Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the full-year results presentation for Abacus Storage King. I'm joined here today by Nikki Lawson, the Fund Manager for ASK, Evan Goodrich, our CFO, and Cynthia and Chris from the Investor Relations team. The Storage King business continues to perform exceptionally well, with continued strength in our sector-leading operating metrics being the most pleasing part of the FY 2025 result. I'll begin with an overview of our achievements for the year, followed by Evan, who will provide an update on our financial results and capital structure, and Nikki will then address our portfolio and platform progress before I wrap up with our outlook and FY 2026 guidance.
Looking at the business's key metrics in summary, the Abacus Storage King business comprises a unique portfolio of predominantly urban self-storage locations, which, on a combined valuation basis, delivers a net asset backing of the organization of $1.74 per share, up 10% from the value at the end of FY 2024. The business is a long-established, trusted, and recognized operating platform under the brand Storage King in Australia and New Zealand, and we have a strong outlook for the business, combining enhancements to the portfolio of properties and also the Storage King operating systems and processes. In total, ASK has now over 1.2 million square meters of prime real estate in Australia and New Zealand, mostly in metropolitan locations.
Plus, ASK also already has invested around 8% of its balance sheet in a number of future development sites, which will be home to modern, high-yielding new stores in time, underpinned by the Storage King brand. We were pleased to deliver a distribution for the full year of $0.062 per share in line with our guidance. The FY 2025 results and ASK's market-leading operating metrics again demonstrate the self-storage sector's resilience to a range of broader macro factors, with many structural tailwinds that we will expand on later in the presentation. On this slide, we highlight what we believe are the key competitive advantages that set us apart in the market and drive strong operating performances you can see that are being delivered period after period.
Our portfolio of over 200 owned, managed, and licensed stores is strategically selected based on demographics and urban density, ensuring we own prime locations that are difficult to replicate. We have right-sized stores in optimal locations that drive market-leading rental rates and occupancy levels. There are multiple growth levers, and these position us well for quality growth and sustained sector leadership. Organic growth, future acquisitions and developments, as well as our technology initiatives, are poised to drive growth in Storage King's brand, customer engagement, and revenue management. The Storage King platform is the secret sauce of the business, as the most recognized and searched brand in the sector. Storage King attracts very strong inquiry levels, and this gives us the confidence for ongoing acquisition and spend on new developments. With opportunity to optimize further, customers seem to be voting with their feet.
Our Storage King dedicated team is the backbone of our success, driving innovation, customer satisfaction, and operational excellence. Putting it all together, we believe our locations, brand value proposition, and talented team position us for sustained growth and success in the years to come. Turning now to the highlights from what has been a busy period. Our operating performance has continued its strong trajectory, with now 100% of the portfolio in established stores delivering very pleasing RevPAM growth of 4.5% on FY 2024, and with occupancy at 91.2%, up 40 basis points on the last period. Further increasing our rental rates by 4.1% in the period, while also slightly increasing occupancy level, is a very strong result and we believe reflects the power of the Storage King brand.
The quality of our locations is key, driving our customer value proposition, and our development pipeline remains on track to deliver over 100,000 square meters of incremental net lettable area over the short to medium term. Our newly developed stores, which are typically larger than our portfolio average, will drive enhanced average RevPAM growth across the established portfolio over the medium term. During the period, we spent a total of $84 million across six operating stores and four development sites, all which we expect to generate strong returns as we bring them onto the market-leading self-storage platform and as we complete the development projects, curating new and contemporary self-storage products. I'll now hand over to Evan to discuss the financials from the period.
Thanks, Steven, and good morning, everyone. This year's results reflect strong top-line growth across all operating segments, our established, acquisition, and stabilising portfolios, demonstrating the strength and resilience of the Storage King platform. Our established portfolio revenue grew by 5.3%, comfortably outpacing CPI, driven by occupancy gains and higher rental yield. This positive momentum has continued into FY 2026, albeit slightly, with July's RevPAM increasing a further 0.1%. Turning to acquisition stores, income rose by 36.7%, reflecting the uplift we're capturing as independent operators join Australia's most recognized and most Googled self-storage platform. Our stabilising assets also performed well, with income up 67.5%, as newly opened stores lease up ahead of our underwriting assumptions. In FY 2026, we expect four new development projects, or 24,000 square meters of additional net lettable area, to come online and join the stabilising portfolio.
These new developments are forecast to contribute significant incremental revenue growth as they lease up, supporting our medium-term earnings trajectory. Operating expenses increased by $11.9 million in the period, reflecting both portfolio expansion and non-controllable cost pressures, particularly land tax and insurance. This resulted in an operating margin of 62%, which was lower than when we last reported to the market. At that time, we had anticipated improvement in the second half, however, this was offset by lower rental income received from brownfield sites earmarked for redevelopments. When compared to FY 2024, the 3% decline in operating margin is largely due to those non-controllable cost increases and reduced brownfield income. It is worth highlighting that our reported operating margin reflects the entire portfolio: our established, acquisition, and stabilising assets combined.
If we look at just the established portfolio, stripping out indirect costs, the margin has remained broadly stable year on year, a clear sign of resilience in our core platform despite cost headwinds. Looking ahead, we expect our top-line growth to continue to trend above CPI for our established portfolio, supplemented by contributions from acquisition and stabilising assets as they mature. Operating cost growth is anticipated to moderate in FY 2026, and we are confident that our margins will be at least maintained, with potential for modest improvement. Margin optimization remains a key focus, supported by initiatives such as technology-enabled revenue pricing and trialing new store formats, which Nikki will discuss shortly. At the corporate level, increased admin costs and interest expense were offset by reduced tax during the period.
Collectively, these factors delivered funds from operations of $85 million, or $0.0647 per security, and distributions of $0.062 per security, both consistent with guidance and providing a solid platform for next year. For financial year 2026, we are targeting a distribution per security of $0.062, with 25% of this expected to be in the form of a fully franked dividend. It is the Group's intention to distribute our $47.3 million of franking credits to security holders over the medium term. The Group's balance sheet remains strong. It is conservatively positioned, supporting growth and flexibility. Approximately three-quarters of our assets are established stores, providing reliable organic income growth, with the balance of our assets allocated to the higher growth acquisition, stabilizing, and development sites, which we expect to contribute incrementally as they mature.
Despite a proven track record of delivering strong value uplift on completion and stabilization, our development sites continue to be conservatively carried at cost. As Steven mentioned, our net tangible assets ended the year at $1.74 per security, reflecting the strength of our underlying portfolio quality. Turning to capital management, which remains a key focus. During the year, we refinanced $1.25 billion of existing debt and added a new NZD 125 million facility. As a result, 100% of our debt is now unsecured, which both reduced funding costs and simplified our capital structure. This enhanced funding platform now gives ASK the ability to access diverse capital sources and move quickly on growth opportunities, a critical capability given the evolving market environment. Our liquidity remains high, with over $600 million in funding capacity and gearing sitting at the lower end of our target range.
Operating cash flow also increased in the period, up 20% to $88.7 million, underpinned by our high-quality earnings base. ASK's weighted average cost of debt for FY 2026 is expected to be approximately 3.5%, reflecting our improved funding terms and current market conditions. Our reported weighted average cost of debt reflects the interest expensed in our P&L and excludes any interest capitalized into our development pipeline. Taking these together, ASK's marginal cost of debt for the full year will remain under 4.75%, with this all-in rate likely to be maintained over the medium term. Our portfolio valuations continue to increase, driven by income growth and the uplift from recently completed developments. Weighted average cap rates did tighten modestly by 10 basis points to 5.45%, supported by a number of recent transactions.
The strength of our portfolio, ASK's capital structure, market access, and our operating platform continue to position us well, driving long-term value creation while managing risk. With that, I'll now hand over to Nikki, who will provide further detail on the portfolio's performance and ongoing platform initiatives.
Thanks, Evan. As we've just shared, underpinning the cap rate contraction we've seen in the period is strong income growth, reflecting our irreplaceable ASK portfolio and detailed by segment on this slide. The 102 store established segment, which delivers our stable returns, delivered RevPAM growth of 4.5% year on year. We're pleased with these results, and they will benefit further over the medium term as we execute on our revenue management initiatives. I'll touch more on this later in the presentation. The second half of FY 2025 performed in line with our business seasonality but was slightly impacted by satellite store acquisitions. Satellite stores are smaller unmanned stores acquired in close proximity to an existing Storage King flagship store and included in the established portfolio. It's worth calling out the 40 basis points of occupancy growth for established stores during the period, now standing at 91.2%.
This occupancy has been achieved during a period of heightened competitor discounting, particularly around acquiring new customers. It's pleasing that in addition to building occupancy, we were also able to grow our rental rates by more than 4%. Going forward, this occupancy gives our managers the confidence to continue taking rate increases with existing customers and to be more discriminating with the rental rates they acquire new customers at. Turning to the acquisitions portfolio segment, value-accretive acquisitions are an important growth lever for the business, and we remain opportunistic in this area, judging every opportunity on its merits and the value it can bring to the portfolio. We acquired two additional satellite stores and one development site in the second half of the year, and we currently have a number of opportunities in due diligence.
Moving to the stabilising segment, we delivered three quality developments in FY 2025, with Morayfield in Queensland, Darlington in South Australia, and Leppington in New South Wales, adding three bold brand icons to our growing portfolio. 2025 has been another year of strengthening all segments of this strategically curated portfolio that allows us to deliver sector-leading operating metrics and to leverage the structural tailwinds in the self-storage industry. Turning to the operating trends by region, like we saw in the first half, we've grown RevPAM in all our Australian regions in the second half. Western Australia, Victoria, and New South Wales remain the standout regions, where our consistent approach of measured increases on existing customers, together with selective promotional activities to continue to attract new customers, is delivering returns. WA, supported by buoyant macro factors, has now closed the gap on RevPAM relative to the other states.
Queensland, South Australia, and the ACT delivered solid performances, despite Queensland and South Australia being impacted by negligible area additions over the past 18 months, a factor that will result in future tailwinds. New Zealand continues to be impacted by a weak economy, and removing the impact of currency, RevPAM was down 2.6%. We do, however, gain confidence from the fact that occupancy levels have now remained stable in the region for the last six months and continue to believe in the long-term attractiveness of this difficult-to-penetrate market with our well-positioned, predominantly Auckland-based portfolio. Looking at our development pipeline, the growth upside from this pipeline is compelling. We continue to see value in new developments, with our pipeline set to deliver nearly 20% additional net lettable area for the business through both developments and expansions in the short to medium term.
Almost half these developments are in New South Wales, followed by Victoria. Positioned in quality metro locations and designed to deliver on brand stature and consumer ease while maximizing net lettable area, these developments fill the priority gaps in our network plan. They enhance our portfolio and add scale to our brand and platform. In addition, as cap rates have tightened slightly and development costs started to stabilize, our development returns have seen some further improvements. We currently have 12 projects under construction, many nearing completion. We have over 9,000 square meters due to come online before October with our new Knoxfield development and an expansion at Bentley in WA, and then another 10,000 square meters of net lettable area due to come online at the end of December, again through a combination of expansions and developments.
We'll continue to replenish our pipeline with new opportunity from our network gaps as completed developments roll into the market. Our confidence to keep developing is derived from our track record of delivering quality returns from our recent developments and expansions. We remain convinced that the combination of optimal store size, location, and asset quality are the three legs of our property strategy that deliver the best results, and that the evolution of the self-storage product as delivered through these purpose-built developments is helping grow the size and rental rate ability of the sector through appealing to a broader group of customers who are using self-storage more as an adjunct to their homes in a market where population sizes continue to grow and dwelling sizes continue to shrink. Reflected on this slide, our newly developed stores continue to fill strongly.
The three stores delivered in FY 2025 have been particularly strong, with Morayfield in Queensland reaching 20% occupancy after only opening in March this year, and Leppington building a waitlist allowing it to fill to 9% in less than a month. As at the end of July, these properties were 25% and 12% occupancy, respectively. Expansions are also a significant opportunity to expand in net lettable area in the portfolio, with Miami on the Gold Coast expanded by a third in FY 2025. We continue to assess opportunities throughout our existing portfolio to expand further, and the redevelopment of 3,000 square meters of net lettable area at Kingston is targeted to open in December 2025.
Moving to our Storage King platform, the secret sauce of the business, as Steven referred to earlier, our operating platform remains a crucial element of Storage King's success, and this year has been dominated by investment in platform enhancements in both systems and processes, designed to improve our people experience, our customer experience, and ultimately our business returns. Our Storage King brand continues to be the most recognized and most searched brand, and the year ahead will be focused on enhancing brand stickiness and value, reducing our need for short-term discounting, as well as increasing the efficiency of our search. Customer NPS also continues to improve, and we've become laser-focused on feedback, collecting insights at move-in, during storage, and at move-out through the introduction of our Voice of Customer program, which rolled out in the last few months.
Supported by our strong Storage King culture, where our teams are passionate about providing storage solutions to customers, these real-time feedback loops will help us anticipate customer needs, respond proactively, and guide future investments, building value for our customers. Looking at revenue management, I spoke at the half year about the major opportunity we see in revenue management and the importance of this to our business model, as well as the considered process that we are following to set this up for success. I'm pleased to say that as of this week, we are now live in four stores with automated pricing, having spent many hours assessing, developing, transferring, testing, and ensuring data integrity, and most importantly, bringing our people along the journey.
We're confident that this system will elevate the quality and consistency of our pricing decisions, and our teams are excited to leverage this tool to enable them to grow the store revenue under their charge. Even as rollout to store starts, this continues to be a journey for us, where we plan to iterate the system continuously and incorporate best practice from local insights as well as analytics, adding new datasets and ultimately incorporating machine learning into the algorithms. We've delivered some strong financial results for the period, and we are equally focused on delivering sustainable financial results, embedding a sustainability lens into our business processes. In 2025, none has been more important than the work on our employee lifecycle system, which we're close to launching.
It's designed to enhance our employee experience through quality onboarding, career development, payroll management, and communications, and it improves our employee relations governance through incorporating a time and attendance system, all while at the same time delivering comprehensive data centrally and to our teams in the field that will unlock value for the business into the future. Other initiatives, like our rigorous due diligence process on acquisitions, incorporate climate risk assessments with financial returns, and we continue to invest in the resilience of our existing portfolio against inflation and regulatory and reputational risk. To this end, we're proud to reaffirm our commitment to net zero on Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030, and particularly pleased with our reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 3% on top of last year's reductions, primarily driven through our investments in additional solar.
Today, 89 stores or over 70% of our portfolio boasting solar installations. In finishing, I need to recognize the incredible people who power these results, a group of committed Storage King activists who drive our unrivaled culture that consistently delivers industry-leading performance. As a team, we're once again pleased with the results achieved in FY 2025, yet remain optimistic and energized by the opportunity ahead, particularly as we couple our proud culture with systems capability in FY 2026. I'll hand back to Steven for closing remarks.
Thank you, Nikki and Evan. Concluding this full-year presentation, I hope those on the line will appreciate that Abacus Storage King remains on a very purposeful business trajectory with an overarching aim to provide investors with stable and growing distributions. To do this, we're focused on accretive quality growth via our multi-pronged strategy of organic growth, acquisitions, developments, and the myriad of platform enhancements that Nikk's just taken us through. Of course, many of you will be aware of the recent capital market activity regarding an offer made by our major investor in a consortium with one of the world's largest self-storage REITs to acquire Abacus Storage King. Most recently, after receiving a revised proposal of $1.65 per security, the Independent Board Committee elected to grant the consortium due diligence for a period of six weeks, which is ongoing, and I refer you to the ASX announcement that was made.
We have no further information to update you with at this time, but we will do so as and when new information becomes available. That concludes our formal presentations for today. Thank you, everyone, for joining us. We'll now open the line for questions, and we do look forward to discussing the results with you in coming days and weeks. I'll turn it now over to the operator.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question via the phones, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two, and if you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. If you do wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type it into the ask a question box and click submit. Your first question is a phone question from Howard Penny from Citi . Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, and congrats on the results. Just a question on, you mentioned that we had a period of discounting in the market, but the Abacus Storage King results seem to withstand that. Could you just take us through a bit of a practical example of the kind of discounting that you've been competing with and how you've strategized the occupancy in centers and rooms to combat that?
Yeah, thanks, Howard. I'll jump in on that. Since January this year, we've been seeing fairly heavy discounting happening on new customers. While the overall market is growing, and certainly the market data we're getting is showing the overall market growing, new customers are coming in with offers in the range of 50% off for three months and other significant discounts in the market. What that does is if your occupancy is high, we fortunately have high occupancy in the business, so we're not as reliant from a churn perspective of trying to grow occupancy, but where we do have our natural churn, we are finding we're having to be far more competitive of new customers coming into the business. You're seeing a widening gap between existing customers and street rates or what new customers are coming in at.
Thank you very much. Maybe just a second question, just on the development pipeline. I can see you have a capacity of around $600 million or so. How much capital do you think is required for the full development rollout, and then just the needed potential recycling, etc., to develop that?
Yeah, on the development slide, you can see the detail there, Howard, the $271 million cost to complete, but that's the entire development pipeline or that's over the next three or four years. I think what we've been at great pains to point out is that we are staggering and staging the development pipeline, and I think that, as you referred to, the capacity on the balance sheet, if we were to take leverage to the 40% mark, is well over $600 million. That doesn't include or factor in any of the development profit upside. It doesn't factor in any of what we expect to be future income growth, valuation uplift, nor does it factor in what we think is the start of the cycle for cap rate compression.
That's what gives us the confidence in the strength of the balance sheet with what we've got on the books and projected in the near to medium term.
Thank you. Maybe if I just steal one last question, and thank you for your time. Just on stabilisation of developments, you've had good progress in the initial stabilisation of those three development sites recently. How long do you see the stabilisation up to, you know, that 90% level for those assets playing out at this stage?
Yeah, Howard, I think it depends on the actual size of the development. Obviously, the bigger the net lettable area of the development, the longer the fill-up period's going to be. If you're talking specifically about the developments that we've got on our books that have already opened, they all sit around that 6,500 - 7,500 in LA . In that instance, we're seeing ourselves get to almost 50% in the first year. For getting up to that 90%, we're still saying just under three years.
Thank you very much, and congrats once again.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Solomon Zhang from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Morning, Stephen, Nikki, Evan, thanks for your time. I'm just interested in your comments on the transaction market, I guess, remaining heavily contested. We've seen a bunch of press reports with groups like, you know, Warwick, Newton-Steamsters, and BlackRock making a bigger push into Australia. Can you just talk to the degree of competition now versus say 12 months ago and how that's translating to yields and cap rates?
Yeah, thanks, Solomon. There's been, I suppose, institutional interest in self-storage in Australia for many years. I think what we've seen in recent times is some of that institutional money purchase platforms and different groups of assets, not necessarily homogenous groups of assets. I think it's difficult to sort of put a line through and adopt a general view, but what we do sense is that there is very strong demand for urban self-storage locations, and that's both on an individual site level as also in some of the portfolio transactions that have occurred. We've also seen in some of those platform transactions that you've referred to, the average purchase price has been a very strong cap rate outcome and initial yield, cash yield, and potentially market yield.
That gives us confidence as we start to see the very early stages of cap rate compression, as we've had obviously an interest rate cut this week. It all trends in the right direction, compared to where we've been probably for the last two, maybe up to two and a half years. We're comforted by the fact that there is increased competition and stiff competition. We are seeing some of the biggest and most active portfolio transactions, both here and in New Zealand, in the last year that we've seen probably for the last 10 years, and that all goes well for shoring up and what we believe puts us, positions us, as we call it, quite a unique portfolio of predominantly suburban and interurban locations that we have, that we believe is quite conservatively valued on today's metrics, today's cap rate and income metrics.
Makes sense. Second question, maybe for Nikki, just looking at slide 13, it just looks like the Queensland, you know, RevPAM actually declines half and half. If I'm reading it correctly, it's down about 3% half and half. Is that right? Can you comment on what's driving that weakness in that state? It seems to be, I guess, a bit weaker relative to some of the other geographies.
Yeah, you can't, and I think you asked me this question at half year last time as well. Just got to be careful on the half on half comparisons because of the seasonality in the business. What we have had is some satellite store acquisitions as well as expansions in Queensland. As I mentioned, the net lettable area in Queensland has changed because when we add a satellite, we link it to the master store, and it's usually the satellite joins us at a much lower rental rate than what the rest of the portfolio is at, or the net lettable area addition comes on at zero occupancy. Queensland's been affected by those factors rather than any underlying like-for-like factors.
On an underlying basis, you wouldn't say that they're performing better or worse than the other states on a half and half basis?
No, they had the same half and half. In fact, it's been slightly stronger, just half and half, mainly because it was slightly weaker in the first half, relative to the other states' growth.
Thanks for that. Appreciate it.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Daniel Lees from Jarden. Please go ahead.
Thanks, morning team. I was wondering if you could just give us some color on the development environment at the moment. What are you seeing on the construction cost side, and what's your target yield on cost for development?
Yeah, it hasn't really changed dramatically, probably from the last period. I think we have seen some stabilisation of the increases in development costs, and as we've spoken to, we do have a large number of projects underway at the moment, including our two biggest ever projects at Mascot and also at Sydney Olympic Park. I think your point on costs and yields, we were fortunate, and what we're continuing to see with relatively conservative underwriting is that even with increase and escalations in costs, 10%, 15%, up to 20% plus, we did get a material lift in rental rate and particularly lease-up rate across our developments over the last couple of years. We still track at sort of 6% plus yield on cost.
There are some projects in very tight locations that might come in slightly below that, but as a rough rule of thumb, that really hasn't changed from where we've been in the last couple of periods.
Great, thanks a lot. Just another question, if I could, just how you're seeing conditions in Victoria relative to other states in Australia. Are you seeing any pockets of oversupply or any commentary at all there?
Yeah, I mean, Victoria's been relatively strong for us. I know the property sector as a whole across all sectors, Victoria hasn't been a standout, but for us, we've seen our Victorian portfolio grow strongly. It is potentially disappointing. If you look at the RevPAM for Victoria, it's below WA, and you would expect it below ACT, below New Zealand. You would expect it to be up there stronger than that, but from a growth perspective, we've actually been really happy. It's been our second strongest state.
Great, thanks very much.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Larry Gandler from Shaw and Partners Limited. Please go ahead.
Thanks, guys. Great operating performance in FY 2025. With that, Steven, just a question on the guidance. You know, you've positioned Abacus Storage King as a growth company in a growing industry, very well positioned. You must have contemplated long and hard about pushing out flat guidance for FY 2026. The question, I guess, is, is the flat guidance a statement more about the payout ratio or the growth?
Exactly right, Larry. We've spoken at some length about a desire to bring the payout ratio lower in ensuing periods. I think we are very comfortable and positive on the growth trajectory of the business, with the only caveat being what Evan referred to as the above-average growth in statutory and what we would call non-controllable costs and expenses. We do think that it is prudent in the current environment to bring that payout ratio lower. We're comfortable with the guidance today to say that we expect to be able to deliver a comparable distribution year on year. However, there is a lot of volatility in the market, whether it be on interest rates or broader macro factors, and we are monitoring that very closely.
Okay, that's also interesting, the volatility, because the balance sheet seems to be moving in the right direction. Cash flow is good. You know, valuations have elevated. If anything, you'd have more confidence in the balance sheet than you would have had three, four months ago.
Yeah, true. I suppose my comment about volatility is more a factor, more a comment on household incomes and personal, you know, consumer strength of the consumer. We're a large volume consumer-facing organization, business, and, you know, there's a lot of pressures in the wider economy that, whether it be wages, whether it be, you know, organizations downsizing and so on. We also are very reliant on housing stock and settlements and completions of dwellings. Every event of a housing completion does trigger a self-storage decision and usually a self-storage transaction. We are obviously very supportive of all the initiatives that are being talked about. However, like most market participants, keen to see actions rather than words on the delivery of that housing crisis or addressing the housing crisis that is occurring across the country.
I think there is a bit of volatility that we do need to keep a track of, Larry, and we think that's quite prudent in the current market.
Okay, great. Thanks for that explanation, Stephen. I just have one other question. It relates to slide 12, the portfolio snapshot. I'm looking, you can't see what I'm seeing here, but I'm looking at the first half and second half or full year versions of those, and the number of established assets went from 103 in the first half to 102 in the full year, and the acquisition portfolio stayed at 12 assets.
Yeah, Larry, I'll jump in there. We had a resumption, so we had an established store, Beenleigh in Queensland, which closed almost on the last day of the month. It was right towards the end of June, so that was part of a resumption in terms of that reduced our established stores by one store.
Government resumption, Larry, taken by the government to, I think it was to widen the road for some roadworks.
Okay, great. You acquired two stores as well in the second half. Where do they show up?
Yeah, because they're satellites, they get attached to an existing store, so we actually don't credit the store count. The NLA, you look at the NLA difference between the half year and the full year, which is the addition of satellites minus the closure of Beanlea on the last day, gives you the new NLA in there, unfortunately.
Okay, excellent. Understood. Thank you very much, guys.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question via the phones, please press star one. Your next question comes from Ben Brayshaw from Barrenjoey Capital Partners Group Pty Limited. Please go ahead.
Hi, Stephen. Thanks for the presentation. I was wondering if you could comment on the supply outlook across the market for self-storage, how the completion rate is tracking over the next 12 months, say, relative to recent years.
Yeah, maybe I'll jump in here if you want me to. Depending on which sources you look at, obviously, the Self-Storage Association sources are the most accurate that we can look at. If you look over the last few years, there's been around 30 to 35 completions a year. What we've seen in 2025, the Self-Storage Association predicted 64 completions for the year, which would have meant a significant step up in terms of new supply. We've seen 20 completions so far in the calendar year this year, and there are another 25 under construction, which will likely complete this year. We're anticipating it is a year with slightly more supply, but it's sort of up to, you know, 45 from what used to be sort of 30, 35 in the past.
Do you envisage that that could contribute to an increase in the discounting that you're seeing across the market?
Yeah, it's a good question. If we look at the market overall, remember the market keeps growing. We're particularly seeing new entrants come in. Certainly, as stores try and fill up, there's always discounting happening to help that happen. We haven't seen, we've looked at our stores, whenever we're close to a new store, you always see the pricing competition happen in there, which sticks around for sort of three years while the other store's filling up, three to four years. I think that we've kind of put that down to some pressure in Queensland over the last few years because that's where most of the supply is coming in. It doesn't seem to have had a significant impact or significant enough impact on the portfolio overall.
Yeah, okay. Thanks, Nikki.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Pete Davidson from Pendal. Please go ahead.
Hi, Nikki. Just a quick question about the development yields on your development portfolio. What's the sort of, how long does it take you to get to the stabilized yield, and what is the stabilized yield?
As Steven mentioned earlier, the stabilized yields we look at are just over 6%, and it takes us, we get to the occupancy within three years, but we really can ramp up the rental yields in that last year and into the fourth year. Looking at more sort of four years, just over four years to get to those stabilized yields.
Is the ramp-up period before, is it sort of straight line, or what does it look like roughly?
Look, it depends where we're opening. We used to say 25% a year on a relatively straight line. What we're seeing now, particularly where we're opening great assets in prime metro locations, we are seeing the initial rent-up yield, there's almost pent-up demand, and the assets themselves are such a billboard that, particularly in the first year, we're jumping up to close to 50% in the first year, obviously with a little more discounting happening. After 18 months, it slows down a little bit over 18 months up to sort of high 60%, and by two years, we're in the mid-70%. We start the combination of really pushing rental rates as well as trying to fill up, and that gets us to our sort of three-year occupancy.
Another question, Nikki, you're a bit psychologist, but are you doing too much development? I mean, it's sort of like 20% of the portfolio, it's quite a big percentage. I think referring back to Ben's question about supply in the market.
I think, Pete, on that 20%, that's an NLA factor. What we've seen, what we look at is the dollar value and the dollar spend is below 10% of the balance sheet. We're quite consciously managing that to be about, you know, no greater than 10% is a rough rule of thumb that we apply. We absolutely do not think that we are doing too much development. In fact, the economic returns and the quality of assets that have been produced by this pipeline since the first project completed in 2018 speak for themselves. The value uplift, the development returns, the rental rates, and just the customer value proposition is enormous relative to some of the older stable properties.
Okay, thanks, Steve. Just another one, are there roughly 2,500 storage centers in Australia, or is that roughly the number?
It depends what you include. The Self-Storage Association changed the definition in their last survey to include, I'm trying to think, because some of it is just hardstand operators versus built facilities. It depends how small you go to qualify as a facility versus not. If we look at institutional grade, we would probably say just under 2,000. It depends where you draw your line really on what is a self-storage facility. That number's about right if you look at the broader definition, yeah.
Nikki, that 60 a year, let's call it [3%] a year, roughly? If they opened 60 on 2000?
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, that's good. All right, thanks very much. Thank you.
Thanks, Pete. Good to hear from you.
Thank you. There are no further phone questions at this time. I'll now hand the conference back to your speakers to address your webcast questions.
We do have one webcast question in relation to the New Zealand market. I think what we're very pleased with is whilst there is some softness, it's coming from a relatively high level. We have quite a high-level RevPAM rental rate and particularly occupancy. We're tracking at over 90% occupancy in the New Zealand portfolio. It's probably as a result of a predominantly Auckland-related portfolio in New Zealand. We don't have a lot of country and Southern South Island type exposure. As Nikki mentioned, obviously there is some economic weakness in New Zealand, and we do continue to monitor.
Further to the question earlier on cap rates and portfolios and capital market activity, there's been quite a high-profile transaction recently in New Zealand with a big portfolio of business that was acquired at very strong pricing metrics, which again gives us a lot of comfort on our portfolio in New Zealand as to potentially the value uplift that we see in the short to medium term in New Zealand. Nikki, is there anything else that we need to bring to attention in New Zealand?
No, I think that's right. I mean, the one factor we're looking at closely is population growth. They've had this, for the first time, the sort of population decline as people migrate between New Zealand and Australia. I think population growth is one of the key tailwinds for us. You wouldn't expect that to continue for the long term in New Zealand. They're certainly actively trying to change that from a policy perspective.
I think that was the only webcast question that we still have today. If that's the end of the questions on the phone, I'll end the formal part of the presentation. Thank everybody for their time this morning and look forward to catching up with everybody either in meetings or in the one-on-one discussions in days and weeks ahead. Thanks, everybody. Have a good day.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.