CubeSmart

have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star followed by the number one again. I will now turn the call over to Josh Scherzer, Vice President of FINA. Please go ahead.

Karen, good morning, everyone. Welcome to QSmart's fourth quarter 2024 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.qsmart.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 8-K we filed this morning, together with our earnings release filed with the Form 8-K, 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. A 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.

Thank you, Josh. Good morning. Welcome to the call. Thanks for participating. We believe that that for our portfolio, the fourth quarter of 2024 may have marked an inflection point in the trend of decelerating same store revenue growth that we and the industry have been experiencing since reaching the COVID induced peak in the second quarter of 2022. From their trough in November of last year, our year over year growth in same store revenues has begun to slowly improve. Specific trends of note include The year-over-year same-store occupancy gap narrowing from 100 basis points negative at year-end 24 to negative 50 basis points as of the end of February. Rents being achieved for new customer rentals have improved their year-over-year negative gap from the average in the fourth quarter of negative 10.3% to last week averaging negative 7.4%. We are generally positive about the economic health of our existing customers. all key metrics, write-offs, et cetera, continue to perform along historically normal levels. We are watching these metrics closely, recognizing core inflation remains stubbornly high. Our base case expectations for revenue growth in 2025 assume, across all of our major markets, that we continue the gradual pattern of improvements from our fourth quarter metrics. Our lower beta urban markets continue to outperform the Sun Belt. Our expectation is our New York City performance continues to be a bright spot, remaining at the top of our highest growing markets. That being said, today, we do not see a near-term obvious catalyst that would sharply reaccelerate organic growth in 2025. The last two years, we and the industry have included a mix of optimism and hope around housing market improvements and other trends that would provide significant stimulus to the busy season demand for our product. In hindsight, these bull case forecasts have proven to be overly optimistic. While we are encouraged by our metrics through February and believe that overall trends are stabilizing, we are being, in our opinion, prudently cautious in our initial 2025 outlook. We remain very optimistic about the long-term health of our business. For almost two decades, the hallmark of our team is our culture of out-hustling to find creative methods to grow externally. With our viewpoint that operating fundamentals are stabilizing, in February, we were pleased to successfully close out one of our joint venture investments by acquiring our partner's interest in an accretive transaction. In planning for the opportunity, in late 24, we opportunistically raised equity capital at attractive valuations on our ATM program. But the net debt to EBITDA of four times, we took advantage of a portion of that leverage capacity to fund the balance of the purchase. The portfolio was deliberately constructed between 2017 and 2021 to include assets that had been recently constructed in tier one markets. Our plan from inception was to bring these properties onto our balance sheet and our investments team skillfully executed on that strategic objective. Most business executives would describe the current macroeconomic and geopolitical environment as uncertain. Beginning over 30 years ago and continuing to this day, members of our leadership team have successfully navigated through cycles and times of great uncertainty. Over that period, self-storage has demonstrated its resilience. We are confident in the future and remain focused on providing an outstanding experience to our valued customers and maximizing the opportunities presented. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Tim Martin, who will walk you through our investment activity, our fourth quarter results, and our outlook for 25 in a bit more detail. Tim?