Greetings, and welcome to the National Storage Affiliates Second Quarter 2021 Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now pleasure to introduce your host, George Hoglund, Vice President of Investor Relations for National Storage Affiliates. Thank you. Mr. Hoglund, you may begin.

We'd like to thank you for joining us today for the second quarter 2021 earnings conference call of National Storage Affiliates Trust. On the line with me here today are NSA's CEO, Tamara Fischer, COO, Dave Cramer, and CFO, Brandon Togashi. Following prepared remarks, management will accept questions from registered financial analysts. In addition to the press release distributed yesterday, we furnished our supplemental package with additional detail on our results, which may be found in the investor relations section on our website at nationalstorageaffiliates.com. On today's call management's prepared remarks and answers to your questions. They contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties and represent management's estimates as of today, August 4, 2021. The Company assumes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements because of changing market conditions or other circumstances after the date of this conference call. The Company cautions that actual results may differ materially from those projected in any forward-looking statement. For additional detail concerning the forward-looking statements, please refer to our public filings with the SEC. We also encourage listeners to review the definitions and reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures, such as FFO, core FFO, and net operating income contained in the supplemental information package available in the Investor Relations section on our website and in our SEC filings. I will now turn the call over to Tammy.

Thanks, George. And thanks everyone for joining our call today. Before diving into our Q2 results and our revised full year 2021 guidance, I'd like to acknowledge and thank the entire NSA team, including our members and their teams for the dedication and effort that allowed us to deliver such exceptional second quarter results. I'd also like to thank our shareholders for their ongoing support which allowed us to complete a very successful upsize equity raise a few weeks ago. The results we announced yesterday, including growth in same store NOI of 21.5% and growth in core FFO per share of just over 34% are consistent with the flash numbers we provided in conjunction with our recent equity offering. Healthy fundamentals and an active transactional environment, which led to a strong first quarter really kicked into high gear during the second quarter. And these positive trends continue into the third quarter. We're at record high levels of occupancy, street rate growth is dynamic, and to top it off, we're seeing unprecedented volume of assets come to market. On the acquisition front, we've been very busy this year, and we expect the pace of deals coming to market to remain elevated in the second half. During the second quarter, we invested $270 million in 20 properties, bringing first half volume to 43 properties valued at $435 million. Year-to-date, we've closed or have under contract 100 plus properties valued at nearly $900 million. Cap rates on these deals ranged from about 5% to 7% and vary based on location sources – the deal whether it was marketed off-market or from our captive pipeline. If there's a portfolio premium or some element of lease-up involved. The weighted average cap rate on all of our transactions closed and under contract is in the mid-to-high 5 cap range. We continue to see meaningful competition for transactions and the amount of capital seeking to establish or expand a position in self-storage continues to drive cap rate compression, especially on larger portfolios. Fortunately, though, about two-thirds of our deals closed under contract this year have been off-market or from our captive pipeline, where we tend to buy at cap rates slightly above market. Our exceptional second quarter results and our outlook for the remainder of the year give us confidence to increase guidance on key metrics, including year-over-year growth in same store NOI of 16%, growth in core FFO per share of 24%, and increased expectations for acquisition volume to over $1 billion. Brandon will provide more color on the revised guidance in his comments. In summary, and it probably goes without saying, it's a great time to be in self-storage. We continue to benefit from our commitment to secondary and tertiary markets, as well as our differentiated structure, which we are able to leverage to drive results and take advantage of the robust transaction volume that we're seeing this year. I'll now turn over the call to Dave to provide color on what we're seeing on the ground. Dave?

Thanks, Tammy. Since the start of the year, we've seen improvement in almost all key metrics. In my 20 plus years in the self-storage business, I've never seen fundamentals quite this strong. Occupancy levels continue to reach new highs, with a lot of room to implement significant increases in our street rates, which ended in July about 28% over the previous year. We continue to be very assertive with rent increases to in-place tenants, which are averaging high single-to-low double-digits. Now, we all know that 2021 comparisons to 2020 are distorted, so I want to provide some additional color. Last year, our street rates at the lowest point declined only about 6%. For the current year, an increase of 28% at the end of July would imply about a 20% street rate growth since 2019. We ended the second quarter with record occupancy of 96.7%, which further increased to 96.9% at the end of July. Based on the current strength we're seeing, it appears that occupancy will remain elevated relative to last year, but the next few months will give us a clearer picture. Our guidance assumes a seasonal decline of 200 basis points to 250 basis points in the back half of the year. We do want to reiterate that we manage to optimize total revenues and not just occupancy. We remain impressed by the strength and sustainability of consumer demand. As we've discussed in our past couple of calls, consumer demand for storage is driven by changes in this current environment that include job transitions, a strong housing transition, lifestyle changes like adding a home gym or home office—all of these which we believe will continue. Turning to new supply, we've yet to see a meaningful shift in development activity in any of our markets. However, we are hearing more developers looking for projects given how strong the fundamentals are. We do expect to see development activity pick up. The construction and land costs have risen meaningfully, and the entitlement and permitting process will remain slow and very cumbersome. We expect to continue to face headwinds from new supply in Portland, Phoenix, and in certain submarkets of Dallas, Atlanta, and West Florida. Currently, approximately 29% of our portfolio has a new competitor in the three-mile radius, and approximately 48% within the five-mile radius. These figures are flat and slightly down from year-end 2020, and currently robust demand is mitigating the negative impacts from supply in these markets. I'll now turn the call over to Brandon to discuss financial results and balance sheet activity. Brandon?

Thank you, Dave. Yesterday afternoon, we reported core FFO per share of $0.55 for the second quarter of 2021, which represents an increase of 34% over the prior year period. Second quarter same store NOI increased by 21.5% over the prior year, driven by a 16.3% revenue increase, combined with a 4.3% increase in property operating expenses. Same store occupancy averaged 95.4% during the quarter, an increase of 760 basis points compared to 2020. While this is the highest growth for same-store revenue in NOI, as well as core FFO per share that we've ever recorded during our six-year history as a public company, I think it's appropriate to look at average growth across the last two years to remove the noise from the impact of a pandemic. Our 2Q the two-year average same-store revenue in NOI growth is 7.6% and 10.2%, respectively; the core FFO per share growth over those same two periods is 21%. All very impressive levels. Dave hit the highlights on operating trends, but I wanted to point out a few additional details regarding top-line revenue. Net debt remains below historical averages. The fee income has recovered from last year, but it still remains below historical norms. Regarding OpEx, same store growth accelerated in the second quarter to 4.3% due to the challenging year-over-year comparison, partially offset by an ongoing focus on cost control. Specifically, personnel costs increased 5.6% year-over-year, in part due to more normal store hours and staffing levels this past quarter versus the reduced levels we experienced last year. Additionally, repairs and maintenance grew 9.8% in the second quarter, partially due to the challenging comparison since we had pulled back on absolutely necessary expenses in the second quarter last year. Property taxes also increased by 1.4%. These increases were partially offset by utilities that declined by 3.6%, and marketing costs were down 6.4%. Clearly, with the elevated occupancy and strong demand we’re experiencing, there is a reduced need for marketing spend. Now moving on to guidance. As Tammy touched on earlier, the strong fundamentals and acquisition activity during the second quarter, combined with everything we're seeing so far in the third quarter, give us confidence that this positive momentum will carry throughout the second half of the year. While we previously highlighted the challenging second half comps, we're now viewing it as challenging given the strength we're seeing in occupancy and REIT growth. We're thus increasing full year 2021 guidance as follows: core FFO per share increases to a range of $2.11 to $2.14 or a 24% growth over prior year at the midpoint and an 11% increase from the prior guidance midpoint. For same store revenue growth of 11.75% to 12.75%, with the midpoint implying that the second half of the year should be just as strong as the first half. Overgrowth of 2.5% to 3.5% and NOI growth of 15% to 17%. Expected acquisition volume goes to a new range of $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion. Additional assumptions regarding guidance are outlined in the earnings release. Now turning to the balance sheet, we were active in the second quarter and subsequent quarter end on the capital front, utilizing our ATM to raise over $140 million of equity. We also accessed the private placement market to issue $180 million of notes. And of course, most recently, we completed a very successful follow-on equity offering of 10.1 million shares at $51.25 per share for net proceeds of approximately $500 million. We were very pleased with the execution of the transaction was upsized, and the green shoe was exercised in full. All of the proceeds from these capital raises were used to repay borrowings in our revolver and will fund our acquisition activity. Our balance sheet is well positioned with no maturities through 2022, a fully available $500 million revolver, and approximately $450 million of cash on hand at the end of July. Our leverage profile includes a net debt to EBITDA ratio of 5.4 times at the end of the second quarter. These recent transactions clearly demonstrate our commitment to maintaining a strong balance sheet with access to multiple sources of capital. Thanks again for joining our call today. Let's now turn it back to the operator to take your questions.

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now have our question-and-answer session. One moment please, while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from Neil Malkin with Capital One Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Hello, everyone. Good morning and fantastic quarter. Brandon, congratulations, I believe you recently had the birth of your daughter. So that's great. And congrats.

Thanks, Neil. I appreciate both fronts.

Sure. So Yes, first question. Can you talk about what your roll-up spreads were or the gap between move-ins and people who moved out in the quarter? And then kind of what trends are you seeing into July and in the third quarter, what do you expect for street rates and similarly that roll-up spread?

Yes, Neil. This is Brandon. Thanks again for the first comments. And by the way, we just wanted to say, I know some people had trouble getting into the call, maybe starting as early as 30 minutes ahead of time. So if you ran into that or anyone else, we apologize for some technical difficulties. On your question, we talked on our last call about the spread between moving rates for new customers relative to move-out rates decreasing such that it was near flat in Q1 and actually flipping positive for the second quarter that spread was about a 6% roll-up. Here through the early part of third quarter, that has only increased when we look at year-over-year. Very strong the quarter.

Yes, fantastic. Maybe just on the acquisition market, you talked about more things coming to market, as the month progresses higher and higher deal activity. Can you just talk about maybe some of the larger assets and portfolios? We've heard from a couple of brokers that there are a couple of billion-dollar portfolios or very large portfolios out there. Please comment on that. If those portfolios can be potentially split up or what the process looks like for you guys, just given your very, very low cost of capital?

Sure, I'll start and Dave can jump in. Neil, thanks for the question. I think it's probably safe to say that we see every portfolio of any size that comes to market. And we've heard the same as you that there are several in the billion-plus up to $2 billion value range coming. I can't really comment on it right now; the one thing I could say is that, to the extent these portfolios are in markets that we like that are a good geographic fit for us, we'd be keenly interested. In terms of how we might think about putting it together, we can probably do it on balance sheet if it's up to $1 billion; anything over that we might look for a joint venture partner to work with. But I think the safest thing to say here is that when a portfolio like that hits the market, we'll take a good hard look.

Okay, great. Well, that's all for me. Thank you. And again, great quarter.

Thanks, Neil.

Thanks, you. Our next question comes from Juan Sanabria with BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, good morning. Just hoping you could talk a little bit more about the cap rate environment. I think you talked about mid-to-high 5 for the transactions or the acquisitions to date. But just curious if that is a going-in yield or stabilized yield, and if it's a stabilized yield, what the going-in number is and kind of the path to get there.

Juan, this is Brandon. So the 5% that Tammy referred to—that's a year one going-in. So for us, that's NOI before our structure, there's a management fee percent of revenue management fee that is paid to the pros. So that's before that cost, but it's that NOI year-one over the total investment. Historically, we're acquiring stabilized assets. However, recently we've discussed an appetite should those deals arise. There are some assets here and there that we would consider non-stabilized that are going to be in that number, in that year-one going-in.

Very impressive, okay. And just on the cost side, just hoping to talk to a couple of line items, one being marketing, you guys were up year-over-year, despite kind of the record occupancy. So just curious on how we should think about that going forward. And second would be on personnel, we've seen some large declines from some of your peers, able to leverage the kind of rent now or your rental programs, or however you want to name them or call them. Just curious about how you guys are seeing that line amidst all the wage pressure and difficulty finding labor?

Yes, sure. Juan, it's Brandon again. So marketing costs, they were down, same-store costs were down year-over-year for the second quarter, just over 6%. Also in the first quarter, I believe that number was down year-over-year, about 4%. So year-to-date, six months, same-store marketing costs are down. I think that's more in line with maybe what you'd expect, given the strong occupancy and strong customer demand. Last call, I made the comment, if we don't need to spend the money, we're certainly not going to spend it. And that's the case with the marketing costs. On personnel, I think we're experiencing a lot of the same things as our peers; we cut hours and staffing quite a bit last year. So there's a comparison that I would point out for us; our actual dollar spend in the second quarter for the same store was actually down from Q1 sequentially. The increase year-over-year of 5.6% is really up against a tough comp from Q2 of last year. When you serve across the other companies, you have to consider anything they might have done with regard to hazard pay or when they really slashed their hours and how they managed their staffing. That's just a heads up. But going forward, I would say we're looking for the same efficiencies, and we’ve been over the last year, there have been a lot of lessons learned. We've proven we can run stores at lower hours than we realized we could pre-pandemic.

What I would add is as you look at going forward with payrolls, and these great numbers we're putting up, our employees have an incentive program. When you have revenue numbers that are off the charts like we have, some of those personnel costs you're seeing are one piece of it, but we’re proud of the results, and we’re proud to obviously pay the incentive programs. The hiring environment is very competitive and tough; we're looking at online rental and payment systems and ways to run our stores more efficiently. It's important to look at our store hours and headcount overall. We can run a little leaner or a little short-staffed without impacting our business. We're flexing team members around and probably using a little more overtime than we're historically used to, but we're managing the environment we're in. Our online leasing program is about mid-to-high 20s, on leasing online rentals across the portfolio. We continue to work on the customer journey and improving that platform; I'd like to see those numbers increase, which would lead to efficiencies around the call center and store personnel. We’ve learned many lessons and there's plenty of runway to improve.

Lastly, for the six months, same-store payroll and related costs were up 2%. We do expect that to be a little higher growth rate in the back half for the full year growth rate. I'd put it close to the high end of the total OpEx growth range that we gave of 2.5% to 3.5%.

Thanks very much. Great color.

Yes. Thank you, Juan.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Wes Golladay with Baird. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, everyone. When we looked at the back half of the year, what do you think is the biggest moving part for occupancy? Is it purely the decision to push rates, or items such as maybe students going back to school taking their stuff out of storage or other items?

That's a great question. I think first of all, we thought we did have a little college student activity in April. We had a significant gain in occupancy and saw some good rental velocities. As we looked at the back half of the year, we guided toward a 200 basis points to 250 basis point decline in occupancy by the end of the year; some of that's around what we felt was a little more seasonal pattern—college students are a little bit of the summer transition. We expect to see some of that towards August and September, as you mentioned, when you start pushing rates and implementing various increases that could influence movement. The positive is that right now, the rental velocities are super strong. As we're moving tenants out, they’re moving right back in. We're still sitting here at almost 97% occupancy, which should be the peak of the season. While we expect some decrement from here, we’re very pleased with the fundamentals; we don't see anything in the future that will disrupt these fundamentals significantly.

Great. And then, like you mentioned, you had about 48% of your portfolio has to apply within five miles, do you think this number will move lower as we go the next 12 months?

I certainly think it could; the new deliveries are slowing. We've been talking about that over the past few calls; deliveries are declining since 2019. The pressures from the pandemic in 2020 slowed the deliveries into 2021. We expect those deliveries now. There’s certainly a lot of interest in our product, but it's hard to buy metal; it's hard to buy wood right now, and it's hard to get planned. So you might see that number decline a little bit in the next 12 months.

Yes, I think the only thing I'd add to that, Dave, is that the secondary and tertiary markets we're focused on are less attractive to new developers. That may not always be true, but historically, the returns haven’t been there. The rents aren't as high and the risk isn't that much different. So at least historically, we've been somewhat protected from the new supply cycle.

Got it. I think in the prepared remarks, you mentioned seeing unprecedented amounts of assets coming to market. Can you maybe talk about how your conversations with potential sellers are going on right now? Are they eager to sell or transact ahead of potential tax changes?

I think with our potential sellers, we continue to have conversations with private operators who would be a good addition to our group of participating regional operators. However, potential changes in tax law don't seem to be moving the process along any faster. It's a big decision, and operators are deciding whether to sell or to stay in the business and continue to grow. Selling all of your assets and joining NSA is a very big decision, so I’d say it's not really changing the cadence of our discussions.

Great, thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Todd Thomas with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, there. This is Robby on the line for Todd Thomas. Can you talk a little bit about the self-storage market in Puerto Rico? Can you comment on how the pricing and demand for self-storage is different between Puerto Rico and Stateside? And do you have a long-term target about how much exposure you would want to Puerto Rico?

Well, thanks for the question. I appreciate it. I'll start by saying that Puerto Rico has been a fantastic market for us. We really like the supply-demand dynamics, and frankly, pricing is a strength down there. In the case of a portfolio that we just acquired in the second quarter, that portfolio was sourced off-market by our operator, who has built strong relationships down there. What we liked about adding to our portfolio was the ability to build scale. On the whole, we know we like Puerto Rico and see it as a good long-term play.

Perfect. That's it for me. Congrats on a great quarter.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Steve Sakwa with Evercore ISI. Please proceed with your question.

Great, thanks. So most of my questions have been asked and answered, but I'm just curious as you're thinking about ECRI given that you're sitting at almost 97% occupancy, are you sort of changing the pricing strategy going into the back half of the year? How are you sort of managing the business bit differently?

Great question, Steve. With the strength of what we're seeing and continued strength, rental velocity, and our ability, with the rent roll-up, and all the things that are going right now, we've been a little bit more aggressive, especially going through July and August, looking ahead even into September. I’d say we're very much on the assertive end; we’re considering a broader tenant base. We’re examining areas where we may have limited our rate increases in the past, looking back at our revenue management platform implemented about 12 months ago, which is starting to pay dividends. We've built good logic behind it, challenging us to maximize the situation we're in. At this point, I would say we're probably a little bit more assertive in the amount and how quickly we're implementing the rate changes.

And is there anything you can tell about customer behavior regarding rent increases? Is there a threshold you see with higher move-out rates, or any kind of change in behavior that would limit how far you can push rent increases?

We haven't come across anything yet. As I said before, we're looking at some of those upper boundaries; what I mean is we might have a cap set on dollar amounts that may feel uncomfortable for tenants. We’re pushing some of those boundaries right now, but nothing standing out that would suggest our strategies are causing changes in behavior at this point.

Great, thanks. That's it for me.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Smedes Rose with Citigroup. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, thanks. I just wanted to follow up on that a little bit. You mentioned the revenue management platform that was rolled out about 12 months ago. Are all the portfolios now on that platform? As I recall, the operators have the option to be on the platform or not. I'm just wondering, is there an opportunity there to add more to the platform, and where do you stand on that?

That's a great question. We're pleased with the acceptance level of these platforms; our operators are doing a wonderful job, and they’ve built some great teams. Currently, a little over 80% of our stores are on the platform and taking advantage of it. The operators are getting much better data than they've had and are achieving much better results. So we're very pleased with that.

So you would expect incremental take-up for that 80%?

I would think so. Yes.

The pros that may not have onboarded specifically to our in-house bill platform are still running revenue management strategies, akin to those they may have done as private operators. They’re still pushing rent increases to customers, so there's still, I do believe there is opportunity. I just wanted to make that clear.

Okay, thank you, David. That’s perfect.

Yes, thanks, Smedes.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Ronald Kamdem with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, congrats on the quarter. And now Brandon, congrats on the new board. Just on looking at markets that have been oversupplied, such as Portland. Can you help us contextualize the amount of demand we've seen in the last 18 months? You're looking at same-store numbers that are double-digits; how many years did we gain sort of during that period before we get to equilibrium? Just how should we think about what these 12 to 18 months have done to those markets?

It's a great question, and I'm not sure we have a clear line of how many maybe years of supply we've shaved off. With the economic drivers currently in play, Portland and Oregon have just seen tremendous results. You look at it throughout Oregon, and they’re just at the top of the list. There's certainly still pressure there, and if you look at Portland's overall occupancy, it's still about three points less than the overall portfolio. The team has done a wonderful job maximizing their position, how many tenants they want to attract, and doing a great job driving occupancy and revenue. I can't really answer how many years we think we've shaved off, but demand factors are indeed minimizing some of that competitive pressure. For Oregon and a few other places, the numbers are solid.

Ronald, to address your acquisition question, you’ve doubled the guidance, and I think you talked a little bit more just about more activity going on. Is that really the biggest change and drivers from three to six months ago? Are you getting a look at a lot more deals than you thought you would be closing, maybe a lot more than you thought? Or is this a view of just being more aggressive into an accelerating market—or maybe a little bit of both? Some color there would be helpful.

I think it’s a couple of things. Good question. What we saw in the first quarter frankly continued to accelerate into the second quarter, and what we're seeing right now, as I mentioned in my early comments, we've been able to source a number of portfolios, either off-market or pocket-marketed. I think that’s given us the benefit; we’ve leveraged our operators’ relationships and our captive pipeline. I'll say it’s a little bit of everything. I'd also add that we're being extremely disciplined in our underwriting. We like what we’re seeing; it just so happens that I don’t know if we'll see another year like this, but it clearly is an unprecedented potential volume.

Super helpful. Thanks again.

You’re welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Joe. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, good afternoon, everyone. And thanks for taking the questions. First of all, I just wanted to circle back on the acquisitions topic again. Can you talk a little bit more in-depth about the type of assets you're targeting? The quality? I know you spoke a bit about yields. I guess, ultimately, how do you balance more activity in the markets and more assets for sale versus the higher prices that you're seeing now?

I'll start, and Dave can join in. I would say that our approach to underwriting in terms of geographic location, quality of the asset—and we are perfectly happy with single-store assets, multi-building in secondary and tertiary markets—gives us a slight advantage. This well aligns with our geography, and for that reason, the cap rates might be a bit higher than what others are seeing. I’d say that in addition to that, we're also looking at newer assets that are in stabilization; they’re not necessarily stabilized yet, but we’ll go after well-priced assets that fit in with our geographic strategy. I don’t know if that answers your question or if there’s any more color I can provide; our focus on secondary and tertiary markets remains the same. I guess one thing to add is that we've been focused traditionally only on stabilized assets, but to the extent we’re seeing non-stabilized, we're open to underwriting and acquiring those assets now.

One thing, this is Brandon. The only point I would add is that geographically, everything we have that we've mentioned to close is well complemented by the existing portfolio.

Okay, great. And then, secondly, you mentioned some of the demand in your prepared remarks is stemming from transition-related housing demand. Historically, do our users stem from that kind of demand segment? Do they have longer lengths of stay or is it pretty consistent with the traditional customer base?

It could be a variety, but I'd say overall it's fairly consistent. With a tight housing market, the length of time out of a house is variable; you sold and can't get your new house in the time expected. Housing pressures may lead to buying less square footage, contributing to longer storage needs. Given our product's affordability and space efficiency, we think we're in a good position for success around this tight housing transition.

So, just lastly from me, I'd ask about the Delta variant—cases beginning to rise across the country—any noticeable change in consumer behavior over the past few weeks?

Nothing to speak of. We’ve kept all protocols in place. We’re seeing a bit more noise around masking mandates in some communities, but nothing definitive that will push the economy one way or the other considering we navigated the pandemic successfully last year. I don't know, even if the Delta variant flares up, there will be a significant impact on us since we were deemed an essential business last year, and I think that will continue.

Okay, good. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the floor back over to Tamara Fischer for closing remarks.

Thanks. To wrap up, I'd like to thank you again for joining our call and for your interest and support of NSA. I'll also reiterate our thanks to our team members and our operators whose efforts are key to NSA once again delivering sector-leading results. We remain optimistic about 2021, and we look forward to meeting with many of you either virtually later this quarter or hopefully in person at the REIT meeting in November. Thanks again.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's webcast. You may now disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation, and have a great day.