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Granite Provides Investment Update and Announces Term Loan Refinancing – Financial Post

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TORONTO — Granite Real Estate Investment Trust (“Granite”) (TSX: GRT.UN / NYSE: GRP.U) announced today that it has acquired two income producing properties and has agreed to acquire three development properties, together comprising approximately 2.5 million square feet (“SF”) at a combined purchase price of approximately C$246.7 million. Collectively, the acquisitions represent an anticipated stabilized yield of approximately 5.1%.

Granite also announced it has extended its C$300 million term loan to December 11, 2026 and refinanced the related cross-currency interest rate swap resulting in Euro-denominated payments at a 1.355% fixed interest rate.

In addition, Granite announced that it has completed the acquisition of the development property in Dallas, Texas that it had contractually committed to acquire. Further, on December 4,2019, Granite completed the disposition of its five western Michigan assets that were held for sale for gross proceeds of US$29.5 million.

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Kevan Gorrie, Granite’s President and CEO, commented that, “consistent with our strategy of acquiring and developing modern e-commerce and distribution facilities in Granite’s target markets, we expect these acquisitions to further enhance the quality of our portfolio, deliver stable and growing cash flow and generate net asset value growth. Further, as evidenced by the recent refinancing outlined herein, we continue to leverage our unique access to lower cost Euro-denominated debt to enhance our returns and cash flow. Following these commitments, we estimate our pro forma liquidity to be approximately C$650 million.”

330 & 440 E. Stateline Rd., Southaven, Mississippi, USA

Granite has acquired 330 & 440 E. Stateline Road, two multi-tenant modern distribution buildings totaling 1.7 million SF, featuring 32’ clear height and situated on 95 acres of land in Southaven, Mississippi for US$87.9 million. Constructed in 2005 and 2007, the properties are 81% leased to established tenants for a remaining weighted average lease term of 5.6 years. The acquisition closed on December 19, 2019.

The properties are located within 2.0 miles of Memphis International Airport, the world’s busiest cargo airport and home to the FedEx World Hub and UPS Airport Facility. The properties benefit from superior access to Interstate 55, Interstate 22 and the BNSF Memphis Intermodal Facility.

De Kroonstraat 1 (Tilburg), Francis Baconstraat 4 (Ede), Oude Graaf 15 (Weert)

Granite has agreed to acquire three state-of-the-art facilities in the Netherlands for approximately €89 million. Currently under construction, the properties will be delivered mid-2020, with the 488,000 SF Tilburg property being delivered in two phases, including a 142,000 SF second phase to be delivered in the first quarter of 2021. The properties have a combined leasable floor area of approximately 852,000 SF and include approximately 1.8 acres of additional land for potential future expansion. The properties are 100% leased to three prominent European tenants for a weighted average lease term of approximately 11 years.

In line with Granite’s European strategy, the properties are located in highly-desirable distribution nodes along the main supply corridor from Rotterdam, Europe’s largest port, to Germany and continental Europe. Furthermore, the assets are situated in one of the most densely populated areas in Europe, making them attractive e-commerce locations. The design of these build-to-suit properties incorporates several sustainability features, leading management to expect the properties to receive a BREEAM “Very Good” certification.

Extension of $300M term loan and refinancing of related cross-currency interest rate swap

On November 27, 2019, Granite extended its C$300 million term loan (the “Term Loan”) and refinanced the related cross-currency interest rate swap (the “Euro Swap”). The Term Loan, with an original maturity date of December 12, 2025, has been extended for one year, on the same terms, to December 11, 2026. Concurrently, the previously existing Euro Swap was terminated and Granite entered into a new seven-year cross-currency interest rate swap resulting in Euro-denominated payments at a 1.355% fixed interest rate, approximately 85 basis points lower than the previous rate. The refinancing is expected to result in interest expense savings of approximately C$2.3 million, or C$0.04 of funds from operations per unit, annually.

1301 Chalk Hill Road, Dallas, Texas

On November 19, 2019, Granite acquired 1301 Chalk Hill Road, a state-of-the-art, 2.3 million SF, multi-level e-commerce fulfillment centre, situated on 101 acres of land in Dallas, Texas. The newly constructed property is 100% leased to a leading global e-commerce provider for an initial lease term of 20 years. The previously-announced acquisition closed on November 19, 2019.

The completed acquisitions were funded using cash on hand and the acquisition of the European properties will be funded from Granite’s available liquidity.

About Granite

Granite is a Canadian-based REIT engaged in the acquisition, development, ownership and management of industrial, warehouse and logistics properties in North America and Europe. Granite owns over 90 rental income properties representing approximately 40 million square feet of leasable area.

Other Information

Copies of financial data and other publicly filed documents about Granite are available through the internet on the Canadian Securities Administrators’ Systems for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval (SEDAR) which can be accessed at www.sedar.com and on the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval System (EDGAR) which can be accessed at www.sec.gov.

For further information, please see our website at www.granitereit.com or contact Teresa Neto, Chief Financial Officer, at 647-925-7560 or Andrea Sanelli, Manager, Legal & Investor Services, at 647-925-7504.

Forward Looking Statements

This press release may contain statements that, to the extent they are not recitations of historical fact, constitute “forward-looking statements” or “forward-looking information” within the meaning of applicable securities legislation, including the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, the United States Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements and forward-looking information may include, among others, statements regarding the expected timing of the closing of the European acquisitions, the expected stabilized yield of the Mississippi and European acquisitions and impact of such acquisitions on Granite’s cash flow and net asset value growth, the expected impact of the extension of the Term Loan and refinancing of the Euro Swap on Granite’s liquidity and interest expense obligations, the expected BREEAM certification of the European acquisition properties, Granite’s intention and ability to make future investments and acquisitions and Granite’s plans, goals, strategies, intentions, beliefs, estimates, costs, objectives, economic performance, expectations, or foresight or the assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Words such as “may”, “would”, “could”, “will”, “likely”, “expect”, “anticipate”, “believe”, “intend”, “plan”, “forecast”, “project”, “estimate”, “seek”, “objective” and similar expressions are used to identify forward-looking statements and forward-looking information. Forward-looking statements and forward-looking information should not be read as guarantees of the closing of the European acquisitions, the expected stabilized yield of the Mississippi and European acquisitions and impact of such acquisitions on Granite’s cash flow and net asset value growth, the expected impact of the extension of the Term Loan and refinancing of the Euro Swap on Granite’s liquidity and interest expense obligations, the expected BREEAM certification of the European acquisition properties, Granite’s intention and ability to make future investments and acquisitions or other events, performance or results and will not necessarily be accurate indications of whether or the times at or by which such impact of the acquisitions or other events or performance will be achieved. Undue reliance should not be placed on such statements. Forward-looking statements and forward-looking information are based on information available at the time and/or management’s good faith assumptions and analyses made in light of its perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors management believes are appropriate in the circumstances, and are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other unpredictable factors, many of which are beyond Granite’s control, that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from such forward-looking statements and forward-looking information. Important factors that could cause such differences include, but are not limited to, the risks set forth in the annual information form of Granite Real Estate Investment Trust and Granite REIT Inc. dated March 6, 2019 (the “Annual Information Form”). The “Risk Factors” section of the Annual Information Form also contains information about the material factors or assumptions underlying such forward-looking statements and forward-looking information. Forward-looking statements and forward-looking information speak only as of the date the statements and information were made and unless otherwise required by applicable securities laws, Granite expressly disclaims any intention and undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements or forward-looking information contained in this press release to reflect subsequent information, events or circumstances or otherwise.

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Contacts

Teresa Neto, Chief Financial Officer
647-925-7560
or
Andrea Sanelli, Manager, Legal & Investor Services
647-925-7504.

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Amazon completes $4B Anthropic investment to advance generative AI – About Amazon

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Amazon concludes $4 billion investment in Anthropic.

Customers of all sizes and industries are using Claude on Amazon Bedrock to reimagine user experiences, reinvent their businesses, and accelerate their generative AI journeys.

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The work Amazon and Anthropic are doing together to bring the most advanced generative artificial intelligence (generative AI) technologies to customers worldwide is only beginning. As part of a strategic collaborative agreement, we and Anthropic announced that Anthropic is using Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its primary cloud provider for mission critical workloads, including safety research and future foundation model development. Anthropic will use AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips to build, train, and deploy its future models and has made a long-term commitment to provide AWS customers around the world with access to future generations of its foundation models on Amazon Bedrock, AWS’s fully managed service that provides secure, easy access to the industry’s widest choice of high-performing, fully managed foundation models (FMs), along with the most compelling set of features (including best-in-class retrieval augmented generation, guardrails, model evaluation, and AI-powered agents) that help customers build highly-capable, cost-effective, low latency generative AI applications.

Earlier this month, we announced access to the most powerful Anthropic AI models on Amazon Bedrock. The Claude 3 family of models demonstrate advanced intelligence, near-human levels of responsiveness, improved steerability and accuracy, and new vision capabilities. Industry benchmarks show that Claude 3 Opus, the most intelligent of the model family, has set a new standard, outperforming other models available today—including OpenAI’s GPT-4—in the areas of reasoning, math, and coding.

“We have a notable history with Anthropic, together helping organizations of all sizes around the world to deploy advanced generative artificial intelligence applications across their organizations,” said Dr. Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of Data and AI at AWS. “Anthropic’s visionary work with generative AI, most recently the introduction of its state-of-the art Claude 3 family of models, combined with Amazon’s best-in-class infrastructure like AWS Tranium and managed services like Amazon Bedrock further unlocks exciting opportunities for customers to quickly, securely, and responsibly innovate with generative AI. Generative AI is poised to be the most transformational technology of our time, and we believe our strategic collaboration with Anthropic will further improve our customers’ experiences, and look forward to what’s next.”

Global organizations of all sizes, across virtually every industry, are already using Amazon Bedrock to build their generative AI applications with Anthropic’s Claude AI. They include ADP, Amdocs, Bridgewater Associates, Broadridge, CelcomDigi, Clariant, Cloudera, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Degas Ltd., Delta Air Lines, Druva, Enverus, Genesys, Genomics England, GoDaddy, Happy Fox, Intuit, KT, LivTech, Lonely Planet, LexisNexis Legal & Professional, M1 Finance, Netsmart, Nexxiot, Parsyl, Perplexity AI, Pfizer, the PGA TOUR, Proto Hologram, Ricoh USA, Rocket Companies, and Siemens.

To further help speed the adoption of advanced generative AI technologies, AWS, Anthropic, and Accenture recently announced that they are coming together to help organizations—especially those in highly-regulated industries including healthcare, public sector, banking, and insurance—responsibly adopt and scale generative AI solutions. Through this collaboration, organizations will gain access to best-in-class models from Anthropic, a broad set of capabilities only available on Amazon Bedrock, and industry expertise from Accenture, Anthropic, and AWS to help them build and scale generative AI applications that are customized for their specific use cases.

Deepening our commitment to advancing generative AI, today we have an update on the announcement we made to invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic for a minority ownership position in the company. Last September, we made an initial investment of $1.25 billion. Today, we made our additional $2.75 billion investment, bringing our total investment in Anthropic to $4 billion. To learn more about the broader strategic collaboration between Amazon and Anthropic, of which this investment is one part, check out the stories below:

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Amazon doubles down on Anthropic, completing its planned $4B investment – TechCrunch

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Amazon invested a further $2.75 billion in growing AI power Anthropic on Wednesday, following through on the option it left open last September. The $1.25 billion it invested at the time must be producing results, or perhaps they’ve realized that there are no other horses available to back.

The September deal put $1.25 billion into the company in exchange for a minority stake, and certain tit-for-tat agreements like Anthropic continuing to use AWS for its extensive computation needs.

Amazon reportedly had until the end of the first quarter to decide whether to increase its investment to a maximum of $4 billion, and here we are just before the deadline, and the company has decided to throw in the maximum amount.

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Anthropic’s AI models are one of very few that compete at the highest levels of capability (however you define it) yet are available at scale for enterprises to deploy internally or in user-facing applications. OpenAI’s GPT series and Google’s Gemini are the others up there, but upstarts like Mistral may soon threaten that fragile triumvirate.

Lacking the capability to develop adequate models on their own for whatever reason, companies like Amazon and Microsoft have had to act vicariously through others, primarily OpenAI and Anthropic. The two have reaped immense benefits by allying with one or the other of these moneyed rivals, and as yet have not seen many downsides.

What we can take from Amazon’s decision to invest the maximum after (one must assume) getting a pretty close look at how they make the AI sausage over there is, really, pretty scant.

It makes too much strategic sense for these companies, which possess enormous war chests saved up for exactly this purpose (outspending rivals when they can’t out-innovate them), to pour cash into the AI sector. Right now the AI world is a bit like a roulette table, with OpenAI and Anthropic representing black and red. No one really knows where the ball will land, least of all the companies that couldn’t predict or create this technology themselves. But if your bitter enemy puts their chips down on red, it only makes sense for you to bet on black.

Especially if you can bet on black at a discount — which is what Amazon got here, since it could invest at Anthropic’s September valuation, which is most certainly lower than it is today.

That said, if things were looking sketchy over there — the way they must have looked at Inflection before Microsoft pounced on it — Amazon could have backed out or just invested less than the full supplemental $2.75 billion. But that might have sent a confusing signal no one wants getting out there, least of all existing multibillion-dollar investors.

We know Anthropic has a plan, and this year we’ll find out what Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and other multinational interests think they can do to monetize this supposedly revolutionary technology.

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Canada to tighten foreign investment rules for AI, other sectors

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Canada will require foreign companies to warn the government in advance before making investments or acquisitions in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and space technology, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, citing an interview with Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne.

The move will aid the government in conducting a national-security review before transactions get too far advanced and would-be investors may be restricted in their access to target companies’ user data or other property while the inquiry is taking place, the report said.


Click to play video: 'Canadians concerned about risk of AI generated fraud'
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Canadians concerned about risk of AI generated fraud

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The tougher rules will also apply to investments in critical minerals and potentially other sectors, Champagne said to Bloomberg.

Earlier this month, Champagne said Canada will crack down on foreign investment in the interactive digital media sector to stop state-sponsored actors from endangering national security.

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