Flagship Communities Real Estate Investment Trust

Flagship Communities Real Estate Investment Trust

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Q1 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptMay 5, 2026

Operator

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by.

Welcome to the Flagship Communities REIT First Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode.

Following the presentation, we will hold a brief question-and-answer session for analysts and institutional investors. I would like to remind everyone that this conference call is being recorded.

Today's presenters are Kurt Keeney, Flagship's President and Chief Executive Officer; Nathan Smith, Chief Investment Officer; and Eddie Carlisle, Chief Financial Officer. Please note that comments made on today's call may contain forward-looking information, and this information, by its nature, is subject to risks and uncertainties.

Actual results may differ materially from the views expressed today. For further information on these risks and uncertainties, please consult the company's relevant filings on SEDAR+.

These documents are also available on Flagship's website at flagshipcommunities.com. Flagship has also prepared a corresponding PowerPoint presentation, which it encourages you to follow along with during this call.

Now, I'll pass the call over to Kurt Keeney. Kurt?

Kurt Keeney

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone.

Thank you for joining us today. We've gotten off to a strong start in 2026 as we continue to execute on our strategy of driving growth through both organic initiatives and disciplined expansion in our core markets.

Our first quarter results reflect solid growth across our portfolio and continued progress on our long-term value creation plan. Our rental revenue increased by 20.6% over the same period last year, our NOI improved by 17.4% over the last year, and our FFO adjusted and AFFO adjusted increased by 12% and 10.4% respectively over last year.

We also continued to see strong growth in same community metrics during the quarter. Our same community revenue grew by 8.6% over last year, and our same community NOI grew by 5.3% versus the first quarter of 2025.

In addition to our strong organic performance, we completed a strategic acquisition during the quarter in Cleves, Ohio, which further expands our presence in one of our core markets. This acquisition is consistent with our approach of targeting markets we know well and communities with occupancy upside potential.

Nathan will provide more detail on this transaction and how it fits into our broader growth strategy during his remarks. Our financial results provide a sense of the strong fundamentals of our industry and the progress we're making towards our growth strategy.

While performance is important, our mission remains our main focus, and that is to provide affordable housing and exceptional residential living experiences in our adult and family-oriented manufactured housing communities while creating value for our shareholders. Sustainability is embedded in what we do, and we've outlined our ESG practices and performance in our sixth annual ESG report, which is available on our website.

We are encouraged by the progress we have made in many different areas, including environmental stewardship and community reinvestment and in corporate governance. With that, I will now turn it over to Nathan for his remarks.

Nathan?

Nathan Smith

Thanks, Kurt. Good morning, everyone.

We continue to see strong performance across our existing communities while also completing strategic acquisitions. Strong performance for us begins at the community level.

We continue to see positive results from our core initiatives, including occupancy growth, lot rent, and additional revenue increases across the portfolio. We also remain focused on enhancing resident experience across our communities.

We are very proud of our continued investment in amenities, infrastructure improvements, and community engagement initiatives, all of which support resident satisfaction and long-term retention. In addition to our focus on operational performance, we continue to pursue strategic acquisitions that are located in key markets where we operate.

This past quarter, we acquired a 96-lot community in Cleves, Ohio, further expanding our bolt-on strategy and presence in that market. This transaction builds on our recent acquisition of three communities in greater Cincinnati area and reflects our continued focus on core markets where we can drive operational efficiencies and create long-term value.

As with many of our acquisitions, we see the potential to enhance performance through future community expansion that can support an additional 12 lots. The community has also benefited from significant infrastructure upgrades, such as newly paved streets and solar lot projects.

It also has improvements to its amenities, including a large clubhouse, playground, ballfield, and basketball courts. Overall, we remain focused on our operating strategy of combining strong organic growth with disciplined acquisitions.

With that, I'll turn it over to Eddie to review our financial results in more detail. Eddie?

Eddie Carlisle

Thanks, Nathan. Good morning, everyone.

Our first quarter results reflect continued strength across the portfolio driven by organic growth and contributions from recent acquisitions while maintaining a conservative balance sheet. Revenue for the quarter increased by 20.6% over the same period last year due to acquisitions as well as lot rent increases across the portfolio.

Same community revenue of $26.9 million for the first quarter grew by approximately 8.6% over the comparable period last year. This increase was driven by higher monthly lot rents and ancillary revenues combined with a rise in same community occupancy.

Net operating income and NOI margin were $19.3 million and 64.5% respectively compared to $16.4 million and 66.2% during the same period last year. Same community NOI margin for the first quarter was 64.2%, a decrease of 2% compared to last year.

While NOI saw an increase from amenity fees, NOI margins were negatively impacted due to these services having lower margin than what we have historically achieved. Winter storms during the quarter also had significant impact on costs and decreased margins.

FFO adjusted and FFO adjusted per unit for the quarter were $9.6 million and 38.1 cents respectively, a 12% and 11.4% increase respectively compared to last year. AFFO adjusted and AFFO adjusted per unit for the quarter were $8.6 million and 34.1 cents, a 10.4% and 10% increase respectively compared to last year.

Same community occupancy of 84.8% increased 1.4% over the same period last year, which continues to reflect our commitment to resident satisfaction and assuring our communities are located in desirable locations. Rent collections for the quarter were 99.8%, demonstrating the strength and consistency of the MHC sector.

As at March 31, our total lot occupancy was 84.1% and our average monthly lot rent was $516. We remain focused on maintaining a conservative balance sheet with an emphasis on long-dated fixed-rate debt.

Our weighted average mortgage interest rate was 4.54% and our weighted average mortgage term to maturity was eight years. We have no substantial debt maturities until 2030.

We had total liquidity of $13.2 million. The REIT currently has 21 unencumbered investment properties with a total fair value of $130.7 million as at March 31, 2026.

With that, I'll now turn it back over to Kurt for some final remarks. Kurt?

Kurt Keeney

Thanks, Eddie. As we look ahead, we remain focused on executing our strategy and continuing to deliver long-term value for our unitholders.

During the quarter, we were proud to be recognized by the Manufactured Housing Institute as the 2026 Manufactured Home Community Operator of the Year Award. This marks Flagship's second consecutive Operator of the Year Award and our fifth national Community Operator of the Year recognition from MHI.

This recognition is a direct result of the dedication of our team and their focus on creating safe, amenity-driven, and vibrant communities across our portfolio. We believe this continued focus on operational excellence, combined with our disciplined growth strategy, positions us well for a year ahead.

Thank you for your time today, and I will now open up the line for questions.

Operator

Thank you. To ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced.

To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster.

Our first question comes from the line of Tom Callaghan with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Tom Callaghan

Thanks. Morning, guys.

Kurt Keeney

Morning, Tom.

Tom Callaghan

Morning. Maybe just start off on the occupancy side of things.

Q1 was quite strong relative to Q4 of last year. Anything specific to call out there in terms of the drivers?

I know you guys kind of point to 200 to 200 basis points of growth per year, but just given how Q1 came in, is it reasonable to expect that there could be some upside there this year?

Kurt Keeney

I think that we've still got some runway on the occupancy this year. We had a little seasonality kick in at the end of the year last year.

Sometimes in your home rental fleet you just have a little turnover, and we had a little bit of the end of the year last year. We've re-leased those units up.

Again, I'm pretty optimistic. In all of our markets, that our occupancy is going to grow in our forecasted range.

Tom Callaghan

Great. Maybe switching gears to the expense side of things for Eddie.

You did note there kind of the winter storm had an impact in Q1. I guess, is there a way to quantify kind of the impact on expense growth or maybe said differently, how should we be thinking about same property expense growth through the balance of this year relative to kind of that Q1 number in the 15% range?

Eddie Carlisle

Q1 was a bit of anomaly from a couple of standpoints, mostly around kind of snow removal and the labor work and repairs and maintenance that go along with that. As I'm looking at it, I think that was about somewhere between a half a penny and a penny of FFO per unit.

Kind of an impact of, call it, $250,000 or so in total year-over-year increase in cost. As you think about expenses moving forward and you want to remove that effect, I think that's probably a pretty good range.

Tom Callaghan

That's great. I'll turn it back and hop in the queue.

Thanks, guys.

Eddie Carlisle

Thank you, Tom.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Mark Rothschild with Canaccord. Your line is now open.

Mark Rothschild

Thanks, and good morning, guys.

Kurt Keeney

Morning, Mark.

Mark Rothschild

Hey, could you just talk a little bit about the homes that you've been buying? How will this impact your growth over the next year?

I think there's about 150 or so homes that you bought in the quarter. Do you expect to do a lot more of this, and how should we think about that?

Kurt Keeney

We were having a little hard time hearing you, Mark, but I think you asked about the rental home fleet that we added in the first quarter. Every year, our commitment is to try to drive the rental home fleet down as a percentage of our overall occupancy.

We think it's a necessary tool in the shed, but we think homeownership is a better tool. We grew our occupancy through releasing rental homes and through home sales in the first quarter.

What we've done with that rental fleet is we're high-grading of the current rental fleet, and we're looking to sell off those older units. Again, I don't know that we would put a lot more into the fleet this year, but I'm sure we will, as we're managing the individual sites.

Sometimes when you get these sites up to 98% occupied, right now we've got about 40 of our communities are at historically high occupancy standards, if not 98% to 100%. When you look at that, those last 2%, sometimes you have to put a rental home in to get those up into the full occupancy.

Mark Rothschild

Great. Thanks.

Maybe just one other following up on the discussion on expenses. Because Q1 was impacted so much from the weather, should we expect, all else being equal, stronger same property NOI growth through the rest of 2026?

Eddie Carlisle

My thought has always been that we can get to higher single digits, low double digits on the same property NOI. Some of that's obviously slowing because of the fact that the year-over-year implementation of our cable agreements are now catching up with themselves, right?

At this point for 2026, we don't have any additional agreements that are going in place. We're going to continue to pursue that, which could give us some help.

I certainly see being able to get that back to the higher single-digit numbers moving forward.

Mark Rothschild

Great. Thanks so much.

Eddie Carlisle

Thanks.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Kyle Stanley with Desjardins. Your line is now open.

Kyle Stanley

Thanks. Good morning, guys.

Eddie Carlisle

Morning,

Kurt Keeney

Kyle.

Kyle Stanley

Just wanted to switch over to the home sales side of things. How have home sales gone to start the year?

I believe there's typical seasonality and strength towards the beginning of the year, particularly post-tax time. Just curious how that's gone year to date and maybe how that compares to any previous years.

Kurt Keeney

The home sales were good in the first quarter. They've also continued even into April.

What you did see, though, the weather did impact the homes being able to be shipped. I think actually we would even had better home sales in the first quarter if we could actually have gotten the houses to the lot.

Many times, Kyle, they went 10 days without shipping any homes because you cannot ship homes when you got snow on the ground in the Midwest. It's not Canada where you guys are familiar with doing that often.

In Kentucky, we have three snow plows, and in Tennessee, they have zero. That creates a little bit of a problem.

I was very pleased with the first quarter home sales comparing that we were up against.

Kyle Stanley

Okay. No, thank you for that.

Maybe just one more kind of going back to the rental fleet. I did see there is an establishment of a rental fleet maintenance technician team.

Just curious, can you elaborate on that a little bit? Was the need for that just given the larger rental fleet?

Just want to understand how to think about that.

Kurt Keeney

We're just trying to be more efficient. Again, if we have a rental home, we're going to put out a good product, and we've committed staff just to make sure that that happens and to get those units turned faster.

It's more efficient on the CapEx side with them. It's one of the benefits that we have because, again, we have this bolt-on spoke-and-wheel kind of strategy, right?

In Louisville, there's 15 locations. You can actually have all within half an hour of downtown Louisville, and that's repeated throughout a lot of our markets.

You can really have these efficiency moments, which makes our margins better and again, that's just us managing that and being the operators that we are.

Kyle Stanley

Just to clarify, in the past on turnover of a rental unit, how would that have been managed? Was it outsourced to someone else or?

Eddie Carlisle

Traditionally in the past we'd have a subcontractor that would come in, do whatever work that was needed to be done to turn that unit. What we've tried to do is to Kurt's point, for two reasons: one, for timeliness, sometimes it's hard to get the contractor there and get that turned timely, we have a vacant rental for a longer period of time, having our own crew allows that to be done quicker, also allows it to be done more cost-efficient.

Kyle Stanley

Perfect. That's it for me.

I'll turn it back. Thanks, guys.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Himanshu Gupta with Scotiabank. Your line is now open.

Himanshu Gupta

Thank you, and good morning.

Kurt Keeney

Morning, Himanshu.

Himanshu Gupta

Just on same community NOI, it was mid single digit in Q1, and Eddie, I think you mentioned high single digit. Just want to clarify, is that what you're seeing for the full year, or is that what you're seeing from Q2 to Q4 onwards in that ballpark of high single digit?

Eddie Carlisle

That's what my assumption is kind of Q2 through Q4, we'll start to see that momentum pick back up and see that the opex is more back in line to what we've seen historically. The fact that we actually have a more full seats from our manager standpoint, we're going to see a little higher opex just from a payroll and benefits standpoint because we've able to had more of our seats full.

While it does increase your opex numbers, it also gives us the ability to drive occupancy, right? Part of the reason that some of the things you struggle with on maintaining occupancy or increasing occupancies when you don't have managers in seats to help us with our home sales or the rental of the units.

I think we'll continue to see the benefits of it, but also within the opex standpoint, you're going to see a little bit elevated from a payroll and benefits because we do have those seats full. Q2 through Q4, I think we can get back in the higher single digits.

Full year, probably kind of in those mid single digits.

Himanshu Gupta

Got it. That's pretty strong.

Thank you. My last question is, you got the Operator of the Year Award.

What are you doing on the operational side that differentiates you from the others? Why do you think you got this recognition?

Kurt Keeney

That's a secret that we're not sharing on this call. If we do that, we'd be telling our competitors what they're doing wrong.

I would say that one of the things that the industry looks at us is how we have integrated home sales into our communities, because we're a one-stop shop, and you can only do that when you have communities that are very close together. As I always say, you can't have one in Houston, Texas, one in San Francisco, and one in Baltimore and think you're going to have really great home sales.

What you really need is 12, 15 in Louisville and 12 in Evansville and seven in Paducah. That's what you really got to have.

Eddie Carlisle

I think our commitment to investment in our amenities is really powerful and something that the industry looks at as a positive, right? Kurt says it all the time, but people move in because it's affordable, and they stay because they like it.

I think that's the key. That second part's more important than the first, right?

When we invest in the communities, we're putting in playgrounds and basketball courts and dog parks and walking trails and fishing lakes. All those things make the quality of the community, and makes it feel like a community, right?

It's not just a place to live. It's a community, and I think that is what people see when they look at how we operate our company.

Himanshu Gupta

Got it. Thank you, and thanks for giving a slice of your secret sauce.

Thank you. Have a

Eddie Carlisle

good day. It's a pleasure.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Matt Kornack with National Bank Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Matt Kornack

Hey, guys.

Kurt Keeney

Matt.

Matt Kornack

Eddie, just quickly on R&M. Just the $250,000 additional cost, is that in your R&M line just so I know where to-

Eddie Carlisle

The majority of it. In total, we spent about $250 $50,000 on just snow removal in general.

If you look at year-over-year, that's only up about $150,000. The remaining portion of that, yes, is in the R&M line and the increase in payroll.

We had a considerable amount of overtime during that period, helping plow snow, helping do any repairs to water lines and those type of things. The majority of it, I'd say $200,000 is going to show up in the repairs and maintenance and another $50 in the payroll and benefits line.

Nathan Smith

One of the things our team did was we had to go help our residents. That does make overtime happen.

You're going to send that maintenance person to help Mrs. Jones get her water line unfrozen, because it's the right thing to do.

Kurt Keeney

I think what's interesting about this is that I'm really pleased with our first quarter results, because we had multiple winter storms hit us, and not making any excuses, but when you have 89 locations get hit by one storm, it shut down our home sales operations for weeks. We were literally shut down because we were helping, to Nathan's point, we were helping the residents plow the streets, plow their driveways, unfreeze their water lines, and just trying to be good neighbors.

I'm really pleased with it, because our home sales were up, and we basically took three weeks off to do snow and winter weather issues.

Matt Kornack

I know for us it was January and February that were particularly bad. Would that have impacted kind of the cadence of your occupancy gain as well?

Would the occupancy have been mostly in March, or did you gain occupancy-

Kurt Keeney

No, we gained in February and March. What's funny is there was a couple of brief moments, and I think people were pretty pent-up.

When they came out, they came out. It's such an affordability play for us right now that they came out and this was tax refund season, and that started mid to late January, and so they were ready to commit to their new home.

It wasn't the ideal sales season, and we still came through it, and came through it well. I'm very proud of the team.

Matt Kornack

Excellent. No, that's good to hear.

Last one for me again back to Eddie, just on the utilities and the utilities recoveries. You mentioned that there's no new kind of additive contracts, but the margin there, it was off quite a bit relative to last year.

Is that kind of a new normal, or is there anything one-time in nature in terms of how kind of the expense versus the recovery will trend?

Eddie Carlisle

I wouldn't call it one-time. What I would say is that what we saw in Q1, last year Q1, our actual water sewer recapture exceeded 96%, which for us is kind of best in class.

This year, that was closer to 90, 91%. Some of that related to the winter storm.

Just keep going back to that, but part of it's related to that. Then, yeah, there is certainly a new normal when it comes to the lower margins on the cable piece of it as well.

We were slightly impacted by the winter weather, but for the most part, it is kind of a new norm there on that recapture.

Matt Kornack

Appreciate that. It's a cold spring here, but hopefully you guys have no more snow in store, we'll talk soon.

Eddie Carlisle

All right, thanks.

Kurt Keeney

Thanks,

Eddie Carlisle

Matt.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Jimmy Shan with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Jimmy Shan

Thank you. Just a couple from me.

The lot rent growth was increased by about 6.8% on a quarter-over-quarter. I recall you had said something about raising by 5.7%.

I was curious what changed there. Then I wanted to know if you could elaborate on sort of what's going on in the investment market, what does that look like, any incremental change in terms of opportunity and pricing?

Eddie Carlisle

I'll take the first part on the lot rent growth and let Nathan talk about the investment opportunities. The lot rent is a couple of things there.

Again, this is another play where when you see some property taxes that grow, right, and we have to pass those on. Part of when we call lot rent growth, I'm thinking just our lot rent increases that we send out in November that take place on January 1st.

There was some additional property tax increases that were added throughout the first quarter. The other thing is the acquisitions that we took over in Q4 of last year, the large acquisition in Seymour, Indiana, and then the three in the Cincinnati markets, those were not considered as being part of the 5.7% growth.

All of those assets had higher lot rent than our overall average, it drug up when you're looking at quarter-over-quarter, it drug up that average. I'll let Nathan talk to the-

Nathan Smith

Yeah. The fourth quarter of last year and even the first quarter of this year, it has been pretty light on acquisitions deals out there.

I have not seen cap rates change on what deals are out there. We continue to look at deals, as we say.

We're going to look for deals that are in our footprint. If they're not in our footprint, we're not really interested in expanding right now into other markets.

Jimmy Shan

Just a quick follow-up on the lot rent. The lot rent that you quote then it would be inclusive of any property tax recoveries that you would have?

Eddie Carlisle

That's correct, yes. That's right.

Kurt Keeney

We gave guidance that we raised the rent 5.7% on average and that most of that started January 1st, but due to those other factors, it actually drove up

Eddie Carlisle

that on a quarter-over-quarter basis.

Jimmy Shan

That makes sense. Thank you.

Eddie Carlisle

Thank you.

Operator

As a reminder, to ask a question at this time, please press star one one on your touchtone telephone. Our next question comes from the line of Dean Wilkinson with CIBC.

Your line is now open.

Dean Wilkinson

Morning, guys.

Kurt Keeney

Morning, Dean.

Dean Wilkinson

Just want to circle back on the acquisition conversation. Look at a market like Nashville and you're seeing some pretty significant corporate commitments to go into that market.

Is this an area where you think that there's a lot of growth? I think historically it's been sort of a tight rental market in MHCs, and you've got some occupancy gains you could make there, but what are your thoughts around sort of that market or the submarkets surrounding Nashville as looking to build up some more scale there?

Nathan Smith

We're always looking in markets that we're already in, especially Nashville. We went into Nashville started with two properties there, and we continue to reposition the one, and it's going excellent there.

Would we like to buy more in Nashville? Of course.

Would we like to also be in other places in Tennessee? We are out particularly looking all the time in the eight states that we're doing it in.

Again, we're not going to buy a 3-cap. It's just not something we're going to do.

We haven't seen an expansion of cap rates either. They've been staying somewhere between 4.5% and 7%, and they haven't changed much at all.

We're still out there looking every day. It just has been, it does seem to be competitive.

There does seem to be some sellers that are maybe starting to have some problems here and there.

Eddie Carlisle

I also think some of the selling opportunities, Dean, in Nashville or in any market, is really going to be, I think, driven by you had a lot of folks that around COVID, rates were really good. People were putting 5-year debt on those assets.

We're starting to come around to where that debt's coming due. I do think that there'll be some opportunities, not particular Nashville, just in general in our business that will start popping up in the near future.

Dean Wilkinson

That's great. Thanks, guys.

Appreciate it.

Eddie Carlisle

Thanks, Dean.

Operator

Thank you. I'm currently showing no further questions at this time.

I'd now like to hand the call back over to Kurt Keeney for closing remarks.

Kurt Keeney

Thank you, operator. Thank you, everyone, for participating today.

Please feel free to reach out to our investor relations team at [email protected] if you have any further questions. Have a great day.

Operator

This concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation.

You may now disconnect.