CubeSmart (NYSE:CUBE) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Todd Thomas: Okay. And then you mentioned that you were down so you called back a little bit of occupancy at the end of October, down 130 basis points. What was the occupancy rate in the same-store at October – at the end of October?

Chris Marr: The actual occupancy at the end of October, the print was 91.3%.

Todd Thomas: Okay. That’s helpful. And then just back — last question back to New York the strength that you’re discussing or the stability in the New York segment of the portfolio. It did experience revenue growth, overall did experience a 20 basis point deceleration from last quarter. And I’m just curious, as we think about New York, it is the overall New York portfolio for you which is pretty sizable at 20%, 21%, 22%. Just curious if you see potential to hold occupancy and rate and perhaps maintain revenue growth at current levels or if you’re expecting growth to decelerate just at a more modest level relative to the balance of the portfolio? I’m just curious if you could sort of comment on that a little bit.

Chris Marr: The latter. So we would expect that there will be some decel in the rate of revenue growth in the same-store portfolio in New York broadly. I think we printed in the high 5s in the quarter. The three — our three main boroughs, Brooklyn, Bronx and Queens were fairly significantly higher than that in terms of their contribution and then it was offset by North Jersey which looks a lot more like the overall same-store pool. But broadly we would expect more muted deceleration in the New York MSA over the next couple of quarters, but still some modest degree of decel.

Todd Thomas: Okay. On the 11% or 12% of revenue in the boroughs specifically, are you seeing strength? Are you actually seeing revenue growth gains in that segment of the New York portfolio?

Chris Marr: Yes. It’s — I mean again, it will vary by boroughs and that the Bronx with no news supply had a really good third quarter. Brooklyn and Queens also have the third quarter, but on a relative basis a little bit lighter. Then the Bronx. But I think overall, we would expect in those three boroughs again to what degree and how de minimis, but I would err on the side of expecting some very modest decel versus flat or accelerating.

Todd Thomas: Okay. That’s helpful. Thank you.

Josh Schutzer: Thanks, Todd.

Operator: Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Michael Goldsmith from UBS. Please go ahead.

Michael Goldsmith: Good morning. Thanks a lot for taking my question. It seems as though the storage West portfolio is providing a nice benefit to the overall same-store portfolio given the performance of the different same-store pools. I guess my question is, how does that portfolio compare now to the overall portfolio? And does this create — is it performing more in line with the overall portfolio? Does this create a bit of — will this not be as much of a tailwind next year? Or does there remain kind of a healthy gap with the rest of the portfolio that should continue to support growth in 2024? Thanks.

Tim Martin: I think the performance of the storage West portfolio will over time look more and more like the rest of the portfolio. It’s continued to grow at a higher pace because, there is a — as kind of a compounding impact of the improvements that we see when we bring things onto our platform. And so those improvements are more meaningful early on for the first year or two that we have in store or a portfolio of stores onto our platform. And I think over time then that benefit diminishes and starts to look more and more like – all else being equal it looks more and more like the portfolio on a whole.

Michael Goldsmith: Thanks for that, Tim. And then my follow-up question is on advertising. It seems like that expense has been flat year-over-year. So your — despite kind of the overall environment it seems like you’re not overly pushing that as a lever to drive demand. So can you talk a little bit about your philosophy there? And then related to that have you seen any change in the cost of Google banner ads or some of the advertising like are some of your competitors pushing harder on this and pushing the costs to advertise higher? Thank you.