Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today, both in person and virtually, for the management presentation on the execution of Shurgard's winning strategy. I'm here with Marc Oursin, CEO; Thomas Oversberg, CFO; and Isabel Neumann, CIO. Before we begin, we want to remind you that all statements, other than statements of historical facts included in this management presentation, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected by the statements. These risks and other factors could adversely affect our business and future results that are described in our earnings release and in our publicly reported information. With that, I will hand over to Marc.
Thank you, Caroline. Let's start. First, this execution of our winning strategy is actually based on four main pillars. The first one is the fact that we have a prime portfolio in the right geographies at scale, so the real estate. The second one is the outperforming same-store growth in terms of revenue, cost management, and therefore NOI, so let's call it the Operations. Thirdly, the unmatched square footage growth with a significant secured pipeline, so the Future. Last but not least, the unique capital foundation, so the way we are financing and the structure of our balance sheet for our shareholders and lenders. These four pillars actually are delivering a compelling 2025 outlook and medium-term guidance.
We think it is a convincing investment case, but I'm sure that you will understand what I mean by this during the course of the presentation and how we are different than others and why it matters. Based on this, Isabel, your turn.
Thank you, Marc. So before we talk about the prime locations, I want to take a moment to recap the underlying sector dynamics in Europe. As you can see from the slides, customers in Europe are fundamentally undersupplied. You can see this in the percentage of self-storage square footage per capita in Europe versus the U.S., which is 15 times lower versus the U.S. And just to illustrate this, if only 1% more of customers would want a unit, then there is not enough units in Europe to supply this. So the market is fundamentally undersupplied. So we continue to be very positive around the market and believe that there is a lot of growth potential in the countries and in the cities where we are present. So let's recap the uniqueness of the Shurgard portfolio.
First, we are the only European operator that operates at scale in seven countries. If we take the major cities in each of these seven countries, then we are present in virtually all of them. Secondly, we are the only operator that offers this type of exposure and focus on capital cities and major cities. And you can clearly see this on the map, which shows not just that we have our scale, but also our focus on capital cities and Tier 1 cities. So in the red part of the pie, we indicate which part of our portfolio is in the capital cities. So in summary, we are where customers are. We're diversified. And these prime locations, really, they're not easy to get. In order to basically recreate this into capital cities, this is really a competitive advantage of Shurgard.
This brings us to the next slides, where we go a little bit deeper into our prime portfolio. We have now, at the end of 2024, we were at 335 owned stores across the seven countries and 1.7 million square meters of rentable space. What I think is important is, first and foremost, what you can see on the pie is, since we have done the acquisition of Lok'nStore, but also since we've done the three German acquisitions in 2024 and at the back end of 2023, you can see effectively how now that our portfolio is even more balanced between the different countries that we have, which really allows us to weather fluctuations from a macro perspective, as we have done in the past. I want to flesh out a couple of things which makes us different than everybody else.
First, 92% of our properties are freehold. Two, as we mentioned, 94% of our properties are in capital and major cities. Three, 65% is purpose-built. And four, the average years of our operation is 15 years. So we are a young portfolio, purpose-built, freehold, and in the right locations. There's one other thing I would think is important to really point out. Average unit size, six square meters with a maximum of 25 square meters. That's very unique as well in self-storage in Europe. Our unit size is lower than our competition. But this is deliberate because it allows us to have more exposure to residential and less to business customers, which really allows us to have much less volatility and be a much more stable portfolio that we have. So really, putting it all together, it's a unique prime portfolio that Shurgard offers.
I'll hand it to Marc now.
Thank you, Isabel. All right, so now let's go to the second pillar of our winning strategy, so this outperforming same-store growth. And I will start with the revenue management. So regarding the revenue management, back to basics in the sense is, what is self-storage and what is Shurgard within the self-storage? So we are a B2C need business. And these words are really important. B2C in the sense business to customers or to consumers and need business. And you will understand, and Thomas will share with you a couple of slides about the fact that the benefit of being a need business versus different cycles of the economy. So first, our customer base. Nothing really new when you see that, except maybe the proportions, 80% what we residential customers and 20% that we are calling commercial customers. Let's focus first on the 80% residential customers.
So first, what is self-storage for these people? I know if some of you have rented self-storage in the past. If so, I hope it was with Shurgard. But residential customers, we always go back to what it is, meaning it's like having my attic or my basement in a remote location. And if you go back to this fundamental statement, it is driving a lot of things later on in the value chain of the business. So if you think about, oh, it's my attic or the basement in a remote location, just think that what do you store there usually if you're a lazy person? Right? So you store more memories or things that you don't want to throw away, might could be useful later on, but this is what you are storing. Secondly, think about the frequency of visit.
How many times do you visit your attic or your basement? Pretty few. It's not a very, let's say, place where you're going to go very often. And last but not least, think about when do you empty your attic or your basement? Well, actually, when I'm moving from home A to home B, but rarely in the meanwhile. I don't wake up on a Sunday morning and say, deciding that I'm going to clean up and empty my attic and my basement. Few people do that. But these key things are really driving the whole value chain. So then also, why do people need self-storage? And this is, again, the link with what Isabel has just presented and where the customers are. They need self-storage because there's a lack of space. It's pretty obvious. But why is there a lack of space?
Because the people who are living in the capital cities, and in particular in Europe, capital cities are usually 20%-30% of the whole population of a given country. It's where the density of population is the highest in a given country. And thirdly, it's, by the way, usually the place where the level of income per inhabitant is the highest. I'm talking Europe, with the exception of Berlin historically, but we know why. And it's catching up. So when you combine these physical constraints, density of population, then the level of income, and then the life events, so what we call life events, marriage, birth, divorce, life, to make it simple, between the age of 25 and, let's say, 70 or 75 years old, the need is there. And we are there, by the way, to serve them.
In the end, the key three USPs of self-storage is, depending on the perspective, let's say, interest, price, what will be the cost of storing, convenience, can I go there on a Sunday at 8:00 P.M.? Can I go there on a Tuesday at 6:00 A.M.? And three, security, because even if my memories are valuable for me, I don't want them to be in a place where it's not safe. So it's turning around always around these three aspects, what we call in marketing USPs. And then back to the way people are behaving in terms of catchment area. So what do we mean by catchment? You take a single property, and within 10 minutes or 15 minutes driving time, you draw the line. So it's like a store. How many people are living there?
And actually, within 10 minutes to 15 minutes, depending where we are, you have 50% of the customers of a given property. And within 20 minutes to, let's say, 30 minutes, you have 80%. So it means, again, to what Isabel presented, we need to be close to residential. We need to be close. I will not drive an hour to go to my unit to look at my souvenir if I want to. It must be close to me. Okay? Then let's go through the commercial customers, which is also an interesting factor that Isabel mentioned. And here, what do we call commercial customers or small entrepreneurs, small companies? Because the way we have designed our building, physically, we have limited the size of the units, 25 square meters.
So if I am a company, I'm looking for, let's say, 50 square meters or 500 sq ft or even 1,000 sq ft, doesn't exist in the Shurgard world. So it means that these kind of customers are going to the industry or to competitors, which means that the people we have, so-called commercial customers, within our company, on the top of that, physically, they cannot get to big units, max 25 square meters. And secondly, commercially, we treat them exactly the same than what we call resi customers. We don't do any specific discounts to them. We do not do any payment terms facilities to them. So they take their phone, they go on the website, they go through e-Rental, they rent a unit, which is exactly the same as any resi customers. So that's why we call them actually commercial customers, but they behave like resi.
At the end, yes, our commercial policy, what we call our commercial policy, meaning the combination of pricing, products, or how do we answer to these key three USPs, is a resi type way, even for commercial customers. That's very important to understand. Talking about the commercial policy, this is what you have on this slide. Security, you understood. Convenience, you understood. Let's focus a bit on the pricing. I would say here, for the pricing, the very important thing to understand is you are in the time flow. You have, first, the prospects. People, we call them prospects, who are living in an area who have potentially the need of storage. How do we attract them? Because convert, if you prefer them, to become a customer. That's the key factor. Here, a couple of things.
Of course, we are using the website, and I will come back to this, but we have public prices because I'm looking for a space. I'll look at the price on Shurgard's website through my phone, and the price I see is the price I pay. Full transparency on the pricing, which looks pretty obvious, all right? But it's not actually in the industry of self-storage in Europe. This industry has been super conservative in bringing transparency to pricing. Still in the U.K. and even large players, the price you see on the websites of certain people is not the price you're going to pay, which is, we think, counterproductive in the logic of being convenient to prospects, therefore, to customers. Okay?
Secondly, the way we are managing these public prices to attract people and to convert them, because pricing is important to become a customer, is what we call yield management, which means we are managing pricing per unit, per location. So if the occupancy is high, the public pricing will be high. If it's low, public pricing will be low. So pretty basic, all right, in terms of concept. Much more sophisticated behind that when you enter into the details. The way we do it, how do you express a low price? How do we express a high price? It's the discounts. People react to discounts in Europe because no one has in mind the value or the price of a unit of, let's say, six square meters. All right? Depending on the country, each country has its own, let's say, psychological prices.
The French with the baguette, maybe in the U.K., a pint of beer. In Germany, Wiener Schnitzel. No, this is Austria. So in Germany, maybe currywurst in Berlin. But a unit of six square meters, no one has any clue of the price of that. But people do react to discounts. So when suddenly you do 50% strike-through, that's a point that will attract people. Then we go to how do we retain and optimize the customer value? Because the end game and what we call revenue management is the combination of these two boxes. You have two parts. Here, as soon as people are becoming a customer, so the prospect is converted to a customer, the behavior is exactly the opposite than what the people thought, which is pretty astonishing, but it's the case. So what is happening? And again, back to what is self-Storage .
All right, I'm a prospect. I will probably think that I'm going to rent a unit, great, not too far from my home, and I will probably stay nine months there. I'm putting in my head, yeah, nine months. I don't need that long term. Okay, fine. The person is coming in, becoming a customer. And by the way, I will come probably once a month to check my stuff. The result of becoming a customer is exactly the opposite, in the sense the vast majority of the people stay super long, and they never come. All right, why so? Again, back to what is self-Storage for them? Attic or basement in a remote location. So for this part, as soon as they are becoming customer, what we try to do is balancing the efficiency of our what we call ECRI.
It's a term and acronym that you will find a lot in the U.S., for example, for self-storage and other real estate asset classes, which means Existing Customers Rate Increase. And here, it's a very different ball game in terms of mechanism. It's an individual pricing increase or systemic and discretionary. It's not yield management, and it's not public. It is per customer or type of customers, and it is discretionary. At the same time, what we are managing is the churn, what we call the churn, which means how many people are leaving us or moving out, if you prefer, every day, every month. So it's the balancing of this that is creating globally the revenue growth of the company. And from this revenue created and generated by the ECRI, how much of that do we reinvest to attract people through discounts?
In the middle of that, you see the red triangle. The arrow is occupancy. And why occupancy is for us a key driver of the revenue growth? It's something which is very interesting and important to keep in mind. The occupancy actually is key. Why? Because, as I said, most of the customers do not know in the end how long they will stay. But what we know is the vast majority will stay long. But we don't know if it will be Isabel or Thomas or Marc that will stay maybe five years, three years, or ten years even, or maybe six months. But the higher occupied you are, the more customers you will have, and the more customers will stay longer, which in our benefit. So this is what we are looking for. So that's why occupancy is not, and we never oppose occupancy and rates.
For us, this is part of the same coin, the coin of revenue. And the head and the tail, occupancy, rates. So now let's go to how do we do that in terms of approach from prospect and customers. We are using actually different tools that we have developed, which is on permanent actually improvements. First, finding the space for the prospect, the website I was mentioning. Okay? And here, we have a best-in-class platform on our phone. And the game here is to use Google and to be the number one and the number two when someone is talking to Siri, say, "Hey, Siri, storage to parking." Okay, fine. And then if we have done our job well, Shurgard will appear, number one or number two, and bingo, the customer will click on it, and we go to the cinematic of the website. Secondly, Lease Execution.
Okay, I'm on it. Can I be converted quickly because time is important here? Yes, you can. We launched this e-Rental process actually some years ago at the end of the, let's say, the first year of the COVID, end of 2020. Within a couple of years, this transaction or this, let's say, possibility to go from a need to a contract, because everything at the end is paid, you have your unit, you just go with your phone and there you are, actually is 50% in all the markets. So that was pretty surprising and amazing to us is that how customers did or prospects did actually embark this functionality and in the end, 50%. The 50% is also very important. Thomas will come back to that because this has driven some efficiencies the way we're operating the stores too.
It's not purely efficient for prospects. It's also efficient for us. Then, all right, I'm a customer. Bingo. So here, what we have done, we have created an app like many other services companies. Nothing really, let's say, shockingly new in the world of services. But for us, it was really new. And what we have done, we have enriched, and we continue, by the way, to enrich this application with functionalities. And already after more or less than two years of being applied, 50% of our customers do use this application. And making it back to the three key USPs, Pricing, Security, Convenience, Convenience, Convenience. Last but not least, daily access and access to the property. So here, back to both of them, security and convenience, we have changed all the devices, physical boxes you see on the picture in red.
You see the gentleman with the beautiful white T-shirt facing this device. Instead of keying his password and trying to memorize the password, all right? By the way, I thought I would have memorized it, but because I'm coming once a year instead of once a month, I forgot it. We help you. You have Bluetooth access with your phone, which means that you're in your car, you arrive, you key in on the button of your phone, the gate is opening. You park your car, you arrive in front of the door, you key in on the button, the door is open. I'm on the third floor. I go to the lift, I key in on the button on the phone, I type third floor, then I go to the third floor, then only the third floor, and then access to my unit.
And this actually today is available for 100% of our properties, which is a big difference than the way we were doing business again three, four, five years ago. Then the results of this commercial policy or of the actions you have seen. So customer needs, what do we want to do, how we do it in terms of technology and approach versus prospects and customers, and then the, let's say, results. First, focus on retention on the left side. Green line, red line. The red line is the churn. You've seen that in more or less six years, seven years. The monthly churn, this is expressed per month. So we were at the scale is on the left, 6.3%. Now it's 5.1%.
Say, "Hey, Marc, but you know 1%, it's not that big." Well, sorry, it is big because times 12 months, which means that you are saving 12% of your customer base per year. So it means that if you want to be at 90% of occupancy, with the time, you need less new movings to keep this occupancy up because you have less move-outs. So that's pretty interesting. And at the same time, we see the length of stay. This is the scale on the right. The length of stay has increased from 36 months to 42 months. And here, what is the benefit of that? If you have people staying longer, it means that you have more people that you can increase at least once a year, and you can generate more revenue. That's the benefit. And it's what you see on the right.
If you take a snapshot of the customer base today, you have what we call short-term customers, the blue circle, 40%, and this 40% is staying on average five months. And then you have 60%, the remaining 60, long-term customers staying on average five years. That's why what we call the lifetime value. So if you take the total customer base, how long did they stay? How much did they pay? And if you take the total duration, we're talking about EUR 5,200 spent on average, which is, by the way, 44% more than what it was in 2018. Back to the commercial policy action that you have seen. And on that, Thomas, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Marc.
Thank you.
So Marc showed you how we are trying to attract customers or prospects and then how we're trying to keep them in there.
What we want to now clarify is there's also a specific, and in our view, the right way of looking at how you actually assess the performance. What we're trying to say here is why do we think that same store is actually the right measure? I know you all know that, but I read at least in one of the reports of your colleagues that still confuses like for like with same store. I think it's really important because if you remember, what is our goal? We want to have high occupancy because then we can manage really our customer, our revenue growth. If you now think about what do we mean by same store, so let's start with that. Same store for us means new developments after three years of operations. I will show you in a second why this is important.
For M&A, it's typically one year because you acquire already a store which has a certain occupancy, and therefore you should get there. So if you look at the graph here and now think about the consequences when we talk about, oh, our stores are same store after three years. They have matured. They have matured from an occupancy perspective. And you will say, "Oh, but Thomas, after 12 months, the line is a little bit should be a little bit more to the left. There's nothing a lot happening there." That's probably correct on occupancy. But don't forget what is happening at the same time when you reach occupancy of 90%, you start to have to give less discounts. So at that point in time, your volatility in revenue is significantly decreasing.
So after three years of time, I have actually a store which you have a very predictable way of forecasting your cash flows. After one year, you see massive growth and you're impressed every month and say, "Wow, that's great." But what you're not seeing is that actually this is just due because the store is just growing up. It doesn't tell you anything on how the business is doing. Why is that important for us in particular? Because as you see here on the left, 87% of our revenue comes from same stores. That means that's the engine. That's where we will do the existing customers rate increases. That's where we do the churn management where we can say, "Hey, this store is full. I can give on this unit size less discount.
Oh, this store, I can increase the customer to a certain expense," so that's why this is a relevant number. It is providing you with a very predictable basis to forecast the performance of the stores thereafter, so that's why we think this is the relevant way to look at it, and just for the people who are a little bit nerdy, that's also how the U.S. looks at those things, and this is the market which is most mature when it comes to reporting on self-storage. If we move on now to what Marc was saying about why occupancy is key. You remember we are managing occupancy because that allows me to ensure that the basis of customers which I can increase is as high as possible.
Because we don't know who of you will be joining, but we know a non-insignificant amount of you will stay longer than you thought because it's a need business. And I will come back to that in a second again. And as you can see here on our slide here, we are not only achieving that over time. On the right side, you see the same store occupancy per year. 90% is where we are really going around. And you will see if you talk to our peers, that is not the same way because they have a different commercial strategy. And I think you understand now why we think our strategy on this one is the right one. But we also manage to achieve that across all of our markets. And that's because we have a centralized commercial policy.
Our policy is exactly the same, data-driven, if I'm in Belgium, in the U.K., or Sweden. And that makes the platform effect extremely useful. What's now the outcome? And I'm sure you can do now the P times Q. So we have the price. We have explained to you how we are pricing this, how we're giving discounts, how do we increase our customers. The Q is the occupancy. And then you see the results really in a very spectacular way. You see on the left hand again, as a reminder, the 90% occupancy. You see the in-place rent. That's the relevant number which you want to know about because that's what customers actually are paying on our same stores. Don't get confused about this noise coming from new customers. This is where the music plays. 87% of our revenue is there. That's what is the focus number.
So we increased over the last years by 33%. And that you can see therefore is reflected in our same store revenue growth over time. We are not shying away that there's a few years where COVID was not unhelpful from the revenue growth perspective, but we are at a level where we think this is a maintainable level. So high occupancy, less move-outs, longer lengths of stay, and rate increases drive revenue on the same store basis. And that's what we want to bring along. Then the last part is coming. We want to address one of the points which we often hear and read. And we want to address that. Hold on. There's this perception that there's a high correlation between how the economic cycle is doing in a country, how is the transactions in the housing markets, and can you outperform them?
And I think we have been consistently telling you, yes, we can. And what we have put here on the slides are a few charts who demonstrate that. And you now say, "Well, that might be a statistical coincidence." But it's not because what you need to keep in mind, it's a need business. Your need to store your memories, your additional furniture which you needed to get out because you are working home is not going away because the economy is going bad. You still have the same need. What is important for you is, is the economy hurting you as individual customers? And we with our pricing so much that you think my need is not worth what I'm paying. And as long as that is not happening, the economy can do what it wants because your need needs to be met. And that's really important.
We put here, as I said, a few charts. We often hear, "Can you outperform inflation?" Yes, we can. Inflation over the last 10 years was 31%. We increased our rates. Same store, same store, keep that in mind, 41%. We called out the U.K. Everyone is talking about it. We wanted to talk about them as well. You see the same effect. Housing effect. Do transactions of housing impact our? No. Our business, same store business, is not aligned to the economic cycle. New business. Keep that please in mind. We talked a lot about revenue. Let's now talk about the cost. As a CFO, we love talking about costs, obviously. Self-storage is a very interesting business when it comes to a cost perspective. 32% of our revenue represents the cost.
And we have drawn out for you, and we have seen that probably before already, what our main buckets. And I would divide them into three different major categories: scalable, addressable, and by design. What do I mean by that? Cost of management is a question of scalability, and we will come to that later. Payroll is a question on scalability. I will address that later. Marketing, scalability. Utilities is addressable. I can do something about that. And by design, repair, maintenance. And I will talk to you now about those various points a little bit further. So let's talk about payroll. Why do I mean it's a scalable part? If you think about what Isabel was telling you in the beginning, we are aiming for high density. We want to be where our customers are. And our customers are in those capital cities.
We are not there with densing up because we like to see our stores next door and we can say, "Oh, there's another one there." No, because it has benefits. And only if you have that benefits, you can actually reach those. And that's what we have done with what we call clusterization of our store network. So you see on the left side the pre-clusterization. So what was happening there? You had a district with a number of stores. You had there approximately by store, two and a half FTEs there. You had which was then a store manager and one to two assistant manager. So by district, you would have approximately have 20 FTE.
What we realized is actually because we did the investment in the digital platform with the app, with the website, with the e-Rental, with the payment platform, that actually we don't need to have people all around all the time in a store. You need them to be there when the customer needs them on an acceptable time. So if you have a problem, you are not willing to wait for two hours. You're willing to wait for 10 minutes because that might be very long. The employee might be on the other side of the store. That's something which is very where you're very willing to do. So what we were able to do is we were able to cluster stores together so that I have a service store which manages one or two other stores. So I can run more the same amount of stores with less people.
So, as you can see by now, we have been able to reduce in a district on average the number of FTEs by 30%. And you can only do that if you have two things, the density and the technology behind that. So that's why it's not easily repeatable because, as I said, if you have a store there and there, a customer is not willing to wait for two hours until your staff arrives. So very important. On the right side, you see the efficiency gains. You see that the number of stores has gone up significantly. And at the same time, the FTE by store has been reducing significantly as well. Let's move to what I was calling the other scalability level. So you can see cost of management, that's the management central platform cost.
That's what the costs are, which is marketing, which is pricing, which is general management. The more store you have, the easier you can spread that across the network, and having a central platform with one central management helps doing that. Otherwise, you cannot do it, and you see here the effect there. When it goes up, that are forward-looking investments because we are investing, for example, in data and future growth. Then it goes up, and then we're scaling down again, so it's a very scalable part of our cost. Marketing, again, very scalable. If you have two stores very close to each other, you don't need to do Google marketing on each of them individually. You actually can do it on a region. Google is increasing prices. I don't know if anyone noticed.
What we were able to do is, due to the fact that we have the density, we could keep the cost on the same level. You see marketing as a percentage of revenue. That you can only do because of density and the central scalable platform. And as I said, addressable. Utilities is an addressable cost because we can make investments in LEDs. We can make investment in solar panel. We can make investment in our building management system so that we can address those costs and drive them down. This is not only good for the environment, it's also good for our cost line. So that's why it's addressable on that perspective. Fred? That's good. Okay. So bringing it all together is then the Net Operating Income. We talked to you about how our revenue growth is.
We talked to you why we think this is a relevant number, how we're achieving this. We told you how our cost structure is. And you can see the result is that over the last 10 years, we were able to increase our NOI margin, same stores, keep that in mind, relevant number for you to predict the future from around 58% to 68%. And that, despite the last two years when we have been very vocal about that enormous cost pressure when it comes from a payroll perspective, when it comes about real estate taxes perspective, when it comes from a utilities perspective, and the marketing perspective. And that's, I think, again, is not by accident. That's a result of having a centralized dense platform. And with that, I hand back to Isabel.
Thank you so Thomas. So let's talk about growth.
2024 has clearly been an incredible year for Shurgard. We've added 237,000 net square meters to the portfolio. I think more important even for me, of course, we all know that we have done Lok'nStore. Even if we exclude Lok'nStore, we have still added 110,000 square meters on a run rate basis, which is an enormous step up compared to where we were four or five years ago. We really raised the bar between where we were four or five years ago versus where we are today. We have a very strong pipeline. At the end of 2024, we had a pipeline which represented 30% of FBO. Needless to say, it's an incredible achievement from the whole team.
What I think is important as well is that if you think about this growth coming over the last four to five years, ramping up organic in a massive way, the lift-up that we can expect as these stores mature in the next couple of years is going to be impressive. So this investment is an investment in NOI for the future as the stores mature. At Shurgard, we pride ourselves on transparency and reliability, and I want to take a moment to really explain the communication we do on the pipeline. First and foremost, when we disclose pipeline, it's always secured pipeline. So what is secured for us? It means a SPA is signed. Not heads of terms or whatever. It's a signed SPA, or even planning has been submitted.
The pipeline we have or the projects that we sign, it's always with the objective that we build them out, so we do not land bank, so if we announce we're signing a SPA, the objective is that we will submit planning as soon as possible, get planning as soon as possible, and start building as soon as possible. We provide three years of visibility, and we disclose returns on a total cost basis, so let's talk about total cost, so we communicate we aim to be 8%-9% minimum on a total cost basis. For the organic development, what does total cost include? It's not just the acquisition. It's not just the acquisition of land. It includes all the construction costs and all the development fees, including internal development fees. On the M&A side, it's not just a purchase price.
It's all the costs that are associated with the acquisition, whether it's legal or accounting or what might be the case, and any CapEx that we will invest in this store to bring it up to standard. So if today I do an acquisition and I know I'm going to have to invest in the roof in the next three years, it will be in my acquisition cost. So I want to take a moment to just explain how we really reinforce the reliability and the transparency of that data. So just to recap on this one, we've seen a step up in growth both on an absolute level and on more a run rate basis. All our projects have an attractive return of 8%-9% minimum, and we provide very visible and reliable data. Talking about growth continue, we're very positive about the future of our growth.
The market is there, the demand is there, and as we discussed before, we're in the right locations. You will remember that we have three levers of growth. You can see that on the left. We have our organic development, whereby we buy a piece of land and we build a Shurgard or we do a conversion. We have M&A, which has over the last couple of years become more important in our overall pipeline, and redevelopment of our existing portfolio, and you superpose this on top of our platform of seven countries. It is very powerful. For each of the countries, we can look at redevelopments. For each of those countries, we can do M&A. For the four focus countries whereby we focus on development, we can do that. It is very powerful. Here, we're really talking about platform in action, and what do I mean with that?
I go back to what Thomas was saying. With every property we add, we're becoming more operationally efficient. We can add it into the cluster. We bring back the cost of our marketing, respectively. With every property we add, the whole portfolio becomes more profitable, and therefore we have more returns to invest again into new properties and new expansion. So it is really an almost self-fulfilling prophecy now because you combine it with this operational efficiency. If you combine it with the scalability that Thomas was highlighting, it is very powerful. When you talk about platform, this is what platform means, so what does that bring us? Track record for the past couple of years. Clearly, we have had a very strong track record, and then if we bring us back to looking forward as well, let's spend a moment. What can we see here?
We can see effectively what our track record has been. How much effectively, when we promised you we're going to do this return, what have we delivered? So what you can see is both on the left for organic and on the right for M&A, you can see each time per vintage, so per year of opening, effectively what the returns are for those specific projects. So for instance, if I take the organic on the left, 2015, we did open three properties that year, and those three properties have a return of 17.3% and so forth. So you can see each time per year since 2015 up until the last full year, I'd say 2023, each time the number of properties we have done and the returns that you have. So what can we see? On the Organic side, clearly we have performed exceptionally well.
All projects that we have opened before 2021 have reached the hurdle rate. Of course, I remind you, this is development. When you open a store, the store is empty. You have to fill it, and then you have to increase rates, and just maybe a quick step back, we changed the hurdle rate to 8%-9% in 2023 for properties opening in 2024 onwards. Before that, the hurdle rate was 7%-8%, so all projects that we have opened before 2021 have met the hurdle rate. We are above guidance on what we have announced. The other thing I just want to point out is that there as well, you can see really the pickup in pace that we have realized, so we were always at one opening, two opening, three openings.
You can kind of see from 2020 to 2021, how that has started to pick up, and that, of course, clearly is going to continue. On the M&A side here as well, target returns are met. Of course, you have less consistency because M&A doesn't have the same amount of consistency in terms of projects. Some years we have done one deal, some years we have done zero deals, other years we have done two deals. So it's not the same consistency. But overall, there as well, we have reached the target returns. 2021, maybe there you can say, well, it's a bit of an outlier, but that is a year whereby the M&A we have done were stores which had a lower occupancy and whereby we had a large build-out to be done. So they're much more like organic.
So they take more years in terms to mature. And same for 2023. Of course, it's early days. This was a Top Box acquisition. You will remember two of those were basically land that we bought. So new buildings have to be put. The property still had to be very much built out. So that means that effectively they're much more like organic, and therefore they will take a bit more time. So where does that bring us? Here you can see the overall of what we have done so far. You can see indeed 2024 very much sticking out and what we are aiming to do over the next couple of years. Just to put it into perspective, if you take our pipeline 2024 and onwards to 2029, we will be investing almost EUR 2 billion, and we will increase the size of the company by 50%.
That is what we're planning to do. And that is, as we have demonstrated beforehand, when we talk about secure pipeline, those are actual projects which have SPA signed. So in summary, we have delivered consistently on pipeline. We believe the potential from a growth perspective is very high, and we do what we say. So I think we are very unique in that perspective that the growth is inherent in our business. And really, the two platforms from an operational, from a scale perspective, and this, they really reinforce each other so that one plus one makes three. I'll hand it back to Thomas.
Thank you. And I will round up now the perspective on telling you how we're going to finance all of that because that obviously is a question. And you might wonder, well, what could possibly be unique in our situation?
And once the button is moving, here we go. Because you need to look at it from two perspectives. On the equity side, what do we see? We see two important parts there. The first one, we have two anchor shareholders who provide stability, who provide support, and with Public Storage, who provide us with knowledge, best practice, and insights on what is happening in the U.S. We have long-only shareholder support from across the world, which means we are not a home country buyer's company where we have only, for example, U.K. investors. If we would be U.K. or Belgium, we have investors from across the world in there. So that is different to many others, which are much more local and therefore have only a specific type of investors in there. On the debt side, we are also unique. We are the only self-storage operator with a rating.
Not only are we with a rating, we have a BBB+ rating, which makes us one of the best real estate companies in Europe from that perspective. We have very much an unencumbered asset base, EUR 6.2 billion of gross assets, all unencumbered, and again, that makes us, compared to the rest of the real estate industry, for sure, but in general, when it comes to size matters, and that's what it does when you talk to the markets, very unique as well, so we have an attractive ability to approach the equity markets because they like us there, and we have a very good ability to address the debt market, and that's what we saw when we issued our last debt last time, so again, that makes us very, very unique in the market and allows us to finance the growth Isabel was talking about.
Again, we are not growing because we want to grow, because it makes economic sense for us doing so. Let me wrap up that with the last topic, which is about something which we have shared with you this morning. I'm not going into full details on that topic again. But what we want to reiterate here is the confidence we have in our operating model. Again, if you look at what is it the market is guiding on, what is it when you see, for example, across the pond what's happening there, we are confident that we can continue the growth story which we have been giving to you over the past years. Just to give you the highlights, which is important, for 2025, we expect to grow both NOI and revenue by 11%. We expect that the underlying EBITDA margin increases by 50 basis points.
We want to clarify that you should expect approximately EUR 50 million in interest expenses because we understand there were some confusions this year about that. We want you to understand that there will be a Scrip dividend coming. So again, consider that when you do your dilutionary effect. And we have very similar robust growth expectations for the years thereafter. On 2026, again, you will read the details, and you have heard them probably before. We give specific guidance because we already know a lot of the pipeline. Isabel has talked about them. So that's why we thought we need to give you specific guidance. And because we are opening so many new stores, there will be a negative initial impact on our cash flow because stores, when they ramp up, they're not immediately profit-generating. So we will see a little bit of a dip in there.
In the years thereafter, we expect that we come back with a very solid growth, and we will expect that we continue investing the 90,000 square meters, the EUR 200 million over time, and that should be, again, supported by the optional Scrip dividend. Again, more details you have seen in the press release. You might have heard about them. I'm handing it back to Marc.
Thank you, Thomas. This is the last slide before Q&A. Here we go. No, not this one. Not this one. This one. Thank you. We think this is a convincing investment case, as I repeat, based on the formulas that initially presented at the beginning of this session. First, the Real Estate, prime portfolio, right locations at scale. Secondly, Operations, outperforming growth for the same store in terms of revenue, cost management, and therefore the NOI.
Thirdly, the Future, the physical future of the company. I think it's pretty clear with what Isabel has demonstrated to you and shared with you, so this unmatched footage growth of our significant secured pipeline. As Thomas mentioned, how do we finance that? And we have pretty much all the tools in the toolbox. And in the end, we are able to deliver, based on the guidance and the outlook shared with you just on the page before, a very attractive, we think, business plan for the coming five years versus 2024, which means delivering a growth of the company physically of 25%. Then revenue growing by 50% because we are more efficient, having an underlying EBITDA growing by 60%, so the pace is higher.
And the Earnings, so what we call EPRA earnings per share, growing by almost the same pace, which is 55%, which is, we think, one of the best-in-class performance. And based on this, I thank you. And Caroline, I think we go for the Q&A.
Thank you very much. We will now start our Q&A. Those in the room will take a moment to wait for a mic. And for those of you on Zoom, you can use the raised hand function, and we will invite you to unmute and ask your questions personally. Or simply type your question into the Q&A function, and we will read them out on your behalf.
This is working.
Yeah.
everybody. Roy Kulter, ABN AMRO.
Maybe on the mid-term guidance, on the 8% revenue growth per annum, can you please split that in what's from the same store, what's from basically adding from new developments, and maybe also what's from rates and also from increases from other sources like insurance?
Do you hear me? Yes? Okay, good. So thank you. So the question is regarding the 8%, the medium term? Okay. So we think that the same store, and it's not a guidance. We know the guidance I'm giving. It's an indication. But we think that the same store will be probably around, to be on the safe side, I would say probably around 3% growth, more or less.
The difference between the eight and the three is coming from the ramp-up of all the acquisitions that we have done recently, plus, of course, the development of the revenue coming from what Isabel has presented and what Thomas mentioned, meaning all the organic growth coming from the new stores that we are opening along the years. This is the ramp-up. The mix will be probably this. That's one. The second part of the question was for the same store, what is coming from mainly ECRI. And actually, well, most of it, if you look at the past, I should say, years, most occupancy we manage, we want to be at 90%, and the growth of the revenue is mainly a value effect coming from the rates increases.
The rate increases, as I repeated, as I mentioned to you, is this combination of increasing existing customers versus discounts to new customers. So it's mainly a rate effect, a value effect, because we want to be at 90%.
Okay, thank you. A second question, if I may. Previously, the mid-term guidance was always focused on 20 basis points per annum NOI margin improvement. I do think now from the slide that there was no guidance basically on NOI improvement anymore, just on EBITDA. Can you please elaborate on that?
Do you want to take it?
Sure. The reason why we thought it might be more useful for you is because we wanted to make sure that the scalability of the platform is not only reflected on an NOI perspective, but also on the G&A perspective.
So we give you effectively what is happening both to NOI and revenue in absolute terms, and then we tell you what's happening on the EBITDA level. So we thought this is providing you much more useful insights for your modeling perspective. But there's no change in what we expect to happen on an NOI margin level.
I would like to add on this is, of course, we will continue to disclose the same store margin every quarter, and you should see that this same store margin will increase and will feed this, let's say, improvement below, so further down in the P&L, so the underlying EBITDA growth. But we think it sounds that, Thomas, it's more useful for you guys to model the company P&L.
Thank you. It's Marios here from Bernstein. I had a quick question on slide 12, actually, the retention slide.
I'm interested in the drop in the move-out ratio in 2024. And maybe thinking about it from kind of a like-for-like angle, has that been impacted by maybe offering people additional discounts for them to stay within the store? How do you think about that in terms of your total revenue model?
Well, Marios, clearly, this is at the European level, so this is combining different markets and depending on the weight of the market and the way they behave. But globally, what we are seeing is that we can continue to, let's say, increase existing customers, so ECRI, and without having, let's say, a level of churn going up. So this is that the major markets have experienced that, which is good news in a way for the future.
Thank you.
And then just on your 30% reduction in FTE across your stores, how much further has that to go potentially across your portfolio? And actually, just what has the feedback been from customers when they're looking at stores without anyone sat in the office?
Yeah, good question. Thank you. So I will start with the end of the question regarding the customer reaction. So a way to measure that has been potentially the occupancy, Google reviews. And just as a reminder, I think we have now more than 350 reviews all time per store. I think it's the number that comes, and with a score of 4.8 per store. So we don't see any, I would say, downside there. I mean, from the numbers, the hard numbers, let's say occupancy, capacity, or churn going up. I disagree. I'm pissed off with Shurgard the way you're managing the stores.
I'm leaving you. Not at all. You've seen page 12. It's even the other way around, so customers are super positive about being able, and back to the convenience, again, we see that the answer is very positive about that, so no impact from a customer behavior, first. Secondly, what more can we do? It's true that amongst the, and it's back to what I think it's Thomas and also Isabel mentioned, that the density of stores, because if you have two stores that are far away from 30 minutes driving time, you cannot do that. We have four countries out of the seven that are, I would say, there in terms of optimum, number of clusters today, number of people. The four markets are actually the Netherlands, Belgium, and the Nordics, Sweden and Copenhagen.
And the three other countries that are France, Germany, and U.K., it's different. They still have some stuff to do there. The good news for Germany, Isabel is investing a lot of money there, and we are very happy for that in the big seven. And you've seen the disclosed pipeline that many stores will come to market in Germany and will feed again what Thomas said in terms of catchment, so creating the density of stores. So it will help Germany to go where the other four markets are, and I would say in the coming two years. France, we have also a plan there. So also in the coming 18 months, we should see France going to the level of the other markets. And the U.K., with the planning we have in terms of development, same thing.
To make a long story short, sorry for this answer. I think that these three markets will be up to speed in the coming 18 months.
Thank you.
Hi, Charles Boissier, UBS. I have two questions. You mentioned at the beginning of the presentation that one of your competitive advantages was the store size. What do you think about the new supply coming from peers adapting their store size? And do you see some markets where that could bring some additional supply? Thank you.
The store size, I think we're referring to the average unit size as a company, so the average unit size, the fact that we do not refuse customers, especially business customers, but the way we have designed the properties by having a maximum of 25 square meters, more or less, helps us to have a customer base which is reacting the way we want that we can manage, the so-called resi-type customer base. If some competitors are in a given catchment changing the unit mix, what we did, by the way, almost 15 years ago during the GFC, fine, because, again, Isabel showed you that the potential of this industry in Europe is massive. So it's not because someone is going from, let's say, 500 units to maybe 600 units or 700 units by slicing up big bulks that will impact us on the medium term. We are very comfortable with that.
Yeah. If I can add what you do see, especially with smaller operators who are probably trying to enter a new market, what you often see, they have put units in one, two floors, and then the rest is in sort of like a disarray. You rent that out, the whole floor, in one big bulk unit, and that obviously then takes, again, you fill up the store, and suddenly you need to have more units, so you need to create, so that creates a lot of noise, again, but even if you have 100 square meter units and you need to resize, then what's happening is you need to suddenly get rid of those customers, and this is big units, big money coming in, so it's a very expensive exercise to do.
And as Marc was saying, Shurgard was lucky that we did that while we were a private company because we know it's a very painful and expensive exercise.
Perhaps one more question. I think there were some industry articles mentioning you were bidding on Access Self Storage. What makes this a potentially good strategic fit? Yeah. Thank you.
Okay. So this is the whale in the room. Thank you for that. Or the elephant in the room, I think, depending on the cultural side you are coming from. So we do not comment on any rumors.
If there are no further questions from the room, I will invite Frédéric Renard to unmute and ask his question.
Good afternoon, I guess, or morning in the UK. Maybe one question on my side. Why don't you communicate on an EPS guidance?
I mean, this year, you have been able to lift your top line by 14%, which is a very good figure. But your EPS is actually down 3% year on year. And of course, the capital increase you did in 2023 was responsible for that. But I mean, you still have a lot of immature stores, and you have the integration of Lok'nStore in your pipeline. So should we expect limited earnings growth in the next two years?
Yes, you should. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think what we are trying to do is to just stay one step shy from filling out the exit sheet completely. So we are giving you the all-store growth, both on revenue and NOI. We're telling you what the EBITDA margin is going to be.
We are giving you guidance on what we expect the interest expenses are going to be, or how at least the debt we expect to move. We are telling you what the effective tax rate is going to be, and this is, as I said, just one little step away from also saying, and this is how the earnings per share is going to move. But I think you can really figure it out pretty simply. And we wanted to be clear this time because, indeed, there was some confusion this year: two aspects. A, it was the share of the dilutionary impact of the ABB, but also of the Scrip dividend. But more importantly, it was the interest expenses, where I think there was some misunderstanding, and we were not clear enough on that, so we clarified this now in our guidance.
I think that now there should be no further any confusion about what those growth rates should be. Okay.
Understood. Maybe a second question, which is related to your full year publication. I see that your Net Initial Yield is now at 4.8%. I think it's down from 5.4% last year. I'm just wondering if this is attributed to, well, first, maybe a bit more vacancy, and if it's also related to the Lok'nStore acquisition.
So Frédéric, you are referring to the Net Initial Yield?
Yes, of your portfolio at 4.8.
And do you have that?
Yeah, yeah. It's quoted in the top down per net initial in your annual report today. So that number is about right.
Hold on. I'm going to this, but I don't have it here.
Yeah, it's in the annual report.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So coming from Cushman, I suppose?
No, so our exit cap rate is staying the same as you will have seen in our disclosure on the valuation, which moves from 520 to 511, if I'm not mistaken. So that's the movement there. We don't really see, when it comes to valuation, any negative impact from our acquisition. On the contrary, if you think about what is driving our valuation, it's mainly coming from results. And what you will then see purely mathematically is because the Lok'nStore stores are not full, are in ramp-up. Therefore, you're getting less NOI from that. And I think we were very transparent to say it takes us a few years until we actually reach maturity because half of the portfolio, if you think about it, was very young. So you get, we paid an amount, which takes already the future a little bit into account.
Therefore, you will indeed see that the yield must, again, change due to that. But this is not really anything dramatic from our perspective. That's pure mathematics as far as I can see that.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you for your question, Frédéric. I will now invite John Vuong to unmute and ask that question.
Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Looking at external growth, you've been very much focusing on growth in the Benelux, the U.K., and Germany. How should we think about geographical exposure going forward, looking at the, say, next five years? Is there also a cap on regional exposure for a certain region?
So John, we have met already many times, and I don't change regarding the answer to this question, meaning that you understood the benefit of the scalability in the model, how to create scale means density of stores.
So we stick to the seven countries where we are because you are talking about M&A specifically here. So we stick to the seven countries in the cities where we are. That's what we're looking for. And there are a couple of exceptions, and you know them. But globally, we don't want to go out of the seven countries because scale does matter to be more profitable. And if we are more profitable, it's in the benefit of the shareholders, and therefore, we can invest even more.
I mean, I would add to that is that the whole setup is that we, from my perspective, I try to be agnostic of where the growth is coming. We can really be additive on each of our countries and in each of our cities. So especially when you talk about M&A, M&A will come along when opportunities come along.
From my perspective, if an opportunity in the Netherlands will come along, then we will look at it. And if in Belgium, it will be Belgium. So it's also a little bit market-driven. Of course, needless to say, if you look at, for instance, what we've tried to do in Germany, but because we did not have the required density in each of these cities, we have done specifically M&A to address that. So that wheel that I was talking about between adding stores and therefore being operationally more efficient and therefore more profitable, that that wheel can effectively get a kickstart and can start turning. So needless to say, in Germany, we would still be able to add a lot more density before we are at the same level as Marc was saying, as you, for instance, you would be in the Netherlands.
The same if you think about Lok'nStore in South East and Manchester. These are areas which are new for us, and we don't have the same density yet. But we would look at them not just from an M&A perspective, but also from an organic perspective. But independent of that, it's not like I will say no to an opportunity in the Netherlands if it comes along. So we are generally, I would say, agnostic around the opportunities that come because any density will benefit our model.
Okay. That's clear. And then turning to the capital structure, how should we think about the funding of this growth in the next five years? And where do you see leverage end up at, given that it's currently above your long-term targets in terms of net debt EBITDA?
Thanks for the question. There are two aspects.
So a, I think we mentioned that before, we expect to go back below five times net debt to EBITDA in 2028. So we are continuing to deleverage in that, and that takes the currently assumed outlook into account. So that's very comfortable. It takes also to account that we expect to continue having a Scrip dividend in there. So we feel comfortable that we are going back to what we promised we would be doing, and we remain extremely committed to our triple B plus rating. And therefore, I think there's no surprises there. To help you again, we put a little bit of a sheet in our outlook, which tells you a little bit how do we expect our net debt to move. So that should be very consistent.
Okay. That's clear. Thank you.
Thank you, John.
Thank you, John, for your question.
We'll now hand over to Vincent Koppmair. I will allow you to unmute and ask your question. Vincent Koppmair of Degroof Petercam, if you could unmute and ask your question.
Good afternoon. Can you hear me? Yes, you can hear me.
Great. Loud and clear.
Very insightful. Specifically, of course, the acquisition now one year later, and especially on your third-party management. You mentioned at the time of the acquisition, you would give more feedback and more details on some of the secondary stores where you didn't know for sure what you planned on doing with them. Could you give a little bit more color on that one? Thank you very much.
Yeah. So actually, we said one year, and we are just in February, and so it will be in August with the half-year report.
You said it fully. Okay.
I mean, we are talking about 17 properties, one seven. Among the 17, 13 are in the hands of one partner. And again, we are learning. They are learning how to work with us. It's a mutual learning process. As usual, we have also good surprises, less good surprises, or some surprises. And we need to understand better the demographics of certain cities. But globally, it's positive. But you will have more information, yeah, with the half-year or in August 2025.
Okay. Great.
At the moment, there's no nothing special to report, if it's in line with what we had expected.
Great. Thank you very much. And just on Lok'nStore again, lastly, of course, Occupancy moving in line with your expectations. Do you see this continuing on now in the beginning of 2025? Thank you very much.
As a reminder, the guidance we have given on this acquisition is to reach 90% by the end of 2026 or December, if I recall. If you were doing the math, it means more or less that we need to do between, let's say, less than one percentage point of gain of occupancy since the acquisition. On the 28 stores that are what we call owned stores, so that are not in the third-party management, those ones are on track. We are getting roughly, depending on the month, between 0.5% to more than 1%. We are on track to be there. Every quarter, we will give some update on this to be transparent with you guys.
Thank you very much. That's all from my side.
Thank you, Vincent.
Thank you, Vincent, for your question. Our next question is a question that comes from Laurent Saint-Aubin.
They ask, what do you think is the maximum gap between the rents paid by long-term customers and the ones offered to new ones?
So we do not disclose any numbers on that. It's probably fair to say, however, and I'm not giving any guidance and contradicting you, but that once you're a customer, as Marc was saying, you become a little bit irrational. And what do I mean by that? At that point in time, the price is no longer for you something which you compare to the market. You're not like comparing, "Oh, I pay EUR 50 , and I could have gotten a unit five minutes further for another one." So once you are with us, you become very price insensitive.
There are obviously, and that's what I was pointing out before, there are limits when you become too much of an annoyance that it's too expensive for your needs. And that is depending on the type of customer, that's depending on how long you are with us. That depends on really what is your budget which you have foreseen. So there is no black and white answer, simple answer for that. And that's what why Marc was effectively saying when we are looking at rate increases, we are looking at it individually by customer and customer type and the risk profile. So it's a risk assessment which we're making to say, "Okay, we do think based on what we know how customers behave, this is the right rate to increase." So it's not everyone gets the same increase. It's a very targeted increase for existing customers.
Thank you very much.
Our next question comes from Céline Soo-Huynh from Barclays. And they ask, how much firepower do you think you have this year, bearing in mind your LTV, ND, EBITDA ratios need to get back within target by 2028?
Yeah, if you do the simple calculation, we have around EUR 142 million in cash. We have still EUR 190 million of undrawn bank credit facility and a EUR 500 million RCF. If you add that up, that's around EUR 800 million, which we could spend. And then obviously, you need to keep in mind what are we buying in return because ideally, we should not see a massive move in leverage or net debt to EBITDA because we would be buying something which comes immediately with something which is NOI accretive and more importantly also on EPS accretive.
So from that perspective, I don't think that you should expect our leverage to go into a direction which is contradictory to what we want to achieve.
And we have given a guidance which is pretty clear on this for the outlook and the medium-term one.
Thank you very much. Our next question is, can you give some color on what the average ECRIs were in 2024 and what do you expect in 2025? What's driving the increase in effective tax rate in the medium-term guidance?
Okay. So you take the second one?
No, you take the second one.
Okay. And I will take the first one. I mean, I'll take the customer one and you take the tax administration one.
So regarding the customer ones, and actually, it's pretty simple when you look at. There's a slide where you saw the revenue per square meter and the OpEx per square meter and the CAGR of that, and you see that the revenue per square meter actually has increased since 2021 at a pace which is higher than what it was before. So today, you can take an average of 15% ECRI per year. We don't expect 2025 to be very different than what 2024 was. And the proportion from this going into discounts is also more or less the same. So that's the expectation. Thanks. Thank you.
So the reason why we guide higher when it comes to effective tax rate is that we are becoming more profitable in countries where it becomes not as beneficial any longer from a pure tax cost deductibility.
So for example, what do I mean by that? In the Netherlands, we are highly profitable. We have the highest margin in there. At the same time, there are limitations which are moving every year on how much you can deduct from a tax depreciation perspective. So while we are not fully depreciated, the tax laws do not allow us to immediately continue depreciating that. So that is a temporary effect where we are moving in the Netherlands. We are adding new product there, which means this limitation will go away. So that's why we think it's going to stabilize again. On the other hand, we see Germany where we also have relatively high taxes. What you will see there is that the profit is now growing, but not fast enough for the investments which we have made and the financing costs we have incurred.
There's a timing mismatch in there, which we then again expect that over the next three years, we'll move to a much more stable level. And then what will kick in is that Lok'nStore will offset those increases because it will become a much more meaningful part of our revenue, which will be not taxed because it's part of our U.K. REIT structure. So that's why we are guiding an increase. And we believe at the moment, considering what we know about the taxes, that we should be stable around that level.
Thank you very much. And our last question asks, why do you offer a dilutive Scrip dividend option while you have a low LTV and high discount on your NAV?
Yeah, I think that depends a little bit on your perspective on where you expect we should be from an LTV perspective.
Where do you think, what do you want to do as an investor with your dividends? The feedback which we got from investors is that they very much appreciate the Scrip dividend. As you know, both Public Storage and NY Common have participated in full, but also of the remaining investors, 50% of the market have chosen for the Scrip dividend. That is simply because it solves a very simple problem for them, which is a reinvestment discussion. They don't have to have that discussion. They just reinvest in the company. It's not that dilutive that anyone would currently think it's getting annoying. It also helps, and we were, I think, very transparent when we announced that it helps us to keep more cash to fund our growth. That's an important part.
Let me quickly address just the underlying question, which says, well, are you correctly leveraged? Is your leverage too low? Should you be higher? So A, the first answer to that is we are very committed to our 2B rating. And then you might say, yeah, but Thomas, I still have from a net debt to EBITDA level, you still have room there. The statement I always make in that, and people who have talked to me will know what I'm going to say now, what our financing strategy is trying to ensure is that we can execute our strategy, which we have explained to you today, no matter the market conditions.
And that means we need to be one of the best in the market to, at the point when the market's closed, no matter COVID happening or something else, that we are the one who can seize the opportunity, go to the market, and get the money. And that's because we are relatively small in size. In a niche market, which is real estate, in a niche market, of a niche market, which is self-storage, you need to be extremely strong from a balance sheet perspective. And that's why we think we have the right, solid, and very robust, and for our business strategy, right financing strategy.
Thank you, Caroline.
Thank you very much for joining us today. And we look forward to reconnecting with you all soon. Thank you.
Thank you.