SmartStop Self Storage (SMA) Q3 2026 Earnings Call: FFO steigt um 9,4 %, Prognose angehoben

Wichtigste Erkenntnisse

• SmartStop Self Storage meldete für das dritte Quartal 2026 bereinigte FFO von 0,51 US-Dollar je verwässerter Aktie und Einheit, ein Plus von 9,4 % gegenüber 0,47 US-Dollar im Vorjahr.
• Die Same-Store-Erlöse stiegen um 2,0 %, während die Betriebskosten um 3,8 % sanken, was zu einem NOI-Wachstum von 4,9 % führte. Währungsbereinigt stieg das NOI um 5,1 %.
• Die operative Same-Store-Marge erreichte 68,0 %, was einer Verbesserung um 190 Basispunkte im Jahresvergleich entspricht und die höchste Marge des Unternehmens in einem dritten Quartal seit 2023 markiert.
• Die Vermietungsquote zum Quartalsende lag bei 92,1 %, während die Bestandsmiete pro belegtem Quadratfuß um 2,6 % zulegte. Im Oktober verbesserte sich die Auslastung auf 92,2 %.
• Das Management hob die Prognose für das Gesamtjahr 2026 für das Same-Store-Umsatzwachstum, das NOI-Wachstum und die bereinigten FFO je Aktie an. Die Spanne für die bereinigten FFO liegt nun bei 2,01 bis 2,05 US-Dollar.
• Das Unternehmen rechnet für 2026 mit einem Kapitaleinsatz von 200 bis 220 Millionen US-Dollar und plant ab der ersten Jahreshälfte 2027 den Verkauf von nicht zum Kerngeschäft gehörenden Vermögenswerten im Umfang von 75 bis 125 Millionen US-Dollar.

Wichtige Finanzkennzahlen

Geschäfts- und operative Entwicklung

Kostenkontrolle und Skaleneffekte im Portfolio waren die Haupttreiber der Margenausweitung im dritten Quartal. SmartStop verzeichnete niedrigere Grundsteuern, Versicherungskosten, Reparatur- und Instandhaltungsaufwendungen sowie geringere Betriebskosten für Versorger. Das Management erklärte, dass Effizienzgewinne beim Personal und Vorteile durch regionale Clusterbildung anhalten dürften, wenngleich einige Einsparungen bei Versicherungen und Grundsteuern zyklischer Natur gewesen seien.

Das Unternehmen priorisierte im Quartal die Auslastung, indem es die Einzugsmieten senkte. Die Neueinzüge stiegen im Jahresvergleich um 5,6 %, während die Vermietungsquote von August bis September lediglich um 30 Basispunkte sank. Mietnachlässe wurden zurückhaltender eingesetzt; zum Zeitpunkt der Telefonkonferenz lagen die Nachlässe im bisherigen vierten Quartal im Jahresvergleich um etwa 25 % bis 30 % niedriger.

In Kanada erzielte das 13 Objekte umfassende Same-Store-Portfolio ein leicht positives währungsbereinigtes Umsatzwachstum, was eine Verbesserung gegenüber einem Rückgang von 1 % im zweiten Quartal darstellt. Die Vermietungsquote im Großraum Toronto lag bei 92,6 %, ein Anstieg um 10 Basispunkte im Jahresvergleich. Das Joint Venture mit 10 Objekten im Großraum Toronto verzeichnete ein Umsatzwachstum von 2,8 % und eine Auslastung von rund 93 %.

Das vollständig im Eigenbesitz befindliche Alberta-Portfolio steigerte seine Vermietungsquote seit der Übernahme im August 2025 um rund 1.700 Basispunkte und lieferte im dritten Quartal ein Umsatzwachstum von 9,2 % im Jahresvergleich. Das Management gab an, dass die Entwicklung des Portfolios die eigenen Erwartungen übertroffen habe.

SmartStop kündigte eine Investition von geschätzten 53 Millionen US-Dollar in Strategic Storage Canada LP an und baut damit seine operative Präsenz in Kanada um mehr als 30 % auf 70 Standorte aus. Zudem stellte das Unternehmen rund 32,3 Millionen US-Dollar an Überbrückungskapital bereit und schloss Vorverträge für zwei bilanzwirksame Akquisitionen über rund 37 Millionen US-Dollar ab.

Zu den Finanzierungsmaßnahmen zählten eine Maple-Anleihe über 200 Millionen CAD zu 4,32 % sowie rund 2,4 Millionen Forward-Aktien, die über das ATM-Programm zu einem Durchschnittspreis von 32,01 US-Dollar ausgegeben wurden.

Management-Prognose

Das Management führte die Anhebung der bereinigten FFO-Prognose primär auf die stärkere Same-Store-Entwicklung zurück. Auch das aktualisierte Ziel für den Kapitaleinsatz liegt deutlich über der anfänglichen Spanne des Unternehmens für 2026 von 45 bis 65 Millionen US-Dollar.

Risiken und wichtige Beobachtungspunkte

• Die Einzugsmieten im dritten Quartal sanken um 5,7 % pro Quadratfuß, da das Unternehmen der Auslastung Priorität einräumte. Nach Angaben des Managements lagen die Einzugsmieten im Oktober weiterhin im hohen einstelligen bis niedrigen zweistelligen Prozentbereich im Minus, wenngleich sich einige Märkte gegen Ende des Monats verbesserten.
• Das Management rechnet damit, dass das Portfolio im Großraum Toronto im Gesamtjahr 2026 geringfügig schwächer abschneiden wird als das US-Portfolio, was vor allem auf die anspruchsvollere Vergleichsbasis aus dem Jahr 2025 zurückzuführen ist.
• Zollbedingte makroökonomische Unsicherheiten haben dem Management zufolge in Teilen des Großraums Toronto zu einer gewissen Zögerlichkeit bei Mietentscheidungen geführt.
• Einige Kostenvorteile im dritten Quartal, darunter vorteilhafte Verlängerungen von Gebäudeversicherungen und Grundsteuereinsparungen, waren zyklischer Natur und könnten künftig vor schwierigeren Vorjahresvergleichen stehen.
• Das Management wies darauf hin, dass das Preisniveau für einige Akquisitionsmöglichkeiten weiterhin erhöht bleibt, und bekräftigte, dass Transaktionen auf Pro-Aktie-Basis wertsteigernd sein müssen.

Highlights aus der Analysten-Fragerunde

Verkäufe von Nicht-Kernvermögen: SmartStop plant zunächst den Verkauf von Immobilien im Volumen von 75 bis 125 Millionen US-Dollar in Märkten, in denen keine ausreichende Größe vorhanden ist; die Abschlüsse werden für das erste Halbjahr 2027 erwartet. Das Management rechnet damit, dass die Kapitalisierungszinssätze bei An- und Verkäufen weitgehend vergleichbar sein werden. Zudem deutete es an, dass operative Effizienzgewinne, steuerliche Vorteile im Rahmen von 1031-Exchanges sowie potenziell beibehaltene Managementverträge die kurz- bis mittelfristige Wertsteigerung unterstützen könnten.

Auslastungs- und Preisstrategie: Nach Angaben des Managements wechselt das Revenue-Management-System je nach den erwarteten NOI-Renditen zwischen Mietpreisen und Auslastung. Im dritten Quartal und im Oktober lag der Schwerpunkt auf der Auslastung, doch bis zum Zeitpunkt der Telefonkonferenz waren die Online-Preise in Toronto wieder auf ein Wachstum im mittleren einstelligen Prozentbereich im Jahresvergleich gestiegen.

Investitionsumfeld 2027: Das Management beschrieb attraktive Gelegenheiten bei stabilisierten Storage-Immobilien in den USA und Kanada, betonte jedoch, SmartStop werde Volumen oder Größe nicht um ihrer selbst willen anstreben. Joint Ventures und strukturierte Investitionen bleiben Teil der Kapitalallokationsstrategie – insbesondere dort, wo sie regionale Marktcluster erweitern, ohne die Bilanz voll zu belasten.

Nachhaltigkeit der Margenzuwächse: Das Management führte einen wesentlichen Teil der Margenausweitung auf strukturelle Clustering-Vorteile zurück. Märkte mit mindestens 10 Objekten verzeichneten in der Vergangenheit eine Margenverbesserung von rund 300 Basispunkten, während Miami, Denver und Chicago seit Jahresbeginn für einen Margenzuwachs von 250 bis 300 Basispunkten sorgten.

Mieterbindung: Die Verweildauer der Mieter stieg auf 32 Monate, wobei 36 % der Mieter länger als 24 Monate bleiben. Dem Management zufolge blieb die Mieterabwanderung im Zusammenhang mit Mieterhöhungen bei Bestandsmietern sowohl in den USA als auch in Kanada stabil.

Vollständiges Transkript der Telefonkonferenz

Vollständiges Transkript der Telefonkonferenz

Ausführungen des Managements

Operator

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to SmartStop Self Storage's Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call.

[Operator Instructions]

I will now hand the conference over to David Corak, Senior Vice President of Corporate Finance and Strategy. David, please go ahead.

David Corak

Thank you, operator.

Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that certain statements made during today's call, including statements about our future plans, prospects and expectations may be considered forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act.

These forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties as described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and these risks could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by our comments.

Forward-looking statements in our earnings release that we issued last night, along with the comments on this call, are made only as of today. The company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

In addition, we will also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Information regarding our use of these measures and reconciliation of these measures to GAAP measures can be found in our earnings release and supplemental disclosure that we issued last night and are available for download on our website at investors.smartstopselfstorage.com.

In addition to myself, today, we have H. Michael Schwartz, Founder, Chairman and CEO; as well as James Barry, our CFO.

Now I'll turn it over to Michael.

H. Schwartz

Thank you, David, and thank you for joining us today for our third quarter earnings call.

SmartStop Self Storage had a strong quarter of results, and we further reinforced our vision by executing on the pillars of our long-term strategy for shareholder value creation through the DECA initiative, which we introduced in July.

Let me first touch on our results for the third quarter. We posted strong same-store revenue growth of 2%, and operating expense decrease of 3.8% and sector-leading NOI growth of 4.9%. Even with a modest currency headwind on a constant currency basis, same-store NOI grew 5.1%. Operationally, 11 of our top 15 markets achieved positive same-store NOI growth.

Our strong focus on expense control led to 190 basis points year-over-year growth in our same-store operating margins. This is our third quarter in a row of improved margins and the highest 3Q operating margin since 2023. This operational performance, coupled with overall efficiencies resulted in an FFO as adjusted per share of $0.51, up approximately 9.4% year-over-year.

With these results and good momentum into the fourth quarter, we once again raised the midpoint of our same-store revenue as well as our same-store NOI guidance, the fourth time this year.

Lastly, we raised the midpoint of our FFO as adjusted per share guidance. The DECA initiative is our multiyear strategic framework that stands for disciplined execution, compounding appreciation through 6 defined pillars for outsized long-term value creation.

As a brief reminder, the 6 pillars comprise disciplined capital allocation as an NAV creation engine, operational focus through clustering and margin expansion, investment in technology led by SmartStop.AI, leveraging third-party management to achieve capital-light scaling, our managed REIT platform and targeting joint ventures that advance our clustering strategy by acquiring operating assets at scale.

With this clear strategic focus, we are confident in our ability to create value through relative outperformance, margin expansion and outsized FFO per share growth, all of which we've demonstrated with our 3Q results and announcements.

To that end, on the transaction side, we announced an estimated $53 million investment in Strategic Storage Canada LP, a Canadian growth-oriented acquisition joint venture, which expands our Canadian operating presence by over 30% to 70 stores, a new programmatic investment partnership with an institutional sponsor who is an accomplished developer in the U.S.

Our preferred and mezzanine investments carry blended in-place yields in the mid-teens, and we also receive property management, rights of first offers and a pipeline of future deals for investment and acquisitions from the sponsor's platform.

During the quarter, we deployed approximately $32.3 million of bridge capital, the majority of which was to the sponsor. We also announced that we're under contract to acquire 2 on-balance sheet acquisitions for approximately $37 million, both in core SMA markets.

From a funding standpoint, we priced $200 million CAD Maple Bond at 4.32% and approximately 2.4 million forward shares through our ATM program at an average price of $32.01. On the third-party management side, we officially rebranded Argus to SmartStop 3PM.

Lastly, we announced a strategic asset management program aimed at the disposition of properties in select noncore markets to redeploy capital into core markets to further reinforce our efficiencies and clustering.

On the performance side, our sector-leading same-store NOI growth of 4.9% was driven by our strong revenue management and growing expense efficiencies as we scale. This led to same-store operating margins of 68%, up 190 basis points year-over-year. We also posted year-over-year NOI growth of 4.9% on a constant currency basis in our 10 GTA SmartCentres joint venture properties.

Our managed REIT platform posted 16.3% year-over-year growth of recurring revenues. The stellar performance paired with a busy quarter on the transaction front actually led to a reduction of normalized cash flow leverage to 6x or 5.6x, assuming the full settlement of our forward ATM shares. The DECA initiative was in full swing in the third quarter, and we're excited about what lies ahead for our company.

Now I'll turn it over to James.

James Barry

Thank you, Michael.

Starting with our operating performance. Our same-store pool posted year-over-year revenue growth of 2% with a 3.8% decrease in operating expenses leading to an NOI increase of 4.9% with quarter ending occupancy of 92.1% and in-place rent per occupied square foot up 2.6%.

On a constant currency basis, same-store revenue grew 2.1% and NOI grew 5.1%. We were very pleased with our operating expenses with a year-over-year same-store decrease of 3.8% in the quarter as the benefits of scale continue to manifest themselves in margin expansion. We saw a decrease in property taxes, property insurance, repairs and maintenance and utilities in the quarter.

Our move-in rates per square foot were down 5.7% on average for the quarter year-over-year as we prioritize occupancy. This strategy was successful as our occupancy was only down about 30 basis points month-over-month from August to September, and our move-ins were up 5.6% year-over-year for the quarter. In October, we gained occupancy from the end of September at 92.2% as of the end of that month.

The result of all of this is that for the third quarter of 2026, we posted fully diluted FFO as adjusted per share in unit of $0.51, up approximately 9.4% from $0.47 in the third quarter of 2025.

Turning to guidance. At the end of September, we adjusted our full year 2026 guidance upward to reflect year-to-date results as well as the impact of announced transactions. The highlights of those adjustments were a raise in the same-store revenue, same-store NOI and FFO as adjusted per share ranges.

Last night, we once again adjusted our full year guidance. We raised our same-store revenue guidance from a range of 0.75% to 1.75%, up to a range of 1.25% to 1.75%. Additionally, we reduced our overall operating expense growth range from 0% to 1%, down to a range of negative 25 basis points to positive 25 basis points. This results in an increase of our NOI growth midpoint from 1.65% up to 2.25%.

We are now expecting capital deployment of $200 million to $220 million compared to our prior range of $190 million to $210 million and notably above our initial guidance range at the beginning of the year of $45 million to $65 million.

Lastly, we are adjusting our FFO as adjusted per share guidance range from a range of $1.99 to $2.05, up to a range of $2.01 to $2.05, increasing the midpoint to $2.03, primarily driven by stronger same-store performance.

As Michael said, we have a clear plan to continue executing on our growth strategy to drive value for shareholders. The results are beginning to demonstrate the potential of the DECA initiative.

And with that, operator, we will open it up to questions.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Viktor Fediv with Scotiabank.

Fragen und Antworten

Viktor Fediv

So my question is about your disposition plan. So you plan around $75 million to $125 million of noncore sales beginning in early 2027. So how advanced is the process? And do you expect the sales to be actually initially dilutive to 2027 FFO per share? And how quickly can proceeds be redeployed and probably some details on yield spreads as well would be helpful.

H. Schwartz

Great. Thanks, Viktor. This is Michael. Our strategic asset management program plays into the deck initiative in terms of the scale and clustering. This is all about clustering in MSAs where we have 10 properties or more, we've been very clear our operating margins improved by over 300 basis points.

Where we lack scale and do not see a path to scale, we'd rather recycle that capital into core markets where we can grow our clusters and efficiencies. So we've initially targeted $75 million to $125 million. We expect those to close in the first half of 2027. There could be more after that, but this is kind of our initial plan.

We have several properties being marketed right now. One that I would point out would be that we have 2 properties on the island of Nantucket. That's a tough market to scale since there's probably not 10 properties on the island. So those fit the bill, I think, quite well.

Now with that, with pricing expectations, David?

David Corak

Viktor, it's Corak. So in terms of the pricing and how I think about accretion dilution, we expect the cap rates on these deals that we're buying to be fairly similar to the ones that we're selling.

Remember, this is not a strategy that is divesting sort of the bottom of the barrel of the portfolio, as you see in a lot of the asset management programs out there in REIT land. Some of the markets like Nantucket, like Michael mentioned, are actually fairly low cap rate markets.

So for a pure sort of NOI -- for NOI standpoint, I don't think there's a ton of accretion or dilution but when you factor in the potential efficiencies here, right, I'd probably lean more towards the accretion in the short to medium term. And just to say that these will all be 1031 exchanges, so there won't be any tax implications.

And then lastly, just something to think about, we're hoping that on potentially some of these dispositions, we can actually retain management of some of the assets. So that could lend itself again to the accretion side.

Viktor Fediv

Got it. That's helpful. And then as a follow-up on move-in rates trajectory. So currently, your move-in versus move-out spread is one of the widest within the public peers. So is your strategy still focusing on occupancy, for example, in October and now in the beginning of November? And do you see that spread between move-in and move-out being narrower in 2027 as move-in rates are going up?

David Corak

Viktor, I'll allow me to give you a little bit of color on the strategy that happened in the third quarter, and then I'll kind of transition on how that plays into October and I'll probably star 2027, but maybe a little bit of thoughts into there. So to your point, our strategy this quarter was representative of what we said on the call 3 months ago that we were going to drive rate while at 92-plus percent occupancy during the busy season. And then coming out of the busy season, we wanted to maintain a good base of that occupancy heading into the slower months.

And that's basically what 3Q looked like, right? You can see it in the move-in volumes during the quarter. Move-ins were up 5.6% year-over-year and occupancy was down only 30 bps from August to September. That's a much shallower seasonal step down than typical. We ended the quarter at 92.1%, which is actually flat with where we were in July.

And obviously, that -- none of that came at the expense of revenue, right? Rents were up 2.6% and same-store revenue actually accelerated from 3Q -- into 3Q from 2Q. The web rates were down 3.5% for the quarter, but we used significantly less concessions. And going into the fourth quarter, the current run rate on concessions is even less. We're down 25% or 30% year-over-year, and that's a meaningful number.

The reality is that we have several levers to drive occupancy, right? We found that customers have had a better response to rate than some of the other levers that we utilize. So we're using less concessions. We haven't pulled on the marketing lever as hard as we could have. Every customer that we move in, there's a rate that we can grow over a length of stay that continues to elongate. We're now at 32 months and 36% of our tenants stay for over 24 months.

Our revenue management system flexes between the rate and the occupancy wherever it sees a better return and 2Q leaned on rate and 3Q lean towards occupancy. It's the same playbook. It's just to maximize NOI. Our strategy was very much the same in October, right? Our occupancy in October was actually up 10 basis points from the end of September at 92.2%.

That doesn't happen quite often. For reference, again, higher than some of our occupancies during the busy season. Our concessions were down, as I mentioned, 25%, 30% quarter-to-date in the fourth quarter. But our move-in rates continue to be down as well, right, high single digits, low double digits.

However, towards the end of October, we actually started to see a benefit from both move-in rates and concessions. So we shifted the strategies in certain markets, namely Toronto, where our web rates today are actually higher than they were last year in the mid-single-digit range.

So in terms of that spread, I think we are going to start seeing some compression, but the strategy in the third quarter and into October wouldn't reflect that, right? We're just pulling different levers.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Spenser Glimcher with Green Street.

Spenser Allaway

Yes. Maybe just a follow-up on some of your comments, David, a second ago around some of what you're seeing from an operational standpoint in the GTA. Just curious, has the Alberta 5 pack, I mean, has that performed in line with your expectations in terms of like the operations? And have there been any surprises there?

H. Schwartz

Actually, this is Michael. It's actually exceeded our expectations. So let me just kind of step back and kind of give you kind of the overview from the Canadian operating environment.

Our same-store pool in Canada consists of 13 properties. And so same-store revenue in this pool was slightly positive on a constant currency basis in the third quarter, which was an acceleration from the second quarter, which was down 1%. That's a little bit bigger acceleration in the third quarter than our U.S. portfolio. Our occupancy in the GTA is 92.6%. So it's up 10 basis points year-over-year.

For the full year, we do continue to expect the GTA to run modestly below the U.S. portfolio, primarily a function of tougher 2025 comps. The GTA did deliver 2.7% same-store revenue growth last year, and that was about 100 basis points ahead of the U.S.

Now the revenue growth in our GTA portfolio has been, and we've kind of emphasized this 3x the U.S. over the past 36 months. In concert with that, our 10-property joint ventures has a high occupancy of 93%, 2.8% year-over-year revenue growth. Our ECRIs within the GTA have been in the low 20s and with consistent attrition levels and the length of stay has been approximately 26 months year-over-year.

So the other aspect is kind of the question you asked was with respect to kind of the other Canadian markets other than the GTA. Our wholly owned Alberta portfolio has gained about 1,700 basis points of occupancy since we've acquired it in August of last year. And in the third quarter, it posted year-over-year revenue growth of about 9.2%.

In concert with that, if you take a look at our entire 29 owned properties within SMA, it posted revenue growth of 8.5% year-over-year with occupancy of 92.3%. And so we continue to see strong lease-up in our recently opened managed assets in Montreal and our late-stage lease-up assets in Vancouver.

So overall, the Canadian consumer remains healthy. I mean bad debt is less than half of U.S. levels. It's about 1%, which is incredibly low. The macro uncertainty tied to tariffs has caused probably some hesitation in rental decisions in certain pocket books, I think, in the GTA. But it's interesting, other markets like Alberta have been showing much steadier trends.

And so I want to also emphasize that the structural demand drivers remain the same and an aging downsizing population, the shrinking home sizes, continued urban densification. And so our GTA portfolio is truly an irreplaceable real estate, given the barriers to entry are significant, the cost to develop, development charges, and we now stand at 41 properties that are owned and managed in the GTA.

James Barry

Yes. Michael, if I can just add to that as well. In addition to the performance we've seen in the Alberta 5, which, as a reminder, was acquired at about 75% occupancy about a year ago in August. We've seen the full lease-up of that particular portfolio, which was, as Michael mentioned, above our expectations. But again, with some of our other announcements and our other transactions, we're adding to the clusters in those particular markets in Alberta, most notably in Calgary, which is going to really help with the efficiencies and economies of scale there as well.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Todd Thomas with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Todd Thomas

In terms of the investment outlook and thinking about 2027 a little bit, there's been quite a bit of volatility in the equity markets and capital markets more broadly. But just curious how you're thinking about the outlook for investments just given the recent improvement in your cost of capital. Can you speak about whether that changes the outlook as we think about '27? And does the composition of capital deployment change at all toward wholly owned acquisitions versus joint ventures and structured investments at the margin?

H. Schwartz

That's a great question. I think from -- just let me discuss the acquisition environment. We continue to believe this is pretty amazing, I think, opportunity to transact in the storage market since the Great Recession. And I think it's been primarily driven by a lot of developments and acquisitions that were either built on COVID numbers or bought on COVID numbers.

And so as storage has kind of settled down and kind of bottomed and started to kind of move forward, some of these owners are kind of over their skis, and they may need to contribute additional capital to their properties for refinancing and some of them there is resulting in a wave of high-quality assets coming to the market.

And so we're seeing a lot of attractive opportunities on the stabilized front, both in U.S. and Canada. We do think from a pricing perspective, there are some maybe properties that are probably a little high. But overall, off-market deals have been pretty attractive, and we've kind of announced 2 of them recently, one in Las Vegas and one in Asheville.

Look, we're not going to just chase volume or size for its own sake. I mean, everything has to be accretive on a per share bar. And we like to emphasize that a $300 million transaction would move our market cap by 10%, and that's effectively meaningful growth for us.

With respect to that, that kind of folds into the strategic investment that we made in Strategic Storage Canada. That investment is a prime example of kind of the opportunities that we're seeing in Canada. We have a growth-oriented acquisition joint venture, which expanded our overall presence in Canada by 30%. It hits on 3 of our DECA pillars, targeting joint ventures that advance clustering, acquiring operating assets at scale, third-party management and disciplined capital allocation.

And so this lets us deal with our Canadian platform without fully burdening our balance sheet. But it also, as James has discussed, it had a meaningful presence in Calgary. Now we have 9 stores in Calgary, and we've done that in kind of a derisked manner. And so this also creates a really nice pipeline of growth in Canada, which is certainly a big target for us.

Now having said that, look, it is great to see that our recent stock performance for SmartStop and the sector. We think it reflects the momentum that we're seeing in our business. Our balance sheet is in a good place. We continue to stay disciplined in how we allocate capital. And as we've done today, we'll evaluate the right source of capital against the opportunities that we see to create long-term value for our shareholders.

Todd Thomas

Okay. That's helpful. And then shifting over to operating expenses down again this year, roughly 2% lower year-to-date. How should we think about the expense backdrop heading into 2027? I guess how much of this year's improvement is sort of structural or sustainable and/or should we expect some normalization in expense growth next year against tougher comps?

James Barry

Yes, Todd, thanks. It's certainly a pertinent question based on the expense decrease that we saw in the third quarter, which we're very pleased with. And again, just as we mentioned in our opening remarks, it is the third consecutive quarter of year-over-year margin expansion for us, and it widened. It actually got larger sequentially from the second quarter.

This is the highest third quarter operating margin we've had since 2023. And we think a big portion of that is structural, right? And as we've mentioned over our lifetime as a public company, in MSAs where we have 10 or more properties, we see roughly 300 basis points of margin improvement, right? And that really -- we saw more of those markets fall into that category once we had the SmartStop 3PM platform, it hits more of those markets, most notably Denver.

So markets like Miami, Denver, Chicago, we are seeing 250 to 300 basis points year-over-year margin expansion on a year-to-date basis. Some of the expense print that we've seen thus far this quarter and year-to-date is cyclical. So we had stronger property insurance renewals in terms of a softer property insurance market. We have seen some property tax benefits as well.

But the things like payroll efficiencies are real and are going to continue to benefit us as we move forward and continue the clustering through whether it be acquisitions, joint ventures, third-party management, all of the above really help with that story.

And then just to echo again, as we mentioned on one of the previous questions, that's another part of that strategic asset management program by migrating away from noncore markets, we're going to continue to reinforce those efficiencies.

Operator

Your last question comes from the line of Michael Mueller with JPMorgan.

Michael Mueller

Out of curiosity, do you have any expectations about the broader Canadian operating environment changing really in any way once PFA takes over operation for the portfolio that it bought?

H. Schwartz

Great question. To date, we have not experienced any notable difference in the operating environment thus far. So it's hard to say. But as I said on previous calls, I think the good news is we compete with a lot of larger operators and regional operators and smaller operators on a daily basis in the U.S. and markets that markets like Las Vegas and some other markets that have a lot of exposure from companies like that. And we feel pretty comfortable that we'll be able to compete at a pretty high level.

Michael Mueller

Got it. Okay. And maybe just one other quick one. When you look at the relatively muted move-outs compared to your move-in volumes, is that dynamic in the GTA similar to what you're seeing more broadly in the U.S.

James Barry

Yes. This is James. I'll just jump in and say we're seeing more limited vacates overall and more muted. I think we saw elevated vacates through most of 2025. What's been notable is in terms of our ECRI strategy, which has been consistent, right, over the course of this year, both in the U.S. and in Canada, we've really not seen any sort of a material change in customer attrition as it relates to ECRIs.

And that even accounts for L.A. County as those ECRI restrictions faded at the end of the second quarter, we actually saw less attrition than we expected in that those customers stayed longer. And we're seeing it in our overall customer length of stay is lengthening over the course of 2026. That's both in the U.S. and in Canada.

David Corak

Yes. And just to give you some numbers, Mike, our move-outs were actually down year-over-year in our DTA portfolio.

Operator

Okay. There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to Michael Schwartz for closing remarks.

H. Schwartz

Thank you, operator, and thanks for your time and interest in SmartStop Self Storage, the smarter way to store. I'd also like to thank our SmartStop team members in 41 states and provinces across North America. Have a great day.

Operator

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.