Greetings, and welcome to the National Storage Affiliates second quarter 2022 conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief 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. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, George Hoglund, Vice President of Investor Relations for National Storage Affiliates. Thank you. Mr. Hoglund, you may begin. We'd like to thank you for joining us today for the second quarter 2022 earnings conference call of National Storage Affiliates Trust. On the line with me here today are NSA CEO, Tamara Fischer; President and COO, Dave Cramer; and CFO, Brandon Togashi. Following prepared remarks, management will accept questions from registered financial analysts. Please limit your questions to one question and one follow-up, and then return to the queue if you have more questions. In addition to the press release distributed yesterday afternoon, we furnished 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 answers to your questions may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties and represent management's estimates as of today, August 4, 2022. The company assumes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statement because of changing market conditions or other circumstances after the date of this conference call. 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 Core FFO, and net operating income contained in the supplemental information report package available in the Investor Relations section on our website and in our SEC filings. I will now turn the call over to Tammy. Thanks, George, and thanks everyone for joining our call today. We had another great quarter with growth Core FFO per share of 29.1% and same-store NOI growth of 17.3%. Our results are reflective of the ongoing strength of the self-storage industry, our differentiated PRO structure, and our exposure to secondary Sunbelt and suburban markets. This exceptional growth allowed our Board to increase our dividend again in the second quarter to $0.55 per share, an increase of 45% over the second quarter last year. Overall, self-storage fundamentals remain very healthy as the industry is coming off historic levels of year-over-year growth. The moderation in growth is largely playing out as expected this year. The self-storage sector is well-positioned for today's inflationary environment, given that we meet a needs-based demand with average monthly rents that represent a small portion of a customer's disposable income. Because our units are leased on a month-to-month basis, we have the flexibility to quickly adjust rents according to market trends, and this permits us to increase rents to offset inflationary pressures on the expense side. I would add that self-storage has weathered past downturns well, supported by unique countercyclical demand factors, including demand driven by household contraction and necessity-based relocation. Following the great financial crisis, self-storage same-store revenues saw a return to peak pre-recession levels within two years, well ahead of other property types. Finally, given the benefits of our differentiated PRO structure and our geographic exposure, we remain very confident in NSA's future prospects. Having said that, the resilience of the sector and our outstanding results don't always manifest themselves in a rising share price, as demonstrated by the year-to-date sell-off. Our Board has decided to put in place a share repurchase plan to provide greater flexibility in our capital allocation strategies. Based on our favorable outlook for NSA, today's depressed stock price provides us with a compelling investment opportunity. Turning to the acquisition environment, during the second quarter, we acquired eight wholly owned properties, investing $115 million in an average cap rate of 5.6%. As we mentioned on our last call, one of our joint ventures acquired a partially stabilized seven-property portfolio strategically located in the Houston MSA for approximately $208 million. While investor demand for self-storage properties remains strong, we've seen the buyer pool narrow somewhat, and property sellers are becoming more realistic with respect to price expectations, given the current increasing and volatile capital environment. We're seeing more deals retrade than we've seen in the recent past, with a few deals being pulled for the time being and some buyers backing out of transactions, but not able to secure attractive financing. Overall, we're encouraged by the number of deals coming to market and by what seems to be more realistic pricing expectations. Subsequent to quarter end, we've acquired six properties valued at $72 million, and the pipeline remains active. The second quarter played out largely as contemplated when we raised guidance last quarter. We've maintained our full year guidance, which implies Core FFO per share growth at the midpoint. Brandon will elaborate further on guidance in his comments. I'll now turn the call over to Dave to discuss current trends in operations and talk about a couple of new strategic technology initiatives we have underway. Dave? Thanks, Tammy. Our healthy operating results were driven by continued strength in self-storage fundamentals, combined with our continuously improving operating platform, which increased our same-store gross margin this quarter by 1.7%- 74.1%. Second quarter same-store NOI increased 17.3% over last year, driven by a 14.6% revenue increase, combined with a 7.6% increase in property operating expenses. We ended the spring leasing season with healthy momentum and occupancy and rate growth. We were pleased with our ability to continue to leverage our revenue management practices. Our rate growth in the second quarter was strong, with contact rates up almost 16% versus the same period last year. Street rates also experienced double-digit growth, averaging 18% higher in the second quarter this year compared to a year earlier. Our focus on rent increases to in-place customers held steady and averaged low to mid-teens. We are pleased that the average length of stay remained stable at 16 months. Discounting and concessions remained well below historical averages during the quarter. The robust growth in rates was slightly offset by occupancy that was a bit lower than the previous year by the end of the quarter. Of course, this speaks to our philosophy that we do not manage to occupancy, but rather to optimize long-term revenue growth, which is continuing at this record-setting pace. Same-store occupancy averaged 95.1% for the quarter, down 10 basis points compared to last year. We ended the second quarter with the same-store occupancy of 95.2%, down 140 basis points over the prior year, and down 40 basis points sequentially from the end of the first quarter. As we discussed on our last call, last year's strong comps become more challenging in the second half. We expect our year-over-year contract rate growth to moderate while we expect occupancy to follow historical seasonal trends. We think the occupancy levels will likely settle into the low 90s, which is still above historical averages. Now, while the whole storage sector has enjoyed robust pandemic-driven demand, I wanna take a few minutes to highlight some of our initiatives that we think will continue to support revenue growth going forward. Our customer acquisitions team is focused on driving increased customer traffic and improving our CMS by building a better online leasing program to enhance the customer experience, while our call center initiatives are focused on increasing overall conversion rates. We remain committed to our AI capabilities, which allows us to be more dynamic in maximizing revenues. We're also excited about enhancement in our machine learning capabilities as we continue to improve our front-end pricing and IPRC platforms. A quick comment on new supply, which remains relatively muted as the competitive landscape hasn't really changed much. Overall, we see these somewhat muted levels of new supply coming in as a net positive. I'll now turn the call over to Brandon to provide more detail on our financial results and balance sheet activity. Thank you, Dave. Yesterday afternoon, we reported Core FFO per share of $0.71 for the second quarter of 2022, which represents an increase of 29% over the prior year period. This continued robust year-over-year growth was driven by a combination of strong same-store growth and our significant acquisition volume over the past four quarters. Our second quarter results represented a record sixth consecutive quarter that we achieved double-digit same-store NOI growth. Additionally, approximately 30% of our wholly owned portfolio is in our non-same store pool, and we're very encouraged by the outperformance relative to underwriting for these properties, which were mostly acquired in 2021 and will be eligible for same-store inclusion beginning in 2023. Regarding operating expenses, our second quarter growth of 7.6% reflected inflationary pressures that we're seeing across the economy, as well as significant increases in self-storage property values, neither of which are surprising. The second quarter growth in same-store OpEx is due primarily to an 11.2% increase in property taxes driven by our Texas, Georgia, and Indiana markets, and a 17.5% increase in utilities. Repairs and maintenance grew 10.2%, reflecting the increasing cost for construction, labor, and materials. We were able to partially offset these increases with personnel costs that were in line with prior year, mostly attributable to greater efficiencies with staffing in our properties. We also benefited from better pricing on our property insurance this year and marketing expenses grew a modest 3.3%. Turning to the balance sheet. During the quarter, we issued $14 million of OP equity in conjunction with acquisitions and closed on a $285 million seven-year unsecured term loan with a variable rate based on a spread to SOFR. The effective interest rate was 3.34% at June 30th. Also during the quarter Kroll Bond Rating Agency upgraded the credit rating of our operating partnership to BBB+ from BBB flat. At quarter end, our leverage was 5.6x net debt to EBITDA, toward the low end of our targeted range of 5.5x-6.5x. We are very comfortable with our balance sheet, with no maturities through the end of the year, just 22% of our principal debt subject to variable rate exposure, and $360 million of availability on the revolver at quarter end. We're committed to maintaining a conservative leverage profile and healthy access to multiple sources of capital. Now moving on to guidance. Results for the second quarter were largely in line with expectations. Consistent with our commentary last quarter, we expect lower growth levels in the second half of the year as last year's comps become more challenging. As such, we maintained our full year 2022 guidance, which we outlined in detail in our earnings release. A few of the highlights Core FFO per share of $2.80-$2.85, which at the midpoint represents 25% growth over prior year. Same-store revenue growth of 11%-13% and NOI growth of 14%-16%. Same-store NOI growth is moderating from the recent record levels, but still remains well above historical averages, and the pace of that moderation suggests that we are headed for a soft landing. Thanks again for joining our call today. Let's now turn it back to the operator to take your questions. Operator? Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd 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'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. As a reminder, we ask that you please limit to one question and one follow-up. Our first question comes from the line of Samir Khanal with Evercore ISI. Please proceed with your question. Hi, good morning, everybody. Hey, Brandon, maybe walk us through your assumptions around occupancy. I know you talked a little bit about rate growth here, but, you know, how you're thinking about sort of the back half of the year, how you end the year with occupancy as we start to think about 2023. Yeah. Samir, thanks for the question. Like Dave mentioned, we expect return to seasonality. From right now to end of the year, maybe 200-300 basis points deceleration sequentially on occupancy. If we see that, it would have us at the end of the year, down from prior year about also 200-250 basis points. Okay. I guess on increases, are you pushing rates to the max you think at this point? Or do you feel like that's an area of upside that we could see sort of in the second half of this year? Good question, Samir. It's Dave. You know, we're certainly being very assertive still in frequency and the percentage of rate increase. In the second quarter, we actually pushed more tenants than we had historically pushed, and that really led to what we think was a little bit of more occupancy decline than we were probably expecting. You know, it was early in the second quarter, you know, in the month of May is where we probably pushed the hardest. We were happy with the push, happy with the results, but it certainly created more move-outs just due to the amount of tenants that we pushed rate increases to. So as we look at the back half of the year, we're not changing our strategy. We're certainly looking at, you know, where we can be assertive, how we're gonna be assertive and keep on the pace for ECRIs. We're also looking at street rate and discount to say, is there other levers we can look at as far as the occupancy piece of it? We were pretty stingy in the second quarter around discounting, and we were certainly, you know, from a street rate perspective, we grew street rates through the second quarter as well. We're trying to balance all those levers, find out where we wanna land, but, you know, in place tenant changes are still gonna stay pretty assertive. I guess the only thing I would add is this is Tammy. Hi, Samir. As Dave commented on in his remarks, we have historically not managed to occupancy, but rather managed to optimize revenue growth. That remains kind of a key focus for us as well. I think we're good with where we ended up at the end of the second quarter. Got it. I guess as a follow-up, I mean, are you seeing any sort of shift in customer behavior here just, you know, giving you a little bit more caution? Are there markets that are slowing a bit more than you expected, maybe in Portland? I guess help me think through, you know, you went from, you know, raising guidance by about 500 basis points the first quarter, which was, you know, probably the highest of all your peers, but then, you know, kind of held steady in 2Q. Just trying to walk me through kind of the, you know, your thinking for in terms of, you know, sort of being cautious here, if that's the case. No, I think I'll start, and then Brandon can jump in. This is Dave. You know, from a consumer pattern, you know, the very top of the funnel is still very robust. We're seeing lots of activity, lots of opportunity. What we've seen change just a little bit in the recent couple of months, probably really around May and June, a little bit in July, is the amount of touches you had to do to get the conversion. So maybe the customer, if they were, you know, maybe it was 1.5x they looked at you and they converted. Now maybe that's gone to two or 2.5. We're happy with the amount of volume we're driving. We're happy with the amount of touches we're getting. It's costing us a little bit more in spend and it's, you know, the touch points around that consumer, which tells us maybe they're shopping a little bit more. Maybe they're looking for a little bit, maybe more of a discount. As I said, we were pretty stingy in the second quarter with discounts and with pricing. Some of that might be, you know, we created ourselves and the fact that we weren't giving a discount, but that's the one pattern. You know, you mentioned Portland. Portland has really our most competitive market. We've been talking about Portland for a number of years. There's a lot of competition up there, and a lot of competitive pressures. The pandemic certainly masked a lot of those competitive pressures, you know, in previous months. We spent the really. A couple things happened with us. We spent the first, you know, three or four months in Portland really working on the transition of the Northwest team because the PRO retired, and we worked through platform changes and worked through our adjustments with those changes. We focused on occupancy, and as you can see, we grew occupancy from the first of the year till now, and now we're coming back into Portland and really focusing on revenue. It's been a little bit of a transition for us. It's not just Portland, it's that Northwest market and we're working our way through it. We're very comfortable with where we're headed with particularly. I think the other thing is, as Dave said, that was probably our most challenged market from a new supply standpoint. We did have the benefit, I guess I'd say, of absorbing a lot of that new supply through the pandemic, but it's still there. It's still something that we're keeping an eye on and have to be aware of as we run those properties up there. Thank you. Thank you, Samir. Appreciate it. Our next question comes from the line of Ki Bin Kim with Truist Securities. Please proceed with your question. Hi. Good afternoon. Can you talk about the street rates that you saw in 2Q and the cadence of how that progressed and maybe a July update? Yeah, good question, Dave. Thanks. Thanks for joining, Ki Bin. You know, we saw progression through the quarter in street rates. We saw sequential growth every month. We've had it through the entire year. You know, obviously with the 18% comp year-over-year in street rate growth, we're happy with. In July, we again saw sequential growth in July as well. We're happy with where street rates are going. That would also include contract. You know, we saw sequential growth in our contract rates all the way through the quarter and into July. Both fronts happy. We're still a positive rent roll-up, which is something we like at this point in time as well. Five quarters straight, right? 5 quarters straight, yep. Just wanna clarify that. I think you were talking about sequential. Do you have that year-over-year? Uh, for- Yeah, Ki Bin, this is Brandon. The street rates in Q2, Dave mentioned earlier, were 18% up over prior year. In July, that was low teens, so down a little bit from the Q2 number. Our street rates last year really peaked right around this time of the year, and then didn't grow that much sequentially through the balance of the year. The comp, you know, the worst part of the comp is really, you know, was through now. I would expect, you know, if things stayed static, we would have that similar, you know, low double-digit spread, but obviously that's dependent on where street rates go, you know, from here to the end of the year. Your street rates are up low teens in July, obviously a very strongly 2 Q. You're saying you have a rent roll-up. Talking about demand, top of the funnel being good, maybe people are shopping a little bit more. I would think that would translate into perhaps a little bit stronger outlook for the second half. You know, I say that, you know, a little tongue in cheek because obviously you're still seeing very good growth. I'm just comparing you guys relative to some of your peers that might be showing a little bit better second half outlook. I'm just curious, like what am I missing here? I think I'll start and then Brandon can jump in. You know, certainly we, you know, comps will play a piece of it. I think as we looked at the occupancy drop in the second quarter, and as we push that rate increase that we pushed, a number of rates we pushed during the month of May, I think we came up a little bit more on occupancy than we were expecting. I think all the rest of those fundamentals stack up well. I think as we go into the third quarter, Ki Bin, we're looking at, you know, how do we continue to drive that conversion rate and drive that occupancy, you know, that occupancy rate to help us offset some of the, you know, some of the loss that we had. Typically, in the second quarter, you don't have that much of a decline in occupancy that we experienced this year. Just last question. When you look at your rates on average, and you compare it to the competitive set in your kind of local competitive areas, where are your rents competitive with your competitors or up below or above? You know, we look at it at a very, obviously very store level, very specific. I would, you know, we're typically if in the upper third, if not the rate leader of most of our markets around the particular store. There are certain situations where there are certain operators that are considerably above market, and we haven't ventured to that level yet, but we certainly are in that upper echelon of rate. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jeffrey Spector with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question. Hi, good afternoon. This is Lizzy Doykan on for Jeff. I just wanted to ask about what you've seen on acquisitions or deal flow the past quarter. You mentioned you were encouraged by the number of deals coming into the market and seeing more deals traded, yet you maintained the guidance range. I just wanted to see if you're still maintaining all those assumptions behind guidance or, you know, if you've seen a change in your conversations with sellers. I'd say yes. The deal flow is strong. It's solid. We continue to look at every transaction. I will say that it takes a while for seller pricing expectations to catch up with, I guess I'd say, reality. In this environment with our and frankly everyone's higher cost of capital, it's, you know, there's an expectation that cap rates will continue to widen. We did see them widen in this second quarter. I would say that the buyer pool narrowed somewhat. We have seen some deals that we thought were done that basically fell apart. We've seen some deals get completely pulled. Right now, we're encouraged by what we're seeing. We'll continue to underwrite everything that you know meets our primary investment criteria. We'll go from there. I think we maintained our guidance. One thing I would probably point out to you is that the $200 million JV transaction that we closed in April involved about $50 million of capital deployed on our part. When I think about total capital deployed, that range of $400 million-$600 million still seems reasonable. I think we'll obviously be in the range and from my standpoint, hopefully above the midpoint or toward the top end. I think the range is probably still good. We do like what we're seeing in terms of the quality of the assets and revised and more realistic buyer expectations. Okay, great. Thank you. Sure. I just wanted to follow up on the earlier question on, you know, any signs of weakness in your secondary market. You know, is there really any signposts at all by any particular regions or, you know, by customer income level, that was different this quarter versus last? How did late fees trend, for example? Good question. This is Dave. You know, we haven't seen any real discernible differences within our markets. You know, the way we're applying rate programs and rate changes and, you know, collections and bad debt all seem to be similar across all of our markets and across all of our stores and, you know, store types and market types. Certainly, you know, bad debt will continue to rise. It's well below historic levels, and I think that's important to note. It's still very tame, but, you know, as you get back into more normal seasonal trends and more, you know, trends that, you know, more historical averages for our sector, you know, the bad debt piece will come up. But the payment activity is the same. The buckets of, you know, the level of delinquent buckets are the same, so we're not seeing any change in that activity either, so. Lizzy, this is Brandon. The only thing I would add, this is not specific to the secondary markets, as you mentioned in your question, but just in terms of what we're seeing certain markets relative to others, and going back to the question about Portland. The pace of the deceleration from Q1 to Q2 on the growth for top line revenue, if you look at the markets that were. You saw the biggest decel, Portland was one, Phoenix was another, Sarasota was another. Those are all markets where we've talked for several quarters now about being more challenged with supply. And so we had occupancy to gain, a year ago, 18 months ago in those markets. That was a benefit. But those are also the markets that we're starting to see a little bit of the initial softness. Because we had some of that, occupancy to gain, you had things in the numbers a year ago, like, the admin fees that are associated with the upfront leasing process that, you know, we're not gonna have this year. That also plays into some of the sequential growth changes. Okay, thanks for the color. Yep, thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Neil Malkin with Capital One Securities. Please proceed with your question. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for the time. You know, first one, Tammy, you know, just kind of hitting on the acquisition topic. You know, we've heard that two things, you know, one, secondary, tertiary markets, you know, again, however you define tertiary, have seen the most cap rate expansion. At the same time, we've also heard that bigger deals, you know, bigger chunks, you know, multiple assets are having a significantly harder time lining up financing and at attractive terms versus, you know, one-off assets. Can you just talk about those two things and you know how that you know is potentially a favorable setup for you just given you know your access to capital and ability to compete where you know potentially you know previously you know heretofore levered buyers would you know be aggressive? Sure. Yeah, thank you for the question, Neil. I'll start with the second part of your question. I will say that we have seen levered buyers falling away somewhat. To the extent that we've seen deals either being retraded or just coming apart, that has been directly related to the, you know, those buyers who are counting on cheap debt, which is really obviously not available anymore. As it relates to secondary market cap rates, it's always been true that those cap rates have been wider. We've always seen a spread between the cap rates where we're pretty focused in the secondary markets and primary markets. I would say that, to be honest with you, I don't think that those cap rates in those markets are widening quite as much, quite as fast because there has been a significant amount of interest and acceptance of those secondary markets in suburban. Certainly, Sunbelt markets have become more attractive over the past couple of years. We're still seeing good, solid, attractive opportunities. I think that we are often considered a preferred buyer because of our access to capital and our demonstrated commitment to those secondary suburban and Sunbelt markets. Okay. On the part about, you know, difficulty getting capital for larger deals, are you seeing, you know, deals out there that are a little bit bigger? I mean, it looks like, you know, you had at least one portfolio in here, but any comment on the ability to maybe, you know, not outbid, but be there to come in and acquire, you know, be an all-cash buyer, you know, mostly cash buyer, you know, again, despite a more difficult lending backdrop. Yeah. Sorry if I brushed over that, but yes. No problem. I would say that is definitely true. There are a handful of, call it, you know, $100 million-$200 million plus valued portfolios. We have most definitely seen buyers who would otherwise be extremely competitive and driving prices to places we would never go, you know, have fallen away. In fact, we have a few examples. I won't get into the detail, but we have a few examples of bidding on a portfolio of assets right in our, you know, bread and butter area, where we thought there's no chance. We're not landing this thing. Sure enough, we end up investing finally. I think from that standpoint where we That's part of what gives us the optimism that we have about our ability to, you know, hit our targets and probably better this year in acquisitions. Okay, thanks. The other one, you know, not to beat a dead horse, but trying to just, you know, understand the. It looks like in terms of occupancy, this quarter is, you know, seasonally or historically an accelerating quarter, right? I know that the comps are tougher, but, you know, it is. Are you seeing? It's almost like normalization was pulled forward a little bit in terms of, you know, that seasonality coming back and the occupancy kind of, you know, dropping down from the elevated COVID levels to something more sustainable long term. I mean, is it, you know. I can you just kind of, again, square that with all the positive commentary you've made, roll ups impressive, you know, still doing well with street rates, ECRIs, you know, really strong. I mean, you know, is the reason for the guidance not, you know. Did that kind of make the guidance, you know, kind of be unchanged? Are you worried about that continuing to happen with occupancy? Because it sounds like demand is not a problem, particularly in your secondary market. Is it just exercising caution in an otherwise uncertain time as we also hit an inflection in seasonality? You know, I guess if you could maybe talk about the main driver there. That'd be great. Neil, this is Tammy. Thanks for the question. I'll start. Dave will answer the substance of the question, but the one thing that I would probably point out is that when we updated our guidance at the end of the first quarter with our Q1 earnings release, we tried to be exceptionally realistic. In part, it is, you know, from my standpoint, it would be better for us if we can get back to a place where we are not updating guidance every single quarter. We were trying to be very realistic and put it all out there and on the line. I think that we did that. I think we feel good about it. Just on the guidance, that's kinda how I'd level set that. Dave can certainly comment on the occupancy and other, you know, parts of your question. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks, Neil. I think as we said earlier, you know, we pushed extremely hard, you know, more than 2x the normal rent pushes we'd normally push in the month of May, for example. I think that actually accelerated the decline in occupancy more than we anticipated. I don't think that the seasonality shift, you know, if anything, it decelerated what would normally, to your point, be a stronger occupancy quarter. I think doing what we're doing, which we're not backing away from, we're pleased with the results, we're pleased with what it generated for us. It pleased, you know, where we're going with it. But it certainly put a little more pressure on occupancy, which is just one of the things we focus on. You know, there's a lot of things involved, but it did put some pressure on it. I think that's the change you saw was around, you know, IPRC. Okay. Thank you, guys. Thank you. Appreciate it. Our next question comes from the line of Todd Thomas with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question. Hi, thanks. Good morning out there. First question, Tammy, I just wanted to follow up on your comments in your prepared remarks about the share buybacks and touch on that, just in the context of you know, acquisition opportunities where it sounds like you know, you're still seeing some deal flow and there's some opportunities there as well. You know, how would you sort of rank order those opportunities today? And should we expect to see the company active in the market you know, repurchasing shares? You know, Todd, I think it comes down to making an evaluation of all of our capital deployment opportunities. It clearly depends on whether the acquisitions are a better opportunity to deploy capital at a better return, creating long-term value and deals that are accretive for our shareholders. But if our best investment, if you will, is a repurchase of our shares, I think that our Board would be supportive of our going forward with that. That may not be a super satisfying answer, but I think that it's consistent with what we've discussed as being, you know, strategically, our job is to invest accretively and for the benefit of a long-term value for our shareholders. Okay. Dave, you know, back to, you know, sort of some of the occupancy that you maybe lost in May and June, you know, that was a little bit more than expected. It sounds like it was related to, you know, some of the ECRIs or the rent increases that were implemented a little bit earlier in the year. You know, I understand it's about maximizing revenue, not so much a focus on occupancy or rate specifically. Just based on your comment, you know, I'm curious if you do plan to pull back a little bit on, sort of the magnitude of the rate increases that you're passing through or asking rents, to some extent in order to, you know, maybe stimulate a little bit more demand. Yeah, I think it's a good question. You know, we're evaluating all of that. I use the word we were stingy on discounting and really, you know, stingy on our rate. Certainly, as we look at the conversion ratios we want, I think we're gonna focus around marketing spend. We'll focus around discounting. We'll focus around pricing, upfront pricing, you know, a little more dynamic and getting the conversion ratios. I don't think we're pushing away from the table on the IPRC, though. I think, you know, we're comfortable with our cadence. We're comfortable with the frequency and the amounts. We'll focus more on the, you know, rentals is what we're gonna focus on. Okay. If I could just ask one last one on Portland. You know, related to, you know, you mentioned that there was some new supply that had impacted that market. Are your comments around Portland, is that due to new supply that's been delivered more recently, or is that really a little bit more around, you know, the supply that was delivered pre-pandemic, where there's maybe, you know, just a little bit of like a hangover in a way, you know, where that space was absorbed somewhat quickly during the last two years. You know, maybe now it's, you know, sort of catching up a little bit as, you know, operating conditions and rental activity is normalizing. I think the back half, you're right. I mean, it was pre-pandemic. At one point in time, I think we were talking about there was 78 years worth of over supply in Portland, and the pandemic certainly, you know, absorbed that and muted that effect of that oversupply. Now that conditions are cooling off just a little bit, it's starting to show back up. Nothing real new as far as overbuilding, it's just pre-existing stuff. Okay. All right, that's helpful. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Keegan Carl with Berenberg. Please proceed with your question. Hey, guys. Thanks for the time. I'll be brief here. It's just two quick ones. First, apologies if I missed this. What percentage of your portfolio is currently below street rate? About 60% of our existing tenant bases. I get your question, it's around 60%. Below? Below. Got it. You know, I know you kind of touched on this too, but, I mean, are you guys seeing any changes at all in customer behavior relative to your expectations? You know, obviously inflation's a huge talking point right now. I mean, how thoughtful are you on that topic when you're pushing rate increases just given, you know, they're feeling financial pressures everywhere, and there could become a point when storage isn't top of mind as far as necessities. Well, we're certainly, you know, paying attention to what's going on with inflation and, you know, what's going on with our consumer shopping patterns. Like I stated earlier, the only real change we've seen is a little bit in the way they're shopping. You know, we're still happy with the amount of flow and amount of activity, but, you know, amount of touch points has increased a little bit. You know, our storage ticket generally isn't a large number, and so it doesn't necessarily in the household income, you know, rise to the top of, you know, heating bills and rent and some of these other things that are going on. Historically, storage hasn't, you know, been as influenced on some of these inflationary times as other products have been. Certainly, you know, something we'll pay attention to as we go into the future and look at. At this point in time, you know, it hasn't really changed or shifted our mindset about how we're operating our business. Got it. Thanks for your time, guys. Okay. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ronald Kamdem with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question. Hey, just a couple quick ones. The first is just looking at the guidance, the implied growth rate in the second half of the year is sort of low 8%. Historically, we've talked about sort of that exit growth rate at the end of the year being a good starting point for 2023. Just curious if that still makes sense, if that still applies or if there's anything different, whether it's the comp, whether it's the mix, that we should think about as we're thinking about the starting point for 2023. Hey, Ronald, it's Brandon. Thanks for the question. I think generally that's a good approach. I mean, how we're gonna exit 2022 on a growth rate, you know, thinking about that as your starting spot for 2023. You're right about the implied growth on the back half. I think, you know, mid-8% at the midpoint, closer to mid-10% at the high end of our guide. Certainly that would indicate, you know, a situation where we're going into 2023 still above like the long term historical averages in terms of same store growth. The one thing that is different for us, and I don't have color right now to provide you, but can do that in November next quarter. You know, I mentioned in my opening remarks, we are gonna have a pretty big influx on our same store pool. The same store pool for us does go up materially, and that will play in terms of where those properties are located and the growth trajectory of those properties. Got it. My second question is just, you know, going back to sort of the rate increases in May, and pushing it really hard and then seeing sort of the occupancy respond. I think you sort of mentioned that you're still pushing as hard for the rest of the year. I guess just trying to get a sense of how much conservatism is baked into the guidance, right? Because, you know, if you're still pushing sort of at the same level, are you expecting occupancy to normalize similarly to seasonal patterns, but to the extent that it doesn't, you know, how much more, how conservative is sort of the guidance at this point? Well, Ronald, I would say, I mean, Dave's remarks about Q2 and May specifically were spot on. I mean, there was a more assertive push than the past. You know, we're continuing here in Q3 and Q4 to process rate increases for in-place customers. That's similar levels, both in terms of total customers that are receiving the increase as well as the percentage increase itself. Similar levels as to what we did Q1, the majority of 2021, that's all wrapped into the guidance. We're not, you know, going anything above or below, I guess. The occupancy effect, I mean, we feel like everything we're seeing, occupancy levels, Dave hit on delinquencies and bad debt, everything appears to be returning to more pre-pandemic normal levels. That's in line with what I said about occupancy, you know, call it 200-300 or 200-250 decline from peak to trough. I don't know if that quite answers it or gives you much else. Yeah, and Tammy mentioned our guidance, you know, we're pretty realistic in May, and I think we're realistic right now, so I wouldn't characterize a tremendous amount of conservatism necessarily. Helpful. Thank you. Yep. Thanks, Ronald. Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from the line of Spenser Allaway with Green Street. Please proceed with your question. Thank you. I just had one bigger picture question as it relates to ancillary revenue streams. Some of your peers are getting really creative. You know, the most recent example would be EXR's of Bargold this quarter. Just curious your thoughts on diversifying your revenue stream in the mid to longer term. I realize you obviously have a very unique position in the industry, but is there any concern around peers gaining market share in segments of the business that might, you know, be small now but might matter a little bit more down the road? Great question, you put out just a little bit about one of our peers. I think something on Extra. I wanna make- Bargold. Was it Bargold? Okay. I wanna make sure I did. I didn't catch that. You know, we're certainly always looking at other ways to effectively look at other income streams, where it doesn't affect our core business, doesn't distract us, you know, do things that, you know, really move us away from what we're trying to accomplish here. You know, one of the things we've always talked about is, you know, third-party management platform would be one of those ones you could talk about. You know, we evaluate that on a very often basis. We ask ourselves, you know, is there a point in time where you could look at something like that vehicle if you wanted to to drive some ancillary revenue streams? We look, we evaluate. We've had tremendous success thus far doing what we do. We've had great success with our differentiated strategy and how we've approached that and how we build platforms for PROs to have success and growth. And that's worked very, very well for us. It will always be part of our strategy going forward. You know, I would tell you know, we're constantly looking. Do I have anything to say that we're working on? No, I don't. We're constantly looking and evaluating and seeing if we can find some additional places. The ultimate judge of that, Spenser, Core FFO per share growth. With our same-store performance and the external acquisition volume that we've delivered for multiple years now, you know, the midpoint of this year's guide, Core FFO per share growth, that's the North Star, and that's the ultimate judge of our performance. Thank you. Thanks, Spenser. Our next question is a follow-up from Ki Bin Kim with Truist Securities. Please proceed with your question. Thanks for taking me back. Just had a quick question around your comments around Portland, Phoenix and Sarasota being a little bit soft due to new supply. Do those pressures get better or worse next year? Yeah, good question, Ki Bin. So, you know, I was intentional with those markets because Portland is on a, you know, same-store growth perspective below portfolio average. Phoenix is kind of right in line with portfolio average, and then Sarasota, you know, greater than the portfolio average. My comments were about the way that their growth rates change from Q1 to Q2. I think that it probably is a little bit more challenging in those markets. I mean, I think the growth prospects, especially in Phoenix and West Coast of Florida, are still. There's still a lot of positive factors in play, just given in-migration data, but in population growth. There still is, you know, new deliveries or to Dave's point about Portland deliveries that have taken place that the market is still absorbing. Portland, for example, we've talked for several quarters now about even though things picked up there, relative to the years prior, our occupancy in that market was still 200-300 basis points below portfolio average. That ties into what we're saying about you're seeing some of the effects of that dynamic with supply and demand. Okay, great. When you think about the customer reactions to ECRI programs or just pricing changes, have you noticed any discernible trends in between how different groups of customers have reacted towards it? Obviously Portland might be a little bit different just because it's oversupply, but I'm talking more about demographic qualities or attributes, whether it might be, you know, high APR tenants might be more or less sensitive or some lower APR tenants, any kind of trends that you see. Nothing yet. I mean, you know, we survey, we studied, you know, some of the patterns you're talking about, demographic patterns and things like, and we just haven't seen anything that, you know, really separate itself in one direction or another. Fortunately, I would say no, nothing yet. Okay, that's it for me. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question is a follow-up from Neil Malkin with Capital One Securities. Please proceed with your question. Hey, thanks for taking another one for me. Just one. I don't think anyone mentioned it. Tammy, you talked about cap rates you acquired this quarter, like a 5.6. Obviously, that's, you know, a bit better than you've done the last couple of quarters. Again, you know, cap rates are rising. Can you talk about the product, you know, that you're evaluating right now that's out there that you're, you know, looking at? You know, have you seen those cap rates move up into that range as well? Like, should we get, you know, the high fives, a six level? And are you seeing actually higher yields for portfolios versus single assets? That's it for me. Sure. So I'll start. I think Dave might wanna chime in here a little bit, but I will say that we have always seen that gap between cap rates in some of the secondary and tertiary markets. To the extent we're acquiring in those markets, we continue to be able to acquire those higher cap rates. The assets that are on the market in some of the primary markets are at better cap rates than what we saw, let's just say the last quarter of last year and first quarter of this year. Again, cap rates are. That's kind of an odd number to even try to discern and talk about from one company and one asset class to another. Having said that, if we were paying, call it a 4.5 cap for a portfolio late last year, that same portfolio might trade for something just north of five in this current environment. Call it the last, you know, 30, 60 days, that's how fast things have changed. I would say that there is still absolutely a portfolio premium. There's no question about that. People are still trying to aggregate size in self-storage, and that's been true historically. That's not really anything new. Last year, we saw the portfolio premiums widen even further than we'd seen in the previous, call it 10, 15 years. Today there is still a portfolio premium. It might not be quite as wide as it has been in the recent past. I think I would add is I think maybe one of the things I'm kind of thinking about what you're getting to is I don't think there's a flight to single properties. I don't think the buyer pool is now targeting single properties because it's a better buy. I think the buyer pool in general has changed, and pricing has changed with it. I mean, there are people who have money that can buy properties and wanna buy properties, and they're still there, you know, bidding for these properties. There hasn't been this flight to, "I wanna buy one-offs in South Carolina," or something like that. We're not seeing that, you know, a change at all in the people that are out there trying to buy properties. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of the question and answer session. I will now turn the call over to Tamara Fischer for closing remarks. Thank you. I wouldn't wanna end this call today without recognizing and thanking our team for their ongoing commitment and focus on delivering outstanding results. We're very grateful for our team. We're certainly pleased with our Q2 results. We remain very optimistic about our prospects for 2022, and I'll just say thanks again for supporting NSA and for joining our call today. Thank you. This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation. Have a wonderful day.