchandising program almost a year and a half ago, and we are trying to target large national or international tenants to complement the roster that exists there today. To directly answer your question in terms of how the retail community is receiving what we're doing, productivity of the shopping center is up because foot traffic is up, and foot traffic is up about 10%.

And then sales productivity from the small-bay inline tenants is also up by approximately 10%. So it's all positive trending. And with respect to renewals, clearly, and this goes back to, again, Andrew's introductory remarks, we're seeing some really good positive leasing spreads with respect to all of our enclosed assets—the vast majority, I should say—but specifically St. Laurent, because obviously they see the value of the long-term benefits of re-anchoring the shopping center.

We still have a lot of work to do, but all of the conversations have been very progressive to date.

Jonathan Pelcher, Analyst

Okay, that's helpful. In the MD&A, it talks about a 120,000 square foot renewal with a retail tenant at the same rate. Was that a contractual renewal rate?

Andrew Tamlin, Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, I think it was somebody that had an option. Yeah, it was. Maybe we could look at that offline, Jonathan. Okay.

Jonathan Pelcher, Analyst

Okay. And then the office renewals in B.C. next year, the 235,000, will there be any change in the rate there, either up or down?

Andrew Tamlin, Chief Financial Officer

What was the renewal rate on the B.C. asset? Tom?

Tom Johnson, Vice President, Western Office Asset Management

So that's the 1 to 111 down here—I think it's Seymour. Oh, it's Seymour. Okay. Those are—Jonathan, it's Tom Johnson in Vancouver. Those rents were structured quite a few years ago. So the Province of British Columbia tends to extend well in advance of their expiry date. So I don't have them handy, but they were in the high teens.

Jonathan Pelcher, Analyst

Okay, that is helpful. And then lastly, just any update on your HBC space, if there is any from last quarter.

Andrew Tamlin, Chief Financial Officer

Do you want to take that one, John?

John Ginis, Vice President, Retail Asset Management

Sure, no problem, Andrew. So, Jonathan, we have exposure at two shopping centers—at St. Laurent and Cambridge Centre. We have successfully re-leased the lower level of the former HBC at St. Laurent to Urban Behavior. In order to facilitate the redevelopment of Sears in St. Laurent, we—as Andrew noted again in his remarks with the addition of a new format Sport Chek and Splitsville—Urban Behavior, which actually does exceptionally well here in terms of sales performance, really wanted to retain the store.

So it was a short-term solution. We said, okay, well, why don't you move into the lower level of the former HBC, which they gladly took, and they opened in May of this year. With respect to Cambridge Centre, we are still working through options. It's a two-level box in a level shopping center, but it's still going to require more work on our end. But we're currently working through a transaction as we speak. Can't really announce it yet because we're not binding.

But our hope is that in Q3 we're going to be in a position whereby we can announce something with respect to at least the lower level of that space.

Jonathan Pelcher, Analyst

Okay, that's it for me. I'll turn it back. Thanks.

Andrew Tamlin, Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Jonathan.

OPERATOR (Operator)

Thank you again. Participants, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by the number one on your touch-tone phone. Again, that's star and the number one on your touch-tone phone. Your next question comes from the line of Sean Waterhouse. Your line is open.

Sean Waterhouse, Analyst

Hey guys, thanks for the question. I'm seeing on the balance sheet there it's around $64 million of land held for development. So just wondering if there's any plan in terms of that—if approvals are being seeked for any projects—and, you know, or is that kind of viewed as a non-core asset?

Andrew Tamlin, Chief Financial Officer

Those are more long-term developments. Anything that we're seeking on entitlements for is more of a long-term play. There's nothing that is going to be coming up from—other than just kind of the projects that we spoke of. There's nothing else that we're actively working on. It's more just kind of longer-term entitlements.

Sean Waterhouse, Analyst

All right, thanks for that.

OPERATOR (Operator)

Thank you. And, speaker, we don't have anyone on the line. I would like to turn the call over again to Mr. Andrew Tamlin. Please continue.

Andrew Tamlin, Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, everybody, for joining the call, and we'll look forward to joining you for the third quarter call, and hope everybody has a good long weekend. Thanks, bye.

OPERATOR (Operator)

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company's SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants' and analysts' statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.