Extra Space Storage Inc

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Extra Space Storage Inc. Q3 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on October 30, 2025. And I would now like to turn the conference over To Mr. Jared Conley, thank you. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome to Extra Space Storage's third quarter 2025 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, 2025. The company assumes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements because of the 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.

Thank you, Jared. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Extra Space delivered solid results in the third quarter with core FFO of $2.08 per share meeting our internal expectations, and demonstrating our ability to generate consistent earnings through our diversified platform. Same-store occupancy at quarter end was 93.7% and averaged 94.1% during the quarter, a 30 basis point improvement year over year. Last quarter, we reported that our high occupancy allowed us to begin pushing new customer rates which inflected positive for the first time in three years. This trend continued and accelerated in the third quarter as we achieved new customer rate growth of over 3% year-over-year net of discounts. While new customer rates continued to improve, same-store revenue prior to other income was flat and slightly below our internal projections. This was partially due to strategic discounts which were offered in the quarter focused on long-term revenue optimization. Excluding the impact of discounts, same-store new customer rate growth was approximately 6%. While these initiatives created a short-term headwind in the quarter and for the year, we view them as an investment for future revenue growth and still believe we are well positioned for accelerating revenue going forward. We have also been active in our diversified external growth channels. We have been able to complete and secure strategic off-market transactions through deep industry relationships at attractive going in and long-term yields. I am particularly excited about the $244 million purchase of a 24 property portfolio in Utah, Arizona, and Nevada, which is the primary driver of our increased acquisition guidance to $900 million. A portion of this acquisition closed earlier this week, with the rest to close shortly when we complete the assumption of the seller's below-market secured loans. The acquisition will be primarily capitalized by the disposition of 25 assets, 22 of which are former life storage properties, and which should close late this year or early in 2020-26. The stabilized yields of the newly acquired stores will be greater than those of the disposed assets, and those assets are of higher quality and in markets which provide better diversification and future opportunities for growth. Additionally, our bridge loan program delivered strong performance with $123 million in originations during the quarter. And we strategically sold $71 million in mortgage loans. This program continues to provide interest income, attract customers to our management platform, and serves as an acquisition pipeline as we deepen our relationships with key industry partners. Finally, our third-party management platform expanded by an additional 95 stores during the quarter, with net growth of 62 stores. Year-to-date, we have added over 300 stores, which brings our total managed portfolio to 1,811 stores. This multi-channel approach to prudent growth allows us to create value across market cycles. whether through direct ownership, joint venture partnerships, lending activities, management services, or other creative structures. Our ability to deploy capital efficiently across these complementary strategies positions us to capitalize on market conditions regardless of the external environment. As a result, we are raising our full-year core FFO guidance per share at the midpoint. reflecting our confidence in our operational execution and gradually improving storage fundamentals. While we expect same-store revenue to remain relatively flat for 2025, we have driven outside growth in our other revenue streams, which are bridging the gap until a positive trend in new customer rates translates into revenue acceleration. I will now like to turn the time over to Jeff Norman.

Thank you, Joe, and hello everybody. As Joe mentioned, our third quarter core FFO was in line with our internal expectations at $2.08 per share. Same store revenue declined 0.2% year over year, which was slightly below our internal forecast. While the improvement in new customer rates is taking time to translate into revenue growth, we are encouraged by the sustained positive rate trend we achieved during the third quarter. While many operators continue to see year-over-year rate and occupancy declines, we have been able to increase rate growth sequentially every month since May due to our strong customer acquisition platform and proprietary pricing systems. We are also encouraged that our other income streams outperformed expectations and helped offset the same-store NOI headwinds. Tenant insurance and management fee income were both stronger than anticipated, demonstrating the value of our diversified revenue model. As expected, property taxes normalized in the quarter, returning to a growth rate of 1.6%, and we expect taxes to be low again in the fourth quarter. That said, same-store expenses were still above our internal estimates, driven by repairs and maintenance and marketing expense. We view marketing expense as a revenue driver and continue to see strong returns from our marketing dollars. Like discounts, marketing spend causes a short-term drag from an expense standpoint. However, we made this strategic decision to increase marketing spend to enhance long-term revenue growth. Our balance sheet remains exceptionally strong, providing significant financial flexibility to execute on strategic opportunities. We maintain a conservative capital structure with 95% of our interest rates being fixed. net of our bridge loan receivables. During the quarter, we recast our credit facility and added $1 billion in capacity to our revolving line of credit. Through the recast, we also reduced our revolving and term interest rate spreads by 10 basis points. We also executed an $800 million bond offering at a rate of less than 5%, which completed our 10-year debt maturity ladder. We are raising our full-year core FFO guidance to a range of $8.12 to $8.20 per share, based on our year-to-date performance and updated fourth quarter outlook. For same-store revenue, we are adjusting our forecast to a range of negative 25 basis points to positive 25 basis points growth for the full year, acknowledging that the positive impact from improving customer rates has not driven acceleration early enough in the year to reach the high end of our previous range. We are raising our same store expense growth guidance to 4.5% to 5% due to our decision to invest in marketing to drive long-term revenue growth, while other expense categories will continue to normalize moving forward. Our updated guidance also incorporates higher interest income projections based on the strong performance of our bridge loan program, higher tenant insurance and management fees, and lower G&A as we continue optimizing operational efficiency across the platform. The self-storage sector continues to demonstrate its resilience, with our business model proving its strength as market fundamentals gradually improve. Our geographically diversified portfolio of over 4,200 stores across 43 states provides significant protection against localized economic fluctuations. Our scale and data give us a significant operational advantage over other industry participants, and our high occupancy and positive rate momentum all position us well as we close out the year and head into 2026. With that, operator, let's open it up for questions.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press star 4 by the 1 on your telephone keypad. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. And should you wish to cancel your request, please press star four by the two. If you're using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, for your first question. Thank you. And your first question comes from the line of Michael Goldsmith from UBS. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. Thanks a lot for taking my question. First question, you know, you're starting to see new customer rate growth, and it's well up above over last year, but I guess, like, how long does that take to flow through the whole algorithm to start to benefit same-serve revenue growth, trying to understand kind of when we should start to see this drive that improved second derivative of same-serve revenue growth?

Thanks. Thanks for the question, Michael. In terms of specific timing, it depends, as you can imagine, on churn and other factors. So I'm not able to pinpoint a time when you see that inflect specifically into revenue growth. But what we can tell you is we're encouraged to see that go from slightly positive rates in May to then over 1% in June, over 2% in July, 3% to 4% in August. So 3% for the quarter net of discounts. is an encouraging trend for us. As we extend that into October, it's over 5% net of promotions. So we continue to see that accelerating trend. As we get into 26, we'll guide and give a little more detail about how that translates into revenue. But the trend is encouraging.

Got it. Thanks for that, Jeff. And my follow-up question, it sounds like you've been using discounts and promotions to drive... to drive customers to the channel. Has that continued into October and is the plan to continue to lean on that in the fourth quarter?

So, you know, we in the past several years have not used discounts as a tool very much, and that's why historically we've given one number for new customer rate growth because there really was almost no difference between the new customer rate goes before and after discounts. In the quarter, we've tried an effort, continual effort that we always do to optimize long-term revenue. We tried some different discounting strategies, particularly in states with states of emergency, to try to maximize performance in those states. And it's proven to be a short-term headwind, although we believe long-term value creation. So that's why we're now kind of giving two new customer rate numbers, gross and netted discounts, because there is a more meaningful difference between there, and we want to be fully transparent. And how long and in what fashion we continue will depend on the results of the testing.

Thank you very much. Good luck in the fourth quarter. Thanks, Michael.

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Jeff Spector from BOFA. Please go ahead.

Great. Thank you. Appreciate the details so far. Joe, maybe can you discuss a little bit more on your comment regarding the short-term headwind? Just to confirm, was there anything specific you can cite, whether it was a particular region, EXR, Legacy versus LSI. Is there anything that helps you or investors understand, like, what exactly happened? Maybe that was a bit worse than expected. And so we know it's, you know, you'll consider, I guess, next year in the guidance. Thanks.

Yeah, so I would say our efforts, our new efforts with discounting were focused First on states, with states of emergency, so think Los Angeles and some other states. And then also some, you know, randomized stores to produce a good data set, if that's helpful.

And Jeff, if I understood, you know, the spirit of your question, I think you're wondering, is this sort of a permanent change versus something temporary? I'd view it as more temporary. We leaned into it in this quarter, and the headwind is felt primarily in the quarter.

Okay, and just to confirm, you're seeing normal seasonal patterns. This has nothing to do with seasonality.

Correct. October, you know, has continued to play out pretty similar to September. So we've mentioned we've actually accelerated rates further, still have healthy occupancy. Was it 93.4 today. So continues to be a positive trend into October.

Great. Thank you.

Thanks, Jeff.

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Caitlin Burrows from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Oh, hi. Good morning. The prepared remarks talked about the $244 million portfolio acquisition. Wondering if you could give any detail on the initial and stabilized yields and how long you expect it will take to reach the stabilized yield and kind of what that upside is driven by.

Sure. Happy to, Caitlin. So the portfolio is a mix of stabilized assets, and their stabilized assets are 78% occupied. So we're We're happy to get our hands on them and improve the performance to our standards. But they're stabilized stores, and then the balance of the stores are in different stages of lease-up, kind of from very beginning to close to completion of lease-up. So the yield is a blend of different types of stores. That being said, the leverage deal, we're assuming $50 million of debt at 3.4%. The leverage yields about four and a half in year one and gets to the mid sevens by the end of or into year three.

Got it. Okay. And then wondering if you guys could talk about what you've seen recently on the reasons for storage use and if there's been any changes.

No real changes than we've talked about for the last several quarters. You know, when we look at moving customers, in the third quarter, we were at about 58%. That's up from mid-50s in the first and second quarter. That's a seasonal increase. More people move in the third quarter than early in the year. So I don't think it's an indication of any significant improvement in the housing market. Just as a data point, the peak was the third quarter of 21 at 63%. So third quarter of 25, we're at 58%. So you see the decline in the for sale housing market there. That's been partially taken up. That lack of demand has been partially taken up by customers who cite lack of space as a reason. they're storing, and they stay about twice as long. Their average stays about 15 months versus seven and a half months for the moving customers. So no real change in that dynamic.

Got it. Thanks. Thanks, Caitlin.

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Ronald Camden from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hey, just two quick ones. Just the corollary to sort of the discount conversation being increased. So we take that as also sort of implying that maybe the marketing spend on sort of the web and all that is maybe incrementally less efficient as it was in the past. I guess the question is, has anything sort of changed in terms of those dollars on online being spent and the return you're getting on those? Thanks.

That's a really good question. So, you know, we view marketing spend as an investment and we test every dollar we spend has to have a certain ROI or we're not going to spend it. And we haven't seen any decline in that ROI. So we don't, we wouldn't tell you that our marketing spend is any less efficient. And I think can see the benefit of that spend in the rate growth that we've experienced. So to answer your question without all the excess words is no, there's not been any diminution in effectiveness.

Helpful. And then my follow-up is just on the expense side. Obviously, property taxes, it is what it is. But this year seemed to be a little bit sort of outsized, right? You guys are running over 6% year-to-date on all expenses. Here, just any sort of comments as you're sort of flipping over the next couple years. Is there an opportunity for even more expense savings outside of property taxes, essentially?

Thanks. Sure. Let me just give some high-level comments on that, and then we can get into specific line items. We're in a very high-margin business, and we want to make sure that we invest in the properties in a way that maximizes long-term revenue. So that means we want to invest in R&M to keep the properties up and of the condition that we want them to be because we know in the long term that chicken comes home to roost. And similarly, we want to invest in our people because we know that through testing and data, when you take... customers take store managers out of stores, it hurts you on the revenue side, it hurts you on the safety side, it hurts you on the catastrophic event side, and it hurts you on the cleanliness side. So we're going to try to be as efficient as we can without impacting the long-term value of our stores. And we just talked about marketing. It's the same way. We look at it as an investment that has a return. And frankly, when we've had over 300 people choose us to manage their properties, even though we're more expensive, we know that our view of how to take care of stores and people is agreed to by most of the marketplace. So that's our general philosophy. We want to be as efficient as we can. We don't want to spend money we don't have to, but we're going to take the long-term view and make sure we protect our revenue streams.

And, Ron, maybe to hit a couple of the specifics around some of the expense line items, you mentioned property taxes. Last call we talked about how it was a bit of the tale of two halves with property tax expense. We have lapped that comp, so you saw that drop significantly in the third quarter. As a reminder, a lot of that first half was driven by outside increases at the legacy life storage store. That mark-to-market has taken place. So it was at 1.6% in the quarter. We expect it to be low again in the fourth quarter. And then as we look at a few of the other line items, we know payroll and benefits stands out as being outsized relative to our norms. A lot of that's a comp from last year. If you look at the nine-month number, it's sub-3%, and that's more in line where we'd expect it to be in the full year, closer to that 3% inflationary level. And then Joe touched on our approach to marketing and R&M. We view those more as investments and we'll make those investments as needed knowing that there's a long-term return. Helpful. Thank you so much. Thanks, Ron.

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Todd Thomas from KeyBank Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks. I wanted to go back to the discounting strategy. Two questions. First, what exactly was the catalyst for offering these strategic discounts? And then second, you mentioned that this was tested or rolled out in some markets like LA where there are some state of emergencies, but it seems like it was a drag on customer rate growth to the tune of about 300 basis points or half of the gross increase that you achieved. You talked about October, but are you expecting both net and gross customer rate growth to continue increasing moving forward?

I'll start by saying we are always trying new pricing offerings and strategies based on the amount of data we have, the amount of stores we have, the amount of testing we can do. This isn't out of line with what other things we've done in the past to try to improve long-term performance. We're not running this company for the third quarter of 2025. We're trying to maximize long-term revenue.

Todd, maybe to hit the second half of your question, we won't get ahead of ourselves in terms of forecasting rate growth because we're more focused just on revenue growth. overall and we're open to using any of the levers as needed that said based on what we've seen sequentially since may and into october um that the increase in pricing power has been a trend okay um but in terms of the impact that the discounts had on overall

Portfolio rate growth in the quarter or or move in rent growth in the quarter. What percent of the portfolio. Um, had you rolled out or were you testing this discounting strategy on just trying to get a sense of what the magnitude of. Of these discounts were like, and potentially. You know, assuming you're pleased with the results. you know, and you roll this out more broadly across the portfolio, just trying to get a sense for, you know, the magnitude of these discounts?

Yeah, good question, Todd. I think we're reluctant to share a lot of detail about the specifics of the test because, frankly, we view this as a competitive advantage. But in terms of trying to help quantify the magnitude, maybe another way, you know, we talked about gross, you know, gross rent growth to new customers of about 6% in the quarter and the net number being closer to 3%. For October, that has tightened significantly. So it's, you know, gross improvement of a little over 6%, net improvement of a little over 5%. So I guess it gives you a feel of sort of the more temporary nature of some of the testing and it being less of a drag thus far into the fourth quarter.

Todd, I also want to be clear. We're not saying that the sole reason we made a change to our revenue guidance was this discounting strategy. It's certainly a factor. But I'll also say that it has been a little slower than we expected for the new rates to roll into the rent goal. That's not something we can predict perfectly. We do know it will happen over time. but it's hard to predict exactly when and how quickly that happens. So I just want to be clear on that.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Eric Wolf from . Please go ahead.

If I look at the last couple of years, you've had move-in rents, you know, down double digits at times, obviously improved a lot lately. if I look at the times when moving rents were down the most or revenue per occupied foot wasn't down nearly as much, right? It was generally kind of just been slattish, right, over the last couple of years. So I guess I'm trying to understand as moving rents recover, you know, why wouldn't the contribution from ECRIs come down, right? If the contribution went up over the last couple of years as you discounted more, as you discount less, why wouldn't that contribution from ECRIs just come down?

Yeah, it's a great question, Eric. If you think through just the way that as we pull these levers and as rates flow into and out of the portfolio, it's a gradual process. So the same way of after three years of negative rates, we were still able to maintain relatively flat revenue growth by using all of our levers. It takes some time coming out as well. And for that to inflect and re-accelerate on the other end. Specific to ECRI, generally our approach has been very similar on a year-over-year basis. There's no meaningful difference, with perhaps the small exception being that we are following and abiding by state of emergency restrictions in some states that put a little bit of a cap or a little bit of a headwind on a year-over-year basis to ECRI. So maybe modestly less contribution, But outside of that, it's generally similar.

Yeah, and I would just add, importantly, that customers are accepting ECRI at the same rate as they have in the past. We don't see any greater reaction in terms of move out from customers.

Got it. So the move in rents not flowing through as quickly to the rent roll really isn't a function of DCRI specifically, that contribution is starting to come down. I guess the question is, what is causing that? Maybe it's just a math problem. It's tough to solve, but what would make the contribution from moving rents be a bit less than expected?

Yeah, the primary driver in the third quarter is was slower churn. You'll notice that both our rentals and vacates were lower. So it's just a little slower churn that we had modeled. Got it.

Okay.

Thank you. You bet. Thanks, Eric.

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Michael Griffin from Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Maybe to follow up on Wolf's question there, I'm curious, Joe, if you can give us a sense of, you know, and I realize you're not going to give 26 guidance, but, you know, where those move-in rates need to go before you start to adjust your ECRI program, right? I understand that you all solve to maximize revenue, but, you know, it seems to me that, you know, as these move-in rents remain lower, you're going to have to make up for it on the ECRI upside. So at what point, not to say that we reach an equilibrium, but that this regime of, you know, higher ECRIs to solve for revenue comes down somewhat?

Yeah, I look at it a little differently, right? Street rates, new customer rates are going up, and that gives us more headroom to increase ECRIs to existing customers. We don't want to move existing customers up too far over street rate. It provides somewhat of a cap, a guide for us. And as street rate goes up, that puts more and more of our customers into the eligible pool to receive an ECRI. So one of the challenges over the past several years is as street rates decline, more and more of our customers were in the group that were ineligible for ECRIs. And now as that switches, that pattern should change.

Thanks, Joe. Appreciate the color there. And then maybe just on the acquisition opportunity set, I mean, it seems like there are more transactions coming back into the market. You seem pretty constructive on this deal that part of it's closed and part you're expecting to close by year end. But Maybe give us a sense of the opportunity set within the transaction market. Are buyers and sellers more willing to come together on price? Is it interest rate stability? I guess, what's the catalyst for maybe an incrementally positive outlook as it relates to acquisitions?

I'm not overly positive on the open market. I don't see cap rates at a level... that given our cost of capital, it's attractive for us to be the high bidder in a competitive bid. And we've seen lots of deals that we've managed where we had first and sometimes last shot that we let them go because we want to be disciplined and adhere to our cost of capital metrics. But what I am encouraged and positive about in the future is our continued ability to create accretive deals through our relationships like the one we just discussed through our joint venture partners which we've done several of which were at very high yields this year we have another one of those under discussion and through being creative and the vast industry relationships we have right having over 1800 properties we manage gives us an awful lot of relationships that allow us to do transactions others can't.

Yeah, and Griff, I'd just add, being involved in the industry in all these ways, it allows us to hang around the hoop. Oftentimes, these acquisitions really are triggered by a life event for the seller or maybe a debt maturity or something else where it's not really a market function that's pushing them to sell. It's more of an event. And we want to be close by when those events happen and have first shot.

I mean, another example is our bridge loan program where, you know, to date we've bought 22% by dollar volume of the collateral we've lent against. So that provides somewhat of an acquisition, you know, proprietary acquisition pipeline for us too.

Great. That's it for me. Thanks for the time. Thanks, Griff.

Thank you. And your next question is, comes from the line of Juan Sanabria from BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Geez, if I'm beating a dead horse here, but on the discounting, I guess a two-part question. What's the strategy behind using it more aggressively in some of the rent restriction areas like LA? And then in October, you mentioned the gross versus net delta shrunk. So does that mean you're not discounting as much as you get in the third quarter? Just why is that discount narrowing in October?

So we're always looking for ways to maximize revenue, long term revenue while complying with law and substituting discounts for rise is an effort to do that. And our use of the tool and how it evolves as we learn more will change over time, and that's one reason you see a difference in October or will see a difference in October.

Sorry, and then just on the disposition, you noted there's a big kind of portfolio that you've put out there for market. Just curious if you could share any feedback on that. Placings in the market for those assets, you mentioned that the acquisition side cap rates are necessarily super attractive, so probably means good demand on those life assets. Any color would be appreciated there.

Yeah, we'll provide more color when they close, but we had bidders, we've selected a buyer. We're going through the process. I mean, I think it's very important for us as a company, every year to look at our portfolio and due to market concentrations or individual asset growth or capital requirements, try to consistently improve the portfolio by doing some dispositions. We're a little heavy historically this year because we're two years out from the life merger and we want You know, we have some life assets that we want to dispose of, but I think we'll sell assets every year and just try to recycle the money into better long-term assets.

Not to be greedy, but one very quick follow-up on the occupancy. I think you said October was 93.4. Just what's the year-over-year delta on that?

So the year-over-year delta is about negative 40 basis points, Juan. And I would look at that much more as a result of last year's comp. If you look at our same store occupancy September to October in 2024, it actually accelerated. Part of that was related to the life storage assets. That's about the time we unified everything under the Extra Space brand. We got aggressive with pricing and took a lot of occupancy at those stores. So if you look at the sequential Progress, 93.7 at the end of September, 93.4 in October. Pretty similar to what we've experienced historically.

Thank you.

How about that? No problem. Thanks, Juan.

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Ravi Vaidya from New Zealand. Please go ahead.

Hi there. Hope you guys are doing well. I wanted to ask about the bridge lending book. How do you expect the lower rate environment to impact the growth of this part of your business? Do you expect maybe that some operators might take more traditional financing options? And would a greater proportion of the MES lending turn into acquisitions from here on out?

So I think a lower rate environment will affect the bridge lending program if it loosens up the acquisition market. Many of our new bridge lending customers are folks who, if they could get the price they have in their head, would sell the asset, but they can't get in the market today. So they're looking for a bridge solution to get them to a future date when they could sell. So I think there's some counter-cyclicality between the acquisition market and the bridge lending business. And that's fine, right? That's one of the reasons we have all these different growth channels, because in any one year, one could grow more than the other. And we just, we want to be doing what's right, given current, what's best for our shareholders, given current market and economic conditions.

Yeah. And one thought, Robbie, that I'd add to that as well, is we've talked about, we originate these loans in a mortgage mezzanine structure. And as interest rate spreads as a whole tighten, the required spread of our A note buyers also tightens. So in terms of kind of the relative spread that we can bring in, we have some flexibility there, especially to the extent that we're holding MeZ notes to optimize those yields.

Got it. Thank you. Sure. Thank you.

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Nicholas Ulico from Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Thanks. I'm trying to just piece together, you know, this quarter versus last quarter. Some of the comments on, you know, occupancy and pricing. Last quarter, you guys, you know, felt good about occupancy, felt good about pricing. You hit an ending occupancy number, which was the highest you had in several years. And then for whatever reason, then this quarter, you know, you know, felt like you were pushing pricing and then you didn't get what you wanted. You, you know, you had some discounts you offered. And so I guess you did that in relation to, you know, I don't know, some worries about occupancy or moving volume coming into the front door. Is that the right way to look at this?

Yeah, I respectfully think it's not. I think that We don't solve for occupancy. We don't we don't get worked up if occupancy is 20 or 30 basis higher or lower. We don't solve for rate either. We solve for long term revenue. And in some instances, if that's going to be a little higher rate and lower occupancy or a little lower rate and higher occupancy, we're ambivalent. We just want the highest long term revenue. And the discounting strategy was not a reaction to any type of occupancy number. It was more thinking about we see more and more of these state of emergencies. How can we change our pricing structure to maximize revenue as these things come up across the country?

Okay, I guess the issue here is that it kind of feels like you guys have higher occupancy than the industry. And you can see that in various ways. But presumably, you guys took some market share over the last couple of years as you went to this discounted pricing on the front end strategy. And I'm just wondering if the issue here now is that the rest of the industry just doesn't have as high occupancy. So if you guys are trying to push rate, you've got to deal with the rest of the industry and what they're going to do. I'm just wondering if that is something that played out this quarter, again, where you guys seem like you're in a little bit better position to be pushing rate than the industry, and then you hit a wall. The problem is that the rest of the industry isn't at the same sort of starting point as you guys right now in occupancy.

I appreciate the question, Nick. I would say I don't think we've hit a wall. We continue to see rates accelerate through the quarter and beyond and continue to be pleased with the occupancy level. I think this is a fragmented enough industry that while we kind of think of the industry as maybe being the large public operators and we're comparing and contrasting 10 basis points here and there, I think holistically we look at this as... We've had negative rates as an industry for a long time. Despite that, we've been able to maintain flattish revenue growth for the last couple of years. And now as new supply moderates and as we maintain those high occupancy levels, we've been able to push rate and we keep seeing it going. As Joe mentioned, we're always testing things. And the beauty of it is we have a large enough portfolio. We don't really have to guess. We can run tests and see. what the winning strategies are and what is resulting in stronger revenue outcomes. So I think we're pretty comfortable that the data is telling us how to maximize revenue.

It's easier to push rates when you have higher occupancies. And as long as our customer acquisition platform can fill the funnel, which they can, we'll do much better with rates at higher occupancies than lower occupancies.

All right. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Nick.

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Spencer Glimcher from Green Street. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Just going back to the dispositions, is there anything you can share on the 24 assets being sold just in terms of geography or rent levels just relative to the portfolio average and As you continue to call the portfolio, as you mentioned, are there many more life assets that you would say fit the disposition criteria, perhaps due to a lack of market concentration, just not being as efficient to operate?

So the existing portfolio has a concentration in Florida and the Gulf Coast. And I would say there certainly are more life storage assets, but there's not. I think this is the big chunk. I don't think we'll do another 22 property portfolio.

Okay, and anything you can share on how those assets' rent levels compare to the portfolio average?

They're lower.

Okay, thank you. And then just maybe the second question here. Can you just remind us what your on-site personnel looks like today just for your properties and then as well as

regional managers how many assets are these employees overseeing on average and are you comfortable with this head count um you know for the near term so we're at about 1.4 full-time employees per store it obviously varies you know 100 000 square feet in manhattan is going to be staffed more heavily than 45 000 square feet outside of lexington kentucky we're continuing to uh use technology to um and and testing to try to get more efficient right and some of it is uh when you have a cluster of stores how can you staff efficiently without having every store staffed at a full-time basis and and other testing that frankly isn't unique in the industry i think everyone is doing it but at the end of the day we want to meet the customer how the customer wants to meet us. And 30%, a little more than 30% of the customers still walk into the store wanting to talk to a store manager. They all have phones. They all have computers. They can do a full transaction with us if they choose online. But they choose to go to the store for a reason. They want to see how clean it is. They don't really know what a 10 by 10 is. They have some questions on the store. And if you take the store manager out and force them to choose to scan the QR code or force them to call up someone on the phone. Some of them will do that, but some of them will turn around and go across the street to a competitor. So as long as we have customers who are choosing to walk into the store, we will make sure we have a store manager there. Because if we cut expenses by 15% and lose one rental a month at our average rate, that's negative 2.5% NOI experience. So we're going to protect that revenue line item very carefully while still being smart on the expense side.

Great. That's really helpful, Keller. Thank you.

Sure. Thank you.

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Michael Mueller from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Hi. Just a general question here on acquisitions. Just curious, when you buy something that's not stabilized or actually – something that is stabilized even, how much can you typically raise the going in yield just from taking the assets, putting them on the platform and kind of getting the expense efficiencies? And I'm just thinking about that, you know, like what's the low hanging fruit in terms of going from an initial yield up to a stabilized yield that obviously has some, you know, additional revenue impact in it.

Yeah. So it's a really good question and it varies widely. So if we're buying a store that's already on our management platform, either because we have a bridge loan on it or it's our management platform, then we've already optimized NOI. And it's much more of a core purchase. And we'll try to do a lot of those with joint venture partners to enhance the yield. If we're buying something that's managed by a third-party operator... it varies widely because the quality of the third-party operators vary widely. Some are very good and some are not as good. But it's not uncommon for us to see 150 basis points or more increase in NOI once we can get it on our platform. Got it. Okay. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thanks, Mike.

Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Omatoya. Okur Sanaya from Deutsche Bank, please go ahead.

Yes, good morning out there. The repairs and maintenance during the quarter and the elevation in that number, is that like a broad-based R&M across the entire portfolio? Was it more concentrated on the LSI portfolio because there was kind of maybe some deferred or maintenance still associated with that portfolio? And how do you just kind of think about kind of going forward with the outlook for R&M?

Yeah, thanks for the question. Yes, some of that outsized growth is driven specifically by the legacy LSI properties. And again, we expect that to normalize. We had some catch-up to do on those properties, but to start seeing that normalized and But all in all, as Joe had mentioned, we want to take care of the properties. So in general, we're going to make sure that we're doing whatever we need to do to protect those assets. But yes, a little bit of an outsized contribution from the life source.

That's helpful. And then on the bridge loom program side of things, Could you just kind of talk a little bit about kind of what you're still seeing out there, ability to kind of put money to work and kind of what kind of yields?

So, you know, we had a very active year last year. I think we did $880 million of originations. And a lot of that was new development stores that needed to pay off their construction loan and want to bridge the stabilization. That business has gone fairly quiet as the amount of new stores being delivered is going down, which is overall a good thing. That's been replaced somewhat by, you know, folks who need to buy out an equity partner because things are going slower than usual or wanted to sell, as I said earlier, and can't. So we've gone, you know, through three quarters, little over $330 million worth of origination. So we're on a good pace for that. The pricing of loans we have on our books, the A notes average about 7.6%. The mezzanine notes are about 11.3%. So over time, we would like to keep our unbalanced sheet balances you know, fairly steady. It will go up and down slightly quarter to quarter, but change the mix to have more B notes and fewer A notes on balance sheet. Thank you. Sure. Thank you.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I will now hand the call back to Mr. Joel Mercolis for any closing remarks.

Great. Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone, for your time and interest and extra space. I just want to reiterate that we're positive about the future. Our rent rate trends are positive and improving every quarter. Supply continues to go down. Our ancillary businesses are growing and help bridge the gap while the time it takes for these new higher rates to flow through the rent roll take time. So we're really encouraged about going into 2026 and are excited for better things tomorrow. Thank you again for your interest.

Thank you. And this concludes today's call. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.