Life Storage, Inc.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Life Storage Third Quarter Earnings Release Conference Call. At this time, all participants have been placed on the listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for questions and comments after the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Dave Dodman. Sir, the floor is yours.

Good morning and welcome to our third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Leading today's discussion will be Joe Sapphire, Chief Executive Officer of Life Storage, and Andy Gregory, Chief Financial Officer. As a reminder, the following discussion and answers to your questions contain forward-looking statements. Our actual results may differ from those projected due to risks and uncertainties with the company's business. Additional information regarding these factors can be found in the company's SEC filings. A copy of our press release and quarterly supplement may be found on the investor relations page at lifestorage.com. As a reminder, during today's question and answer session, we ask that you please limit yourself to two questions to allow time for everyone who wishes to participate. Please re-queue with any follow-up questions thereafter. At this time, we'll turn the call over to Joe.

Thanks, Dave, and good morning, everyone. I am pleased to report another outstanding quarter. It has been a very active quarter on a number of fronts. First, I am pleased to announce that we celebrated a significant milestone during the quarter when we crossed the 1,000 store threshold. Second, I am proud to announce that for the fourth consecutive year, Newsweek has recognized our team for best customer service among storage centers. And third, we continue to perform at record levels with record occupancy for this time of year and exceptionally strong pricing power. With regards to external growth, we are on pace to achieve record acquisition volume with over 1.7 billion of wholly owned acquisitions either closed this year or currently under contract and expected to close by year end. This represents 115 additional stores and nearly 20% growth in our wholly owned portfolio. These acquisitions represent a nice mix of both markets and maturity, with roughly one-third still in lease-up and approximately 75 percent in the Sun Belt states. We continue to expand in key markets such as Austin, Atlanta, Tampa, Miami, Phoenix, San Diego, Seattle, and greater New York City. Despite one-third in lease-up, we still expect the blended year one cap rate to be in the mid-four range as we remain focused on finding both strategic and FFO accretive opportunities. Our third-party managed portfolio totaled 357 stores at quarter end and is proving to be the robust acquisition pipeline that we anticipated. Specifically, 27 stores acquired this year were managed by Life Storage, representing 36% of our closed acquisition volume so far this year. And we continue to onboard additional managed stores at a rapid pace including 30 in the third quarter alone, as owners and developers are attracted to our operating performance and innovative technology platforms. Our team has evaluated a record number of management opportunities this year, and the pipeline continues to grow. With this strong performance, we are once again increasing our guidance for 2021. We have raised the midpoint of our estimated adjusted funds from operations per share to $4.94 cents this year, which would be a 24% growth over 2020. We have also nearly doubled the upper end of our acquisition guidance from $1 billion to nearly $2 billion. And lastly, before handing over to Andy, I am pleased to announce that we published our inaugural sustainability report this morning. This report highlights our many ESG initiatives, including our expanded solar, diversity and inclusion, and community engagement programs. The report is available on the sustainability page of our investor relations website. So with that, I will hand it over to Andy to provide further details on the quarter and revisions to our guidance.