CubeSmart (NYSE:CUBE) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Kassandra Fieber: Yes.

Chris Marr: Yeah. I don’t have that number. I don’t track that number not something we tend to focus in on because it’s a factor of, again, when you came into the portfolio and as Street rates move around. So I don’t have an exact percentage on that one for you.

Kassandra Fieber: Okay, no problem. Thanks for answering my questions.

Operator: Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Steve Sakwa from Evercore. Please go ahead.

Steve Sakwa: Yes. Thanks, Chris. I just want to clarify one thing you said earlier just to make sure. When you talked about 16.9% going to 18% was that the roll down of kind of new customers against expiring customers? Or was that something different? And if that is the case do you feel like that 18% roll down is kind of the bottom? Or do you expect that to move a bit lower moving forward?

Tim Martin: Hey, Steve, it’s Tim. It was actually from — I was staring those numbers out there. So the 16.9% and 18% were net effective rates that we’re achieving compared to the net effective rates we were achieving last year. The 16.9% was the change third quarter this year versus third quarter last year. The 18% was saying is we got into October rates in October net effective rates new customers were 18% down. As we would have thought about that as we talked about on earlier calls, our expectations several months ago was that we would be able to start to narrow that gap year-over-year. And that the 16.9% gap in the third quarter would start to narrow throughout the fourth quarter. And in fact as we sit here today it’s actually gapped out a little bit more. That’s what we were referring to in those numbers. That’s the context.

Steve Sakwa: Got it. Okay. So it sounds like it’s gotten a bit worse and maybe gets worse in November December against the 18%?

Tim Martin: We’ll see. Yes I mean it’s a little bit too early to tell definitively, but it’s certainly net effective rates are worse relative to last year than we would have thought a couple of months ago for certain.

Steve Sakwa: Great. Thanks. And then just on the acquisition front. I mean obviously you guys are well positioned with the balance sheet. Just help us think through like what would be an appropriate or acceptable rate of return? And I realize cap rates can be all over the board if you’re buying empty buildings or newly developed buildings. But how do you think about kind of a stabilized yield or an IRR on things that you would want to buy just given where your stocks trading and where debt costs are like how high does the returns need to be against your cost of capital?

Tim Martin: Yes. I think there’s really two buckets to answer that question. I think there is a bucket of opportunity that’s measured in call it $50 million to $150 million type of opportunity which is largely funded with our free cash flow. We think about that in our targeting stabilized yields in the low to mid-6s. That’s kind of where we’re looking at the moment. I don’t think low to mid-6s for us right now would work and we wouldn’t be interested in doing $1 billion worth of activity at those types of returns given our cost of capital. So it’s kind of — it’s kind of one bucket that is the bucket that we can pursue, that is not relying upon us raising external capital either debt or equity. And then there’s the bucket beyond that where those returns obviously would have to be higher than that to be accretive if we were out raising capital in the current environment.

Steve Sakwa: Okay. And just as a quick follow-up are there any markets that you think there’ll be more distressed in? Is it the urban markets? Or is it more of the suburban kind of migration markets that maybe people chased and built into?