SmartStop Self Storage REIT, Inc.

Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to SmartStop Self Storage's second quarter 2026 earnings call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. I will now hand the conference over to David Corak, Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance and Strategy. David, please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that certain statements made during today's call, including statements about our future plans, prospects, and expectations, may be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties as described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. and these risks could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by our comments. Forward-looking statements in our earnings release that we issued last night along with the comments on this call are made only as of today. The company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. In addition, we will also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Information regarding our use of these measures and a reconciliation of these measures to GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release and supplemental disclosure that we issued last night and are available for download on our website at investors.smartstopsellstorage.com. In addition to myself, today we have H. Michael Schwartz, founder, chairman, and CEO, as well as James Barry, our CFO. Now, I'll turn it over to Michael.

Thank you, David. Thank you for joining us today for our second quarter earnings call. Smart Stop Self Storage had a strong quarter of results. and we further reinforce our vision by communicating our long-term strategy for shareholder value creation with the announcement of our DECA initiative in July. Let me first touch on our results for the second quarter. We posted strong same-store revenue growth of 1.3%, an operating expense decrease of 3.4% and an NOI growth of a positive 3.7% and maintained average occupancy of 92.5%. Operationally, 10 of our top 15 markets posted positive same-store NOI growth. Our strong focus on expense control led to 150 basis point year-over-year growth in our same-store operating margin. This is our second quarter in a row of improved margins. This operational performance coupled with overall efficiencies resulted in reported FFO as adjusted per share of 49 cents. up 17.6% year over year. With these results and better than expected momentum into the second half of the year, we raised the midpoint of our same store revenue and same store NOI guidance as well as our FFO is adjusted per share guidance. In July, we introduced the DECA initiative, which is our multi-year strategic framework that guides our decision making as a management team. The DECA initiative stands for disciplined execution, compounding appreciation through six defined pillars for outsized long-term value creation. This value creation is driven by relative outperformance, margin expansion, and outsized FFO as adjusted per share growth. This is the true goal of our DECA initiative. I communicated a $10 billion capitalization level. which will be the output of executing in a disciplined fashion on those goals. And that level is also the size that we think SmartSops platform can begin to recognize its full potential. Our results and activity this quarter are a perfect reflection of this initiative. Strong same store results driven by our revenue management platform, talented operations, and store level teams, growing efficiencies as we scale, and Deliberate Expense Control. Same store operating margins of 67.3% up 150 basis points year over year. NOI growth of 9.4% in our Canadian joint venture properties year over year. 14% growth of the reoccurring revenue stream for our managed REIT platform the acquisition of a three-property portfolio of high-quality self-storage properties at a high 5% cap rate, the deployment of approximately $16.3 million of bridge capital at a double-digit yield, an organic reduction to our cash flow leverage to 6.2 times, and finally, sector-leading FFO as adjusted per share growth of 17.6% year-over-year. Sitting here, 16 months later, Post-IPO, we are encouraged by the sector's momentum and our successful execution of the plans we laid out at the IPO. We are excited to articulate and communicate the DECA initiative with all of you, and while the pillars we outlined were on display in the second quarter, we've just begun to scratch the surface of this company's full potential. As I wrote in the letter, the DECA initiative is the future. The foundation is laid, progress has been made, and the work is underway. Now I'm going to turn it over to James.