Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Joining me on today's call are Michael Cooper, CEO, Jay Jiang, CFO, and Kingsley Foris, Director, Asset Management.

I'll provide an overview of the quarter before turning it over to the team. We continue to see good momentum in the Canadian office sector.

Positive net absorption was experienced for a third straight quarter, with national vacancy decreasing by 130 basis points from Q2 2025 to 17.4%. Much of this activity is occurring in downtown Toronto, which has experienced positive net absorption of approximately 4.6 million square feet over this period, with vacancy decreasing by over 400 basis points to 14.4%.

Sublease space has decreased for an 11th consecutive quarter and is largely expected to return to pre-pandemic levels. With continued vacancy declines, including large-block spaces, there has been increased competition for Class A space, with resulting demand expected to spread to remaining office spaces.

Dream Office had a strong leasing quarter. Across our portfolio, we completed 71,000 square feet of new leases and 45,000 square feet of renewals.

Importantly, the majority of our new leasing was secured at 74 Victoria and 30 Adelaide to a government-affiliated tenant. Kingsley will provide additional color on this deal a little bit later.

We ended the quarter with Toronto committed occupancy at 89.8%, compared to 87.4% in Q4 2025. Of this increase, 180 basis points is from new leasing and 60 basis points is from the sale of 212 King.

As previously announced, in March, we entered into an agreement to sell 212 King Street West, and the transaction is expected to close in Q2 2026. In-place occupancy increased by 150 basis points from Q4 2025 to 80.9%.

Other markets committed occupancy ended the quarter at 71.5%, down 60 basis points from Q4 2025. Subsequent to quarter-end, we completed 9,000 square feet of new leasing, which brings committed occupancy largely back to where we started the year.

At 606 4th Street in Calgary, our conversion from office to residential is continuing to progress. The property is now fully vacated, demolition is continuing, and construction has commenced.

Project timelines and costs remain in line with expectation, with over 80% of construction contracts awarded to date and first occupancy targeted for Q3 2027. In Q1 2026, comparative NOI increased by 4.7% year-over-year to $24.5 million.

The increase was due largely to step-ups in rent and new leasing in downtown Toronto. This was slightly offset by reduced weighted average occupancy in our other markets.

For Toronto, comparative NOI increased by 6.5% year-over-year to $19.9 million. Leasing in downtown Toronto is tracking well, and we are raising our committed occupancy target to 88% to 90% by year-end.

We are also increasing our in-place occupancy range to be between 84% and 86%. Some of these deals are taking longer to commence than expected, and the NOI impact will lag.

As a result, we are holding our downtown Toronto comparative NOI growth target at 2% to 5% and our total portfolio comparative growth target at 1% to 3% for 2026. We are seeing ongoing signs of recovery in the downtown Toronto office market as largely driven by increasing return-to-office mandates.

We are building on the leasing momentum for 2025 and are encouraged by our progress to date. Other markets are experiencing varying levels of recovery, though we do expect them to remain largely stable over the remainder of the year.

Overall, we believe that the REIT remains well positioned to continue to address vacancy through the balance of 2026. I'll now turn the call over to Kingsley, who will provide additional color on our leasing progress, our leasing priorities, and what we were seeing on the ground.

Thanks a lot, Derrick. Good morning, everyone.

I hope you're all keeping well. As Derrick mentioned, Q1 was a strong leasing quarter for Dream Office, and we made meaningful progress addressing key vacancies across the portfolio.

During the quarter, we completed 116,000 square feet of leasing. Toronto represented the majority of this activity, with 106,000 square feet made up of 68,000 square feet of new leasing and 38,000 square feet of renewals.

New leasing was driven by activity at two key assets, including 40,000 square feet at 30 Adelaide and 27,000 square feet at 74 Victoria. Both deals were completed with a government-affiliated tenant at net rents in the mid-30s.

Rent commencement is staggered from June through December of 2026, which is a strong outcome given the longer fixturing periods the market is seeing on deals of this size. 74 Victoria and 30 Adelaide were key leasing priorities heading into the year, and we're pleased to have them done in Q1, with rent starting in 2026.

As Derrick mentioned, committed occupancy in Toronto was 89.8% at quarter-end, which is up 240 basis points from the start of the year. For some more color here, I want to highlight that the Toronto portfolio opened the year in 2025 at 83.8% committed occupancy.

The region is up a full 600 basis points in just 15 months. From an economic standpoint, blended NERs across the Toronto portfolio averaged about $23.

This is up about 15% versus the deals we completed in 2025. Coming into 2026, we were very clear on our priorities.

On our Q4 call, we outlined a plan to lease 150,000 square feet of vacancy and achieve 57% retention on 2026 expiries. With 65,000 square feet of vacant leasing completed so far and retention currently at 52%, we're on track to meet and potentially exceed those objectives.

As Derrick noted, we're now working towards 88% to 90% committed occupancy in Toronto by year-end 2026. In-place occupancy also came ahead of plan.

We expected a decline in Q1, but finished up 150 basis points from the start of the year. This was driven by a 40,000-square-foot tenant taking physical occupancy one quarter earlier than expected.

Rent commencement for this lease remains in Q2, the NOI contribution from this deal is still in line with our plan. In total, we now have 250,000 square feet of vacant space with contractual commencement through the remainder of the year.

This drives our expectation for in-place occupancy to end the year at 84% to 86%, with about half of that growth in the next two quarters and the remainder in Q4. Looking ahead, the path to achieve our 2026 target in Toronto is clear.

To reach committed occupancy of 88% to 90%, we need to deliver 57% retention and complete an additional 90,000 square feet of vacant leasing. On renewals, we have strong visibility and we're actively engaged with our target tenants.

On the vacancy side, our efforts are focused in three key areas: firstly, on Bay Street, we're targeting 30,000 square feet of vacant leasing here, with 95% of that space delivered in model suite condition; secondly, at 74 Victoria, where we're targeting 25,000 square feet, representing one additional floor at the asset; and finally, at Adelaide Place, where we're targeting 35,000 square feet of leasing. This includes 15,000 square feet in advanced negotiations, with the balance representing a full-floor opportunity that's expiring later this year and we're confident we can lease.

While leasing momentum remains strong, the cost to complete deals is still high. However, in A-Class assets, costs are stabilizing and we're pushing our rents.

Particularly at buildings like Adelaide Place, where committed occupancy now stands at 96.5% and NERs continue to improve. Sub-A-Class assets continue to require more landlord spend as tenants expect turnkey delivery or significant funds for build-outs.

In summary, this was a very strong quarter for Dream Office. We made real progress on our vacancy, tracked well against our guidance, and maintained discipline on deal economics.

I'd like to thank the team for their continued hard work, and with that, I'll turn it over to Jay to walk through our financials.

Thank you, Kingsley and Derrick. Good morning.

I'll walk through our first quarter financial results and update you on our outlook for the balance of 2026. We reported diluted funds from operations of 57 cents per unit for the first quarter.

This compares to 56 cents per unit last quarter and 68 cents per unit in the first quarter of 2025. Quarter-over-quarter, the improvement reflects 8 cents of higher NOI and straight-line rent, partially offset by 5 cents decline from sold assets, including our Kansas City building and our 50% interest in 606 4th Street in Calgary, and 2 cents of higher interest expense.

Building on what Kingsley described, there's currently an 890-basis-point spread between in-place and committed occupancy in downtown Toronto. We completed our construction obligation on several large leases committed in past quarters, and tenants have taken possession of their space for their fixturing period.

The financial effect of this is elevated straight-line rent, up $1.6 million this quarter. We expect straight-line rent to remain elevated in Q2, and then gradually decline in Q3 and Q4 as those leases reach economic commencement and we begin recognizing cash NOI.

Year-over-year, the 11 cents decline was primarily driven by assets sold over 2025 and Q1 2026, including 438 University, our Kansas City building, our vendor take-back mortgage in Calgary, and 5.9 million units of Dream Industrial REIT. Cumulatively, these dispositions reduced FFO by approximately 23 cents per unit.

We also realized 5 cents of lower FFO from reduced NOI at 212 King, which is now held for sale, along with lower lease termination fees and other items. These declines were partially offset by higher comparative NOI of 6 cents, higher straight-line rent of 7 cents, and lower interest expense of 4 cents.

As a reminder, we used the proceeds from assets sold of $186 million to repay our outstanding debt in anticipation of refinancing in a higher interest rate environment and to make our balance sheet safer. Without these asset sales, our interest expense would be 11 cents higher per quarter, and leverage ratio would be up 350 basis points.

On the financing front, we have already addressed $144 million, or 84%, of our $170 million of debt maturities in 2026. Of the $26 million remaining, $18 million is for 212 King, which will be addressed on closing of the sale.

The only remaining maturity is an $8 million Calgary mortgage due in Q3, which we're in advanced refinancing negotiations. Our net asset value per unit was $49.61, utilizing a weighted average cap rate of 6.3% on our total income portfolio.

It represents a modest decline of 31 cents, or 0.6%, from $49.92 last quarter. The decrease was primarily driven by slight fair value losses on investment properties and write-offs of maintenance capital.

Our net total debt-to-net total assets was 54.8%, and net total debt-to-EBITDA was 11.9 times. Our liquidity was $91.7 million at the end of Q1.

With the expected closing of 212 King in the second quarter, we intend to use the proceeds to repay the $18 million mortgage on the property and pay down approximately $21 million on our credit facility. Relative to our March 31st financial position, the immediate impact to our net total debt-to-EBITDA will be 0.3 times lower, and our liquidity will improve by an additional $21 million.

As covered on our February conference call, our focus remains on achieving 90% in-place occupancy across downtown Toronto in two years. At that point, we estimate that downtown Toronto portfolio NOI increases by approximately $15 million, and our debt-to-EBITDA improves to around mid-10 times.

Also on our last conference call, we provided FFO guidance of $2.25 to $2.30 per unit, assuming no dispositions. With the sale of 212 King, which is approximately 5 cents accretive, we are raising that to $2.30 to $2.35 per unit.

Q1 was a solid start to the year, and we are well positioned to achieve our guidance for the balance of 2026. We look forward to updating you on our progress in future quarters, and hope to see you at our annual general meeting on June 3rd.

Now I'll turn the call back to Michael.

Back to me for the first time. Welcome everybody.

I think you've heard in quite specific detail what's happening at the company. Kingsley walked through what we need to do to hit our numbers for the year and with actually quite incredible specificity in terms of which buildings we're looking to lease up and what we expect.

I want to talk a little bit more generally. For six years, we've been having these conference calls talking about the tour velocity, generally quite positive, and the difficulty to get deals closed.

I think it's true, we've continued to have a fair amount of tours. It still is a difficult time getting deals closed.

On the margin, we're getting more deals closed. As Kingsley pointed out, the rent to the landlord is up 15% this year over last year.

I think that's quite positive. In August of last year, on our conference call, I was saying that I can see that there's real evidence that the market is changing, and we should wait a couple of quarters to see if it continues.

Three quarters later, we said that I think that overall vacancy is down 400 basis points in Toronto. That's a big deal.

We're continuing to see quite a bit of demand. We are making progress on the returns to landlords from the leases, but they're still very expensive.

What I would say is I think that we're now into a new era for office in Toronto. The issues that we've been dealing with are behind us.

We're definitely into the recovery. This quarter, we had an exceptional quarter with exceptional leasing.

I think the team's view is if for the rest of the year we can be slightly positive, up about 30 basis points, we'd be pleased with that. I think our expectation is that next year, we're going to see some more leasing and we're going to see continued improvement, and we're at a margin where the company is producing more and more free cash.

We're getting to a real turning point, which we're quite excited about, and the buildings are showing well. Nothing's easy, but it has been quite a tremendous change from where we were.

I mentioned on the last conference call that for quite a few years, the only office buildings that were trading were trading from an office owner to some type of institutional user. We were quite opportunistic in terms of selling some assets at very good prices, and so were some of the others.

The provincial government bought some buildings, George Brown College bought a building from another REIT, we sold a building to a health sciences company, all at great values. What I was saying was in the last 12 months, we're starting to see investors buying office buildings for the purpose of running office buildings.

When we see other trading, they're trading very, very attractive compared to how we're trading in the public markets. We keep investigating what type of assumptions are necessary to get those values.

What's happening there is they are pro formaing equal or even higher occupancy than we're using, and they're showing lower cost. There's real money being spent now.

I think 123 Front recently sold, and we've heard about 95 Wellington in the last 10 days. If we use those as metrics, there's some really decent value in our business.

At the annual meeting, I think Jay and I will present an update to our September 6, 2023 hypothetical model for the next five years of the business. I think that'll be quite exciting to hold our fingers to the fire on what we've said and what's happened.

I would say that it's a tough business, but there's a lot of signs of improvement both in the private industry as well as the public. I think it's going to be a little bit surprising that the government is going to need a lot more space in order to fulfill their new mandate of four days a week.

That's undergoing review now, and hopefully we'll start to see more of that. As the team has said, we've already seen quasi-governments leasing, and I think the government is going to need to step up as well.

We can see increasing demand. As far as the issues we've had over the last six years starting with COVID, it looks like that's behind us, we're very pleased to have made it.

Anyhow, if anybody has any questions, we'd be happy to answer them.

Thanks, and good morning. Michael, you just made some comments now about transaction volume increasing and values on deals.

The unit price obviously is dramatically below where you guys have your IFRS NAV. Based on your comments, can we or should we assume that you'll look to even be more aggressive in possibly selling assets at those prices?

I just got a déjà vu when I said at the conference call three or four ago that I don't really want to become the 30 Adelaide Street East REIT. I would say we would be happy to sell in the other market category.

In downtown Toronto, I don't see it. No, I think we sold $8 billion of assets so far.

We're down to 2. I'm not sure how much more we would sell.

Okay. Thanks.

Maybe just one more. It sounds like the leasing is going well, but there was a comment made, I think it was by Kingsley, that still requires significant funds for build-outs.

To what extent are NERs recovering along with the occupancy improvement?

That's what I was referring to. Kingsley said the NERs are up 15% from a year ago.

That's right.

Okay. Great.

Thanks so much. I'll turn it back.

Hey. Good morning, everyone.

Thanks for all the great color provided on the call so far. It's very helpful.

I think it was mentioned that there was about 90,000 square feet of new leasing left to do to hit the kind of 2026 target that you've outlined. I haven't heard anything, I don't think, on the Bay Street collection, was just wondering if it was safe to assume that the majority of that new leasing was kind of concentrated in those assets?

Yeah.

Of that 90,000 that we mentioned on the vacant front, we think we're going to do 30,000 on Bay Street. One thing I'll note on that front is 95% of those suites are in model suite condition, they're ready to go.

We've had a lot of success with these units. We've leased 90% of them that we've delivered to date, and they've all leased within six months of them being completed.

We feel good about that 30,000-square-foot target, and that's all on Bay Street as part of that 90.

Great. Appreciate that.

That kind of answers maybe part of my second question that I was going to ask, which was just where you were seeing the most demand, whether that was concentrated on any specific maybe type of tenant or type of space within the portfolio?

I wouldn't say it's any type of tenant. We've definitely seen more government users or quasi-government users coming to the plate to take up space.

Our Bay Street stuff does really well with financial services companies that are client-facing, because you can take a 5,000-square-foot floor plate and have a full floor, they really like those buildings. It's been kind of widespread on where we've seen demand.

Obviously, the deals that we did this quarter were very concentrated at 74 Victoria and 30 Adelaide, big-block space. There's not a lot of that available downtown anymore, I think that's why we're getting those looks, especially at 74 Vic.

No, I wouldn't say we're concentrated on a type of tenant demand, but the space is definitely doing well.

Great. Then last one for me is just when you guys expect maybe some of the leasing spreads in the downtown Toronto portfolio to inflect positively?

We're currently at 81% or 80.9% in-place occupancy as of this quarter. Throughout the year in 2026, we expect about half of the spread between our year-end guidance to take place between Q2 and Q3, and then the remainder of it in Q4 to hit that 84% to 86% range.

Is that what you're asking about, or were you asking about the rate?

No, talking about the rate, on the leasing spread.

When do we see the

rate— Leasing spread. Just shifting positively.

I think this quarter you guys averaged about negative 5% for the leases signed in downtown Toronto.

I think a lot of that goes to the mix of the leasing. Kingsley, you have a view on it?

I can speak to that for sure. I think there were two pieces, and sorry, I missed your point on the rate.

The replacement rents were down a bit this quarter. We had two commencements in Q1.

One of them was at 30 Adelaide and one of them was at 20 Toronto. These were big-block spaces, and those deals were done in Q1 of 2025.

A little bit lower rents there. That's why you're seeing them down.

Then the deals done in the quarter were down a bit as well. We did a deal at a potential redevelopment site for 20,000 square feet that dragged that down.

In terms of them turning, they're already turning. If you strip out that potential redevelopment deal, we're ahead of our 2026 rates on where we're doing deals.

Costs are coming down a bit as well, which we're liking, and that's really why the NERs are going up. In terms of the rates turning, it's already happening, especially at the A-Class assets.

Adelaide Place, we're doing deals into the 40s on net rates, so that's positive piece there.

That's great color. Thanks so much.

I'll turn it back.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, guys, and congratulations on a good quarter.

Kingsley, this question's probably for you. When you look at the kind of tenants on the tours, the industries they represent, has that changed over the last 12 months?

What I'm trying to get to over here is that initially, obviously, you saw a huge demand from traditional users of space in the core. Has that slowly starting to show a lot more hybrid users, a lot more different kinds of users now?

I would say the only real change we've seen is just more government activity from a meaningful standpoint. The rest of our assets are well positioned for financial services, and that's where we get a lot of the demand.

We haven't dealt with a ton of hybrid users on space.

All right. When you talk to your government partners in terms of their requirements for space, at this point, did they figure out how much space they would need, or do you anticipate them actually coming back with more demand for the rest of the year as they come back to office?

Sorry, can you repeat that?

I think what we're seeing is both. I think more people are coming back to office, and I think people are finding they just don't have enough space.

Some of that is more people come back, and some of it is their businesses are growing.

Yeah. Exactly.

I was trying to figure out if the government users specifically have kind of that part of the equation figured out, because we saw that with the banks, right? They had a whole bunch of people coming in and figured out they don't have enough space for people to accommodate.

Since the governments are actually giving back some space in the last couple of years, I was trying to understand if that would be some similar conclusions they'll come to.

That's actually a great example. I think the banks have actually been reducing the number of employees in some areas, adding employees in others.

Maybe net lower, but they still need much more space. I don't know, probably 1.5 million square feet that's been leased in the last year by banks.

Look, we're not going to be able to provide clarity because there isn't any. It's almost like every situation is different, but in total, we are seeing a higher demand for space and we are seeing the costs coming down a bit.

When you think about you have a face rent of X and then you've got all these leasing costs, I think what we're really getting the net effective increase is just dialing back the cost a little bit, and the rents are more or less the same. I guess that goes to the prior question of are the rents up 5% or down 5%?

That's the face part. It kind of goes along with the costs.

We're seeing it improving. If we can see rents going up another 15% at a net effective level, that'd be pretty good for next year.

It'll also mean that there's less space for tenants to choose from, and it's going to increase. This is my experience, is when you come through a bad time, landlords have operating costs and taxes they're paying, they want to fill up their buildings, and for us it might cost 5 bucks a month to have a space vacant, you want to get it full.

Then as you sort of get past a certain number of occupancy in the market, you start to see the costs reduce a lot. At that point, what happens is you have leased up a lot of your space, and it's not economic to wait until everybody else leases up their space and then lease, but what we'll see then is when we have 15% or so a year of space that comes up, we'll do really well on that.

Effectively, we'll save that for the annual meeting because I think that's part of the way we're seeing things shaping up.

That was amazing, Michael. I can't wait for that meeting.

I'll turn it back.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone.

Again, I'll echo the comments earlier. Thank you very much for the detailed review and sort of plans that you have and goals you have for the year.

Maybe just on the government, seems to be, I guess one of the biggest changes as you guys see it from your corner of the market. Do you see the government buying buildings?

I know that was a plan a couple of years ago. I don't know if they've really done a lot of that, but is that something you see happening or you see them mostly leasing space?

I think it's a great question. When we talk about governments, there's a lot of different levels plus quasi-governments.

We have seen the Province of Ontario relatively shrewdly buying office space when there's not a lot of other buyers. I haven't seen the federal government looking to buy buildings.

I think we have no evidence that they're going to be buyers. It looks like they just want to lease.

They own a lot already in Ottawa especially. If you think about it, for over five years people didn't go into the office.

Now there's a mandate, and they've got to go to every single department in the federal government and ask them what space do they have, how many people, how many they can fit. I think the expectation is by the end of the year they'll have a good idea.

Okay. That's helpful.

I think

the federal government leasing hasn't really started. It's actually other governments that we've been dealing with more, and hopefully that'll be another push.

I assume in downtown Toronto you're talking mostly the province and maybe the city, but mostly the province or an affiliated.

There's a lot of space in the downtown core that the federal government leases, but I think generally at 74 Victoria with the federal government, they moved some of their space. I think what they're doing is just maintaining a status quo.

Now that they've got a mandate as to what people are supposed to do, they know what they're solving for. It's obvious that they don't have the space for it.

Okay. Thank you.

Remember a couple of years ago you guys were focusing on ready suites, model suites, and leasing them for sort of three-year terms, getting really good traction at that time. Has the market shifted that that's no longer a focus?

How's the length of leases signed changed maybe over the last year or so?

I'll touch your first point there, Sam. Thanks for the question.

On length of leases last year, on our new leases, we are WALT for eight years. That was very strong.

Just slightly after COVID, those were coming down. We saw a big uptick last year.

This year we're at five years, which we're also very pleased with. That covers the WALT piece.

With regards to model suites, I would say it depends on the type of asset you're looking at. Sub-A-Class space, you're probably going to have to put a bit more money into your deals.

Tenants want turnkey. The reason really why we do them on Bay Street and the reason why we're successful with them, if you think about the dynamic of the Bay Street assets, these are 2,000 to 10,000-square-foot floor plates.

Often tenants in that size range don't have an in-house real estate team that wants to manage a build-out, what we're able to do is we're able to build out the space for them. It's a very seamless process for them to come in.

With that, we've just seen a massive uptick in terms of the reduced downtime that we face on space like that. We think that investment gets paid off with the downtime that we reduce by holding that space vacant and unfinished versus cleaning it up.

That makes sense. Makes sense very much.

Okay. The last one for me is on the CapEx side.

I think Michael, maybe Jay as well, you've both referenced free cash flow. Last year, I think the REIT spent about $35 million on just improving the buildings.

What's the budget for '26 and 2027 on that line item?

Just on a comparable basis, Sam, for building capital, I think we did the bulk of the work over the past couple of years, the buildings are in better shape. If you look at sort of the run rate in Q1, we spent about $4.5 million on building capital.

I would say the run rate for the year is about $15 million, and that really depends on the timing and when we need to spend on certain building maintenance items. I would go with that for now.

So $15 million. Then what was the other sort of $20 million that was spent last year on that line item in the financials?

Oh,

those were also building capital, but we made more improvements last year in anticipation of some of the leasing, and most of that sort of refers to Kingsley's commentary on the model suites. More of the model suites are done and the cash was already spent, we expect to spend less money this year.

Would you say the same thing for 2027? I know it's a year away, but just given the way the business is kind of shaping up?

Yeah. I think from a building maintenance perspective, it would be comparable.

Our capital allocation for 2027 would be mainly to address new leasing and renewal leasing costs.

Okay. That's helpful.

Last one for me is just on the IFRS NAV. It was basically unchanged this quarter.

I haven't seen that too much in the last three years, I'm just wondering what your view is on the IFRS NAV, why it didn't go down as it often has in the last two or three years?

Yes. Sam, I think for the most part we do a lot of appraisals both for financing and valuation purposes.

The appraisals tend to track the market inputs, and they're often validated by the various brokerage firms. For example, if you follow CBRE, from Q3, Q4, and Q1, the office market investment and valuation cap rates have remained relatively flat, we carry those forward and that's consistent with our appraisal process as well.

The other is the income is stabilizing, and over time across our portfolio we're seeing higher income in a lot of places. That's the other component, and overall we expect that to be pretty stable over the course of the year.

Okay. Great.

That's it for me. I'll turn it back.

Thank you.

Good morning, guys. Can you speak a bit to the breadth of the tenant demand?

I know we've talked about financial services and financial services-adjacent users, and now the government. Are you seeing kind of broader tech tenants, other users come into or come back to office space at this point?

Yes. We did a big deal at 67 Richmond last year with an AI user, Cerebras.

I think we talked about it on the last conference call. That filled the whole building.

By the way, on that one, we did our due diligence on their financials where we were satisfied, and then they got a $36 billion valuation from venture capital.

Yeah. I would say we are seeing more breadth in terms of just financial services.

Then I guess the opportunities for people to move are being constrained by the fact that it seems like Class A, downtown core, PATH-connected, all those guys are seeing improved occupancy. On the retention side, are you starting to see that reflected in future discussions with existing tenants?

Absolutely. We're targeting, I think we said 57% retention on the call earlier this year.

I think one way that we get to the higher end of our range on committed occupancy is we do better on our renewals, and I think we are doing better on our renewals. We did 60% retention this quarter.

We see that continuing to go up. The biggest piece I would say that's really a signal of that is the deal cost that we're putting into our renewals is a lot lower than it was before.

To an extent, we were through COVID paying to keep tenants around. That's not happening anymore.

There's less options for them, we don't have to put in the same amount of money we did before.

At the same time, I would say that the renewal rates are lower than the historical averages, there's room to move up. I'm not sure why it's lower, but maybe some of it is sort of pent-up because of the leases, people's business have changed, and they need different things.

I think that increasing renewal rate is probably one of the biggest drivers of value in our business.

Makes sense. Michael, maybe for you.

You have made it, but you're, I think, $150 million of free float at the moment, a much smaller entity. Sounds like you've got a positive outlook for the next three years.

I understand that it's a chicken-and-egg scenario in terms of your cost of capital, but in today's environment, looking at what you're seeing in the office market, would you be inclined to kind of purchase more assets in Toronto if you had the cost of capital to do so?

I'm not sure what the cost of capital would be. Obviously, if we could issue equity at a price that increases the metrics of the business, that would be good.

I think that's unlikely to happen in the near term. Quite honestly, I meant the opposite, that it looks as if prices in some ways are moving further away from our cost of capital.

I think what's interesting is we would look at maybe how we could use some of our assets with an institutional partner. If we see opportunities that are great, maybe we try to grow the business that way, but we're not going to dilute the company.

Okay. Fair.

Just need the shareholders to come on side. It will happen.

That's all. What, Matt?

We're looking to you on that one.

That's fair. I've got a few where I need to get the prices moving in the right direction, it's an effort here.

Thanks for the color, and it seems like the business is doing much better, so that's great.

Thank you.

Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking my question and the great insight so far.

I was wondering if you could touch base on what you would consider for an NCIB? I know Dream was active in the past on it.

I don't think you've talked about it for a number of time for obvious reasons, but with the great improvement in transaction liquidity and the discount to the NAV and the strengthening on that base perhaps for office, as you've mentioned on the last call, is that something that you would consider, and what would it take for you to consider using an NCIB for Dream Office units?

Firstly, I think Dream Office and its predecessors is the only company that's bought back more than 40% of its stock three times. We're quite familiar with it.

It is not on our mind. Our debt level is too high.

The way we want to fix that is by growing our EBITDA and value. I think that using capital to buy back stock would be premature because we continue to want to make sure we got lots of liquidity.

We'll see what happens in the future, but it's definitely not on our mind to use capital for anything other than getting tenants, taking good care of the buildings, and paying distributions. I don't think that's something that we're thinking about now.

Thank you. Would you be able to touch base on any improvements in market liquidity in your other markets like Saskatoon, Regina, Calgary?

I know that this seems that Toronto downtown centric is getting very, very attractive prices. Almost after every deal, it seems that the prices are getting better for the next office sold, and I think we're seeing it in Ottawa too.

I was wondering, have you seen any improvement in your other markets, and is that something you would perhaps consider? If you were to sell properties in your other markets, would that go towards reducing debt as well?

In full transparency, we've been quite open to selling other market assets for quite some time. With the conversion of one of our two downtown Calgary office buildings to an apartment building is another way of reducing our office exposure there.

Our building in Saskatoon has Vendasta, a tech company that's growing, and one of these days I think we'll be able to sell it. We got Co-operators in Regina, and that's a good building.

The market's been quite narrow, if you want to buy them, we'd love to meet with you or anybody else. I think it's been a little bit quiet.

Thanks for the answers, Michael, and I'll pass it back.

Thank you.

I think we've covered a lot, and appreciate everybody's support and interest in the company. Hopefully we'll have a chance to share some more ideas and get your thoughts at or after the annual meeting.

Thank you all very much.