Extra Space Storage Inc

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the third quarter 2024 Extra Space Storage Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you would need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would like now to turn the conference over to Jarrett Conley, Vice President of Investor Relations. Sir, please go ahead.

Thank you, Michelle. Welcome to Extra Space Storage's third quarter 2024 earnings call. In addition to our press release, we have furnished unaudited supplemental financial information on our website. Please remember that management's prepared remarks and answers to your questions may contain forward looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied by our forward looking statements due to risks and uncertainties associated with the company's business. These forward looking statements are qualified by the cautionary statements contained in the company's latest filings with the SEC, which we encourage our listeners to review. Forward-looking statements represent management's estimates as of today, October 30th, 2024. The company assumes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements because of changing market conditions or other circumstances after the date of this conference call. I would now like to turn the call over to Joe Margolis, Chief Executive Officer.

Thanks, Jared, and thank you, everyone, for joining today's call. To begin the call today, I would first like to address the impact of Hurricane Milton on our people. I am happy to report that all our teammates are safe, although a small number of individuals and their families were displaced and we have provided shelter assistance for them. Scott will address the financial impacts of the hurricane in his comments. Before we address the myriad of data points and moving pieces from the quarter, I want to make some overall big picture comments on our performance. We had a good quarter. Optimizing performance in the current market environment and our efforts allow us to increase the midpoint of our full year FFO guidance. Let me start with the biggest contributor to FFO growth, which is store performance. The extra space same store pool performed consistently with our expectations with quarter ending and October occupancy of 94.3%. This solid performance allows us to increase the bottom end of 2024 same store guidance. Revenue for the life storage same store pool came in slightly below our expectations. but this was generally offset by meaningful outperformance with respect to expenses. Having completed the move to a single brand in the latter part of the quarter, we are just starting to see the benefits of a single brand. We fully expect this group of stores to follow the same pattern of improvement into and during 2025 as the 143 life storage stores that we converted to the Extra Space brand at closing in 2023. Our non-same-store properties are also outperforming our expectations and contributed to our FFOB. Outside of store performance, our external growth initiatives are exceeding projections. In the third quarter, we added 63 third-party managed stores gross netting 38 stores. Year to date, we've added 124 net stores to the platform, and we anticipate adding approximately 100 additional properties by year end. This would make 2024 our best year for net additions to our management program outside of the life storage merger. Our bridge loan program expanded with $158 million in new loans originated in this quarter. And we have increased our expected average hold of such loans to $925 million for the year. On the acquisition front, we have deployed $334 million in wholly owned and joint venture acquisitions year to date and are seeing an encouraging increase in accretive opportunities. Lastly, we continue to find efficiencies in the business and have again lowered our G&A guidance for the year. Overall, I am very pleased with our performance and trajectory this year. We continue to leverage our scale to find efficiencies in all areas of the business, optimize store performance, and grow our ancillary businesses to drive FFO growth. Our higher portfolio occupancy positions us well to capitalize on an improving new customer rate environment when fundamentals recover. I will now turn the time over to Scott.