CubeSmart

Good day and welcome to the CubeSmart fourth quarter 2020 earnings call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Josh Schutzer, Senior Director of Finance, please go ahead.

Thank you, Grant. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to CubeSmart's fourth quarter 2020 earnings call. Participants on today's call include Chris Marr, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Tim Martin, Chief Financial Officer. Our prepared remarks will be followed by a Q&A session. In addition to our earnings release, which was issued yesterday evening, supplemental operating and financial data is available under the Investor Relations section of the company's website, at www.keepsmart.com. The company's remarks will include certain forward-looking statements regarding earnings and strategy that involve risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause the actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. The risks and factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements are provided in documents the company furnishes to or files with the Securities and Exchange Commission, specifically the Form 8K we filed this morning, coupled with our earnings release filed with the Form 8K and the risk factor section of the company's annual report on Form 10-K. In addition, the company's remarks include reference to non-GAAP measures. Reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP measures can be found in the fourth quarter financial supplement posted on the company's website at www.keepsmart.com. I will now turn the call over to Chris.

Thanks, Josh. Good morning. I'll begin by recognizing and thanking Chris. our over 3,000 CubeSmart teammates across the country who have worked tirelessly and passionately during the past 12 months as the pandemic has altered our business and our lives in so many challenging and difficult ways. Our team is innovated and adapted as our traditional means of operating often changed overnight. Throughout, we maintained our focus on delivering outstanding customer service with genuine care. Our focus and our investment in the highest quality assets, balance sheet, and platform continued to pay dividends in 2020, as evidenced by our solid same-store revenue and NOI growth, in spite of a first half of the year that began with headwinds from new supply and then a very difficult operating environment in the second quarter. The fourth quarter continued the momentum from our very strong third quarter performance, And our state-of-the-art systems balanced price and occupancy, and our results in a volatile year proved out our flexibility in a rapidly changing environment. Looking at our performance across our markets, we experienced broad-based demand and strength in pricing across our entire diversified portfolio. We had similar solid growth in both our urban and our suburban stores. The New York MSA, inclusive of the outer boroughs, the rest of the Acela Corridor, and our Arizona, Nevada, and California properties were particularly strong performers. Positive results were a bit more muted in the southeast and Texas, as there remains a bit of a supply overhang. But overall, we had strong performance across the board. Our investment team was extremely busy during the quarter as we successfully leveraged our relationships and closed on attractive transactions in our core markets. Our results were headlined by the Storage Deluxe transaction, but we also closed on an additional 10 stores across five states, furthering our strategy of maintaining a high-quality, diversified portfolio. We continue to be a third-party manager of choice, adding over 150 stores to the platform for the fourth consecutive year. We are entering the stage of the development cycle where many of our owners, whose stores opened particularly in 2017 and 18, are ready to monetize their asset, and we expect a degree of churn in the managed portfolio this year. During 2020, in addition to enhancing our quality platform and quality portfolio, we continue to enhance our quality balance sheet, attractively raising capital and utilizing our joint ventures to provide us capacity as we look to the future. The positive trends from our fourth quarter continue thus far into 21, and we expect a constructive operating environment this year as evidenced by our earnings guidance. I will now turn the call over to Tim, who will provide more details on our fourth quarter and full year performance and our 2021 outlook.