Greetings. Welcome to the Life Storage fourth quarter earnings release conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Brent Maedl. You may begin. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today for the fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call of Life Storage. Leading today's discussion will be Joe Saffire, Chief Executive Officer of Life Storage, and Alex Gress, Chief Financial Officer. Following prepared remarks, management will accept questions from registered financial analysts. As a reminder, the following discussion and answers to your questions contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties and represent management estimates as of today, February 24th, 2023. The company assumes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statement because of the changing market conditions or other circumstances after the date of this conference call. Additional information regarding these factors can be found in the company's public SEC filings. In addition to the press release distributed yesterday, this morning we published an investor presentation regarding the unsolicited acquisition proposal received from Public Storage on February 5th, 2023. We have also furnished our supplemental package with additional detail on our financial results. These materials have been filed with the SEC and may be found on the investor relations section on our website at lifestorage.com. As a reminder, during today's question and answer session, we ask that you please limit yourself to two questions to allow time for everyone who wishes to participate. Please re-queue with any follow-up questions thereafter. This time, I'll turn the call over to Joe. Thanks, Brent. Good morning, everyone. Following our discussion of our fourth quarter and full year 2020 results and financial outlook, I'll spend some time walking you through the presentation we filed with the SEC this morning and the rationale behind our board's unanimous decision to reject Public Storage's unsolicited acquisition proposal. First, I'm excited to announce that Life Storage crossed the threshold of $1 billion in total consolidated revenue in 2022. This is an incredible accomplishment, as we now have nearly doubled the revenue we reported only five years ago in 2017. I am confident in our ability to continue to build on our momentum and deliver outstanding results. I am also pleased to announce that Newsweek has awarded us the Best Customer Service Award in America for storage center category for the sixth year in a row. This award is a testament to the best-in-class brand and team we have here at Life Storage and to our commitment to delivering exceptional, seamless experience for our customers. Turning to our quarterly results, I am pleased to report we were delivered another quarter of outstanding performance across all segments of our business. While we continue to see a return to more normal seasonal trends, our operating fundamentals and business trends were very strong and remain above pre-pandemic levels. This positions us well for the year ahead. I'd like to highlight a few notable results and trends. For the quarter, we achieved same-store revenue growth of 11.8% versus the prior year period. Our strong performance was broad-based, with 85% of our major markets achieving 7% or greater revenue growth. For the year, 32 of our top 33 markets achieved greater than 10% revenue growth. These results underscore the benefits of our disciplined portfolio strategy to expand in key growth markets that allow us to benefit from regional income and population trends. In addition to this outstanding operating performance, we also completed another strong year on the acquisitions front, completing over $1 billion in wholly owned and JV acquisitions, totaling 75 properties. Of this amount, $974 million and 49 stores were wholly owned acquisitions, representing nearly 7% growth in our wholly owned portfolio. We continue to expand in markets such as Dallas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Diego, St. Louis, and New York City. Today, we own and or operate nearly 1,200 stores facilities across 37 states and the District of Columbia. With regards to third-party management, we added 40 stores gross, net 39 stores in the fourth quarter, and 107 stores for the year, for a total of 440 stores at the end of 2022. Our third-party management platform had an excellent year, as both our existing relationships and new relationships continued to add more facilities to our platform. During the quarter, we transitioned 29 operating facilities from other REIT platforms, further evidence that more and more owners are choosing the Life Storage brand and platform to manage their assets. This portfolio of managed stores continues to provide a strong pipeline of acquisitions. We acquired 11 managed stores during the year, representing nearly 1/4 of our wholly owned acquisition volume. Our operating trends thus far in 2023 demonstrate that we are continuing our strong momentum as we achieved January month-end occupancy of 91.2%, which is 150 basis points higher than pre-COVID January 2019. In fact, we had record move-ins in January. Demand remained strong. Our excellent performance in 2022 reflects the strength of our operating model and the significant progress we have made to build our portfolio with high-quality properties in attractive growth markets. In 2023, we will continue to focus on executing on our strategy to expand our portfolio and deliver best-in-class service. By doing so, we will build on our track record of strong, profitable growth to continue to enhance value for our Life Storage shareholders. With that, I will hand the call over to Alex, who will provide additional color on our performance for the quarter and the year and walk you through our 2023 financial guidance. Thanks, Joe. This quarter, we reported adjusted funds from operations of $1.69 per share, an increase of 19.9% over the same quarter last year. Well above the high end of our guidance. Fourth quarter same-store revenue increased 11.8% year-over-year, driven by realized rates per square foot growth of 14.7% over the fourth quarter of 2021. As Joe mentioned, we continue to see the operating environment normalize. As expected, though, asking rates and occupancies remain elevated, they continue to level off from their highs during the pandemic. Same-store occupancy for the quarter averaged 91.5% or 140 basis points above pre-COVID levels. Demand remained strong through year-end, with move-ins accelerating in the last month of the quarter and through January 2023. Same-store operating expenses, excluding real estate taxes, increased 4.1% for the quarter versus the prior year period. The largest negative variances occurred in utilities, repairs and maintenance, and internet marketing. The 15.7% increase in same-store property taxes as compared to the prior year quarter reflects the impact of large tax rebates received in the fourth quarter of 2021 that reduced the comparable expense in the prior year quarter. For reference, full-year property taxes increased 5.2% compared to the prior. These quarterly increases were partially offset by a 4.3% decrease in payroll and benefits. The net effect of same-store revenue and expense performance was 100 basis point expansion in quarterly net operating income margin to 73.7%, resulting in 13.3% year-over-year growth in same-store NOI for the fourth quarter. With this improved performance, we again increased our dividend 11% in January as we continue to focus on increasing capital returns as we grow our business. This increase follows our 8% dividend bump this past July and marks a cumulative quarterly dividend increase of 20% since January 2022. Turning to the balance sheet, our net debt to recurring EBITDA ratio remains strong at 4.8x at quarter end, and our debt service coverage ratio is a healthy 5.2x at December 31st. We had approximately $655 million available in our line of credit at quarter end, with no significant debt maturities until April 2024, when $175 million becomes due, and our average debt maturity is 5.5 years. In addition, at December 31st, nearly 85% of our debt was fixed rate. Turning now to our 2023 guidance. Details of our 2023 earnings guidance and related assumptions were included in our release last night. Our 2023 same-store pool increased by 88 stores, bringing our total 2023 same-store pool count to 664 stabilized stores. We expect same-store revenue to grow between 4%-5.5%, a majority of which will be driven by existing customer increases. Excluding property taxes, we expect other expenses to increase between 4%-5%, while property taxes are expected to increase 6.25%-7.25%. The cumulative effect of these assumptions would result in 3.75%-5.25% growth in same-store NOI. We expect our wholly owned acquisitions to be between $150 million and $250 million. Based on this outlook, we anticipate adjusted FFO per share for 2023 to be between $6.75 and $6.95 or 5.2% growth over prior year at the midpoint. As you will hear in Joe's comments shortly, we felt it was important to share with you our summary outlook for 2024. Based on what we know today, we expect low double-digit FFO per share growth in 2024 with a midpoint of 11%. I will turn the call back to Joe to discuss the presentation we filed this morning that discusses the factors that led to our board determining that the proposal from Public Storage significantly undervalues our company and its growth prospects. Joe? Thanks, Alex. Last week, we announced that Life Storage Board of Directors unanimously rejected the unsolicited acquisition proposal publicly announced by Public Storage on February 5th, 2023. The board's decision followed a comprehensive review of the proposal in consultation with independent financial and legal advisors. As Brent noted in his opening this morning, we filed a presentation that provides a deeper dive into the factors that led to the board's determination that the proposal significantly undervalues our company. I want to spend some time this morning walking through the presentation and providing more color on why we are so confident in our future, and why we believe that Public Storage's proposal does not appropriately reflect the value embedded in the upside of Life Storage and our clear line of sight to continued growth and value creation. I'll start on slide three of the new investor presentation we posted this morning. If you haven't seen it yet, the presentation is available in the IR section of our website and on file with the SEC. The board's decision was grounded in the significant progress we have made over the past 5 years, creating a differentiated platform and what we believe is truly unique value creation opportunity. In this time, we have grown Life Storage from 706 stores across 28 states to a diversified footprint of nearly 1,200 stores across 37 states, primarily in the key growth markets across the Sun Belt. As we have grown, we have enhanced our operating model, building on our pioneering technology and innovating our platform to provide best-in-class service to our more than 675,000 customers. My focus since 2019, when I was appointed CEO, has been to accelerate our progress by focusing on our strategic pillars to deliver profitable growth and industry-leading shareholder returns. Our operational and financial performance over the past several years demonstrates that our strategy is working. We have a robust platform to continue building on this momentum. Turning to slide four. The board unanimously determined that the Public Storage proposal significantly undervalues Life Storage and the company's prospects. Over the next several slides, I will walk you through the key elements of the board's decision, including Life Storage's significant outperformance over the past several years and the reasons we believe we are positioned to extend our industry-leading track record, the unique opportunity we have to drive continued superior growth by scaling our platform faster and more efficiently than our peers, our margin expansion initiatives, which are leading to enhanced profitability, and the belief that Public Storage's proposal was opportunistically timed and does not reflect the significant continued growth and value creation that Life Storage is poised to realize. I'll begin with the reasons we believe that the proposal does not provide adequate value for Life Storage and the company's prospects for future value creation. As you can see on slide six, over the past five years, and since March of 2019, we have translated our significant growth and strong financial performance into superior returns for our shareholders. Our team has delivered industry-leading returns of nearly 100% since March of 2019 and nearly 150% over the past five years. The strong results and financial outlook that we announced today reflect our confidence in our ability to continue this track record. Slide seven underscores our proven commitment to exceptional dividend growth. Providing an attractive and growing dividend for our shareholders is not something we have embraced only recently. In fact, we have raised our dividend 6x since March of 2019 for a total increase of 80% over that period. Growing our dividend is a key focus and we intend to continue to do so as we drive enhanced FFO growth over the coming quarters and years. The substantial value we have driven for our shareholders over the past several years has been underpinned by our significant financial outperformance. On slide eight, you can see that Life Storage has beat or met analyst consensus for FFO per share every quarter since the beginning of 2018, with the exception of one quarter at the start of COVID in 2020. We have also achieved or exceeded our own guidance for FFO every year over that period, including substantial outperformance in 2021 and 2022. We hold our team to high standards. Time and time again our team has delivered. The financial outlook that we have announced today reflects our confidence in our team's ability to build on this substantial momentum in 2023, in 2024, and for the long term. In addition to our outperformance expectations, we have outperformed our peer group. On slide nine, you can see that. Since 2019, we are consistently at or near the top of the list on FFO-per-share growth. If you include forecasted 2023 results, Life Storage has the highest FFO-per-share CAGR in our peer group at 13.3%. This compares to Public Storage at 9.3%. As Alex and I mentioned earlier, we anticipate industry-leading growth in 2024. Slide 10 shows our expectation of low double-digit FFO per share growth in 2024, with a midpoint of 11%. Our growth projections are based on a number of different factors, including continued same-store growth, contributions from recent acquisitions, the positive impact of lease-up assets, growth in fee revenue from third-party management and joint ventures and redevelopments. We expect to continue leading the industry in terms of growth. Moving now to our operating strategy and track record of execution, which have allowed us to deliver best-in-class performance across our portfolio. Let's turn to slide 12. Our best-in-class operating performance is driven by accelerating top and bottom-line growth. Over the past three years, we have driven leading same-store revenue growth. Through our strong operating fundamentals and disciplined expense control, we have translated this top-line growth into same-store NOI outperformance. Our leadership position is bolstered by our footprint in rapidly growing markets, as you can see on slides 13 and 14. Over the past three years, we have reshaped our portfolio to focus on key Sun Belt markets, where we benefit from attractive demographics and higher projected growth than our peers. We believe expanding in the right markets is critical to future growth. Between our existing footprint and our relationships through our third-party management and joint ventures, we have a built-in pipeline to continue growing in markets supported by strong demographic tailwinds. Our advantage geographic footprint is clearly a factor in rejecting the proposal. A key component of our portfolio strategy and our superior value creation has been our focus on expanding in the Sun Belt, which I mentioned on the prior slide, offers compelling demand trends and population demographics. Since 2019, we have acquired 140 new properties in the Sun Belt, totaling approximately 70% of our acquisitions over this period. Though population and employment growth trends in the Sun Belt are projected to continue to drive strong demand, our peers' portfolios remain underexposed to the region. We believe our strong footprint in the Sun Belt represents a significant competitive advantage, particularly relative to companies that have focused on growth in California, where population demographics are trending in the opposite direction. Today, roughly 60% of our total store count is located in the Sun Belt states, excluding California, and we expect to drive continued above-market growth in the region as we benefit from in-migration trends. With approximately 65% of our third-party and joint venture assets also in the Sun Belt, we have a considerable opportunities to expand in the region. Thanks to focused planning and outstanding execution, today, Life Storage is in better markets, positioning us for continued superior growth. Turning now to our operating platform, which together with the size of our asset base, allows us to grow faster and more efficiently than our peers. Let's turn to slide 16. At Life Storage, we have built a model that allows us to scale our portfolio and drive superior earnings. Our leading third-party management platform and joint ventures provide us with an embedded pool of potential acquisitions in key markets, the vast majority of which are off-market opportunities. We have historically been able to capitalize on these opportunities at attractive rates as we avoid competing bids from an open market process. We have a strong track record of translating these acquisitions into enhanced profitability by identifying and executing on redevelopment activities. I've been talking about our faster growth. Let me show you what that looks like. As you can see on slide 17, since 2018, we have accelerated our store count growth by leveraging our unique external growth levers, increasing our overall footprint by 55% over that time. We have scaled our third-party management platform and joint venture portfolio at a faster rate than our overall portfolio, creating an increasing number of acquisition opportunities. Today, our portfolio of managed and joint venture asset comprises of about $8 billion in assets, approximately 65% of which are in the Sun Belt. This is a primary driver of our acquisition pipeline, which currently stands at $685 million in assets, approximately 95% of which are off-market opportunities. We expect to continue to build out our pipeline as we enhance our third-party and joint venture relationships, allowing us to continue to bolster our portfolio and strengthen on our foundation for continued profitable growth. We expect our store count to increase by approximately 100 over the coming year. Growth is valuable and likely a key reason Public Storage is pursuing Life Storage. Referring now to slide 18, the relative size of our asset base positions us to scale our portfolio more efficiently than peers, allowing us to deliver higher growth rates through our proven acquisition strategy. Our wholly-owned acquisition volume since 2019 as a percentage of our total enterprise value at the year-end in 2022 is 30%. Public Storage cannot match this growth rate because of both the size of their portfolio and the overall lack of larger scale portfolio deals. For example, Public Storage's acquisition volume over that period is only 12% of their total enterprise value. For Public Storage to have achieved our growth over that period, they would have needed to spend approximately $16 billion more on acquisitions. Our smaller base compared to Public Storage means we have significant runway and more upside and can more easily deliver significant growth. That's an exciting and important differentiator for Life Storage. Turning now to slide 19. We attribute much of our strong growth rate and continued robust acquisition pipeline to our leading third-party management program and established joint venture relationships. Our third-party management program has seen remarkable growth since 2019, adding 227 new managed stores, including 65 net transfers from other REITs. We also continue to develop our JV portfolio of 141 stores through relationships with leading institutional and private equity partners. These relationships enable us to participate in top markets and quality properties that provide future upside with a moderate capital investment. We've increasingly leaned on our pool of managed and JV assets to fuel our acquisition pipeline in recent years. In fact, 37% of our total acquisition volume since the start of 2020 has come from these properties. These relationships also provide an attractive annual fee stream, delivering approximately $31 million in annual fee income and reduce our reliance on the public markets as an alternative source of capital. We believe the relationships we have built through these pipelines are valuable assets in and of themselves. Our partners trust Life Storage, and they rely on our leading operating platform and brand. This kind of trust is a differentiator for Life Storage, and it's not built overnight. It is something we earn through our hard work every day. We have heard from many of these partners, and they have serious reservations about continuing their relationship with Life Storage if the company were to be acquired by Public Storage. In short, our third-party management and joint venture relationships are unique and valuable. We have been able to translate our strong external growth into significant profitability through our redevelopment initiatives to improve the quality of our assets and drive enhanced ROI and enhanced margins. We are relentless in our efforts to deliver the best possible experience for our customers through ongoing investments in our owned assets. As you can see on slide 20, since 2018, we have completed $208 million of redevelopments which have yielded stable, attractive ROIs of over 10% and translated to a 390 basis point increase in our NOI margin. We have a strong pipeline of these initiatives underway across our portfolio, which are positioned to drive future growth and cash flows as they are completed. Importantly, this is all in our control. As we continue to execute on both internal and external growth opportunities, Life Storage has the proven capabilities and dynamic operating platform to drive enhanced profitability and value for shareholders. Speaking of profitability, I will now provide a deeper dive into our margin improvement trajectory and the initiatives we have underway to sustain this momentum. Since the beginning of 2019, one of our key areas of focus has been to improve our margins, and I am pleased to say we have made substantial progress so far. The chart on 22 speaks volumes. Since 2019, we have delivered sector-leading NOI margin expansion of approximately 630 basis points. We achieved this through disciplined execution of our initiatives to improve rental rates and reduce operating expenses in our stores while maintaining best-in-class service. As we continue to advance these initiatives, we expect to deliver at least 70 basis points of additional margin uplift over the next two years. One point that Public Storage has brought up in its discussions around its proposal has been its relative margin differences. When you look beneath the surface, the margin gap is not as great as they may suggest. While Public Storage has been able to achieve higher reported NOI margins, a direct comparison of our two companies' margins ignores several key variables with meaningful impact on total margin differences. You can see a breakdown of these factors on slide 23. In particular, the higher regional rents in Public Storage's key markets account for approximately 370 basis points of margin difference. These are non-controllable factors reflecting the different geographies of the portfolios. Public Storage benefits from a lower tax basis than Life Storage, primarily due to Proposition 13 in California. Their margins in California have inherent risk from a potential repeal of Proposition 13, which would eliminate tax breaks and could remove approximately 150 basis points from their margins. When you consider at least 70 basis points uplift, we expect over the next two years, the spread between our margins shrink significantly. Given the momentum we have in increasing store profitability through our efficiency initiatives and technology rollout, we are confident that we can continue to close the margin gap as a standalone company. The strong growth and profitability trends in our business and our superior geographic exposure and capabilities were key factors in the board's decision to reject Public Storage's proposal. The board also determined that the proposal was opportunistic and fails to account for our compelling outlook and ability to continue to drive leading growth and value creation. Let me explain why we think the proposal was opportunistically timed, which is covered on slides 25 and 26. First, Life Storage has been undervalued compared to historical averages. Based on recent history, however, we believe that this dislocation in our stock price is temporary. In fact, the proposal currently reflects an implied FFO multiple of only 17.7x, which is well below our three-year average of 19.4x. In other words, it's a great proposal for Public Storage, it is clearly inadequate for Life Storage shareholders. Public Storage's proposal, which was made during the quiet period before we announced our 2022 results and outlook through 2024, does not account for our company's strong future growth prospects. Let me take a moment to explain the graph you see on page 26. What we show here is the PEG ratio for us and our peers, which is defined as the price-to-earnings ratio divided by our earnings growth rate over a period of time. The PEG ratio calculates our 2024 FFO multiple, adjusted for the expected growth in 2024 and dividend yield. While Life Storage is undervalued on a one-year FFO multiple basis, as we just discussed, it is even more undervalued when looking at our PEG ratio. When our FFO multiple is viewed in the context of our expected growth, we are trading well below our closest peers' multiple. We anticipate a significant improvement in our multiple as the markets better understand the superior growth Life Storage is poised to deliver over the next two years. Let me repeat that. We anticipate a significant improvement in our multiple as the markets better understand the superior growth Life Storage is poised to deliver over the next two years. Public Storage's proposal fails to account for this industry-leading growth and instead seems to be opportunistically timed to transfer Life Storage's upside value to Public Storage. Turning to slide 27. The board conducted a robust evaluation process. Among other things, the board considered whether Life Storage is better positioned to deliver growth and value standalone or with Public Storage's proposal. The conclusion of this evaluation was unanimous. Life Storage is better positioned to continue enhancing value for shareholders by executing its current strategy than it would be through the proposed transaction. In reaching this conclusion, the board considered a number of factors I reviewed today: our robust growth pipeline, our track record of delivering higher than expected total shareholder returns and driving leading revenue, NOI, and FFO growth rates, and our strong margin improvement. Further, the board determined that our portfolio of newer higher quality assets in attractive markets is primed for growth that we do not believe Public Storage can match. The board's evaluation indicated that the Public Storage proposal is inadequate, opportunistic, and does not reflect Life Storage's best-in-class performance and value potential. I want to briefly mention in closing the independence of the Life Storage board. This is a diverse, regularly refreshed board that is clearly committed to acting in shareholders' best interests. Board members bring significant experience and expertise relevant to our business objectives and are ultimately focused on value creation for shareholders. We are proud to have a strong record of engaging with shareholders and taking action in response to their feedback. Turning to the final slide. We believe Life Storage is uniquely valuable, growing at a faster rate in higher growth properties than peers and delivering sector-leading margin improvement. Public Storage's proposal is opportunistically timed to take advantage of a temporary dislocation in the stock price and does not reflect Life Storage's recent performance and bright prospects for continued superior value creation. The Life Storage board is open-minded and will continue to review opportunities to further enhance value as we execute on our proven plan to drive continued growth and shareholder value. Thank you all for joining us today. I hope you share in our excitement for the bright future we see ahead for Life Storage. As we turn to the Q&A, I'd ask that you keep all questions focused on our strong performance, our business, and the outlook we provided today. We shared quite a bit of detail around the board's decision to reject the Public Storage proposal, and I'm sure you can appreciate that we do not intend to comment further on that matter. With that, operator, we will now open the call for questions. Certainly. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to be removed from the question queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment while we poll for questions. Your first question for today is coming from Juan Sanabria at BMO. Hi, good morning. Thanks for the time and for that thorough presentation this morning. Joe, I was just curious if you could maybe shed some light as to the drivers behind the 2024 earnings growth you laid out, in particular, what you guys would expect from a same-store revenue perspective, just to kind of think about how that stacks up relative to your guidance that you laid out last night for 2023? Sure. Hi, Juan. Be happy to. Obviously, we feel really strong about the guidance we gave for 2023. That's embedded in our outlook for 2024. There's multiple drivers. I just kind of went through some of them in the presentation. Again, much of it is to do what we've been doing over the last few years, in particular, the acquisitions of nearly $5 billion, including JVs, over the last few years. For sure, we see continued growth in the same-store growth, outperformance in some of those acquisitions. Since underwriting, we like what we see, to be quite honest. The growth in the third-party management platform has been going extremely well, better than expected. Obviously, we've got our enhancements program that we've, you know, is doing quite well in providing double-digit returns on those investments. obviously, there's the margin improvement we talked about. We do see at least 70 basis points in further improvement. Great. Then just, I understand the hesitancy to wanna delve deeper into the presentation, but I think, you know, there's clearly you lay out the multiple difference versus history, which is well and good, but I would argue today is a different environment given the higher interest rates. Just curious on how you think about the difference in cost of capital and absolute values when the board is thinking about assessing bids out there, because clearly, today's world is different from where it was, unfortunately, six months ago. Listen, Juan, I'm not gonna get into the board's reasoning behind some of this, but I will say I'm not happy with the multiple right now. It doesn't reflect the opportunity ahead of us, the growth prospects ahead of us. It's why I felt it was important to talk about 2024. It was just last year, we were trading at a premium to the average multiple of our peers, and now we're at a discount. It's definitely market-driven, and I believe temporary. Thanks, Joe. Thanks, Juan, Your next question for today is coming from Todd Thomas at Key Banc. Hi. Thanks. Good morning. I guess, you know, two follow-ups on those questions, actually. First, you know, just around the 2024 growth. Joe, you know, the industry, you know, lacks visibility, which, you know, you discuss in the slide that outlines, you know, the track record the company has of, you know, beating versus consensus, but also your own quarterly and annual guidance over the last several years. I'm just trying to get a sense around the level of comfort that you have, as it pertains to the 2024 FFO growth that you outlined, and maybe how much of that growth is sort of locked in, I guess, in your view and sorta controllable, you know, versus, you know, what is from maybe the same store and operations more generally. Right. Thanks, Todd. What we put in there, we feel very confident about. You know, obviously, our guidance for future acquisitions for at least 2023 is much, much smaller given the market conditions than the last three years. Actually, there's not a lot in that 9%-13% FFO growth from future acquisitions. Really it's what we see, what's controllable. We have very clear visibility in our 3PM pipeline going forward. We have signed contracts of stores that are opening over the next 12-18 months. That's in there. We see our expansions program, where they are in the pipeline. There were some supply chain issues that held some of them back over the last few years. We're catching up. We know when they're gonna open, and we have a really good track record of understanding how they're gonna lease up. Obviously we've did, you know, $3.3 billion in acquisitions over the last few years in the Sun Belt. We feel very strongly about the demographics of the Sun Belt. You know, all of that is embedded in the 2024. We feel very confident, Todd. Okay. You know, just, in terms of the process here, can you talk a little bit about how the board thinks about maximizing shareholder value over time? I think you said the board conducted a robust review of the company's valuation and value potential. You know, has the board engaged with a third party to provide a valuation for the company, or is there another way that the board defines value in terms of, you know, sort of a target multiple or NAV? Does... You know, what does the board view as the current NAV of the company? Todd, I'm not gonna get into what the board looks at and their process. We've talked a lot about it in the presentation. I will say that the board is always open to and will regularly evaluate any opportunities that are put in front of them. What we talked about today was one proposal put in front of them. I won't say more about it. Okay. I guess one last question, if I could. You know, you talked about some of the risk of the third-party management, you know, contracts, I guess may be falling out in the event of an acquisition by PSA, maybe some impact around some of the joint ventures. Are you seeing an impact today on discussions that you're having with potential parties, either, you know, for joint ventures, you know, for third-party management? Is there a hesitation around them moving forward? Is this having an impact at all on business today? Absolutely no impact on our business today. The feedback we got about a potential transaction, that was unsolicited. We've gotten many calls from JV partners and third-party management owners telling us that they're not gonna stay. It's a risk. Okay. Thank you. Your next question is coming from Steve Sakwa at Evercore ISI. Yeah, thanks. Good morning. If I'm doing my math correctly, I think FFO growth is projected at around 5% this year at the midpoint of your guidance. Effectively, Joe, you're saying that, you know, you can double FFO growth in 2024. I know you've laid out a bunch of drivers. You know, which ones are the biggest contributors to that accelerating, I guess, earnings growth or which ones are creating big headwinds this year that you think may get neutralized or become tailwinds next year? Hi, Steve. I'll let Alex jump in a little bit here. Hi, Steve. Good morning. You know, when you think about 2024, I want to go back and just quickly say, you know, to put in context, you know, we are a relatively young company with a smaller base. As we've talked about in our meetings, you know, we're very much continuing on our journey to grow and expand. We've shown that since 2019, we've driven same-store margins up by 630 basis points to most of our peer group. We recognize that. We recognize we have more work ahead. I think in terms of 2024 and specificity around the weight of each factor, that while we are confident in that outlook, we're not going to give specific weightings to the individual growth drivers. I would really, you know, go back and reiterate a couple of points that Joe made. You know, it's a couple of different things from different factors. The growth of our same-store pool, the strong performance of our acquisitions, you know, $5.5 billion of wholly owned in JV over the last few years, growth of 3PM and JVs and contribution from our lease-ups. You know, we talked about margin initiatives and improvements of at least 70 basis points in that outlook, and that comes from an investment in, you know, process and technologies. It's continuing that journey of the 630 basis points that we've done to date. Okay. Either Joe or, maybe Alex, you know, employee costs at the site have certainly, you know, been a big focus for everybody as, you know, people have tried to streamline kind of operations and improve margin. You know, maybe just talk about some of the things that you've done technologically and, you know, what else is left to be done, on the on-site personnel side, and how much of that factors into the, 70 basis point margin improvement over the next two years. Hi, Steve. I'll take that. Listen, thanks for acknowledging and, you know, talking about technology. You know, many may forget we led the sector with the Rent Now program. You know, when everyone else kinda laughed and said, "You know, we wanna sell at the counter," we proved that technology can improve payroll, improve efficiency, and actually improve customer service levels. Obviously, we're still heavily invested in our Rent Now program. You know, we have dynamic pricing. We continue to look ways to increase utilization of that channel. It continues to go up. We're not just stopping with that. Obviously, there are other things that we can do to make, you know, the stores more efficient and maintain the livable wage that we provide. We invest in our people. We're very proud of our people. They're a lot of the reason why we are growing our 3PM business and our JV business. We'll continue to invest in our people. We're just trying to work smarter at the counter. We're trying to reduce the hours. We're using data. We have a ton of data that we're, you know, just really learning how to utilize. We've been hiring data scientists, and that data is helping us decide hours at stores, traffic, which stores do we need more people, which stores can we pull back but still keep them open. There's a lot involved in that. Obviously, there's been talk of kiosks in the industry. We're looking at kiosks, a different type of kiosk, virtual management, a live agent at a kiosk. These are the types of things we're looking at, and we're excited about what they're gonna do for us going forward. Great. Thank you. Your next question for today is coming from Smedes Rose at Citi. Hi. Thanks. I guess just, you know, with this year's guidance and next year's guidance, maybe you could just talk a little bit about what you're seeing, kind of on the wages and benefits line, what you're thinking about for this year's growth in 2023 and how you think that will grow, in 2024. Hi, Smedes. I'll let Alex talk a little bit about 2023 and the payroll we expect. For 2024, probably won't get that granular, but go ahead, Alex. Sure. Yeah. In, in 2023, just specifically on the payroll and benefits line, obviously very good coming off of 2022, you know, coming in lower year-over-year. You know, as Joe alluded, you know, we really invest in our people, and we really pride ourselves in customer service. In 2023, you know, payroll is up but nominally, certainly well below the pace of inflation. It's probably around that 2.5%-3.5% level. If you look at 2024, we see that continuing to normalize, if not come down more for the exact reasons Joe outlined. It's the continued investment in technology, and specifically part of that is the continued rollout of our kiosk program that enables us to optimize hours at stores with lower physical, you know, count in the store and leveraging our call center operations. Okay, thanks. Joe, I just wanted to go back. When you said you had managed owners of managed properties calling and saying that they would drop out if PSA took over, I'm just, what's the aversion? I mean, is it because they're newer in that space, or is it they don't like the brand, or what? Like, why would they, why would they do that? Smedes, you know, I can't comment as to why they choose decisions. I know that when we're trying to win business, brand, people at the store, and really your performance in their region, they wanna choose an operator that is outperforming the others. That's how their stores are gonna perform. You know, we invest in our people, we invest in our properties, and they see how our stores are managed, and they like that about us. I think there's many options in the third-party business. It's a very difficult business to win. We kinda got into it late in the game, but I think we're really, you know, punching above our weight right now. We're doing very well, and we're excited about the prospects going forward. Okay, thank you. Thanks, Smedes. Your next question for today is coming from Mike Mueller at JP Morgan. Yeah, hi. In terms of the redevelopments that you've talked about completing over the past few years and the returns, can you talk about the size of that pipeline? There's really nothing in the supplemental about it today. You know, what the pipeline could grow to over the next few years in just kind of marginal returns. Sure. I mean, obviously with, you know, our acquisitions, Michael, we kinda continue to build up a pipeline. Every acquisition we do, we look at opportunities to expand or enhance, do a knockdown. You know, the pipeline, you know, we have been, you know, targeting, you know, $60 million-$70 million a year in investment. We could do more. We could do $100 million. Sometimes there are constraints with municipalities and getting, you know, the appropriate approvals. Supply chain issue has been an issue, but we think that's getting a little bit better. You know, our guidance kind of includes $60 million-$70 million, you know, 2023, 2024. We will do more if we can. You know, we can get up to $100 million-$110 million. We have the capacity. We have our own construction team, that just focuses on that. A lot of it is in our control, but some of it isn't in our control, and that's supply chain and municipality speed. Our guidance, $60 million-$70 million a year, you know, but I think we'll do better. What is a typical redevelopment or enhancement? Sure. What portion of those tend to, I guess, have expansions, you know, tacked on to them as well? Every year, you know, it's kind of a constant building of our pipeline. You know, our area managers, our store managers, we kind of like bring up ideas, and we have a whole committee around it. We look at for opportunities. It can be, you know, everything from just knocking down an old, you know, drive-up facility and building up three stories climate control. It could be just changing the front of an office. It could be, you know, all sorts of things, Michael. It really depends on the project. We've had complete knockdowns. You know, we had a store in Sun Belt that, you know, just kind of kept flooding every few years, and we ended up knocking the whole thing down and building a next gen, three or four story climate controlled building. When you do that, obviously climate control, you get better rate per sq ft, and so forth. It really depends on the project, but it's a great program for us. It's a great use of our capital. Okay. Just lastly on the view that margins are expanding about 70 basis points over the next, I forget if it was a year or two. Is that more driven on the expense side, or is that more driven on the revenue side? Just any color you can shine on that. Hey, Michael, it's Alex. Yeah, to reiterate what we said a few moments ago, you know, when you look forward the next couple of years, you know, 70 basis points at least of margin issues, predominantly, you know, on the expense side. That's a reflection of what we said. You know, the investment in technology and then the benefit of our scaling coming through our numbers. We would see benefits on payroll, internet marketing, and also continued rationalization of other expenses. Okay, got it. Okay, thank you. Thanks, Michael. Your next question for today is coming from Michael Goldsmith at UBS. Good morning. Thanks a lot for taking my question. In your presentation, you talk a lot about the Sun Belt and the continued growth there. Can you talk a bit about the performance of the Sun Belt relative to your to the rest of the portfolio in 2022, and what are the expectations for that region and its impact on your 2023 and 2024 guidance? Thanks. Michael, it's Alex, when you look at 2022 in our markets in the Sun Belt, you know, really good production coming out of some of the key states in the area. I'd specifically, you know, call out, you know, obviously Florida, you know, Georgia as kind of the prime ones. That's a good setup. Those are part of the good setup into 2023. Yeah, I mean, it's just, you know, it continues to be, you know. If you go to Florida, I was just down there a couple weeks ago. No one's talking about recession. It's incredible. I mean, you know, the demographics, the job growth speaks for themselves. Obviously, Florida has been just, you know, on fire for us the last couple of years, and we expect that to continue, Michael. Thanks for that. You had a big acquisition year in 2021. I guess I would expected there would be a large contribution from some of the lease up properties, impacting your FFO growth in 2022 and 2023. 2023, you're looking at, like 5% growth. I'm just wondering... Then there's an acceleration in your 2024 guidance. Just trying to better understand the dynamics from the lease up properties and the acquisitions on the earnings growth over the next couple of years. Michael, it's Alex again. Yeah, I mean, go back to what we talked about in 2024. It's really coming from a number of factors. We're not gonna comment on the weighting, but definitely it's continued growth of our same store pool. Yep, it's the strong performance of acquisitions that we've done to date, you know, $5 billion-$5.5 billion that's wholly owned, and of course, there's a JV number in there as well. While we're not gonna go into specific weightings, it's a couple of different factors. Certainly the continued performance of our lease up pool is part of it. Yeah, just one more for me. You did a really nice job outlining your thoughts on the proposed acquisition and your case here. You know, have you received any approaches from any other interested parties? Michael, I can't comment on that. All right, thanks so much. Good luck in 2023. Thank you very much. We will take one more question. Your question is coming from Jon Petersen at Jefferies. Ooh, I just made the cut. Thank you. No problem, Jon. I wanted to ask a question on the margins. You know, I know some of your peers, I guess Public Storage specifically, breaks out direct and indirect expenses as part of their operating expenses. Can you just help us definitionally, what do you guys put in OpEx? What do you put in G&A? Any commentary on how that differs from your peers would be helpful. Yeah, It's Alex. Hey, Jon. I won't comment obviously on the peer definitions. You know, for us, you know, in our same store NOI margin, it's really direct operating expenses, you know, at the store level. You know, obviously the payroll, property tax, you know, benefits, internet marketing, you know, those utilities, you know, those are the obvious line items. We don't include in there supervisory costs. Our regional managers, our ABPs, our RVPs, you know, centralized costs come out into our G&A. Okay. Maybe if I could just ask one more question on, you know, since it's the last one on where we're at kind of in the process. Are you guys... I know you hired bankers. Are you running a process? Are you actively considering, you know, all sorts of opportunities? It almost seems like the way you presented it, you got this bid from PSA, not good enough, you're just moving forward, business as usual. Is... Like, how should we think about, you know, how you guys in the board are evaluating maximizing shareholder value right now? Does it go beyond just operating the business? Well, you know, as CEO, I'm executing on our strategy, to be quite honest. As we've said a few times now, the board is always open to and will regularly evaluate opportunities to enhance shareholder value as and when they come. Can't really say more than that. Okay. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thanks for the thorough presentation. Thanks, Jon. I will now turn the call over to Joe Saffire for closing remarks. Well, thank you everyone for joining us today. We look forward to continuing to engage with our shareholders as we focus on driving strong shareholder value. Please follow up with Brent if you have any additional questions related to the unsolicited proposal. This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.