Extra Space Storage (EXR) Q2 2026 earnings call transcript

I will now hand the conference over to Jared Conley, VP of Investor Relations. Jared, please go ahead. Thank you, Connor. Welcome to Extra Space Storage's second quarter 2026 earnings call. In addition to our press release, we have furnished unaudited supplemental financial information on our website. Please remember that management prepared remarks and answers to your questions may contain forward-looking statements as defined in the private securities litigation reform act. Actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied by our forward-looking statements due to risks and uncertainties associated with the company's business. These forward-looking statements are qualified by the cautionary statements contained in the company's latest filing with the SEC, which we encourage our listeners to review.

Forward-looking statements represent management estimates as of today, July 29th, 2026. 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.

I would like to now turn the call over to Drew Margolis, Chief Executive Officer. Thank you, Jared, and thank you, everyone, for joining today's call. In addition to our CFO, Jeff Norman, I am joined today by our President, Noah Springer. I am pleased to report a strong second quarter for Extra Space Storage. We delivered core FFO per share of $2.15 representing a 4.9% year-over-year growth, a result that reflects both the quality of our platform and the improving operating environment. Our same store revenue grew by 2.4% in the second quarter, exceeding our internal projections and accelerating from the first quarter. Occupancy ended the quarter at 94.2% as our systems effectively balanced rate and occupancy to optimize revenue across the portfolio.

The pricing power we have been building over the past several quarters is now clearly flowing through our results. And with same store expenses declining modestly year over year, same store NLI also accelerated, demonstrating the leverage in our operating model. We are seeing broad-based improvement across many of our markets, supported by steady customer demand, strong retention of existing customers, and gradually moderating new supply. While new customers still exhibit some price sensitivity, we continue to capture a disproportionate share of the market due to our best-in-class digital marketing, pricing, and operating systems. The rate gains we established throughout 2025 and into 2026 are now embedded in our revenue base, and we're encouraged by the momentum heading into the second half of the year.

Our company built around operational depth, cutting-edge technology, financial flexibility, and continued to outperform the industry. With that, I'll turn it over to our President Noah Springer to discuss our external growth initiatives.

Thank you, Joe. Our external growth platform continued to perform well across multiple channels in the second quarter. In the acquisition market, we were both disciplined and active. We closed 18 stores for $91 million, almost all of which were off-market transactions. Our scale, reputation, and long-standing relationships give us broad access to deal flow, and we're seeing many opportunities. That said, asset pricing remains elevated and we're maintaining our underwriting standards and staying disciplined with a focus on long-term accretion rather than chasing volume. We have significant growth capital to be opportunistic, and we will continue to use our balance sheet and joint venture structures as part of our external growth strategy. We take pride in being strong capital allocators, and we will remain focused on opportunities that enhance portfolio quality and generate accretive returns for our shareholders.

Our bridge loan program had another strong quarter. We originated $141 million in new loans and ended the quarter with approximately $1.5 billion in outstanding balances. The bridge loan program creates value on multiple levels. This program generates attractive interest income in addition to earning management fees and tenant insurance.

Finally, the program creates a natural pipeline for future acquisitions as we continue to consolidate our fragmented industry. Third-party management also delivers similar benefits. We added 67 stores during the quarter with net growth of 48 stores, bringing our year-to-date net growth to 108 stores and our total managed portfolio to 1,964 stores at quarter end. The steady demand for our management reflects what owners experienced first-hand. Our platform consistently drives superior property performance through operational expertise, sophisticated revenue management, and technology infrastructure that scales across more than 4,400 stores.

Now, I'll turn it over to our CFO, Jeff Norman. Thank you, Joe and Noah. Our FFO growth of 4.9 percent exceeded our internal forecast and was driven primarily by store level performance. Year over year, same store revenue growth accelerated 70 basis points from the first quarter to 2.4 percent. Same store NOI accelerated 230 basis points increased 3.5 percent year over year. Same store expenses decreased modestly year over year with all major categories at or better than our internal expectations. Our discipline translated directly into accelerated NOI growth. Our ancillary businesses also contributed to our FFO outperformance. Net tenant insurance income exceeded our forecast due to stronger penetration and lower claims volume. Interest income was also ahead of estimates due to modestly higher interest rates and higher than modeled loan retention.

Our low leverage balance sheet remained strong with significant access to capital. At the end of June, we priced a $550 million bond offering at 4.9 percent, which settled the first week of July. Proceeds for the offering were used to pay off our first bond maturity on July 1st. Today, we have roughly $2 billion available on our revolving lines of credit. Net of amount held available as a backstop for our commercial paper program, which gives us significant flexibility to move quickly on investment opportunities.

Shifting to guidance last night, we raised our full year 2026 FFO outlook. Our core FFO is now expected in the range of $8.25 to $8.40 per share. We raised same store revenue growth guidance 100 basis points to a range of 1 percent to 2 percent. We also raised our same store NOI guidance 200 basis points to a range of positive 0.5 percent to 2.5 percent. We refined our Los Angeles price restriction assumption and our updated guidance reflects approximately 20 to 30 basis points of headwind for the full year compared to our initial estimate of 40 basis points.

In summary, we are having a solid summer leasing season. Same store NOI and core FFO are both ahead of expectations. Our balance sheet is strong and prepared for additional future growth and we continue to benefit from having the strongest team portfolio and platform in the industry, which all have contributed to our results.

With that operator, please open the line for questions.

You're spot on that, depending on where you are in range, the high end implies that same store revenue growth is similar to that of what we experienced in the first half of the year and that at the low end of the range, it implies some deceleration. And a couple of factors play into that. The first is we move deeper into the year. We do experience more difficult comps, so we're mindful of that. And second, while we haven't seen any change in customer health, be it existing customers or customers that are all performing consistently as they have been throughout the year, we're not unaware of the headlines and some of the macro risks related to the customer out there.

We read a lot about consumer confidence being low, about there being pressure from inflation and other macro forces. And we thought those risks are appropriate to factor into the range. All of that said, we factor those into our original range and didn't fill those specifically in the first two quarters. And so far, I really not felt them in July, July was quite similar to June. So to the extent that those don't materialize, it presents an opportunity with the guidance, but we think the prudence is reasonable given those macro factors. Got it. Thanks for that. And then since you brought it up, can you give us an update of what you're seeing so far in July?

And it sounds like it's been pretty similar to June, but we'd love to get your thoughts on the metrics. Thanks.

Joe, Michael, this is Joe. July was a good month for us. Just as a comparison, in June, we were slightly ahead in rate year over year, but we're slightly behind in occupancy. And in July, the system flipped that. We were now slightly ahead in occupancy and slightly behind in rate. And this is a great example, I think, of our systems using different levers to optimize performance over the long term. And the net result of that is so far through however many days, we are slightly ahead of our budget in July. So we're having a good month.

Thank you.

Our view is that customer demand is steady. We haven't seen any pickup in the housing market. We don't see any indications through our various channels that there's more customers out there.

But our systems are able to not only capture more than our share of customers. We've had the highest occupancy at the highest rates in the industry for many, many, many quarters and years now. But we're also capturing better quality customers through some of our channel pricing and other strategies. So I think the short answer is demand is steady.

Performance is improving because of the continued reduction in supply and our systems are optimizing what's available in the market.

Sir, Griff, thanks for the question. What we're seeing is the market out there continues to be a little expensive. And where cap rates are coming in on the broker deals tends to push us towards our proprietary pipelines that we have. So we continue to close deals that are relationship deals that are managed deals and that are joint ventures and bridge loans. We tend to go to those because as those deals come up and they're ready for us to harvest, they end up being great deals for us and for our partners. Kind of the whole idea of all of those pipelines that we have. Quite a few of the stores, in fact, the majority of the stores that we close this quarter were from a relationship deal that we had.

And we're happy with that and happy that with the accretion that we got from those stores, and we'll continue to look towards that as the market tends to be a little more expensive than we want to do on the brokerage side.

Thanks, Griff.

Sure. There's there's a lot of factors that can lead to revenue growth. I mean, as you point out, rate and occupancy are two of the most important ones, but there's others such as ECRI, unit mix optimization, other tools we have to have positive revenue growth. And I wanted to also ask about the New York City settlement. It's just curious if there are any implications or any additional considerations from that suit, or is that in the rear view mirror at this point? And then can you also comment separately on the licensing and registration requirements for operators in New York City? Curious to get your view around the impact that has on the industry, whether you think it could ultimately sort of strengthen the competitive positioning for some larger, well-capitalized players, or whether that's sort of a net negative, potentially just curious to get your thoughts on that.

Sure. So just to set the table what we're talking about, there was a claim made against us by New York City based on 117 complaints they got over three years. We had 130,000 customers over those three years, and we continue to vigorously dispute those claims. We do not agree with them at all. But that being said, we were forced with the choice of entering a lengthy litigation process in New York City or settling this case for $1.7 million and putting it behind us.

And we felt the best thing for our shareholders was to take out the uncertainty and put this behind us. So we have settled the case. There's no repercussions or reverberations that we see or have felt elsewhere in the country or in New York. This matter is now behind us. With respect to the second part of your question, all self-storage operators in New York City will be required to have a license on, I think August 24th of this year. We are prepared to file the papers, pay the very modest fee, and get licensed. And in connection with that license, there will be a series of requirements of how you have to operate. We're still, we, the industry, are still waiting to see the final list of requirements that will come with that.

And I guess all I could say is one, they'll apply to everyone, so it'll be an even playing field, and two, we will comply with the law.

Sure.

Thanks, Tom.

Good question, Brendan, and I had to give you a mushy answer, but it depends. As we've looked at different types of economic stress and different types of cycles, they haven't all performed the same. But in general, we've seen demand hold pretty steady, and in some cases even accelerate through some of those types of environments because life transitions give rise to storage, and sometimes economic strength can cause more life transitions.

So from a demand standpoint, it's generally been steady to even accelerate it. On the other hand, you may also deal with vacates, and we have not seen elevated vacate activity in our stores. In fact, our length of stay continues to elongate as we think of our in-place customers on a year-over-year basis is about one and a half months longer than it was last year. So we haven't seen it yet, but as you see all these headlines out there, as you look at what the consumer is facing, we certainly think it's a reasonable risk to be mindful of. But to your point, we have not felt that in our customer behavior year-to-date, and so if that continues to be the case, then that assumption would potentially improve conservative.

How much further do you think you can go in terms of improving the average customer's behavior in the portfolio and just maintaining that customer relationship for a longer time to benefit from their stay in your facilities? Yeah, that's a very good question, but also a hard one to answer. I don't know if we have a goal for length of stay or any of these other metrics, but our scale and the amount of data we have allows us to continually test ways to optimize performance. How do we get a better customer? How do we keep them longer? What just all kinds of different metrics? So I can say with confidence, we continually try to improve across all of these metrics.

We have been improving. We have a good track record, but I don't know how far we have to go.

Yeah, thanks for the question, Ron. We're really pleased with what we've seen on the expense side this year and how we've been able to continue to leverage our scale to become more efficient. And I know you've mentioned that long term. I'll start with the year. As you look at the run rates we've had year to day in the first half and what we're guiding to for the full year, it implies that we stay in those sub-inflationary ranges, which we view as a real positive, especially in the face of some of the less controllable line items like property taxes as you mentioned. Long term, while we won't, you know, guide or forecast into future years, I think that advantage, that scale advantage and the efficiencies that it drives will continue to be an operational advantage for pressure space.

So I anticipate that we can continue to leverage those opportunities. One specific one maybe that I'll call out is on the insurance expense line item. We have a mid-year renewal which we've completed that was very favorable. It was only applicable for the month of June within the second quarter, and you can see the positive impact that that negative year over year change in our premiums add. And that will continue to flow through the rest of this year and into 27. So several reasons to be optimistic on the expense side looking forward.

Thanks. We're looking at our underwriting disciplines and continue to stay very disciplined in that while asset pricing remains elevated. When we say that, I would say in, you know, anywhere from A to C markets, you're probably somewhere from the high fours to the high fives if you want to look between those markets. So where we look at that, we're going to continue to harvest deals from our proprietary pipelines where it makes sense for us and where we continue to have deals that are accretes us over our cost of capital.

Thanks, Ron.

Chair, I'm sorry if I missed this, but on the moving rates, I know you excluded LA, but just curious, so where would that have been if LA was included and just to confirm that that had much of a benefit for you and TUKU?

Thanks for the question, Samir. We recognize that that number is one that is viewed not only tomorrow or actual performance, but is a proxy for overall new customer health for our portfolio and across the industry to include LA County, which is artificially regulated. It doesn't make a lot of sense from our perspective because you're going to be comparing apples and oranges a little bit, especially as you think back to your comp period last year when those restrictions were in place. So I won't provide a full portfolio number, but I can tell you that internally we think of it the same way. We are not using that data. We're focused on it. San Los Angeles County, because that's really the best proxy for what we're seeing across the portfolio.

I think you're seeing lower supply in almost all markets. Now, that doesn't mean that when there's still stores being delivered and in that micro market, right, when we talk about self-storage markets, we're talking about very, very small areas. You know, that's bad for that market and negative. But when we talk about MSA's and large markets, I think you're seeing a decline in deliveries in almost all MSA's.

You're a little garbled in the question that might be a systems problem. Do you mind repeating the question?

of the year. So we take a longer view on ECRIs and don't try to maximize in any one quarter or two quarters because customers are extraordinarily sticky. And when we test different ECRI levels, it's really hard to, we don't see increased moveouts even with increasing ECRI. But that being fair, we need to have a long term fair sustainable program.

And that's what we seek instead of maximizing ECRI.

You know, it's one and a half billion where you're comfortable keeping that book or do you plan to grow further from here? Yeah, the one and a half billion I think is a good number for us. I think we'll continue to see it there. If we want to flex up or down, we can always sell the A's or hold the A's a little bit longer. But where we are currently, I think that's a good spot for us.

Thank you.

I think what's important to understand about extra space is we're constantly trying to sharpen our tools. We're constantly innovating. We're using our data and technology to test. And it's really a lot of small gains. We're getting a little bit better at this, a little bit better at that. I'm not in any way announcing brand new extra space or any big changes. But certainly want to give the impression that we're never satisfied with our systems and our technology stack and our processes. And we're always trying to get a little bit better. And I think it shows up in the results.

So right around mid year, they were lifted, but we don't get the whole benefit from that, you know, exactly on the day they're lifted. So now we're estimating it's a 20 to 30 basis point headwind as opposed to a 40 basis point headwind. So some help, but not, not very significant.

I think there is perhaps too much focus, singularly on new customer rate is the only driver of revenue. And as we've talked about on the call, there's multiple other levers in short. There's always an opportunity to continue to accelerate revenue. We haven't necessarily guided to that, but it is certainly impossible.

Thank you.

And no, I would say no different than what we've seen in the last couple of years in a row. And very much in line with our expectations. We guided to modeled and assumed that we would have no material catalyst from a demand standpoint through the summer leasing season. And I think it's played out in line with that expectation.

I think your thesis is correct that if you look at new customer rates in prior periods, they roll into the rent role and that gives you a sense for future revenue growth. But it is only one component. And as we spoke earlier on this call, there's other components that could provide positive revenue growth in future periods, even if you have several periods of flat rate growth. Okay.

Sure.

And what specific actions are you taking to maintain these strong retention levels, particularly given that some of your peers are having lower occupancy levels, so they may be more inclined to compete aggressively on price?

So agree with your point that the reduction in moving customers from low 60s to about 55% now has largely been replaced by customers who tell us they're storing because they lack space for their goods. And the expected length of stay of those customers is at least twice as long as the moving customers. So that is the benefit of the downturn in moving the slowness in the housing market. And the second part of the question, what are we doing? Well, you need to provide an excellent customer experience at the store. Our customer satisfaction rates are in the low 90% important part of that is having a manager there to make sure the store is clean and have a relationship with the tenant and address their concerns.

And when the tenant gets a rate increase notice, our store managers and call center agents are empowered within certain bounds to address any concerns a customer have. And we end up with about 16% of our customers who get rate increases getting some level of relief and staying in the store through that. So that helps us retain customers. And I'm going to repeat myself. I think it all falls under providing a good experience for the customer and making them want to stay and not seek their. Most of our customers, 76% of our customers when they leave, it's because they don't need storage anymore. And it's really hard to save those customers if they don't need the product anymore.

Yeah, Victor, sorry for what will sound like a vague answer. It really was across the board. And we saw general outperformance and some of the stronger markets in terms of total same store revenue growth also had the strong stout performance. So as you think of some of the Midwest markets, DC, Boston, Chicago, Richmond, Virginia, San Diego, California, across the board, we had a number of markets outperformed.

Thank you. Thanks, Victor.

To get to 3% without improvement in occupancy or rate, I think would be difficult. Do you have a sense as to I guess how much of a lift we need to see in street rates to kind of get you back to that level?

Thank you. Well, so I feel like I've given you an unsatisfactory answer. We believe if supply continues to decrease and we don't have any significant change in customers that the risk of which Jeff outlined, we think we can get back to kind of historical levels of revenue growth between 3% and 4%. I don't know that time period, our guidance doesn't suggest it's going to happen this year, but we're certainly in the recovery stage of the storage cycle and I would expect that's where we end up.

Yeah, and apologize for being repetitive, Juan. It will depend where you are within the range, right? If at the high end of the range, you would imply a flat slope heading into 2027. At the bottom end of the range, it would imply some deceleration into next year and if we out perform our range altogether, that would imply acceleration into 2027.

Yes, the comps do become more difficult whether it's thinking of new cost movement rate or even just revenue altogether. We started to accelerate revenue beginning in the fourth quarter last year, so yes, the comp does does become more difficult.

No, absent, you know, some testing we're doing, there's been no change in our ECRI policy.

Yeah, and one, you know, this is getting really on the margins, but the only one that I'd point out is with our original guide assumed full year restrictions in Los Angeles County, with that being lifted on the margins, you know, a little better in the back half the year. Got it.

Thanks, Juan.

Yeah, not concerned. You know, our algorithms are focused on historical data we have for how a certain market and store performs vacates, rentals demanded different times of the year and not any individual customer data or observations.

Thanks, guys. Thanks, thanks.

Hi, it's Jeff. As we mentioned earlier in the call, it looks a lot like June from a performance standpoint. I think Joe outlined a little bit that we've swapped a little bit of occupancy for a little bit of rate on the margin. And so far, with a few days left in the month, we're on pace to to modestly outperform our revenue expectations. So continues to be favorable in July and looks a lot like the second quarter.

Yeah, thanks, Theo. No big change at all. In fact, with this business, there's ups and downs where portfolios sell and portfolios come in. Beginning of July, there was a portfolio that sold not concerning to us. We continue to add properties where over 100 properties net so far this year. And the benefit of this program is that there's a lot of owners and owners have less than two stores on average per owner.

And so most of the time, if anybody adds or leaves, it's onesies and twosies that we add or that disappear. But there was one that we had go beginning of July and will continue to add and continue to very strong about the program. No material change whatsoever.

Thank you. So we are seeing improvement in some Sunbelt markets, Austin, Dallas, Miami, all turned positive and new customer moving rates on a year over year basis, all improving markets, but not all markets. Houston, Tampa, still Phoenix, still difficult markets for us. But that's not at all surprising. We don't expect the Sunbelt all to act the same. We don't expect markets within the Sunbelt all to act the same. And it is one of the reasons that our portfolio is designed to be broadly diversified across mostly primary and secondary growth markets, because we know markets don't act the same at the same time.

And the more diversification we can get, the more we smooth out our return series. And Ravi, if I could just add a thought there, I think that's one thing that makes this even more excited about our performance this year in general is relative to the market. We're a little overweight, the Sunbelt, and despite the drag from those markets that haven't had a stronger performance, we've still had pretty significant same store revenue acceleration. And at some point, those markets will continue to flip and accelerate. And I think give another leg to that growth.

Thanks, Ravi.

I will now turn the call back to Joe Margolis, CEO for closing remarks. Great. Thank you, everyone, for your interest in our company. Our team is happy to report very solid results and the ability to raise guidance. These results stem from success across all aspects of the platform. Our stores are outperforming expectations. Our expense control is very positive, both at the store level and at the G&A level. And we're getting solid contributions from our ASLRA businesses.

So we're encouraged on where we are in the cycle and confident that we have the machine to optimize results going forward. Thank you and look forward to talking to you next quarter. This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.