SmartStop Self Storage REIT - Earnings Call - Q1 2025

Executive Summary

• SmartStop’s first quarter as a listed REIT showed resilient operations: total revenues were $65.45M, same-store revenue grew 3.2% YoY, and ending occupancy reached 93.0%.
• Non-GAAP profitability held firm: FFO, as adjusted per share and OP unit (diluted) was $0.41; management introduced inaugural FY25 guidance with FFO, as adjusted of $1.84–$1.92 per diluted share.
• Balance sheet and cost of capital improved post-IPO: $931M gross raised and $875.6M net proceeds used to redeem preferreds, reduce revolver, and repay acquisition facility; senior facility and 2032 notes flipped to unsecured with lower spreads.
• Versus Street: Q1 revenue beat consensus ($62.85M actual in S&P vs $54.50M est.; definitional differences vs 8-K total revenue), EPS slightly missed (-$0.309 vs -$0.295 est.), and FFO/share tracked in line at ~$0.41*.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Same-store metrics stabilized: revenue +3.2%, NOI +2.3%, average physical occupancy up 50 bps to 92.6%; ending occupancy 93.0% (+100 bps YoY).
• External growth momentum: acquired three properties in Q1 for ~$82.5M and added a Kelowna property post-quarter (~$28.3M USD), with nine assets/development sites under contract totaling ~$157.8M.
• Capital structure catalysts: NYSE listing (April 2), $875.6M net proceeds deployed, and Credit Facility/2032 notes moved fully unsecured, reducing spreads and unused fees; “a significant milestone” per CEO.

What Went Wrong

• GAAP profitability: net loss to common widened to $(8.41)M and EPS to $(0.35), reflecting higher interest expense and depreciation.
• Operating cost headwinds: same-store property operating expenses +5.2%, driven by property insurance, taxes, payroll, and repairs/maintenance, compressing same-store NOI growth.
• Street EPS miss: Primary EPS slightly below consensus (-$0.309 vs -$0.295 est.) despite revenue beat; highlights ongoing rate/expense pressures in the quarter*.

Transcript

Speaker 4

Thank you for standing by. My name is Celine, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the SmartStop Self Storage REIT First Quarter 2025 Earnings Webcast. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to David Corak, Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance and Strategy. Please go ahead.

Speaker 0

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 or implied in 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 were issued last night and are available for download on our website at investors.smartstopselfstorage.com. In addition to myself today, we have H. Michael Schwartz, Founder, Chairman, and CEO, as well as James Barry, our CFO. With that, I'll turn the call over to Michael.

Speaker 3

Thank you, David, and thank you for joining us today for our inaugural earnings call as a New York Stock Exchange-listed company. SmartStop has been a public REIT since 2014, and we're thrilled to now be part of the listed REIT community. Before we dive into high-level remarks, I'll highlight a few items related to our first quarter results. We posted a strong first quarter with our same-store revenue growth of 3.2% and a year-over-year growth of 2.3% and ending occupancy 93%. Our FFO as adjusted per share was $0.41, up one cent year over year. As this is our first earnings call, I'll start with some introductory remarks about SmartStop, and then we'll walk through our industry views, outlook, as well as a deeper dive into our first quarter performance. After that, we'll open it up to Q&A with James, David, and myself.

As many of you know, we filed our initial registration statement in April 2022. Almost three years later, on April 2, 2025, we listed on the New York Stock Exchange and began trading, a milestone accomplishment for the SmartStop team. To that end, we'd like to thank our employees, our board, the independent broker-dealer community, and our retail investors who have helped us build this company into a remarkable platform that it is today. We'd also like to welcome our institutional investors and thank them for their support thus far as a listed REIT. We look forward to a great partnership for our next chapter as a publicly traded company. Now, let's talk about SmartStop. We're headquartered in Ladera Ranch, California. We have more than 590 employees. We have a highly aligned and experienced management team. We're the 10th largest storage owner in the U.S.

and the 5th largest in Canada. Our portfolio spans more than 17.5 million sq ft, 23 states, the District of Columbia, and four Canadian provinces. Approximately two-thirds of our portfolio is located in top 25 U.S. MSAs or Canadian CMAs. Some of our largest markets include Toronto, Miami, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Houston. We also have a healthy mix of smaller markets like Asheville and Dayton. In the GTA, we're the single largest operator with 23 assets either on balance sheet or in our joint venture with SmartSenters, and we manage another 13 assets in that market for a total of 36 owned and managed in the GTA, representing 3.3 million sq ft. Now, let's talk about what makes SmartStop Self Storage the smarter way to store. Our technology-driven platform is the backbone of our company. Our platform competes at the highest levels in both the U.S. and Canada.

have invested an outsized amount of capital in our proprietary technology all across the organization, including acquisitions, digital marketing, our call center, and revenue management. This investment can be seen in our results. We posted sector-leading average same-store NOI growth over the past five years greater than 9%. Our platform also helps us with the external growth equation, as we are able to bring under-managed assets onto our robust platform, increasing our going-in yields. This is true in the U.S., but especially true in Canada. The sizable technology and human capital investments give us a platform that is highly scalable and allow us to achieve economies of scale from growth in our property count. Another differentiated aspect of our business model is our managed REIT business, which we view as our joint venture with retail shareholders.

This generates accretive fees in the near term and helps us realize efficiencies that can improve our operating margin. In addition, it serves as a potential captive future pipeline for growth. Speaking of growth, SmartStop has a track record of disciplined external growth, over $2.5 billion of acquisitions since 2016. Today, we're excited about the opportunity for external growth as sellers have become more constructive and attractive opportunities are coming to market. We believe the external growth story is coming back for our sector, and we're finding select opportunities to acquire accretively. In September of last year, we began to execute on our acquisition pipeline and have since acquired a portfolio of 10 properties in the U.S. and Canada, totaling nearly $275 million and over 800,000 net rentable sq ft. Lastly, our balance sheet is stronger than ever. Even pre-IPO, we maintained a triple B-minus investment-grade rating with Kroll.

With the IPO proceeds, we were able to reduce our leverage as measured by net debt to EBITDA to under five times, with ample dry powder to strategically grow. Additionally, the IPO has helped us to reduce our cost of capital. To summarize, SmartStop is a technology-driven self-storage REIT with a high-quality, diversified North American portfolio. Our portfolio, our platform, our management team, and our balance sheet are poised for FFO growth through the following: organic growth in same-store, non-same-store, and joint venture pools; external growth in an improving acquisition environment; growth in the managed REIT business; and growth utilizing our low-leverage balance sheet and reduced cost of capital. We feel SmartStop is well-positioned to succeed not only in this environment, but in a multitude of broader economic environments. It's important to remember that since 2015, the U.S.

storage sector has experienced the largest amount of new supply in its history, with nearly 40% supply growth in the top 50 U.S. markets. COVID-errant demand helped to absorb the supply, and the absorption has proven out to be temporary. We believe that the deceleration of fundamentals over the past three years has primarily been driven by this cumulative wave of supply in concert with fluctuations in demand over the last two years. Now, the good news is that the supply picture is improving with every day that goes by, and demand appears to be rebounding despite a muted single-family home market. In the fourth quarter of last year, we publicly called the bottom in the U.S. self-storage fundamentals, and the sector has been proving that out since. For the first time since spring of 2022, moving rates are stabilizing and occupancies are in line or better than historical averages.

Our customers' health remains strong, and to date, we've seen little to no impact from recent economic volatility. Reservations are up, website visits are up, and online rentals are up significantly. Delinquencies remain at normalized levels, and ECRIs remain healthy without change in attrition. To that end, I'm really just referencing the U.S. Canada is experiencing an entirely different dynamic, with less supply per capita, lower institutional competition, strong demographic growth, and slightly different demand drivers than the U.S. GTA has been an outperformer versus the U.S., and that trend continues in 2025. In the first quarter, our Toronto portfolio posted 7% same-store revenue growth on a constant currency basis, with an ending occupancy of 93%.

With an improving supply picture, a steady demand picture, and easier comps, we believe 2025 will be incrementally better than 2024, but not as strong as a more normalized year in storage. Likewise, we believe we will see a more normalized rental season as compared to the past two years, but again, still not quite a typical rental season. Overall, we're entering the rental season from a position of strength. The first time we've been able to say that in almost three years. Now, let me turn it over to James Barry.

Speaker 6

Thank you, Michael. I'll remind everyone that the first quarter was our last full quarter of being a non-traded REIT. The impacts from our April IPO are not reflected in the financial results or balance sheet. Starting with our operating performance, we are pleased to report that our same-store pool posted year-over-year revenue growth of 3.2%, with property operating expense growth of 5.2%, leading to NOI growth of 2.3%. The FX impact from our 13 Canadian assets within our same-store pool was a headwind of approximately 70 basis points to our overall same-store results, as we posted constant currency revenue growth of 3.9%, with expense growth of 5.9% and NOI growth of 3.0%. Revenue growth was slightly better than our expectations as occupancy ticked up in February and March, while rates remained solid.

On the property operating expense side, property taxes were up 6.8%, property insurance was up 17.9%, marketing expenses were up 1.2%, in addition to seasonal increases in repairs and maintenance and utilities. The result of all of this was that same-store property operating expenses increased by 5.2%. This combination led to a better-than-expected NOI growth for the first quarter of 2025. Our same-store pool ended the quarter at 93% occupancy, up 100 basis points year-over-year, with move-ins up 14% and move-outs only up 4.1% year-over-year. Our web rates were down about 5% year-over-year, while our achieved move-in rates were down 6.8% on average for the first quarter, as the stabilization of the REIT environment continues.

Sequentially, we saw healthy growth in revenues over the fourth quarter, driven by pickups in occupancy and in-place rate, with our occupancy gap over last year expanding throughout the quarter to 100 basis points at quarter end. These trends continued into April, with occupancy ending at 93.1%, also a 100 basis point increase year-over-year, with move-in rates down high single digits as our systems continue to balance occupancy with rate as we enter this busy season. On the external growth front, we acquired three properties for $82.5 million during the quarter. In addition, subsequent to quarter end, we acquired one property in Canada for approximately $28 million USD. With these four properties acquired year-to-date, we have added approximately $243 million on balance sheet since September 30 and $111 million thus far in 2025.

Additionally, we are under contract to acquire seven assets for $150 million, of which we expect six to go on SmartStop's balance sheet for a total of $121 million. These assets, along with the properties acquired to date, are primarily Class A assets located in top 25 MSAs, with going-in yields in the mid-5% range, with management upside remaining. Further, the properties are primarily in markets in which we already operate, adding to our overall clustering strategy. Turning to the managed REIT platform, our three managed REIT funds, inclusive of 1031 eligible DST programs, increased AUM by $125 million during the quarter, with AUM ending at nearly $900 million. We recognized fees during the quarter of $3.9 million, and the managed REITs acquired seven properties during the quarter, most of which can be characterized as non-stabilized.

In addition, one of the managed REITs delivered a development in Canada subsequent to quarter end. The managed REITs have a combined portfolio of 43 operating properties and approximately 3.8 million rentable sq ft as of quarter end. The result of all of this is that for the first quarter of 2025, we posted fully diluted FFO as adjusted per share and unit of $0.41. Turning to the rest of 2025, last night, we issued our inaugural guidance for the full year. We are expecting same-store revenue growth in the 1.5%-3.5% range, with NOI growth of 0%-2.2%. These ranges assume no significant recovery of the housing market and reflect our strong occupancy levels and stabilizing rates balanced against the broader economic environment.

We are expecting managed REIT EBITDA between $10.75-$11.25 million, which reflects moderate growth in the AUM of our three funds as compared to 2021 levels. We are also expecting FFO as adjusted per share and unit of $1.84-$1.92 for the full year 2025. This guidance range reflects the improving storage operating market balanced with recent broad macro volatility, which does extend to the operating environment as well as interest rates and the fundraising environment within our managed REIT business. Lastly, turning to the balance sheet, during the quarter, we defeased our KeyBank Florida CMBS loan, which carried a balance of approximately $49.9 million as of year-end. At the end of the first quarter, our capital stack was composed of $1.4 billion of debt and a $200 million Series A preferred. Net debt to EBITDA for the first quarter ended at approximately 9.2 times.

In early April, in connection with our IPO, we raised $931 million of gross proceeds. After transaction costs and fees, we paid down a $175 million term loan, redeemed in full our $200 million Series A preferred, and paid down our revolver by $472 million. We've included a pro forma capitalization table to reflect the uses of proceeds from our IPO in our financial supplement, which was published yesterday. Also, subsequent to quarter end, we flipped our senior credit facility and 2032 private placement notes to fully unsecured, in addition to rightsizing the aggregate commitments on our revolver to $600 million. With the flip to unsecured and the step down in leverage, our overall costs on a revolver stepped down by 65 basis points.

Our pro forma net debt to EBITDA, reflective of the post-IPO basis, accounting for our portion of JV debt, is about 4.8 times on first quarter numbers. This improved balance sheet positions SmartStop for growth that we believe will thrive in a multitude of economic environments. With that, we will open it up to questions.

Speaker 4

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, simply press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star one again. If you are called upon to ask your question and are listening via loudspeaker on your device, please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute when you're asking your question. Your first question comes from the line of Juan Sanabria with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Hi. Thanks for the time. Congrats on the successful IPO. Just wanted to start with the managed REITs have AUM guidance of growth of $950 million to just over $1 billion. Just if you could comment on kind of how that market's performing, the equity raising market, and your visibility into those assumptions.

Speaker 0

Yes, I'll do that. Thank you. We continue to raise money in the managed REIT platform. As we all know, we're here today because of that relationship with the independent broker-dealer channel. Both our managed REITs and our 1031 DST programs are structured to pull from several different pools of capital within the independent broker-dealer channel, from a perpetual REIT to lifecycle REIT to the 1031 exchange Delaware Statutory Trust. As you noted, we're currently at approximately about $900 million of assets under management across these programs, and we do see some opportunity to grow this AUM. Our guidance is on average AUM of $950 million to about $1.50 billion, which is very achievable based on our 20-plus year track record in that community. Now, again, we are balancing a few things here with respect to our guidance. Obviously, macro volatility and any implications on fundraising.

In addition, if there's any capital recycle event with respect to, I think that's more of a 2026 event. In addition, I'd like to just emphasize that there is obviously a lot of competition. There's product competition, or I'd like to say product pollution. You have from perpetual REITs, lifecycle REITs, interval funds, credit funds, 1031 exchange, BDCs, and preferreds. The market and these advisors and their shareholders obviously have a lot more aggregate choices today, so it makes it a little bit more competitive. Now, we had about $4 million in revenues in the first quarter. In addition to this, the AUM tends to be more growth-oriented.

We'd like to emphasize that our property management and tenant protection revenues are set to grow organically, usually at an outsized pace versus the traditional same-store, because as many of you recognize, we put high-quality properties that would have been ultimately dilutive to SmartStop Self Storage REIT. We put those in our non-traded or our managed REIT platform so they can incubate and stabilize over time.

Speaker 6

Great. If you could just give us an update on how April finished up in terms of occupancy, achieved rates for new customers, and maybe in-place rates. Within that, could you just give us a sense of ECRI's contribution to achieved rates? If that should continue to kind of help boost same-store revenue as we go through the year, or that benefit will wane as we go?

Speaker 0

Hey, Juan. Thanks. It's Corak. April ended the month with occupancy at 93.1%. That's, again, up about 100 basis points year-over-year. Sitting here a week into May, we picked up another 10 basis points, so we're sitting here today at 93.2%. Web rates were down 2% year-over-year in April. April move-in rents were down 9% year-over-year, but that was up sequentially 4.5% over March and up 11% over February. That's actually a little bit better sequential cadence than 2024. To give a little bit of context there, I'll take you back to spring of last year. We pushed really hard on rates in April of 2024, thinking that we were going to see some incremental demand as we were entering the rental season. We did not, and we pulled back that lever a little bit as we entered May. There was a big pop in April.

We pulled that back in May. That's an example of our move-in rates and our web rates being very dynamic. As you know, our systems are making millions of decisions on a regular basis. As you heard from some of the peers, April was a quite choppy month. Sitting here on May 8th, our move-in rates are up sequentially 9% from April, and they are actually up 2% year-over-year. Lastly, I'll just note that the promotional utilization is down about 30%. I'm sorry, is it about 30% right now? That's down 1,300 basis points on a year-over-year basis. We are using that lever a little bit less. Look, we're pretty happy with where we're positioned going into rental season on both the rate and the occupancy side. Being at 93% gives us the optionality, right, to potentially capture more rate as we go through the rental season.

To your question on the ECRI front, I would note that there's no real change in that strategy on a year-over-year basis. We're still in the same cadence. We're still in the same magnitude. No real change in the attribution from the ECRIs at this point.

Speaker 6

Thank you very much.

Speaker 4

Your next question comes from the line of Todd Thomas with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Speaker 0

Hi. Thanks. Good afternoon, everybody. First question, for the acquisitions under contract, are you able to share any additional information around where they're located, what markets they're in? Stepping back and just thinking about investments more broadly, you mentioned the clustering strategy. As we think about future investments, should we assume acquisitions are in existing markets, or are you open to expanding in new markets in the near term?

Speaker 6

Yeah, Todd, this is James. I'll jump in there. As we mentioned in our opening remarks, we expect to close six properties for $121 million. To give you a little more color on that, it's primarily a Houston portfolio. Five of those assets are in Houston, as well as another property in the Denver metro. Again, adding to those overall clusters is still a very key part of our story, both in the U.S. and in Canada.

Speaker 0

Okay. We should assume going forward that you'll continue to focus on clustering, or are there other markets, new markets, that you're eyeing for growth? There's no question, Todd, this is Michael, that there are other markets that we do believe we should be in, markets that probably were overheated a couple of years ago. They're probably softened up, the bottom are bottoming. We like that positioning with respect to some of these aggregate new markets. There's no question that with our existing portfolio, there's a lot of value in the clustering, so that we can kind of tighten up our spread. As we've talked about, our spread's been about 500 basis points lower than the peers. In markets where we have 10 properties or more, we're 300 basis points higher.

If you just look at Toronto, Toronto, our margin's 71+% already because of the clustering that we have. I will also emphasize that clustering happens and occurs whether it's on balance sheet, right? It happens if we raise money through our and deploy capital through our managed REIT, but it's also through other areas that we have been discussing with you. Right now, SmartStop is not in the third-party management business, but it is something that we're exploring and we're looking at. Obviously, if we go down that path, any type of additional assets through that platform would also enable us to increase our margins. Okay. That's helpful. My other question in the guidance for the non-same-store NOI, I think this quarter, the non-same-store NOI annualizes to around $13.5 million.

There's a little bit of an adjustment, I guess, to make related to the timing of the first quarter acquisitions. But the guide is $15-$15.6 million. That implies a fairly healthy improvement. A couple of things, I guess. One, is that guidance for wholly owned assets only, or does that include the unconsolidated JV properties? And then second, what's driving that increase? Is there anything specific that you would point to, or is it simply yield upside from another leasing cycle? Yeah, I'd say a couple of things, Todd, as Corak. One, as we pointed out, is there were three properties that were purchased during the quarter, and we gave a reconciliation of what that NOI growth could look like on an annualized basis in the NAV breakout. I would also note that some of that is just the seasonality, right?

We bought several properties in the fourth quarter, and we bought several properties in the first quarter. If you just take the first quarter and annualize that, you're recognizing kind of the seasonally worst quarter of the year. I think there's a little bit of both in that. That is just wholly owned, Todd? Okay. Great. Thank you. Operator, can we go to the next question?

Speaker 4

Your next question comes from the line of Daniel Triaco with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Thank you. Appreciate the April and May commentary. I guess in relation to Dave's comments, curious if the move-up in occupancy is strategic out of more macro or economic uncertainty, or is May at the plus 2% a signal the pricing model is shifting to rate over occupancy and maybe an indicator of improving demand, or is it just more of a function of comps versus last year?

Speaker 0

Yeah, it's a little bit of strategy, Dan. We're moving into rental season here, sitting at 93.2% occupancy. That gives us optionality in certain markets and in certain properties to be able to push rate, right, and maybe sacrifice a little bit of occupancy. I'm not going to sit here and say that it's a massive shift in the strategy, but the optionality on a property-by-property on a micro market basis is a really nice thing to have, and it's, quite frankly, something we haven't had in a few years.

Speaker 5

I appreciate that. Following up on growing the portfolio and generating scale in your markets, maybe Denver as an example, what's the magnitude of margin benefit you're expecting this year from the clustering efforts? Also related to that, what's the opportunity set look like for taking on a third-party management platform and how that would possibly expedite that margin upside?

Speaker 6

Yeah, I'll speak to the margin opportunity with that clustering. As Michael alluded to earlier, in those markets where we have, call it, 10 or more properties where we feel we have those economies of scale, our margins tend to be about 300 basis points higher. I think in speaking to Denver specifically, I think there's more opportunity to continue to drive that first 300 basis points as we get that market up to that 10-property mark. If you think about where that comes from, it's just being more efficient within the local MSA on our advertising spend and better efficiencies from a payroll perspective. That is where we really see that margin opportunity, at least that first 300 basis points.

Speaker 4

Your next question comes from the line of Keibun Kim with Houston. Please go ahead.

Speaker 3

Thank you. Good morning and congratulations on your IPO. On the move-in rates, can you give an update for Toronto where it was for the quarter and how it trended in April, please?

Speaker 0

Hey, Kim. I'll give some numbers on the move-in rates in Toronto specifically, and then maybe we'll have Michael talk about kind of the operating environment in Toronto in a little bit more context. In the first quarter, move-in rates in Toronto, and this is on a comps and currency basis, were down about 3%. In April, they were down comparable to the U.S. at about 9%. We're seeing sort of the same thing in May, where we're up a little bit year-over-year. I would just add that, as we said in the outset, our Canadian portfolio has been an outperformer for us on a comps and currency basis with revenues up 7% in that first quarter. If you look at our JVs that would meet our definition of same-store, they actually did even better.

Sitting at a very solid 93.2% occupancy, I think puts us in a great position as we go through the busy season. Overall demand in Canada and specifically, let's say, Toronto remains strong, and our platform continues to capture kind of an outsized amount of this demand. We have not seen any weaknesses from the changes in the immigration policy or the macro environment, which are questions that we tend to get. Vacates are down 2% in the first quarter and actually less than the U.S. Overall, we feel pretty comfortable and confident going into the busy season from our Canadian portfolio.

Speaker 3

Is it the same dynamic where you pushed rate maybe a little too hard last year so the comps get easier and you think Toronto will be positive for the rest of the year? Following up to that, what's implied at the midpoint of your guidance for just overall street rates for the portfolio? Not street rates, moving rates for the rest of the year.

Speaker 0

Yeah. When you think about Toronto, we did enact a very similar strategy last year where we pushed rates pretty hard in April and then pulled them back in the last few days of the month and into May. When you look at May, right, it is pretty reflective of what I said earlier in the up just slightly in May. When you think about our guide this year, as we give our guidance, we are going to try to just stick to guiding to revenue dollars, right, rather than the individual pieces. I will say that as you look at the move-in rate comps and you look at the web rate comps, they do get a little bit easier as you go through the summer months and into the rental season. Look, this is a function of us really, things change pretty rapidly.

If we gave you the individual pieces, we'd probably just change them over the course of the year. We just want to stay a little bit away from that. As you know, there will be a healthy attribution from occupancy. As you saw in the first quarter, it may not stay at 100 basis points for the whole year, but for the first time in a few years, it's actually a tailwind. Like I said earlier, we like where we're sitting with occupancy over 93%, but it gives us the optionality to potentially capture more rate as we go into rental season.

Speaker 3

Okay. Thank you.

Speaker 0

Thanks, Kim.

Speaker 4

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Mueller with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Yeah, hi. Just one. I guess for the managed REIT versus SmartStop, the managed REITs will certainly look at unstabilized acquisitions. How close do you think you could move toward non-stabilized acquisitions with SMA? I mean, what's the rule of thumb for the dividing line between the two buckets?

Speaker 3

Great question. The fundamental guideline would be probably we would want to accept no more dilution than about 5% of our FFO. If you step back, we built this company being a total return self-storage operator by doing developments, redevelopments, certificate of occupancy, mid-lease-up, highly occupied, under-managed, and stabilized assets. We are not adverse to putting these high-quality lease-up type of properties or even developments within SmartStop. Being a new publicly traded company and our sensitivity to FFO growth, we need to grow the overall size of the company. As we do that, we can start to slowly layer in that growth component. I have got a track record of that. I want to do that, but I also have to deliver on a quarterly basis.

I think that the ultimate question is, when will we be able to do that? Obviously, you can see that we have a very solid acquisition pipeline. I think we feel very comfortable with our guide this year on acquisitions, but I think it could take probably about 24 months of additional acquisitions and growth thereof to start to seed our portfolio with a little bit more growth.

Speaker 0

Yeah. Michael, just to chime in in terms of our guidance and the properties under contract that we've disclosed, to differentiate, as a good example of what Michael's talking about, the three assets that are not going into SmartStop, two of them are development pieces of land in Canada, and another is an early lease-up property that's below 30% occupancy, right? Clearly, those would be dilutive in the near term to SmartStop. That just kind of demonstrates the point we were making.

Speaker 1

Got it. Okay. Thank you.

Speaker 4

Your next question comes from the line of Wes Goladay with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Speaker 3

Hi everyone. You had that comment that things were starting to normalize. Was that mainly a U.S. comment, or does that apply to Toronto as well?

Speaker 0

It was. Toronto is a little bit of a different animal, right? It has slightly different demand drivers, and Michael will elaborate on those in a second. In general, the trends that we have seen in the U.S., when you look at almost every metric that we track that we talk about with you guys, everything's just a little bit better in Toronto, right? The rental environment's a little bit better, the move-out environment's a little bit better, the rate environment's a little bit better. You do not have the same volatility that we've seen in the United States over the past three years here.

Speaker 3

Yeah. Let me just jump in there. One of the things that I think we need to step back and just really understand is kind of where demand comes from with respect to Canada. As we know, the beauty of self-storage is the diversity of the demand drivers and the resiliency of those demand drivers. We recognize it's not recession-proof, but it has a lot of recession-resistant traits. In the U.S., it's about mobility. It's always been about mobility. It's about people in transition. In Canada, the demand is more structurally rooted in space constraints, urban densification, immigration patterns, and lifestyle needs.

It is important to understand that while many core demand drivers for self-storage exist on both sides of the border—urbanization, downsizing, life transitions—the relative weight and nature of those drivers differ significantly between Canada and the U.S., and that is largely due to cultural and structural factors, especially around housing mobility. Unlike the U.S., where people tend to move very frequently because of jobs, cost of living, or lifestyle changes, Canadians historically move less often. This is kind of rooted in a more conservative cultural attitude towards homeownership and stability. We talk about a less transient workforce and a more regulated housing and rental market in major Canadian cities. This results in housing mobility not being a primary driver of self-storage demand in Canada. Instead, we see demand from life stages, divorce, debt, downsizing, and seasonal needs.

Most of Canada still has four seasons. In addition, urban constraints. When you take a look at the urban centers of Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal, they have small living places. They have higher housing costs, and there's a significant amount of densification aggregate overall policies. This has created a significant storage shortfall for urban dwellers, and people aren't moving, but they're living in smaller spaces, especially condos that lack basements, garages, or outdoor sheds. In addition, obviously, immigration and population growth has been a big benefit for Canada. Finally, self-storage in Canada also benefits from the recreational aspect of skis, canoes, camping gear, and in addition, small businesses and e-commerce needs for affordable inventory and document storage. Many of you know about the industrial space in Canada.

It's expensive, it's tight, and storage tends to be kind of that utilization at an affordable price for startup businesses.

Speaker 4

Your next question comes from the line of Keibun Kim with Truist. Please go ahead.

Speaker 3

Thanks for bringing me back. Michael, if you had double the technology or G&A budget, what are some areas of your technology stack or the way you price things that could improve over time? Yeah. It's a great question. First, let me emphasize that when COVID hit and we started to see that demand in storage, one of the things that SmartStop did, it didn't run around high-fiving each other. What we did is we looked inward and said, "Where do we need to improve?" Because once things change and settle down, we want to make sure that we're positioned to be successful. Over the last couple of years, we updated our operating system, our CRM system, call center. More importantly, we've spent a lot of time on our data warehouse.

We have talked to you about this with respect to our outside data scientists that have helped us construct a data warehouse that now is making, in our small portfolio, a million pricing changes on a monthly basis. To address your question, it is all about artificial intelligence. We have already taken a full look at every aspect of our operations. We have identified approximately 47 areas that we could see some improvement from artificial intelligence. After that review, it has been whittled down to about 37. Some of those have some crossover. From that overall area, there are some that we probably would not do because other people are doing it. Right now, we are putting together our AI strategy. It is going to take into account, one, some off-the-shelf capabilities, let us say like Salesforce that already has artificial intelligence built in, and to be disciplined in cost.

When it comes to our data warehouse, we are already starting the process to implement artificial intelligence over our data warehouse so that we can now just have effectively machine learning and machine decisions. I think that's the next wave for us is trying to be very specific and strategic with respect to our artificial intelligence investments and how we can get the most out of those dollars. Thanks for that helpful color.

Speaker 0

Thanks, KeyBean.

Speaker 4

That concludes our question and answer session. I will now turn the conference back over to H. Michael Schwartz, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of SmartStop Self Storage REIT for closing remarks.

Speaker 3

I want to thank you all for your time today, and we look forward to seeing you all at the upcoming conferences. Make it a great day. Thank you.

Speaker 4

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.