Greetings, and welcome to Public Storage First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. To access the queue at that time, please press star one on your telephone keypad. 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. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Ryan Burke, Vice President of Investor Relations and Strategic Partnerships. Thank you. You may begin. Thank you, Rob. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our First Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. I'm here with Joe Russell and Tom Boyle. Before we begin, we wanna remind you that certain matters discussed during this call may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These forward-looking statements are subject to certain economic risks and uncertainties. All forward-looking statements speak only as of today, May 1, 2024, and we assume no obligation to update, revise, or supplement statements that become untrue because of subsequent events. A reconciliation to GAAP of the non-GAAP financial measures we provide on this call is included in our earnings release. You can find our press release, supplement report, SEC reports, and an audio replay of this conference call on our website at publicstorage.com. We do ask that you initially limit yourselves to 2 questions. Of course, if you have additional questions after those two, feel free to jump back in queue. With that, I'll turn it over to Joe. Thank you, Ryan, and thank you all for joining us today. Tom and I will walk you through our recent performance and updated industry views, then we'll open it up for Q&A. Our first quarter performance was in line with our expectations. As we anticipated, the new move-in customer environment remains challenging. However, we are encouraged by positive trends across our business, which include industry-wide customer demand improved sequentially through the quarter, the ability to raise our move-in rates as we enter the peak leasing season, strong in-place customer behavior, including longer than normal lengths of stay and lower delinquency rates, moderating move-out volume, improving occupancy, and waning development of new competitive supply, a trend we expect will continue. As mentioned on last quarter's call, we were encouraged by month-over-month revenue growth re-acceleration in certain markets, including Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Seattle. That momentum has continued, and additionally, we see accelerating trends in markets including San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Minneapolis. We anticipate more markets will be added to this list across our portfolio over the next few quarters. These bottoming to improving trends are particularly important for two reasons. First, they are in stark contrast to 2023, when all markets were decelerating as we normalized from record performance in 2021 and 2022. And second, they put us on track for improving company-wide financial performance in the back half of this year, as embedded in our guidance. Additionally, our high-growth, non-same store pool of assets comprises 538 properties and 22% of our overall portfolio square footage. With NOI growth approaching nearly 50% during the first quarter, these properties remain a strong engine of growth. Overall, we are encouraged by what we are seeing on the ground. The team is very focused on capturing new customer activity as we approach the busy season, which will help drive our performance for the remainder of 2024 and into 2025. With that, I'll turn the call over to Tom to provide additional detail. Thanks, Joe. Shifting to financial performance, we reported first quarter Core FFO of $4.03, representing a 1.2% decline compared to the first quarter of 2023. Looking at the same-store portfolio, revenue increased 0.1% compared to the first quarter of 2023. That was driven by rent growth, offset by modest occupancy declines. Move-in rates, adjusting out our winter promotional sale activity, were down 11% in the quarter. Positive net move-in volumes led to a modest closing of the occupancy gap at quarter end to down 60 basis points. On expenses, same-store cost of operations were up 4.8% for the first quarter, largely driven by increases in property tax and marketing spend to drive move-in activity. In total, net operating income for the same-store pool of stabilized properties declined 1.5% in the quarter. Our performance in the stabilized same-store pool was supplemented by very strong growth in our non-same store pool, as Joe highlighted. With the non-same store assets at 81% occupancy in the quarter, we have confidence in outsized growth from that pool to come this year and into the future, which is a segue to our outlook for 2024. We reaffirmed our core FFO guidance for the year with a $16.90 midpoint on par with 2023. The first quarter was in line with our internal expectations, and as we discussed on our last quarterly call, we anticipate deceleration of financial performance into the second quarter and with improvement in the second half. Outlook for capital allocation remains intact, with $450 million of development deliveries anticipated, which will be a record year for Public Storage, and $500 million of acquisitions in the second half. The transaction market for acquisitions remains subdued, with limited volumes, given a volatile cost of capital environment year to date. We're optimistic that there's a pent-up level of transaction activity likely to come, and we're eager to participate when that does occur. Finally, our capital and liquidity position remains strong. We refinanced our 2024 maturities in April with a combination of a 3-year floating rate note, a 15-year Euro note, and a 30-year reopening. Our leverage of 3.9x net debt and preferred to EBITDA, puts us in a very strong position heading through the year. With that, I'll turn the call back to Rob to open it up for our Q&A session. At this time, we'll be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, we ask that you please limit to two questions, and of course, feel free to jump back in the queue for any questions or follow-ups. 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. One moment please, while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from Samir Khanal with Evercore ISI. Please proceed with your question. Hey, good morning, everyone. I guess, Joe, you talked about 1Q being in line with expectations. Maybe talk around April, kind of what you're seeing, you know, on move-in trends, sort of general trends you're seeing in April, and, and I guess how has April sort of played out versus your expectations? Thanks. Sure, Samir. Yeah, I would put April in the same context of sequential improvement that we saw through the first quarter, where again, we've seen overall expected top of funnel demand, expected move-in activity. We've been pleased by that. It's matching our expectation, as you know, Tom and I have outlined the way the year is likely to play out, so no surprises. And I would say a validation of the re-acceleration in a number of markets that I pointed to in my opening comments. And Samir, I t's Tom here. Maybe I'll just provide a couple of data points on April as well. Similar trends, as Joe mentioned, on move-in rents into April. We are starting to increase those rents, as Joe highlighted, as we move into May in the peak leasing season. Existing customers performing quite well, something that Joe highlighted in his remarks. Move-outs were again down year-over-year in the month of April. Occupancy finished the month down 50-60 basis points. So a pretty consistent April, and obviously, we're eager to get into May, June, and July here, the peak leasing season of the year. Got it. And I guess, just shifting over to the transaction market, I know you mentioned it was subdued, kind of, maybe, you know, possibly with the rates spiking here in March and April. I guess, what gives you the confidence that you'll start to see sort of more transaction or opportunities in the second half? Thanks. Yeah, Samir. There's likely to be a range of motivations that's going to bring a seller to market. The fluctuation in those motivations has been up and down, obviously, as we've seen over the last few quarters, with the volatility with interest rates, et cetera. But having said that, we've been in active dialogue with a number of owners that will likely transact sometime in 2024. I think they're trying to gauge, you know, more precise timing based on what may or may not be coming, you know, through the discussion. The Fed may be indicating relative to change in interest rates between now and end of the year, et cetera. But on one end of the spectrum, there are a number of situations that will require an owner to bring an asset to market, whether individually or in some level of a portfolio. So we do still anticipate some activity, beginning to percolate. As Tom mentioned, it's been a pretty quiet, couple of quarters, but the conversations that we've been having with a number of owners are giving us confidence that there's likely, you know, some pending trading activity that, we may be able to capture, thus not changing our outlook for 2024 relative to the amount of acquisition activity we're likely to capture. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question is from Keegan Carl with Wolfe Research. Please proceed with your question. Yeah, thanks for the time, guys. Maybe first, just curious for your expectations in the housing market that you currently have embedded in your guidance, and if this has changed at all since your initial guide and commentary a few months ago? Yeah, sure, Keegan, this is Tom. So I wouldn't edit any of the commentary that we had in February around any of the assumptions really, heading into the peak leasing season here. You know, we obviously just provided that outlook a little over 60 days ago, and as Joe mentioned, and probably not surprisingly, providing that outlook two-thirds of the way through the first quarter. The first quarter played out very similar to our expectations, and I think that the range of outcomes are very much intact there, as well. Specifically to the housing market, you know, we are not anticipating in any of the ranges a robust housing market, and based on where interest rates have moved, I think that's the right place to be as we sit here today as well. J ust as a reminder, certainly, you know, that, demand factor is one, but it's one of a number that, particularly at this time of year, can provide momentum and, you know, higher level of, top-of-funnel demand. Our view of a different customer cohort, i.e., renters, continues to be quite strong. So we're very pleased by the activity that's also coming from, that type of customer. And with that, and then as your question alludes to a more subdued housing market at the moment, we still feel that we've got good demand factors that are gonna drive the business going into leasing season, busy leasing season. Got it. And then shifting gears, maybe just a big picture question. I guess I'm just trying to figure out what it would take in the broader environment, if we think about our upcoming NAREIT meetings in a handful of weeks here, like, what will it take for you guys to have a more positive or optimistic tone? In other words, I'm trying to figure out what can go right in storage, given it feels like everyone's just focused on where weakness is going to persist. Yeah, sure, Keegan, I'll preface some NAREIT meetings then. So I would highlight maybe two elements that we would be pleased to be discussing at NAREIT, and I think would give us a positive tone. One of them, going back to Joe's commentary, is adding more markets to that list of markets that are reaccelerating, right? As we think about the bottoms that are occurring in many of these markets and reacceleration, we're a collection of 90 markets around the country, not a one-stop moving portfolio. And so adding more markets to that list gives us more and more confidence in terms of the outlook and the performance of the portfolio as a whole, clearly. The second thing I'd maybe highlight would be more dialogue, I think, to the questions we were just discussing around capital allocation, more dialogue with, with sellers, and not necessarily more transactions over the next 30 days, but more dialogue, more underwriting activity, as we set up for what is more traditionally a busier time period for self-storage transactions in the second half of the year. We'll start to have some of that dialogue here over the next 30-60 days. And Joe, I don't know if there's anything to add. Nope. Good. Thanks, Keegan. Yeah, thanks. Our next question comes from Eric Wolfe with Citibank. Please proceed with your question. Yeah, thanks. Maybe just to follow up on your last answer. You mentioned that you're seeing a reacceleration in revenue growth and increasing number of markets. You talked about those markets, but just wanted a clarification on that. I mean, does that mean that your year-over-year revenue growth is accelerating in those markets? Or does that mean that, as your occupancy kind of goes up due to normal seasonal patterns, you're seeing sequential month-over-month growth in revenue, which I think you would probably expect, just given, you know, normal seasonal patterns? V ery good question, Eric, to clarify what we're meaning by that. So specifically, what we're speaking to is month-over-month improvement in year-over-year revenue growth. So if you think about, pick, you know, pick a market that's growing 1% in the month of February, in the month of March, it's growing 1.5%. That would be a reaccelerating market. So not a seasonal thing or revenue on an absolute basis going higher because of higher occupancy or things like that, but actual year-over-year growth improvement. C ontextually, it's part of the opportunity that continues to play through in many, many markets. You know, we mentioned waning supply, so we're also going into environment where the competition factor in the vast majority of our markets continues to decrease. Again, as we're starting to see this reacceleration, that's also for the most part, in many markets with very little new supply coming in, that's too an additive factor relative to the amount of demand that we continue to see, an opportunity to drive more customers into the portfolio. Got it. That, that's helpful. And then I just had a question on the sales activity. You know, you talked about the impact on your move-in rents for the quarter, but was just curious, you know, what criteria you look at in order to determine why you should increase that sales activity. So if we look at last October or this March, is why did you decide to increase sales versus the other month, especially given some of the recent, you know, positive demand indicators that you were just talking about? Yeah, that's a good question, Eric. So we've run these sales consistently over time, and last year we ran them a number of different time periods. And in the month of February, at the tail end of February and beginning of March, we ran one as well. The primary reason is we had some inventory that we felt like we could move. And so at different points of the year, we'll try different promotional tactics, sales tactics, to drive customer activity, pairing that with advertising and the like. Tend to see good traction there. We saw good traction during the winter season here, as we talked about, and we'll likely c ontinue to use promotional activity, sale activity, and the like, through the year this year, not dissimilar to what we did last year. Got it. Thank you. Our next question is from Jeff Spector with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question. Great. Thank you. In the markets that you talked about, where you're seeing these accelerating trends, I guess, can you talk about that a little bit more? Like, what's driving that, from your view? And tie that into the comments that you did say, Joe, that the new move-ins do remain challenging. So I'm just trying to tie those two together. Thank you. Yeah, Jeff. Yeah, maybe to start with the second part of the question. Yeah, challenging on a year-over-year basis, but sequentially, we're seeing a good trend up. So we, you know, hope to continue to see that build as we go into, you know, further months into the year, and our confidence grows month by month, even through the month of April, as we've talked about. So, you know, that's one powerful component. Thematically, many of the markets where we're starting to see this re-acceleration on the early side were typically markets that were not the high flyers in, you know, the peaks of the pandemic era. So, they haven't had to reset relative to the more dramatic rate increases and overall demand increases that we saw through the pandemic. So on the flip side of that, you know, you're not hearing us talk about Florida, for instance. So, you know, Florida's got a ways to go before I think we'd add them into that re-accelerating bucket. But on, you know, a more active level and more dominant level across the portfolio, as we've listed out, you know, market by market, we're starting to see that improvement, particularly where, you know, we've got markets that weren't those high flyers, but have seen more consistent performance, and we're starting to see that re-acceleration as we speak. So there's more to come, as we've also talked to, so we're confident as the year plays out, we're likely to, you know, add to this list of re-accelerating markets. And again, as I just mentioned, with many of these markets not dealing with, you know, an abundance of new supply as well. Thank you. They've revised their numbers a couple times now. Hey, Jeff, sorry, you cut out. Can you repeat? I'm sorry, you cut out for a second. Yes. Can you hear me now? Yes. Great. Thank you. Sorry about that. I was just my follow-up with Joe is on supply. I was saying that, you know, we subscribe to Yardi, and I think they've updated that now a couple times, where this year is higher than last year, but expecting a decrease into next year. I guess, can you provide a little bit more on your supply forecast? Like, you know, are you seeing something different or the same for this year, let's say, and then for 2025 at this point? Jeff, if you step back, I mean, I appreciate, you know, the way that Yardi attempts to track nationally, both development activity, and then more precisely, what I think can be more difficult is the reality of how many of those projects actually get put into production, and then are likely to complete on a year-by-year basis. So we've been very consistent now for the last 2 to 3 years, where we, in our own development activity, have seen the competitive factor of this supply taper down. It's tapering down in 2024, so I think I would say we have a bit of a difference opinion if they're pointing to some type of an uptick this year. What we see, and has been very commanding, on a day-to-day basis, and if you're actually doing development as we're doing on a national basis, the amount of headwinds, the amount of timing delays, the amount of complication, market to market, has not eased at all. Again, we've been very consistent about that. And then you layer on, A, the cost of capital that, you know, Tom and I have been talking to, as well as, you know, the unpredictability in certain markets relative to demand, et cetera. There's more headwinds that any developer on an individual basis is facing, and by virtue of that, you're seeing a downdraft in the amount of deliveries, which we think are gonna continue going into next year and the year after. We're frankly looking at development. If you're starting fresh in any given market, that could take anywhere from 2-3 years just to get through an entitlement process right now. So just think about that from a calendar standpoint. That puts you out into 2026 and 2027, and there's really not an easy way to combat that. So the risk factors tied to development continue to increase for all the factors I just mentioned, and we're pretty confident that our lens into that activity is far more accurate than others. Thanks. Very helpful. Thank you. Our next question is from Todd Thomas with KeyBank Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question. Hi, thank you. Tom, I just wanted to go back to the guidance, which you affirmed, you know, and it sounds like the quarter was relatively in line overall. You know, I'm wondering: Are you, are you still anticipating move-in rents to cross the zero threshold later in the summer and occupancy to remain down about 80 basis points in a year? Or has the mix shifted around a little bit following this quarter's and the April, you know, performance that you discussed? Yeah, Todd. No, I'd point you to, you know, all of that commentary that we had on the February call is as intact as it relates to the assumptions that underlie the range there. And as you'd anticipate, the next three months are going to be important as to which directions we're heading on certain of those metrics. We've been encouraged by performance to date, and we will have more to talk about ranges and things like that as we move through the year. F ollowing up on that, is there a scenario, you know, in which move-in rents remain, you know, a little bit weaker than you anticipated, you know, down double digits or, you know, high single digits, but occupancy continues to improve and you end up closing that gap entirely? And if so, what would that look like? What would the sensitivity around the model look like for guidance purposes if, you know, there was an outcome, you know, in that sort of direction? Sure. I mean, there's definitely a range of outcomes and assumptions that you can make on the revenue modeling. I think what you're highlighting is, if you have better occupancy performance, but worse rate performance, but if you end up in the same spot. Could you end up in the same place as you otherwise would have anticipated? Absolutely. Okay. And just last question then. You know, one of your peers saw a slight uptick in vacate activity and, you know, sounded like that there was an expectation that there'd be some sort of continued normalization around vacates and in the length of tenant stays. Your vacate activity was lower in the quarter, you know, versus last year. And I'm just wondering, you know, if you expect that to continue, or do you see potential for vacate activity and, you know, the length of stay trends to normalize a bit more going forward? So I think there, there's a couple parts to that question, Todd. I think the first one is around length of stays and what we've seen trend-wise, and we've been really pleasantly surprised over the last several years at how sticky the length of stay has been. You know, when we were sitting here on calls in 2021, we were concerned that maybe there'd be a pretty quick return to normal or quote-unquote, "pre-pandemic" length of stays. And we're now sitting here in 2024, still talking about longer length of stays compared to pre-pandemic levels. But we're certainly off of those 2021 and 2022 peaks. And so there has been a quote-unquote, "normalization," but I think some of the factors that have led to longer length of stay are durable. We've talked about customers that are using storage because they ran out of space in their home. A less housing turnover likely leads to longer length of stays. All those things can be a positive as it relates to length of stay. And so while we're off the peaks, we still remain encouraged by customer behavior and the length of stays that we're seeing in the portfolio today. So that may be the first part. The second part is, how are we thinking about move-out activity? And, you know, move-out activity, I think in the midpoint case, is basically flat year-over-year move-out activity. So, yeah, we're not anticipating a spike in that midpoint case. And then maybe just a third component, you know, from a macro health of customer standpoint, you know, with ±85% of our customers being consumers, you know, employment trends continue to validate the economy's in, you know, very strong shape. We're not seeing any elevated level of stress play through that even takes us back to pre-pandemic levels, i.e., they're better. Payment patterns, delinquency patterns, et cetera, are still in a very good zone. We're not seeing any new and undue stress that's coming through on, you know, the customer environment as a whole. So we continue to be very pleased and confident about our ability to, you know, see that level of stability with our existing customer base. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question is from Eric Luebchow, with Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question. Thank you. Appreciate the time today. Just wanted to touch on, on same-store expenses a little bit. I saw slightly, you know, elevated growth in property taxes. I think you had guided that being up about 5%. So maybe, kinda, is there any kind of seasonality to think about throughout the year in property taxes? And then also marketing expenses, you know, up significantly. How should we think about, you know, how those trend throughout the year, given the, the unique dynamics of this year with, with spring leasing coming up? Yep, that's a great question. So as you highlighted, operating expense for the quarter was above our full year outlook, and so we are anticipating that overall operating expense trends will improve. And so you've hit on a couple of the drivers of that, and I'll elaborate on a couple others. The first one, property tax. We still are anticipating property tax to be ± 5% year-over-year growth for the year. The first quarter did have some reassessments that were earlier in the year, this year, that was kind of one-time related. On the marketing topic, similarly, if you look at marketing spend in the first quarter, it was pretty consistent with the fourth quarter, which is a little bit higher seasonally. We'd anticipate marketing spend, both on an absolute basis, but also on a year-over-year basis, to moderate a little bit as we move through the year. Obviously, depending on customer demand, activity, and the like, but that's another driver. But I would also add two others. One is our capital investments that we're making in solar power on our rooftops, which has myriad benefits for us, obviously, the environment and our customer base. And one of the factors there will be lowering utility expense. We had that in the first quarter, but that's gonna continue as we move through the next couple quarters. And then also, the technology investments that we made around our customer interaction. Now, over two-thirds of our customers are coming to us and renting digitally, before they ever show up at a property. That number continues to grow, and we've been very clear around some of the opportunities- to utilize that for specialization and centralization of roles and lower payroll expense as we move through the year. We'll see more of that heading through 2024 as well. Great. Appreciate it. Just on a follow-up, you mentioned some of the risks to development right now. You're seeing longer lead times for things like entitlement, higher construction costs, higher interest expense. So it seems like PSA is really leaning in now, a lot of your competitors may be pulling back, but do you have any change in your outlook to get to kind of an 8% NOI yield bogey within 3-4 years, which I think was your historic underwriting? Anything you can call out specific where the markets you're developing today, the supply conditions, the competitive intensity, why you're, you know, what gives you the confidence you can get to those type of returns? Yeah, I mean, we take a, you know, clearly a multiyear view of that hurdle rate. It hasn't changed even out of some of the pressure points that we've spoken to. So we continue to see the opportunity to find, you know, very good land sites, assets that will, from a competitive standpoint, not be burdened relative to any, you know, undue risk. That's another thing that we factor in with the amount of data and the knowledge we have, submarket to submarket, that gives us the level of confidence we can get to that hurdle, if not higher. So really haven't changed any of our hurdle expectations and/or the risk that, you know, that might convey relative to what could play out on a market-by-market basis. To your point, yeah, there's definitely more things that we're evaluating relative to the costs, timing, rent level achievements, et cetera, that go into our underwriting, but we're still confident that we're adding to and finding, you know, very good sites to continue to grow our scale in many, many markets nationally. So development team's working very hard to uncover those opportunities. Frankly, and maybe another point to your question, we have a different and more advantageous competitive advantage. We're seeing more land sites that might be further into entitlement processes that we are, you know, interested in too, relative to potentially accelerating some of those delivery hurdles that I talked about. So, you know, many factors in this environment actually play to our platform quite well, and we continue to, you know, one by one, take advantage of those. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question is from Michael Goldsmith with UBS. Please proceed with your question. Good morning. Thanks a lot for taking my question. Given what you've started to see in some of the markets, you know, turning, bouncing off the bottom and starting to reaccelerate, does that mean that ECRI in this market could also start to pick up? Yeah, certainly. I mean, as you see momentum in a market, we've talked consistently about how we think about existing customer rent increases. One of the factors is certainly the cost to replace a tenant, and as we see move-in rate and demand, activity percolating in those markets, that will feed into our thinking about, well, should a customer maybe receive a higher magnitude or higher frequency of increase? So, absolutely. And I think the second piece of our existing customer rate increase model is around customer performance, and we've been speaking in a couple of previous questions around how we continue to be encouraged by that behavior. Thanks for that, Tom. My second question is around the type of customer that's acquired through the sale process that you did. Does that generate? Does a sale generate incremental demand, or does it, you know, help you take market share? Does that customer have a different demographic profile or length of stay customer? I'm trying to get at is, you know, it would seem that this would be a higher customer acquisition cost for this customer, trying to determine if there's a, you know, how does that customer lifetime value look for that customer? Yeah, Michael, I'd say across the board, you know, different pricing, promotion, and advertising tactics will lead to drawing more, a little bit different mixes of customers, and the like, to our stores. And so we pull those different levers throughout the year, looking to try to maximize NOI, ultimately, so revenue less the advertising expense associated with it. And so we're toggling those levers, trying to maximize that outcome. And so, you know, as you look at a sale, for instance, it will draw more customers, and we'll use some different tactics around pricing and promotion and advertising to try to optimize that overall lifetime value of the customer. Thank you very much. Our next question comes from Spenser Allaway with Green Street. Please proceed with your question. Thank you. Consumer health continues to be topical, just given the economic backdrop, but I was just wondering specifically about the commercial tenant. Can you comment on the health or appetite of the business consumer, and how has that changed, if at all, in the last year? Yeah, Spenser, I would say in like fashion, no stress points or any other headwinds that we're seeing from that type of customer. You know, there's obviously a very broad range of user types, different industries, some are product-oriented, some are service-oriented, some are, you know, very specific to certain locations, but I wouldn't, in any way, characterize we're seeing any elevated level of stress. Actually, you know, still very good, consistent use of storage, particularly, as I mentioned, there may be certain factors that pull a commercial customer configuration into one property at a higher or lower level than another. But, a gain, nothing that we've seen that indicates there's an elevated level of stress or concern. You know, as the economy continues to be quite good, you know, we're seeing actually still good demand factors coming from, you know, business users overall. Okay. And then on the marketing front, just curious if the dollars being spent on advertisement are fairly comparable across markets, or other regions, like, a particular focus, where you guys are either trying to push occupancy or where you're seeing greater top-of-the-funnel demand that might, you know, entice you to spend more? Yeah, Spenser, it's a good question, and maybe a follow-up to Michael's question around how we're managing pricing, promotion, advertising. All three are being utilized really at a local level to drive a combination of either traffic in the form of advertising, or conversion rates related to pricing and promotion activity. And advertising is something that we can use either nationally or what we typically do is much more locally to support top-of-funnel demand in local markets, where we're getting both a combination of good return on that ad spend, but also supporting properties that would benefit from incremental top-of-funnel demand. So it varies pretty widely. Our next question comes from Nick Yulico with Scotiabank. Please proceed with your question. Hey, good morning out there. It's Daniel Tricarico, along with Nick. Following up on some of the earlier questions in your commentary, Tom, and sorry to harp on this. I know you've talked about ECRIs being a combination of price sensitivity and cost to replace, you know, the latter now increasingly elevated today in relation to the discounted pricing strategy you're using. So my question is: How do you think about the magnitude and velocity for which move-in rate needs to improve, so that the cost to replace, or in theory, the roll-down effect, is offset and revenue growth can reaccelerate again? Or is there another way I should be thinking about it? There's a lot embedded in there. I think the first thing I would say is, you know, as you look at cost to replace, you all can see some of the elements that go into cost to replace pretty clearly based on our move-in and move-out rates. Some of them are different and related to how long we think a unit will be vacant, what the advertising spend may be associated with a unit, what the promotional activity may be around it, and that's all managed at the individual unit level. And so, you know, big picture, one of the things we've highlighted this year is that we think overall contribution from existing customer rate increases will be pretty consistent with last year. And you say, "Well, how can that be if you think costs to replace may be a little bit higher?" And I'd say, well, there's another element that I add to what I just highlighted, which is the mix of the tenant base. So we had success in moving in a meaningful number of new customers last year above and beyond the prior year. Those customers tend to get higher frequency of increase earlier on in their tenancy, and that's contributing to performance this year of our ECRI program. And so I think there's a multitude of different components there. Cost to replace is certainly an important one, but as we look at the year this year, we think overall contribution will be relatively consistent. Thank you for that. Maybe a less convoluted follow-up. You know, could you share how you bucket the demand segments for the business? You know, maybe to give us a better understanding of the current picture. You know, is the general, like, job and home mover 30 or 40% of demand, and then the longer-term business customer 20%, you know, and then another cohort, the balance? You know, any color you could share from any of your internal data would be great. Thank you. Yeah, sure. So I'd anticipate that overall demand contribution this year is pretty similar to last year. And the way we've bucketed the contribution to move-ins last year was about 15%, 15% of customers that are coming to us because of an existing home sale-related move, and that was down from about 20% in a more typical year. So a relatively modest contribution. Customers that are moving and they're renters, either single-family or multifamily renters, tend to make up a larger percentage. I call it between 40%-45% of the tenant base. And then you've got another group that we've consistently spoke of, that's been elevated post 2020, and that's customers that have ran out of space at home. That's been consistently outpunching pre-pandemic levels and is pro- likely to be more like 15%-20%. And then, as you go beyond that, I'd call it other. There's a whole host of, of interesting use cases, as well as commercial tenants that will make up the rest. And so, you know, we, we continue to see good, obviously, move-in, activity at our stores. And as Joe mentioned, we've been encouraged by that activity year to date. Thank you, Tom, guys. Our next question comes from Juan Sanabria with BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question. Good morning. Thanks for the time. Just on the acquisition front, could you remind us how much is assumed or baked into guidance for presumably accretion from the acquisition volume highlighted in guidance? And then, kind of as a subset of that question, how are you guys thinking about Canada? I know the family, the Hughes family, has some- assets there, does that prohibit you from potentially getting involved there? Or is there any time that the family may be looking for one reason or another to monetize their stake? Thanks. Sure. Yeah, so to, again, point to 2024 guidance on acquisitions, you know, we've pegged $500 million. Obviously, at this point in the year, it's gonna be more back-ended. But some of the commentary, one, earlier in the call, relative to what we're likely to see with, you know, a range of different motivations, from sellers, we. You know, we've got, you know, I think, good perception into, you know, the ways that we can get to that kind of acquisition, volume, as we sit, you know, as we sit here today. You know, the Canada question, get to your point around, the Hughes family and their ownership and platform in that market, it does not impede our ability to, you know, go into that market itself. There are no conflicts on either side for either party to, you know, continue to look at a range of investments in that market. With that, you know, we no commentary relative to what the future may play out, but there are no constraints on our part. Great. Then just a question on labor and FTEs. You guys, in your Investor Day, which is now a couple of years back, hit your targets in cutting down, I think, workforce utilization or costs associated about a quarter from prior levels. But I guess, where are you in further abilities to reduce FTEs or payroll costs? And could you just give us maybe a sense of kind of how the industry has changed in terms of FTEs per store, maybe five years ago, to where you are now, to where you ultimately think you can end up going? Yeah, I can speak to that in certainly our own platform. So the goals that we pointed to in our Investor Day presentation were achieved, ± a couple of years ago. So we were very pleased with the opportunity that we saw to optimize labor hours with many of the tools that supported that, particularly tied to our digital platform. What has played out from, you know, again, the last two years through today, and now even going forward, there's actually more to achieve. That comes from the continued improvement in our operating model, the digital tools that we're using not only for one type of day-to-day demand that comes in and out of a property, which is tied to move-in activity, but it's overall customer support. We've rolled out, you know, a PS App that now we have about 1.5 million customers tied to, so that's direct account management that takes the burden off of property labor hours, very efficient for the customer as well. So it's a win-win in terms of not only time savings on our end of the spectrum, but efficiency and consistency from a customer standpoint. We continue to look at, you know, very different and robust digital tools and optimization tools that give us the amount of clarity and trajectory that we're gonna likely see with continued reduction in FTE hours. I think we're doing that in a very different way than the industry has done. You know, you can look at some metrics that you can benchmark our performance to others. So Tom already mentioned that about two-thirds of our customers now transact with us digitally. That's far in excess of not only what the industry is achieving, but what level of accelerated performance we're getting from that channel and that level of interaction with customers directly. So a lot of good things that we're continuing to tackle on that front. With the amount of data that we have, we continue to look at different ways of continuing to optimize and bolt on more, again, opportunities to not only drive down labor hours, but as importantly, maintain or increase customer satisfaction levels. So a lot of good things that we're continuing to invest in there and very confident about the trajectory we're on. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question is from Ronald Kamdem with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question. Hey, just two quick ones. One is just on Southern California. If you could just provide updated thoughts. It's still one of your best-performing markets. What's sort of the prospect of that starting to re-accelerate as you're sort of going forward? How's fundamentals trending on the ground? Yeah, that's a great question. So Southern California continues to be a strong market for us, both Los Angeles as well as San Diego. During the quarter, we were impacted by some storm activity and state of emergency restrictions that impacted the quarter's financial performance for a couple of months. But those markets continue to see strong customer activity, and we have confidence in those markets heading through the rest of the year. You know, just again, to bolt on a comment, Ron, that we made in other questions, again, very, very little competitive new supply. It's one of the most difficult markets to either, A, find land sites and, you know, work through entitlement processes, et cetera. Uniquely, though, it's the market at the moment we have the most development activity nationally in. So we uniquely are finding some interesting opportunities to expand our portfolio right here in Southern California. And, to Tom's point, we're still seeing very consistent and good levels of activity. Great. And then my second one was just to follow up on the marketing spend question. Is it fair to say it's at the highest level in five years as a percentage of revenue as number one? And then can you talk about the breakout of that marketing spend inflation between just cost per click going up versus just more marketing being done, if that makes sense? Yeah. So a couple questions, components there. So the first quarter and fourth quarter, we tend to see higher percents of revenue as we think about supporting demand in quarters where we have seasonally more inventory to rent, and we get good returns in those quarters to do that. And then we typically see the second and third quarter marketing spend come down a little bit as a percentage of revenue. As you look at the quarter, yeah, it was probably pretty consistent with some quarters we had back in 2018, 2019, maybe a touch under what some of them were, but a comfortable range as we think about the level of marketing support that we're providing the stores. As I mentioned in previous question, that's dynamically managed around local demand trends and supporting the business. But I would anticipate from an absolute percentage of revenue, that's likely to decline in the next couple of quarters like it did last year before coming up again in the fourth quarter to support higher inventory levels at the lower levels of occupancy we experienced in the fourth quarter. Thanks so much. Our next question is from Caitlin Burrows with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question. Hi, good morning. Maybe, just on acquisitions, looks like subsequent to the quarter end, you had $34.6 million in acquisitions. So just wondering if you could talk about how these properties, came about. Were they four separate deals? What type of seller? Yeah, individual sellers, Caitlin. You know, smaller, you know, deal-by-deal opportunities. You know, as typically we see, you know, there's a range of different seller types that were in dialogue very actively. So these were, again, individual owners. I would, you know, tell you, as I mentioned earlier, we've continued to have a whole range of different conversations with, different, owners or owner types, whether, family owners, individual owners, institutional owners. But, you know, again, the, the deals that we've got either are closed or under contract or, or just that very, one-offs, you know, smaller assets, that fit well into certain markets that we're, you know, certainly interested in growing scale, et cetera. Got it. Okay. And then maybe just one on the move in, move out spread. It looks like it's flattened a bit. So do you have a view on whether we've hit the trough of that spread, given where the move-out rates and move-in rates are at this point, and I guess, expectation going forward? Yeah, we would anticipate, Caitlin, that that spread does narrow in the second and third quarter seasonally before widening out again in the fourth quarter. So not dissimilar from a seasonal trend standpoint to what I was speaking about related to advertising. Got it. Thanks. Our next question comes from Ki Bin Kim with Truist Securities. Please proceed with your question. Thanks. Good morning. So I'm not sure if I missed it or not, but did you give an update on April move-in rate trends? I did, Ki Bin. Okay, I'll just go back into the transcript. When you look at the year-to-date, changes in sequential rents, you know, how does that compare to what you would, you know, consider a normal seasonal pattern? Has it been better or worse? I'd say, on a year-over-year basis, it's been, pretty consistent and a touch better than last year, which is what we'd anticipate. And obviously, we're anticipating that likely to continue here through the peak leasing season. We'll update you on that, as we move through the next three months or so. Okay. And on your CapEx, you have $150 million for the Property of Tomorrow program. That's supposed to wind down next year. But just trying to get a better sense of it. I mean, does it go to zero, or is there, you know, a certain level that you might have to keep, you know, for a longer time? No, it, it's going to go to zero. It probably some of the cash payments on the cash flow statement will continue into the first quarter or so of next year, just as we wrap up the program and make our final payments. But ultimately, that'll go to zero. Okay. Thank you. Our next question comes from Tayo Okusanya with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question. Yes, good morning out there. Just given some of your comments around improving trends in more markets, could you talk a little bit kind of January, February, March, specifically around street rates, kind of on a year-over-year basis, how that was improving throughout the quarter? Like, do we kind of sort of like -15, and now we're like at -10 and heading towards the 0, that's kind of embedded in some of your guidance going forward? Okay, so there's kind of two parts to that question. One is the accelerating markets, and those accelerating markets are driven by a whole host of things, and not just individually move-in rents, right? But as we think about that, we highlighted on the previous call two or three markets that were accelerating at the time we were sitting there in February, and we added a handful of markets to that. So we're definitely seeing improving trends across that group of markets. I think your next question was just sequentially, as we think about year-over-year declines in move-in rents. And on the February call, I had highlighted that January, February move-ins, move-in rates were down in the 10-11% zip code, and we finished the quarter and had April right around that same sort of level. Obviously, there's periods of time where it's a little bit better than that, periods of time where we're lowering rates to drive move-in volume. So it's been relatively consistent, which is what you'd anticipate really through the first part of the year, 'cause you're at the trough point of rents. And as I noted, we're at the point of the year now where we are raising rents now, and that's when we're likely to see some changing activity as it relates to those trends, as we've discussed, in our outlook. That's helpful. And then for ECRI increases, are they also kind of consistent versus what we've been seeing in recent quarters? Yeah, pretty consistent in terms of trends. With the exception of what I highlighted earlier around more newer tenants added to the program, given the strong move-in volumes last year. Yep. Yep. Okay. Thank you. Our next question is from Michael Mueller with JP Morgan. Please proceed with your question. Yeah. Hi, sorry to drag out the call longer here, but, what are some of the attributes of, the markets where you're seeing the improvement that you flagged? Is it just less supply? 'Cause it seems like that list that you rattled off was dominated by kind of bigger cities. And, as a follow-up to that, is the momentum you're talking about, is it better momentum in move-in rates, or is it just more traffic oriented? Sure, Mike. I think there's a number of factors. You rattled off some of them that are contributing to it. We listed a series of markets. Each market is a little bit different. Certainly, supply plays a component in some of those markets, meaning a lack of supply, higher barriers to entry, as Joe spoke to, on certain of those markets. But I'd also highlight stronger demand trends, better move-in rent trends, better move-out activity. It's really a handful of different drivers that are unique to each market. But as you characterize them all, I would categorize them into markets that didn't have the same really strong levels of growth in 2021 and 2022, and so don't have the same level of really difficult comps to come off of. As Joe mentioned earlier, you can put Florida, for instance, as a big winner over the last couple of years, is likely to take a little bit longer to normalize, but still has been a really strong performer over the last several years for us. Got it. That, that helps a lot. Thank you. Our next question is from Brendan Lynch with Barclays. Please proceed with your question. Great. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe I could get your thoughts on what's behind the lower delinquency rates that you highlighted in the script. Some macro data suggests that consumers are facing some incremental challenges, but that doesn't seem to be what you're seeing. I would say Brendan, on a macro basis, we still see a very healthy, you know, consumer base. W e've got, ± about 2 million customers, so, you know, full spectrum of the economy at large, and not really seeing any undue pressure market by market, or, you know, again, that would indicate that there's some elevated amount of risk that's coming from, relative to stress points, et cetera. I think you're hearing, you know, a fair amount of commentary even, you know, now that we're, you know, well into 2024, around consumer balance sheets. Employment levels, are quite strong. I think this is, you know, part of the angst that the Fed's having relative to their, you know, timing relative to tapering, et cetera. So the employment and behavior from consumers at large continues to be quite good, and we're very pleased by that, obviously. You know, on a day-to-day basis, we're not seeing the type of you know, range of when you see a customer go into some level of delinquency, et cetera. The pace and the nature of that that pattern isn't as elevated as it was pre-pandemic, so keeping a very close eye on it, but no material shift, and continues to give us you know, an outlook that the consumer environment's gonna be quite healthy. Great. Thanks. That's helpful. Maybe just one more: you ran some TV ads in the quarter. Can you just talk about your thought process around when and where to use TV advertisement versus other types of advertising? Yeah, we did use a little bit of TV advertising. It's one of the things that we can utilize pretty uniquely in the industry, given our national scale and so that's something we will use periodically. In this case, we used it to advertise some of our promotional activity, which we saw a good reaction to in the quarter. Great. Thanks for taking my questions. Thanks. We have reached the end of the question and answer session. I would now like to turn the call back over to Ryan Burke for closing comments. Thanks, Rob, and, thanks to all of you out there for your continuing interest and time, and we'll talk to you soon. Have a good day. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and we thank you for your participation.