Good day and welcome to the Shurgard Half-year 2025 Earnings Call. My name is Barbara, and I'll be your event coordinator. Today's c all will include prepared remarks from the company, followed by a Q&A session, where participants can Ask a Question button i n the upper right corner of your screen. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Caroline Thirifay, Head of Investor Relations at Shurgard. Caroline, please go ahead .
Thank you, Barbara, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for Shurgard Self Storage Ltd.’s April 2025 results. I’m joined today by Marc Oursin and Thomas Oversberg. Before we begin, please note that all statements made on this call, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Details of these risks and other factors can be found in our earnings release and public filings. You can also find our press release and an audio replay of this call on our website at Shurgard.eu. With that, I’ll now turn the call over to Marc
Thank you, Caroline, and good morning, everyone. Let’s begin with page two of the online presentation the highlights. Our portfolio now includes 338 properties, totaling 1.7 million square meters. The first half of 2025 delivered strong results, with revenue growth of 17.1% and high occupancy across southern geographies, reaching 89%. Additionally, platform efficiency contributed a 90-basis-point gain in annual margin, which is very significant. Looking at our balance sheet metrics, EPRA NAV per share reached €51.4, and leverage remains below 20%, with net debt to EBITDA at six times. If you don’t mind, let’s move to page three for a more granular look at the results.
On that page, you can see that the significant growth in our revenue, as I mentioned, of 17.1% combines the effects of the 2024 acquisitions, particularly those outside London, along with the performance of our core sales portfolio, which represents 82% of our revenues. A notable point is the EBITDA growth of 17.4%, which exceeds revenue growth despite some newly opened properties not yet reaching maturity and affecting margins. This impact has been mitigated by improvements in our central platform efficiency. Therefore, our adjusted earnings increased by 2.7% following the expected impact of the new debt raised in 2024 to finance the Lok'nStore Group Plc acquisition. If you move to page four, you’ll see a focus on the M4 region. Revenue increased by 4.7%, with a stable, high occupancy rate of 89%, and in-place rent also grew by 4.6%.
Meanwhile, as mentioned previously, the cost management and platform efficiencies delivered a significant margin improvement of nearly one percentage point during the first half of the year. It’s worth noting that all countries reported positive results, with the Netherlands and Germany leading at +7% and +5.4%, respectively. Sweden is back on track with growth of over 4%, while other markets posted increases between 2.5% and 3%.
Thank you, Marc. I’ll now take you through our financial performance on page six, focusing on the main components driving NOI growth for the first half of 2025. Starting with our same-store portfolio, you can see the breakdown of the key drivers contributing to NOI growth. Approximately €300,000 of the increase resulted from our ability to lease more square meters than last year. Additionally, €5.1 million came from higher in-place rents, reflecting our ongoing success in raising prices across our markets. Importantly, as Marc mentioned, we improved our same-store NOI margin by 90 basis points, adding €1.7 million to total NOI. This is remarkable given the continued cost pressures, particularly from rising real estate taxes in the UK and France, as well as payroll expenses.
Other cost headwinds include marketing expenses and, to a lesser extent, higher payment processing fees covered by the same plan. In contrast, repair and maintenance expenses remained stable year-on-year. The margin improvement reflects the impact of our realized synergies, cost benefits from store clustering, and overall cost management initiatives. Additionally, our 14 non-chain stores contributed an extra €300,000 to NOI compared to the prior year. Moving on to the next slide, we can see the bridge showing the movement in our adjusted EPA earnings per share. Compared to the first half of 2024, these earnings rose by €0.01 per share, explained by the following components. Underlying EBITDA increased by 17.4% year-on-year, driven by the previously discussed 16.7% increase in NOI and a controlled 14.8% increase in DNA expenses. As a result, the underlying EBITDA margin improved by 10 basis points to 56.1% for the same period in 2024.
The main cost drivers in the first half of 2025 include other payroll expenses totaling €0.9 million, reflecting the impact of inflation on salaries and selective investments in new positions to support future growth. Combined, the NOI and DNA effects resulted in a net uplift of €0.20 per share. As guided, higher interest expenses offset most of this gain. This stems from our long-term financing strategy to support portfolio growth. The increase in debt, along with the repayment of low-interest loans, raised our average cost of debt from 2.39% to 3.29% as of June 2025. Finally, in line with expectations, our effective tax rate increased by 1.1 percentage points to 18.7%, reducing adjusted EPA earnings per share by €0.02. Together with the impact of newly issued shares and other adjustments, this results in an adjusted EPA earnings per share of €0.82, representing a 1.3% increase.
With that, I'll hand it back to Marc.
Thank you, Thomas. Let’s now discuss our portfolio expansion, shown on page eight of the deck. As you can see, our large pipeline remains aligned with our guidance for the next three year 2025, 2026, and 2027. I won’t go into every detail, but I’d like to highlight a few key points. First, we have a significant number of redevelopment projects with strong returns, totaling 14,000 square meters roughly the equivalent of three standard properties. This is very significant for 2025 and the years ahead. Second, our top four markets by revenue the UK, the Netherlands, France, and Germany will all benefit from this additional space over the next three years, bringing greater scale and cost leverage.
Third, the half-billion-euro total investment will generate an additional NOI of more than €45 million at maturity. Let's now look at page nine, which includes a few pictures. Here, we highlight the beautiful city of Stuttgart, Germany, and the large property in Vaihingen, covering 7,000 square meters. It’s the first picture on the top row, from left to right. Stuttgart is one of the “Big Seven” cities in Germany. We decided a few years ago to enter this market and scale up quickly. That is exactly what’s happening this year and next. A second property will open in the district of Landsberg in Q4 2025, just a few months from now.
The third property, in the district of Wangenstadt, will open in 2026. This means we’ll have three properties in Stuttgart within two years, giving us a leading position in that city compared to competitors. Now, let’s move to page 10 for an update on the former Lok’nStore board. We acquired Lok’nStore Group Plc on August 1 happy anniversary, by the way, as it’s August 14 today and we’re on track with our business plan. Our teams have done a tremendous job across many areas, and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank and congratulate them for their outstanding achievements. We’re planning a dedicated property tour on the morning of October 9 this year, which Caroline will discuss later in the presentation.
As for a few key metrics, prospect behavior is consistent with other markets, showing about 50% penetration of online rentals which has been confirmed after one full year of operations. Occupancy continues to rise steadily, reaching 77% by the end of June, and remains on track to hit 90% within 18 months, as previously guided, by December 2026. Expected synergies are estimated at €4 million to €5 million and are set to be realized by 2025. With that, I’ll hand it over to Thomas.
Thanks, Marc. Let me conclude our half-year performance review with an overview of our financial position. As you’ll recall, our financing policy is designed to ensure we can execute our strategy under any market conditions. It remains a core pillar of our continued growth and long-term value creation. Following our successful initial public bond offering in 2024, we returned to the Eurobond market in the first half of 2025 with another well-received €500 million issuance. The debt market clearly values our BBB+ investment-grade rating from S&P, our strong value proposition, and our fully unencumbered asset base. The bond was issued at a competitive 4% fixed interest rate and was used to refinance our floating-rate bank facility and a $130 million tranche on a long-term basis.
This transaction reduced our refinancing risk, lowered our average cost of debt to 3.29%, and extended our average debt maturity to 7.7 years. With net debt to EBITDA at six times and LTV at 22.8%, we remain well within our targeted leverage range and continue to uphold our BBB+ rating commitment. Our cash reserves of €149 million and our fully undrawn committed revolving credit facility (RCF) of €500 million provide additional liquidity, giving us ample capacity to fund future investments. Moving on to slide 12 looking ahead to the end of 2025, we can confirm our guidance. Key points to note: revenue and NOI growth are expected to be around 11% across all stores, reflecting strong first-half performance and solid comparables for the second half of 2025, which include our UK and German acquisitions in the reference period.
Our underlying EBITDA margin is expected to improve by 50 basis points, 10 of which were already achieved in the first half of the year. Net interest expenses are projected to rise to about €50 million due to the long-term financing of our investments. We currently estimate our effective tax rate on adjusted EPRA earnings will be around 18.5%. For shareholders, our dividend remains stable at €1.17 per share, with an optional scrip dividend. With that, I’ll hand it back to Marc for a summary of our half-year results.
Thank you, Thomas. Now let’s wrap up the presentation with page 13. Overall, it’s been a great half year for our company combining strong revenue growth, significant margin improvements from our central platform, and a substantial development pipeline, as you’ve seen in the slides. Our UK acquisition from last year remains on track, supported by a solid balance sheet, which allows us to confidently reaffirm our 2025 outlook. With that, I’ll turn it over to Caroline
Thank you, Marc and Thomas. We are excited to invite all of you to join us for the visit to Farnborough and Aldershot on October 9 at 9:00 A.M. It will be a great opportunity to see our operations up close. With that, we are now pleased to open the line for your questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. If at any point you would like to submit a written question, please click on the “Ask a Question” button located at the upper right of your virtual screen and type your question. To ask a question via the telephonic line, press star one on your telephone keypad. We’ll pause briefly to allow questions to queue. We will now proceed with our first question from Andrew at Green Street Advisors. Andrew, you may go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Thank you for the presentation. A few questions from me maybe we can take them one by one. Firstly, on your same-store revenue growth: in the first quarter, this was trending at 5.7% year on year, but now in Q2, it has slowed down quite a bit. I’d like to understand what the main drivers are, and could you also share some insight into how you’re seeing Q3 so far?
Okay, sure. Thank you, Andrew. This is Marc speaking. As you mentioned, Q1 actually delivered very good performance. To be frank, it was higher than we anticipated. We had expected same-store performance for the full year to be between 3% and 4%, and Q1 was significantly higher. Q2 is in line with our expectations. Among the 3.8% figure shown on page 17, the area where we were somewhat surprised was the UK, which came in a bit softer at 1.7%, while the highest share was at 3%. This is mainly because our same-store pool in the UK is almost exclusively in London. Out of the 40 stores we have in this same-store pool, 37 are located in London specifically, within the European side of the city.
What we are seeing there is that a couple of competitors are more aggressive on their pricing, and we answer that by having also good pricing and therefore to keep our occupancy at the level we're looking for.
Okay, that's clear. Thank you. Just on Lok'nStore, the portfolio you mentioned, it seems to be on track for reaching 90% stabilized occupancy by 2026. Are you seeing any upside to that timeline, or is 1% per month the sustainable pace?
I think that this is clearly sustainable. Maybe some months will be 0.5, another month closer to one or above one, clearly the season. By the way, what we have done also, because we were doing pretty well there, we have taken the opportunity to remix some properties during the start of Q2. Actually, without this remixing, the occupancy would have been even higher than what we have now. It's good for the short and medium term because it means that we have a smaller unit size, more units, and we're able to have a good pricing there. To make a long story short, you know that in the UK, the season, which means from, let's say, June to August, early September, is usually higher versus other countries. There is a more significant seasonal effect than the continent.
What I'm expecting to see is probably not the same kind of growth in terms of space in Q4, because it will be the low season, but nothing worrying. We're on track. For the time being, there are some upsides on certain stores. Others are more in line. For the time being, let's be reasonable and I'd say conservative. We stick to our, I would say, guidance on there.
Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. Just to follow up there, now that Lok'nStore has been fully rebranded and it's plugged into the Shurgard machine, are you seeing any improvement in pricing power or customer conversion compared to pre-integration levels?
Yeah, in a way, indeed. The gain in occupancy is the tangible result of that. As mentioned in previous calls and in this presentation, you can see on this page regarding ex-Lok’nStore Group Plc what we call e-rental. This means that out of 100 new contracts, more than 50% are completed entirely through this seamless online experience from selecting a unit to paying and signing the contract. We see this trend across all our markets, even in tier-one cities, not just capitals. We expected it to be the same for ex-Lok’nStore Group Plc, and it’s great to see it confirmed in reality
For us, in terms of demand, there is no specific behavior of prospects in Manchester, in Birmingham, or in London.
Okay, that's very clear. Thank you.
Welcome.
Thank you, Andrew. We are going to move to our next question. It comes from John at Kempen. You can proceed with your question.
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Just referring to the 3–4% like-for-like same-store revenue growth, which is part of your 11% guidance right now it’s already at 4.7%. Do you expect a deceleration in the next four months for your like-for-like growth?
Indeed, John. That’s how we build up our budget, business plan, and guidance for you and the market. Yes, we expect the same-store revenue growth to be slightly lower in the second half compared to the first half.
Okay, that's clear. Just on the EBITDA margin improvements, I think you're doing that to a 0.1% fixed point improvement. You reiterated guidance at 0.5%. Where do you see further improvements for H2?
There are several factors contributing to that. Some are related to the timing of one-off payments. For instance, we had real estate taxes coming in the first half of the year, so we should see improvements when those are spread across the full year. We also expect some additional synergies to come through in the second half, bringing us to the full target level. At this point, we’re confident we’ll achieve those margin improvements.
Okay, that's clear. Thank you.
Thank you, John. Have a good day.
Thank you, John. Our next question comes from Frederick at Kittler Chevreux. You may proceed with your question.
Hi, guys. Good morning. Just maybe two questions on my side. The first one will come back on the question on the same-store growth that you expect to decelerate in H2. Can you give me a bit more granularity on why it is the case and specifically across some geography? That would be the first question. The second one on Lok'nStore, you did a very good improvement, you know, in Q1, boosting the occupancy rate by around 400 basis points. It was only 100 basis points in Q2. I guess it's much, I won't say easy, but a bit more easy to fill that up when the occupancy rate is relatively low. Now that the occupancy is a bit higher, do you feel that it will be a bit more complicated or that you will have to give much more incentive? Thank you.
Okay, maybe let's start with the expert consult to start with. Would you take it?
Yeah, I take that. Hi, Frederick. Actually, it's to a certain extent the opposite. What we saw is that we were able to fill up the stores quite successfully. What we did, actually, as Marc was mentioning before, we pulled forward the remixes of some of our stores, which meant we actually emptied some of our units and got terminated customers. We did the remix, and that resulted in a drop in occupancy, which we are now filling up again. What we have done is the value creation, which we foresaw a little bit later from that, will now be pulled forward. We should see this coming in a little bit earlier than we initially foresaw. That actually is to the contrary. It's not that we feel it's been more difficult.
We felt that it was very successful so that we were feeling very confident to do the remixes now already.
Regarding Frederick, the first question you have on the same-store growth for H2 and the granularity per country. Here, we expect, and I would say, for more or less the same reason, the UK and Netherlands to slow down versus what we had in H1 or Q1, if you take it. This is what we start to see for different reasons. The UK, it's clearly due to the fact that we have, it's what we have seen, a couple of competitors that are more aggressive on pricing. One of them is BrightEdge, without naming it, and it's quite significant. It was in a search process. This is London because I'll repeat, our same store is purely London. That's what we expect to see and to continue. The second is the Netherlands. The Netherlands, don't forget that the starting point is super high.
These guys are down 7% growth of revenue same store on the year to date. Clearly, we think that it's not sustainable at this level due to the cost. That's why we anticipate to have a slowdown there. If I take the other markets, France, Germany, Sweden, Belgium, and Denmark, globally, all of them are between 3% and 4%, and this should remain into this kind of range.
Okay, understood. Thank you.
Thank you, Frederick. Our next question comes from Will at KBC Securities. You may proceed with your question.
Yes, hi, good morning. I hope you can hear me.
Yes, I can hear you very well, Will.
Perfect. Yes. Sorry, I'm in the car, actually. I've got two questions. One is on the pipeline. I'll ask them one by one. If I just add up all your projects in redevelopment and development for 2025, I've got a little gap with your proposition on CapEx. My question is, now that the LTV is down a little bit, is there room for some M&A this year? Can you give an idea on how much and in which region?
Very well spotted. Even from your call, wonderful. You are fully right because you know that for M&A, we do not disclose till we have a deal really signed with the seller. This gap, as you said, is actually coming from potential M&A that will take place before the end of the year.
All right. A second question is regarding the fair value uplift, which I think increased significantly year on year to €300 million. You say it's a mix of some operational improvement and maybe also some gains from cap rates. Can you split that out a little bit? Also, if you can give some idea in which regions these gains or operational gains have been realized?
Yeah. Hey, Will. I think what we have been saying consistently over the last year or two is that the main reason for the improvement in our valuation is not the cap rate. The cap rate stays very, very stable, since I would say two years on that. It really adds a minor, minor part to the value uplift. The biggest part really, by far, and I would say around 70% comes from our trading performance. Where Customer and Rate Fields looks at our actual trading and feels very comfortable to write that forward, that's really the biggest impact. Of course, we have an impact of new store. Those are the main gaps. The cap rate really, I mean, you can almost forget the movement this gives us to our value.
Okay, that's clear. Thanks for taking my questions.
Thank you, Will.
Thank you, Will.
Thank you, Will. Our next question comes from Jonathan at Delta Bank. You may proceed with your question.
Thanks. Good morning. On the development pipeline, I was just wondering how you're seeing construction costs currently trending relative to business plan, whether there's been any change there. Secondly, whether you're seeing much supply coming on across your markets, and particularly how you see the supply backdrop in London, given your comments regarding the pricing environment. Thank you.
Yeah, sure. Thank you, Jonathan. Regarding your first question for the cost per square meter, we don't see any pressure on that. For the time being, it's pretty stable. Of course, there are different costs between one geography. You take Berlin versus London or versus Paris or versus the Netherlands. For each of these geographies, we don't see any specific, let's say, pressure negatively, I mean, meaning costs increasing. We don't see that for the time being, which is good. Secondly, regarding the, let's say, the delivery of competition, meaning the supply, do we see major increases in supply depending on the cities where we are? No, not at all. In London, back to what your point of the second question was regarding London, no, London is purely a commercial position or commercial policy from one or two guys who are more aggressive on their pricing.
This has nothing to do with new square meters coming from the supply. No. Again, it's rather difficult to develop in the capital cities and tier one cities, but especially capital cities. More than two-thirds of our portfolio is in the capital cities. Therefore, I think we are quite well protected when we look at the past 10 years. The speed of development of the industry in this capital city is mainly driven, actually, by Shurgard, one, and sometimes by others, but it's quite limited.
Great. Thank you.
Welcome.
Thank you, Jonathan. Our next question comes from Thomson at Banque de Groof Petercam. You may proceed with your question.
Good morning, everybody. Thank you for taking my questions. Many questions have already been asked, so I will just keep on one last one, maybe. On the optional dividend, this was the first time you didn't mention whether the main shareholders would participate this time around. I guess you don't know mainly, but do you still account for them participating to the optional dividend? Thank you.
It's been well spotted. This is my, I would say, pushing the paperwork question on their end. From our side, I think we are still fully expecting them to participate. They just need to sign the documents so that we can also officially put it again in our releases.
Great. Thank you very much. That's all from my side.
Thank you, Thomas.
Thank you, Thomson. Our next question comes from Roy at Equity Brokerage Service Benedict. You may proceed with your question.
Okay. It's probably me, Roy Coulter, ABN AMRO. Just one question from my side at this end. Could you please comment a little bit on the investment market? We see that you guys have announced several acquisitions, but sort of single asset deals recently, basically over the summer. Are you expecting for the rest of the year, maybe also portfolio deals coming on the market? Maybe not for you yourself. Maybe it is, maybe it is not, but maybe more like a general market comment on that.
Yeah, sure. Globally, the activity is, I would say, quite robust for all kinds of portfolios, single assets or a couple of those and larger ones. Obviously, I think we are combining for the coming two, three, four years, I would say, the following situation. A bit more stability on the cost of money, obviously. Private equity/institutional is coming back. If the deal in the UK from AXA doesn't take place, many people have money to roll out, these guys would be ready to probably go for other targets. The age, the pyramid age of the owners of self-storage. You know that most of them, I'm talking about the founders, are operating their portfolios. They are getting in their 60s. Therefore, there's no one in the family willing to take over. For them, it's the time to cash in.
I'm expecting to see more and more deals in the coming three to four years.
Okay. Great. Thank you.
Thank you, Roy. Our next question comes from Charles at Credit Suisse. You may proceed with your question. Charles, your line is open. Can you ensure that your device is unmuted, please?
Okay. Apologies. I was confused because it mentioned Credit Suisse. Hopefully, you can hear me. I just was wondering.
I can hear you.
Okay. Great. Thanks. I just was wondering about the strategy update mentioned a 60% growth in EBITDA and 55% in EPS. I think that was changed down by five percentage points. I just wanted to hear your comment on what drove that revision. Thank you.
On the medium-term guidance, sorry, the line is here. It's not that great. We are simply, actually, being more realistic or less aggressive, you know, on the promise of a delivery concept. This is why we've done that.
Okay. Great. Thank you.
Thank you, Charles. Our next question comes from Marius at Bergstein. You may proceed with your question.
Morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I just wonder from my side, I see there's a few changes in the investment CapEx pipeline for 2026. I just wanted to check what drove this and whether you're still on track to achieve the €320 million you've targeted for next year. Thank you.
Yeah, we don't, no worries there at all. I mean, the pipeline is something that is especially for not this current year, but for the year N plus one, so 2026, and N plus two, so 2027. Some projects could move forward or backward depending on the timing of delivery, and that's what it is. We don't have any, let's say, worry at all to deliver what we are looking for, knowing that back to the point of Vin, actually, from KBC, we do not disclose, you remember, anything about M&A specifically till it's done. Between the objectives we have in terms of cash out and square meters and what you can see, if there's a gap, it's related to M&A potential deals that will come up.
Okay. Great. Thank you.
You're welcome.
Thank you very much. Our next question comes from Samuel at MP Paribas. You may proceed with your question.
Hi, good morning, guys. Thanks for the presentation. Just one follow-up, please, on acquisitions. I was interested in what you think your balance sheet capacity is as of today and how you think about funding mix in the context of net debt to EBITDA is six times above your internal target. At the same time, the comment suggests that there's potentially more portfolio deals that will be coming to the market in the near term. Thanks.
Yeah, I think let me repeat a little bit what we were saying since, since I think the year end. When we look at how we are financing potential deals, there are two components which we are always considering. The first one is our commitment to the approved BBB+ rating, on the one hand. On the other hand, I think we always said we want and need to have deals being accretive. If you take those two things together, you can see that there are certain deals which simply make no sense to us because we do not achieve both of those targets. What we also have been saying, in that case, we might look for alternative ways of how we're making sure we are getting those portfolios in one way or the other. As you know, we're having third-party management, availability and experience by now.
That might be an alternative way of how we might make sure that these portfolios end up in our hands. Overall, as I said, we feel that if we are in those two criteria, we should have sufficient purchase power to do all deals necessary.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you, Samuel. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question in written format, you can do so by clicking on the Ask a Question button located on the upper right of your virtual screen, and you have to type in your question. If you want to ask a live question, you can do so by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. We'll pause here again briefly to allow any other live questions to generate. If we have no further live questions for the moment, we'll proceed with the written questions. Our first written question comes from Ube at Storeen. How large part of the new customers are booking online versus telephone versus walk-in?
Sure. If you look at, and you take 100 as a base of contracts, call them move-ins. Also, I would say that, as we mentioned it, we have on average 50% of these contracts or move-ins done completely with e-rental, so fully on the web. There is no, I would say, shorter human interaction. It's just purely the prospect with the website. The phone will be around 30%. Some countries are a bit higher, others a bit lower, but the average is around 30%. Once we call them walk-ins, we will be below 20%. Between someone pushing the door and saying, "Hey, Marc, I would like to enter this unit," or, "I would like to get some information." That's the breakdown.
Thank you very much, team. Moving to our next written question. It comes from Eleanor at Barclays. Should we read anything into the lack of medium-term guidance compared to confirmation at Q1?
No.
Okay. Moving to our next written question. It comes from Rumi at Aberdeen. The first question that Rumi is asking is, on Lok'nStore, I think you used the word remixing. What does this mean, please? Does this mean subdividing space to achieve a better rate? The second question?
I'm going to answer the first one to make clear for the audience. Yeah. This is exactly this running. You take, for example, a unit of 200 square foot or 300, and you slice it in much smaller units. The purpose is to go, there are two purposes actually by doing that. One is that you expose less yourself to what we call business customers who are renting very large units. You make your customer base more solid, more resilient in a way because it's more fragmented. Secondly, of course, it is pushing the rates up because you know that in this business, the price per square meter or per square foot is higher. The smaller the size is, the higher the price is per square meter. Sorry, Barbara, you can move on to the second question?
Absolutely. The second part of the question was on the new store pipeline. Some look small in size, just 600 to 900 square meters. Are these parts of your hub and spoke strategy?
Yes and no. In the sense, it's not development. What I think you are referring, Romney, is the section called major redevelopment. It's clearly here the fact that what we have said, we have a lot of square meters related to that. You increase simply or you partition an empty space in a given existing property. It's what we call redesc. That's why it could go from 600 to more than 2,000 square meters, for example. It's not purely a brand new property that you are opening. Having said that, for the rest, let's call them the real new stores that are, that have opened, actually, for example, in Löwenich, in Cologne, or Wangen in Stuttgart, you have 7,000, 6,000.
Some of them are operated as what we call remotely managed store, being a member of the clusters and participating to what Thomas mentioned to you, which means the gain of margin through actually operational efficiency. That's what it is.
Thank you, team. Our last written question for the moment comes from David at Polar Capital. Can you please explain the third-party management model for an acquisition?
Yeah, sure. It is actually something that the industry, I mean, the self-storage industry, does not really do in Europe, but it's extremely common in the U.S. It is more or less exactly also what the hospitality industry has for decades, where actually an investor will come or an owner of a business will come to an operator and ask the operator to run the business for him or for her. That's what it is. Therefore, all the costs of operations are supported by the owner, and we get fees from the owner for this service, if you prefer. Usually, the properties are branded with the brand of the operators, in this case, Shurgard. We make some fees on that. All these stores are also participating. You can do the fees different ways, but globally, they do participate to also leveraging your fixed costs.
Therefore, that's why it is quite interesting. You don't engage capital also because if you have some CapEx to do or other things of that kind, or even expanding and having a new building, then the owner will invest. We as an operator are simply making fees from that.
Thank you very much. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, to ask a live question, you can press star one on your telephone keypad. To ask and submit a written question, kindly click on the Ask a Question button on the upper right of your virtual screen and type in your question. We'll pause here again briefly for any final questions.
Okay.
It appears.
Yes.
Since we have no further questions.
Yes, it's pretty good. Thank you all for joining us today. We look forward to reconnecting in this venue.
Thank you. Thank you, team. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This concludes today's EVA call. Thank you all and have a great day.
Thank you, Barbara, for your support. Bye-bye, all. Take care, all.