Earnings Call Transcript
National Storage Affiliates Trust (NSA)
Earnings Call Transcript - NSA Q4 2020
Operator, Operator
Greetings, and welcome to the National Storage Affiliates Fourth Quarter 2020 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 a pleasure to introduce you to your host, George Hoglund, Vice President of Investor Relations for National Storage Affiliates. Thank you. Mr. Hoglund, you may begin.
George Hoglund, Vice President of Investor Relations
We'd like to thank you for joining us today for the fourth quarter 2020 earnings conference call of National Storage Affiliates Trust. Since this is our first earnings call of the Biden Presidency, I'd like to quote our new president and say to all of the potential investors that haven't yet purchased NSA stock, come on man. In addition to the press release distributed yesterday, we filed an 8-K with the SEC containing 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 the answers to your questions may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties, including uncertainty related to the scope, severity, and duration of the COVID-19 pandemic and the actions taken to contain or mitigate the direct and indirect economic impact. The Company cautions that actual results may differ materially from those projected in any forward-looking statement. For additional detail concerning our 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. On the line with me here today are NSA's CEO, Tamara Fischer; COO, Dave Kramer; and CFO, Brandon Togashi. Following prepared remarks, management will accept questions from registered financial analysts. I will now turn the call over to Tammy.
Tamara Fischer, CEO
Thanks, George, and thank you, everyone, for joining our call today. Before we discuss 2020 results and our outlook for 2021, I wanted to acknowledge all those who have been affected by recent severe weather and related events. We are and will continue doing our best to support our team members and communities as they recover from these difficult challenges. Now moving on to results, we ended 2020 with a bang, delivering strong same store NOI growth, closing our busiest quarter ever in terms of wholly-owned acquisition volume. And to top it off, we announced in December, the addition of a significant New PRO, Blue Sky self storage. Occupancy is near record highs, street rates are up year-over-year and growing. And our revenue management strategies are largely back to normal. The positive momentum and fundamentals are making for a strong start to 2021. And Brandon will elaborate further on that later in the call.
Brandon Togashi, CFO
Thank you, Tammy. Yesterday afternoon, we reported core FFO per share of $0.46 for the fourth quarter of 2020. This represents an increase of 15% over the prior year period. Fourth quarter same store NOI increased by 6.1% over prior year, driven by 4.8% revenue growth and a 1.6% increase in property operating expenses. Same store occupancy averaged 92.1% during the fourth quarter, an increase of 400 basis points compared to 2019. For the full year, core FFO per share was $1.71 and 11% increase over 2019, primarily driven by the integration of prior acquisitions, additional strong acquisition volume during the year in same store growth. We also realized three pennies of accretion in 2020 from the internalization of SecurCare, in line with expectations. Full year same store NOI grew 2.2%, driven by 1.7% revenue growth and a 0.5% growth in OpEx. Both same store NOI and core FFO per share results were ahead of the top end of our reinstated guidance, largely due to occupancy remaining higher than expected, and property taxes coming in lower than forecasted. Same store OpEx growth benefited from diligent cost control, as we've discussed in recent quarters. Specifically in the fourth quarter. Personnel costs declined 80 basis points year-over-year, while utilities declined 5.3%, due to a milder start to the winter, as well as the benefits from our LED lighting initiative.
Operator, Operator
Our first question today comes from Samir Khanal of Evercore. Please proceed with your question.
Samir Khanal, Analyst
Hey. Good morning, everyone. Tammy, can you walk us through the cadence of revenue growth over the next few quarters? Just trying to get a better understanding of how much of a deceleration you're baking in during the third quarter or the second half of the year as things start to normalize?
Brandon Togashi, CFO
Hey, Samir, it's Brandon, I'll take that one. I mean, we historically have not given quarterly guidance, not doing so here now. But certainly the first half, as I mentioned in opening remarks, is going to be very strong. Q3, you start to get a little more challenging, but you know, we were still emerging from some of the restrictions in place, in terms of processing rate increases and certain fees being charged. So Q3, I think still has the first part of it has an element of easy as well. And then Q4 is the really tough comp, right? And so what I will tell you is the back half of ‘21, we still expect to be positive. But very modestly in the first half, you know, we expect to be quite strong.
Samir Khanal, Analyst
Got it. And then I guess, switching over to the expenses. And Brandon, can you provide a little bit more color on kind of the breakdown of maybe your property operating expense lines, maybe property taxes, payroll, what are you assuming for guidance this year?
Brandon Togashi, CFO
Yeah. Sure, Samir. So I would say for property taxes specifically, that's the one line item that our assumption for growth is 5% to 6%. And that's outside of the 3.5% to 5% total OpEx range we gave. All the other categories, you know, personnel is the next biggest, but everything else down the line from R&M, utilities, marketing, each of those categories is within that 3.5% to 5% range. So property taxes are the primary one that I would say falls outside on the high end.
Samir Khanal, Analyst
Got it. And my last question here is, you know, given the weather disruption we've seen in Texas recently, are there any early reads into the impact of rental demand? I mean, I guess for you, it'll be primarily the Dallas market that I just wanted to ask in case there's any kind of early reads?
Dave Kramer, COO
Yeah. This is Dave. Good question. You know, fortunately, the weather is starting to clear and now everybody's assessing the damage. We had very minimal damage from our properties. And from our perspective, a couple of frozen water pipes and stuff, so fortunate there. It really just paused all the rental and move-out activity for four or five days. And so as we look at it, it'll probably be an uptick in demand as things are on par and people need some storage to move stuff around and make some repairs. It didn't really have an immediate impact for us, and we think long term and short term, it has some positive effects for us.
Tamara Fischer, CEO
Yes, we do think in the first quarter, we'll probably see slightly elevated snow removal costs, and maybe a little bit higher O&M than we might have otherwise expected, especially since we're off to such a late winter, we actually don't plan for snow removal in Texas.
Samir Khanal, Analyst
Right. No, that's it for me. Thanks so much.
Dave Kramer, COO
Thank you.
Operator, Operator
The next question is from Neil Malkin of Capital One Securities. Please proceed with your question.
Neil Malkin, Analyst
Hey. Good morning, everyone. Fantastic quarter. First question - can you just kind of talk about what you're seeing out there on the balance sheet or consolidated side, in terms of the mix? And kind of what are cap rates looking like for the transactions from the fourth quarter? And what are they looking like right now?
Tamara Fischer, CEO
Sure, I'll start and Dave might want to add on to some of my comments. But really, what we saw was a combination of small and mid-sized portfolios. A big part of what we did in the fourth quarter, frankly, was one portfolio. However, we were super busy on the one-off transaction side of things. And a lot of it happened before the end of December. I think we saw sellers who were a little anxious about upcoming potential changes to tax regulations and potential tax reform. Cap rates, I would tell you, are in the 5.5 to 6 range; portfolio premiums still exist, and you might see them in the 50 to 75 basis point range. For us in the markets where we would like to acquire assets, there was still a little bit of cap rate compression, but it's not over the top at this point in time. And the activity continued into 2021. We continue to be very busy looking at transactions. We also look at, as you know, almost every portfolio that hits the market, but we just keep on with our blocking and tackling, taking these properties down one asset at a time to the extent that's what we need to do. The nice thing about our structure is that our multiple PROs all represent acquisition teams for us around the country, and they're all very busy. It's really not singled out to one team or another or one geographic location or another. Anything to add to that, Dave?
Dave Kramer, COO
No, I agree. Particularly in the geographic area, we saw properties in all of our markets and, you know, across the country, and that was pleasing to see in a really good pace of activity.
Neil Malkin, Analyst
Okay. Kind of an add-on to that. Several companies across real estate asset types have talked about – putting their foot forward in terms of either JVs or alternative structures to augment growth in an aggressive cap rate environment. Are you thinking about that? Can you talk to the Board about what other things could be, considering different parts of the capital stack? Also your stock price is obviously very strong. Is that, you know, dictating where you allocate your capital or what you focus on, maybe even third-party management? So, if you could just kind of give us an outline for how you look at all those things this year, that would be great.
Tamara Fischer, CEO
Sure, you know, we have historically been successful in closing larger portfolio transactions with joint venture capital. We have great relationships with our joint venture partners, and we'd like to continue to deploy capital with them. We also see it as a very valuable component of our capital stack and are, frankly, almost always in conversations with one potential JV partner or another, so that we will be well positioned to take advantage of opportunities as they present themselves. We do see that capital as being an important part of our structure.
Operator, Operator
The next question comes from Juan Sanabria of BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.
Juan Sanabria, Analyst
Hi, good morning. Just hoping you could delve a little bit deeper into Blue Sky, the new PRO? And what do you think that relationship brings to you? Are you assuming any incremental acquisitions beyond the small bit that came with the initial signup, in terms of your $400 million to $650 million of acquisition guidance for the year?
Tamara Fischer, CEO
Sure, so I'll start with a key benefit of adding Blue Sky as a PRO. The underlying entities behind Blue Sky are Grow Your Storage Development, and that entity is led by Lee Frederick, who has a long history of developing high-quality self-storage assets. In fact, we've been a buyer of some of his assets over the years. Two years ago, Mike Perry, our former VP of acquisitions joined Lee to broaden their platform and to become their acquisitions person. They have been quite successful at it. They also partnered with Ben Vestal, who is a large third-party manager and, frankly, a broker. What we think they bring to the table is the ability to access some, about 30 to 35 assets that they actually have a controlling ownership interest in, that will be contributed to NSA over time, probably the next three to five years at about $50 million a year. From someone like Ben Vestal, we have an opportunity to look at the 150-plus stores that are managed by his platform. When an owner decides to sell, I think, hopefully, we have a chance to acquire some of those assets ahead of others. Just to speak about Mike Perry for a minute, he's been in the business a long time and is highly regarded. His deep relationships in the industry will be hugely valuable for our company.
Juan Sanabria, Analyst
Great, thank you. And then maybe I was just hoping you could speak to any insights you've gained from your exposure, which is pretty diverse. You have some significant weightings in California, which may be seen some outflow of people, maybe more concentrated in the Bay Area, and some big exposures in Texas, which has seen net move-ins apparently from what you can gather from media and news stories. But curious on what you're seeing in terms of demand and or move-outs, keeping your geographic diversity?
Dave Kramer, COO
That's a good question, Juan. This is Dave. Across our portfolio, we've seen positive fundamentals; rental activity remains strong and move-outs have been muted. You know, if you talk about the California market, you know, Brandon mentioned Riverside-San Bernardino had really strong results. Part of that is from the implement bounce back, but we also think it's the migration out of maybe the bigger cities into maybe not out of California, but into some of these more suburban markets for California. In Texas, we've certainly benefited from the outflow of some of these other markets through the whole Sunbelt area, down through the southeast and into Texas. We haven't really seen a significant shift in any of our communities or any of our MSAs, as far as patterns; everything has remained very good, very strong, and we're very positive about it.
Juan Sanabria, Analyst
Great, thank you very much.
Dave Kramer, COO
Thank you.
Operator, Operator
The next question is from Todd Thomas of KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.
Todd Thomas, Analyst
Hi, thanks. Tammy, first question, in your prepared remarks, you said revenue management strategies are largely back to normal. I was just curious, what still has to normalize in your view, as you look ahead further into the recovery?
Tamara Fischer, CEO
I'll start and then let Dave tag on to it. What I would say is that we are evaluating rent increases where our existing customers on a state-by-state, local municipality, and trying to live within the guidelines. There are some states where price gouging is prohibited. For the most part, I would say that we are back on track with rent increases on existing tenants and the same cadence we've had historically, but we are keeping an eye on things to ensure that we don’t go out of bounds.
Dave Kramer, COO
Yeah. I would agree. Todd, the only thing I would add, you know, speaking of California, we expect the restrictions will lift here shortly; they haven't apparently, an expiration date here in the next few weeks. We're mindful of that, and we're just ensuring we're following all the guidelines for the state of California and a couple of cities within California that have even tighter restrictions. But for the most part, we’ve been able to resume what we would normally be doing in our revenue management platform across most of our communities.
Tamara Fischer, CEO
And the nice thing about our structure, just to not beat a dead horse, is our PROs located geographically across the country are as close as you can be to local rules and regulations and executive orders. I think that gives us an advantage to stay close to what's going on and what the timing is for relief, and if various governors are thinking about other kinds of restrictions. I think that gives us an advantage in terms of visibility.
Todd Thomas, Analyst
Okay, that's helpful. And then, you talked about gaining additional occupancy through January. So, we're a couple months now, a little less actually, I guess, from the start of the peak leasing season. Outside of California, or in jurisdictions where there are price gouging rules still in effect, do you have the ability to lean into the strength with higher rate increases to more customers, elsewhere across the portfolio?
Dave Kramer, COO
It's a good question. Yes, to answer your question, we’ve certainly seen improvements in street rates. We expect street rates to improve in the first half of the year, which will obviously hit what used to be the peak leasing season. Obviously, we're at record high occupancy right now, so we have the ability to push a little harder on in-place rent changes, and we are. We'll look across the portfolio and look for those seasonal trends as we see them. But yeah, we like to take advantage of what's in front of us, and we'll do our best to maximize where we can.
Todd Thomas, Analyst
Okay. And then I just wanted to also follow up, I guess, on Tammy, your comments around work from home and some other trends that you discussed that maybe the pandemic accelerated, you characterized it as the three SSS's. As you think about investments and capital allocation going forward, how does that affect your views around the company's geographic footprint? Do you anticipate any changes at all to how the company looks going forward in terms of some of the market exposures we see today?
Tamara Fischer, CEO
That's a good question. We've long been committed to primarily secondary and tertiary markets, and that has served us well over time. I think we remain committed to those markets. That’s not to say that we won't look at top 15 MSAs; we will, and we're open to growing in markets where our PROs currently operate, continuing to gain scale in those markets. On the whole, I would say that's not a huge change to our strategy. But if anything, I think we're even more committed to the secondary and tertiary markets than we have been historically, as it has served us well.
Todd Thomas, Analyst
Okay, if we look at California and Oregon, where you have relatively large concentrations, do you expect, over time, to reduce your exposure to those states maybe by acquiring assets elsewhere? Or do you think that you'll continue to maintain that level of exposure to those markets?
Tamara Fischer, CEO
I think over time, as we grow, those markets will likely become a less significant component of our total. But the truth is, we like Oregon, we like Oregon long-term. We may see some good opportunities up there to acquire assets over time. Our PRO up there is actively looking at deals as they become available. In California, it's the same thing; it’s a huge state and economy, and it may always be huge to us to maintain. We're not currently on a one-off thesis seeking to strategically increase our position there. Texas is significant for us, and Texas is a big market for self-storage and will probably remain big for us, as will Florida. We're big in states where self-storage is heavily relied upon by the population and where we are seeing significant in-migration, such as Texas and Florida. I believe we’ve mentioned earlier; we haven't seen the impact of out-migration from California at this point in time. We're heavily concentrated in Riverside-San Bernardino, and we like the Inland Empire, which has seen its own in-migration. I would say, when it's all said and done, probably not huge changes to our strategy.
Todd Thomas, Analyst
Okay, thank you.
Dave Kramer, COO
Thank you.
Operator, Operator
The next question is from Smedes Rose of Citi. Please proceed with your question.
Smedes Rose, Analyst
Hi, thanks. I wanted to follow up to some of your comments about supply that you thought in ‘21 would be similar to 2020? What sort of percent change is that in the supply? What gives you confidence that you think that it'll trail down the pace of growth thereafter?
Tamara Fischer, CEO
So the comments that we make about supply are informed by Yardie, and we follow the data they provide and find it quite reliable. Our perspective is refined by our PROs' local knowledge in those markets. What we can say is that we're seeing the same supply trends as everyone across the industry. Some projects have been abandoned; some of the new developments literally miss pro forma by years, and lenders backed away from funding those projects. Yes, there were projects that were delayed for a variety of reasons, labor restrictions on working, inability to get products, and those deliveries will come to market in 2021. We think that deliveries in our key markets will probably not be much less in 2021 than they were in 2020. On the whole, I believe across the United States, there will be a slight decline in 2021 in the delivery of new products. I'm not sure we have any greater insight than most people reading the data, except for the fact that, and I keep circling back to this, our relationships with our PROs and their knowledge of our markets provide us with a slightly better perspective.
Smedes Rose, Analyst
Great. Okay, good. And then you've mentioned on a couple of calls now that one of the things that might be driving more sellers coming to market is expected changes in tax structures. Is that primarily around concerns about capital gains, or is it state taxes? Do you expect any changes in behavior from your PROs as they consider potential changes to the current tax structure?
Tamara Fischer, CEO
Starting with the sellers, I think the mom-and-pop sellers, I don't perceive as having as much hype around the potential changes in tax law, even though from my perspective, it seems like there should be. We are still seeing increased activity; potential mom-and-pop sellers are increasing. Anecdotally, some may be driven by this potential change. As it relates to our PROs, I don’t think we’ll see any change in behavior on their part. I do not think we see a risk to the ability to defer taxes on the contribution of assets to the REIT. Therefore, I think they will continue to make those assets available to us to acquire upon stabilization or when the property owner is ready to sell the asset.
Smedes Rose, Analyst
Okay, thank you. Thanks, appreciate it.
Operator, Operator
The next question is from Ronald Kamdem of Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.
Ronald Kamdem, Analyst
Hey, two quick ones for me. Congrats on a great quarter. Following up on the discussion with the PROs. After looking at the 2020 performance and looking forward about filling out other markets you're interested in, what's the outlook for conversations with the PROs? Is this making them more likely or less likely to be interested in joining the platform? Just curious how you guys are thinking about that going forward.
Tamara Fischer, CEO
I think we have room to add another one to three PROs opportunistically across the country. If you look at the math in our desk, we’ve had that there for quite some time now. There are still geographic areas where we would like to add an operator. Our conversations with operators are steady; I wouldn't say the cadence has changed much. As we've discussed before, predicting the timing is nearly impossible. It is possible that some of the large private operators will take the potential tax changes into consideration, and those conversations might accelerate this year, but we don't have any line of sight on that at the moment. We're open to bringing on a couple more PROs.
Ronald Kamdem, Analyst
Great. My second question is just revisiting this topic of other income that always comes up, whether it's tenant insurance or third-party management. I'm curious if your thoughts or views on that have changed, given the occupancy and performance. Is that an opportunity that maybe looks more interesting than in the past?
Brandon Togashi, CFO
Hey, Ronald, it's Brandon. Let me give you a few thoughts and see if this fits in with your question or not. Everything you rattled off is the ancillary part of the business. Things like tenant insurance and retail sales have been positive year-over-year, given the velocity in rentals. Fees have been, as you know, challenging throughout all of 2020. Fees were still down for us, roughly 10%. Some of this was due to Oregon, which was the last of our major geographies where restrictions were in place to start the quarter. We were still working through that. But there remains a key part of our business in ancillary revenue, and it will contribute to growth.
Ronald Kamdem, Analyst
Got it, thank you. One more, if I may, can you comment on who you guys are competing against now in the markets? Obviously, private equity has come into the space pretty heavily. Is it still sort of mom and pops, is it private equity? Just curious what the competition looks like for acquisitions now.
Tamara Fischer, CEO
Our peers across the board are actively acquiring assets, so we consider them our competitors. We find firms like Blackstone and other private equity firms very active in the market. It’s extremely competitive; the silver lining of self-storage performance has attracted a lot of attention, and everyone wants to jump into the business and deploy capital here. Our strategy is to remain disciplined and execute on our strategy. We have set a target of $400 million to $650 million invested this year. We hope to do so with our PROs, and if something bigger comes along, hopefully with a JV partner, either an existing one or a new one. I'm optimistic about our ability to deploy that capital this year while remaining disciplined.
Ronald Kamdem, Analyst
Perfect, many thanks.
Tamara Fischer, CEO
Of course.
Dave Kramer, COO
Thank you.
Operator, Operator
The next question is from Ki Bin Kim of Truist Securities. Please proceed with your question.
Ki Bin Kim, Analyst
Thanks. Good afternoon. It's great to see all those strong demand across most of your markets. We're trying to understand how to balance the very near-term strong growth versus eventual kind of mean reversion. I wanted to go back to your comments regarding the three SSS's, sunbelt, suburb, and secondary markets. Do you think there's something to say about these markets having more resiliency to mean reversion versus some of the more urban migration out markets where we saw strong demand in the near term?
Tamara Fischer, CEO
I think you might be onto something there, and I'll tell you why. Those secondary and tertiary markets were not nearly as severely affected in terms of community shutdown and small business shutdown, and they benefited from in-migration. Those markets do not perform as well in really hot economies, but they also do not suffer as much during economic downturns or in, you know, in this health crisis or potential pandemic. I think you hit the nail on the head with your thought about the resilience of those markets.
Ki Bin Kim, Analyst
Okay, great. You guys changed your website a little bit this past quarter or two, the gostorage.com website. Are you not using that anymore? Is there an encompassing umbrella website to search through your inventory? I'm sorry, not store the PRO websites. Did you lose any customers by that change, do you think? Any thoughts on creating another umbrella website?
Dave Kramer, COO
Good question. This is Dave. Yes, we have launched another umbrella website, it's in its first phases. And we'll be working over the next couple of quarters to build a more robust product than what we had with the first version of go storage units. I don't feel we've lost any business with the evolution of our CMS and the tools that the PROs have deployed. We felt that the strength in those local brands exceeded what we were getting out of the go storage units platform. We rolled out nsabrands.com, and we have front-facing pages that launched. We're building on that as we go in the next quarters, and I think in the end, you'll be very pleased with what you see.
Ki Bin Kim, Analyst
Okay, thank you. One last question on cap rates for the $525 million in guidance for 2021. Is it safe to assume this kind of same 5.5% to 6% stabilized cap rate?
Dave Kramer, COO
That's correct, Ki Bin.
Ki Bin Kim, Analyst
Okay, that's it. Thank you.
Tamara Fischer, CEO
Thank you.
Operator, Operator
The next question is from Jason Belcher of Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question.
Jason Belcher, Analyst
Yeah, hi. I'm wondering if you can give us a little more color on the stronger than expected customer demand you're seeing, and maybe touch on where your average length of stay is currently and how that's trended over the last year or two?
Dave Kramer, COO
Great question. This is Dave. Our average length of stay continues to increase, which we're happy about. It's above about 16.5 months right now, if you look at it as a whole, and it continues to trend in the right direction. The demand patterns are all over the board across all of our communities. We're seeing strength across our diverse portfolio. Obviously, markets where we have competitive pressure may not perform as strong as the rest, but because of this additional demand, they are performing well. We're pleased with it everywhere.
Jason Belcher, Analyst
Great, that's helpful. If I could drill down more specifically on the college student and business customer segments of your base, any comments you can offer there, and maybe give us some rough idea of what percentage of revenue those two cohorts make up?
Dave Kramer, COO
It's a good question. We've talked a lot about college students and what's going on with that segment. It's mixed across all the universities in the country; some are in, some are out, some never came back. As we look at this spring, we expect the college season may not be as peak as it has historically. However, we expect some movement come late March and April as colleges move kids back into dormitories. Our business tenants consist of about 15% to 20% of our overall tenant base. It's hard to tell because not everyone discusses being a business during the rental process; the businesses generally run under individual operators' names, so it’s tough to track. We maintain it in the 15% to 20% range.
Jason Belcher, Analyst
Great, that's helpful. Thanks very much.
Operator, Operator
Our next question is from Stephen Mead of Anchor Capital Advisors. Please proceed with your question.
Stephen Mead, Analyst
Yeah, good morning. I was struck by the statistics and comparisons in Oregon. Can you explain sort of what was going on in terms of the big increase in occupancy and then relatively flat rental rates? As we look into 2021 and your guidance, what is sort of the trade-off between occupancy and rental rates?
Dave Kramer, COO
Both really good questions. In Oregon, it really stemmed around Portland, where we saw the biggest occupancy gains. Our PRO did a wonderful job of balancing occupancy and rental velocities and demand. They deployed smart marketing tactics and revenue management strategies to really achieve the rental velocity they were looking for. Portland has been a very competitive market, putting pressure on rates, which will continue until supply works its way through. As we look at this year, we have the same question about balancing occupancy versus where we want to balance rate. Currently, fundamentals are strong; we're pushing hard on both ends and monitoring rental velocity and expected move-out velocity compared to what we're aiming to achieve for driving new demand. The first half of the year looks really strong; the back half may see a seasonal pattern where we have to ask ourselves how much effort we want to spend and is it worth it? Our revenue management teams are working on that, and I think we have a pretty good roadmap.
Stephen Mead, Analyst
And one last question, is there any sort of connection between higher inflation environments versus lower inflation environments regarding your ability to push rents?
Dave Kramer, COO
Good question. The nice part about our product is we're under month-to-month leases. We have a lot of flexibility to react quickly, whether in demand or pricing. Historically, when looking at overall inflation, we've seen rates generally go up. That's what we've experienced in the past.
Operator, Operator
The next question is from Neil Malkin of Capital One Securities. Please proceed with your question.
Neil Malkin, Analyst
Hey. Guys, appreciate you taking the follow-up. Two quick ones. First, we haven't seen the strength in the single-family market, either ownership or rental, since the mid-2000s. How did that impact demand or customer profile? If we were to continue in a robust single-family market, would that change the nature of your portfolio's seasonality?
Dave Kramer, COO
Certainly creates demand as people transition across the country. The single-family market has been incredible in most of our markets. Typically, that is more of a summer trend, which is interesting as we come out of the third and fourth quarters into the first. We're seeing strong housing demand right now, leading us to wonder about our peak leasing season this summer. Nearly, it drives demand, and we generally benefit from that. If the housing market remains strong in many of these regions, we'll see good results.
Neil Malkin, Analyst
Okay. Other one for me is a lot of companies across multiple sectors are discussing how the operating technology and platform will be the next chapter of institutionalization of the asset and revenue management. What do you see as the next chapter from an ops or tech standpoint? Any implementation of that made harder since your PROs can run their rev-man systems?
Dave Kramer, COO
That's a good question and point. We're about a year into our own proprietary revenue management system, called Store Cast. It was a great year to really utilize the new system and keep controls on it. 2020 was challenging from a rate and pricing perspective, ensuring that the system didn't run wild. I'm really excited about what we're doing with this tool. We have major initiatives focused on discounting and upfront pricing to maximize customer acquisition. We’ve segmented the revenue management team; one is focused on setting dynamic upfront pricing for new customers, while the others are evaluating lifecycle and IPRC. If this was a baseball game, we’re in the middle innings. We've got runway left to develop pricing strategies and enhance our models, which will lead to efficiencies in customer acquisition.
Neil Malkin, Analyst
Thanks so much.
Dave Kramer, COO
Thank you.
Operator, Operator
There are no additional questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back to Tamara Fischer for closing remarks.
Tamara Fischer, CEO
Thank you. I'd like to thank everyone again for your interest in NSA. We’re pleased with our fourth quarter and full year results and the fact that our sector and our unique PRO structure allow us to deliver such outstanding results. We're optimistic about 2021 and we look forward to meeting with many of you either virtually in the near term or maybe even in person later this year. Be safe, stay healthy. Thank you. Bye-bye.
Operator, Operator
This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.