Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Shurgard H1 2026 results earnings call. For the first part of the conference call, participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions- and- answering session, participants will be able to ask questions by dialing pound key five on their telephone keypad, by clicking the Raise Your Hand button on the player, or by writing their questions in the chat box. I will now hand over the conference to Caroline Thirifay at Shurgard. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for the Shurgard H1 2026 results. I am here with Marc Oursin and Thomas Oversberg. Before we begin, we want to remind you that all statements other than statements of historical fact included in this call 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. You can find our press release as well as a replay of this webcast on the website at shurgard.eu. With that, I will now turn the call over to Marc.
Thank you, Caroline, and good morning, all. Thomas and I will present to you the different sections of the deck. I propose to go to page four to start with the key highlights of the first semester 2026. First, on the revenue side, we have seen an acceleration in Q2 with 3.6% versus last year additional, while Q1 delivered +3.1% versus last year, supported by stronger momentum in key markets, as the U.K. and Germany. In addition, our like-for-like in Q2 grew by +2.5%, while Q1 was 2.2%, so a slight improvement. However, this acceleration has been slower than anticipated. Second, regarding the income from properties, or NOI, we continue to focus on cost management, and Q2 2026 achieved a growth of 1.6% versus last year, while Q1 was negative versus last year.
Thirdly, our balance sheet is strong, with a low leverage of 6.5 x the debt over underlying EBITDA, an LTV below 24%, and EUR 70 million of cash, plus our undrawn RCF of EUR 570 million. Fourth, our secured pipeline is a real growth engine for the future. We have 170,000 sq m that will be delivered by 2028, and these new properties will fuel our NOI growth with an additional EUR 35 million at maturity. Fifth, regarding the outlook 2026, the slower-than-anticipated revenue growth led us to revise downward our targets for the year. But looking ahead, we are focusing on filling up our new properties and leveraging our pricing power and customer retention for our same stores to drive the revenues up during H2 2026 and strengthening our position for 2027. On that, let's go to page seven with our business update section. Talking about growth acceleration.
Q2 has seen a good momentum for the U.K. and Germany, while the Nordics and the Netherlands continue to deliver very solid performances. France and Belgium are flat for different reasons. France is impacted by our more aggressive pricing, but occupancies start to increase. While for Belgium, a couple of stores are defending their market share versus a competitor in a ramp-up phase. Interestingly, the U.K. is combining two positive levers, one related to the accelerated ramp-up of our non-same stores, in particular, the former Lok'nStore, and the revenue growth in June and July and also early August for our same stores. I propose we go to the next page dedicated to an overview of our portfolio and importance of growth. As a reminder, we are on page eight. Thank you.
As a reminder, you will find on the right side of the page our portfolio is well-spread across Europe with prime cities. This is what you see on the map. In addition to this strong foundation, the left side of the page shows how the growth of our platform footprint has driven rented square meters over the years, and in turn, revenue. Meaning Shurgard has a significant embedded growth potential based on our recent openings and current secured pipeline. I will not go to the details of page nine, but what you need to understand and remember is the importance of the share of properties in ramp-up in our portfolio that will contribute to our future earnings growth. With 29 additional more stores just for the year 2026. Let's go to page 10.
Page 10 is showing some pictures of the new properties that we opened in H1 and two major redevelopments we did. Those are again demonstrating the benefit of being the owners of our buildings and creating density of properties in prime areas. H1 2026 has seen the delivery of 28,000 sq m, representing EUR 55 million of investment, and H2 will be very busy and will deliver another 75,000 sq m or close to 75% of the whole year 2026 commitment.
Let's go to page 11 to have an overview on our portfolio expansion. We have secured today another 95,000 sq m or EUR 240 million of project cost to be delivered in 2027 and 2028. Mainly three countries will benefit from this footprint growth, Germany, the U.K., and Netherlands. Globally, our current pipeline for the years 2026, 2027, and 2028 will generate EUR 35 million of additional NOI at maturity.
I would like to mention that all projects approved since February 2026 will deliver a return at maturity of 9%-10% NOI yield, increased by 100 basis points versus previous federal rate, and will feed the NOI growth even further. Let's flip to page 12. We have a couple of good news regarding the former Lok'nStore portfolio performance in Q2 and early Q3 2026. We have reached 110,000 sq m rented early August, which is our guided target. Meanwhile, the move-in rate continues to grow. On this, I turn to Thomas.
Thank you, Marc, and good morning, everyone. Let me start with our all store performance for the first half of 2026 on page 14. At constant exchange rate, property operating revenue increased by 3.3% to EUR 229.6 million. This was supported by a 3.4% increase in average rented square meters, while average in-place rent was stable. The impact of our larger ramp-up portfolio meant that average occupancy was 83.6%, or 1.9 percentage points below the prior year. Net operating income increased by 0.5%, to EUR 140.2 million, with operating margin declining by 1.7 percentage points. This reflects the impact of operating a portfolio that is 6.1% larger in rentable square meters, together with inflationary pressure and deliberate investments to support revenue growth, which we will talk about on slide 16. Underlying EBITDA was EUR 124 million, down 0.6% at constant exchange rate. Adjusted EPRA earnings were EUR 0.77, down 5.7%.
I will come back to the per share bridge on slide 18. Let us now look at the sources of the revenue growth. As noted, revenue at constant exchange rate increased from EUR 222.2 million in the first half of 2025 to EUR 229.6 million in the first half of 2026, an increase of EUR 7.4 million or 3.3%. The 251 stores already in the 2025 same-store pool contributed an additional revenue of EUR 1.9 million. The 24 stores entering the 2026 same-store pool added a further EUR 0.8 million.
Taken together, same-store segment contributed EUR 2.7 million of incremental revenue growth. The 2026 non-same store pool contributed EUR 4.7 million, demonstrating the significant earning contributions from properties that we have recently been developing or acquired and are now renting up. The key point is therefore that growth is broad based across the portfolio. Let us now break down the NOI development on slide 16.
At constant exchange rate, NOI increased from EUR 139.5 million to EUR 140.2 million or 0.5%. The bridge shows two dynamics. Within the same store properties already included in the 2025 same-store pool reduced NOI by EUR 0.6 million, while stores entering the 2026 same-store pool added EUR 0.5. The combined impact of the 275 same stores was therefore broadly stable, with a modest decline of EUR 100,000.
The ramping up non-same store portfolio contributed an additional EUR 0.8 million of net operating income and offset the same-store movement. This confirms that this part of the portfolio is already contributing to profitability, even though these stores are still below mature occupancy and margin level. Let's zoom in on various cost drivers compared to the same period of prior year. Payroll expenses increased by EUR 2.1 million as a result of both additions in properties as well as the reinforcement of our support center.
Real estate and other taxes increased by EUR 1.7 million, mainly driven by the anticipated increase in U.K. business rate, combined with the additional stores across the network. Marketing expenses increased by EUR 1.1 million, reflecting the generally higher cost of online advertising, as well as our larger portfolio. In addition, it reflects the deliberate decision to increase our spending to support revenue growth. Finally, other operating expenses have increased by EUR 2.1 million, mainly due to two drivers. First, higher licensing and maintenance costs for our SaaS ERP tool, which replaced in H2 2025 our on-premise solution, combined with the addition of the stores to the portfolio and the rollout of our European call center. The noted same-store margin pressure reflects the timing of these commercial and operating model-driven investments, as they were incurred against lower than expected, modest same-store revenue growth.
While the Q2 direction was better, the improvement in revenue was not yet sufficient. Our focus on occupancy and rental rate growth should allow us to show a better sales leverage effect going forward. Slide 17 puts this split into a larger perspective and shows why the ramp-up portfolio matters so much to future earnings. As the chart shows, the non-same store segment offsets a negative contribution from the same store and has the highest contribution to NOI growth since 2021. This is our strategy at play. It shows the important growth the portfolio expansion delivered during the recent years. Looking at the H1 2026 performance, our immediate priority is twofold. Continue maturing these newer stores while reinforcing growth and operating leverage in the same store portfolio through occupancy, pricing, customer retention, and cost discipline.
Let me now bridge this operating performance to adjusted EPRA earnings per share on slide 18. Adjusted EPRA earnings per share decreased from EUR 0.82 in the first half of 2025 to EUR 0.77 in the first half of 2026, a decline of 5.7% at constant exchange rates. NOI positively contributed approximately EUR 0.01 per share, which was offset by approximately EUR 0.01 from general administrative costs and here in particular, higher share-based compensation expenses, and EUR 0.03 from the anticipated higher net interest expense.
The tax movement contributed approximately EUR 0.01, while the other items were broadly neutral. The remaining approximately EUR 0.02 per share dilution came from the higher weighted average share count following the 2025 scrip dividend. The scrip option has now been discontinued. This residual comparison effect is a residual comparison effect, apologies, and not an ongoing source of dilution, which is important when assessing the underlying earnings trajectory.
Let me now turn to the balance sheet and financing position, turning to slide 20. At June 30th, the investment property, including properties under construction, was valued at EUR 7.27 billion, compared with EUR 7.12 billion at the end of 2025. The increase reflects continued investment in the portfolio, while the overall valuation environment remained broadly stable as exit cap rates expanded modestly from 5.1% to 5.2%. EPRA NTA per share increased by 0.7% to EUR 53.64. Net debt was EUR 1.73 billion, compared to EUR 1.66 billion at year-end, reflecting the continued investment in the portfolio and the move to a full cash dividend. Loan to value was 23.7% compared to 23.2% at year-end, and net debt to underlying EBITDA was 6.5 x compared to 6.2 x. The increase is measured and remains fully within our rating framework.
It also needs to be viewed against the substantial embedded earnings contributions from stores that are still ramping up. The financial structure behind this balance sheet remains strong and gives us significant flexibility, which is further detailed on slide 21. We retain our strong BBB+ rating from S&P with a stable outlook and 100% of our assets remain unencumbered. On average, fixed cost debt is 3.3% with a weighted average maturity of 6.9 years. We currently have EUR 795 million committed liquidity sources consisting of our undrawn remaining term loan and the revolving credit facility. In addition, we have EUR 70 million of cash at hand. This liquidity, combined with a strong loan to value ratio, provides the flexibility to execute our committed development program by maintaining capital discipline. Our financing position, therefore, does not change the priority.
Fund the secure pipeline, protect the rating, and allocate capital only where returns meet our more demanding criteria. With that, I hand back to Marc to take you through the outlook and our execution priorities.
Thank you, Thomas, for these explanations. I am on page 23. Regarding the outlook 2026, we have decided to revise the operational part downward due to the revenue trajectory we have at the end of H1 2026 versus the anticipated one. The impact is leading to a revised all store revenue growth of 3.5%-4.5% versus full-year 2025 at constant exchange rate. Despite our cost management, less interest expenses, and lower corporate income tax than anticipated, the negative difference of revenue growth is impacting the underlying EBITDA and our adjusted earnings versus previous guidance. On the square meter portfolio expansion side, we will deliver within the initial guidance. Leverage and dividends stay as initially guided as well.
For the medium-term guidance, considering the current operating environment, we are not reaffirming our targets. We will revisit when market conditions allow for a more meaningful assessment. However, we maintain our leverage targets with an LTV below 25% and net debt over EBITDA of 5x-6x, and our commitment to our BBB+ S&P rating. We will continue to pay a cash dividend of EUR 1.17 per share per year. Let us go to page 24 to discover the key actions in motion to support our EPS growth. I think it is important to share with you and understand the actions that the management, supported by our board of directors, have already decided to put into motion. They are fourfold. The first one is the capital discipline.
We stopped the optionality of the scrip dividend in January 2026, and all dividends since then are 100% cash payments to avoid additional dilution and impacts on the EPS. The second decision has been to increase the hurdle rate by 100 basis points to 9%-10% NOI yield at maturity for all organic projects as of February 2026, with a positive medium-term impact on the earning per share. The third decision has been to require an EPS accretion as of the first full-year of operations for M&A deals. The second lever, that is relating to financing of the company. Here we have refinanced former debts and additional needs in March 2026 with a term loan facility of EUR 570 million at a cost of 80 basis points above Euribor, which brings flexibility and avoids upfront loading interest costs. Our third lever is the revenue acceleration.
We have applied a more aggressive pricing to accelerate the ramp-up of our known same stores, which are a significant source of potential additional revenue and NOI since Q1 2026. At the same time, we pushed the occupancy of our same stores with additional advertising and continue to do so in Q3 2026. Last but not least, we have rolled out a European call center for sales calls, in and outbound call, to catch more leads and convert more. The complete rollout will end by October 2026. Our fourth lever is the operating efficiency that you are familiar with. The clusterization of our store network has been completed with the U.K. in early Q3 2026, and France will be completed by Q4 2026. It will deliver labor cost savings for the full-year 2027 and partially in 2026.
In the end, these eight key actions have and will support EPS growth for our company. Therefore, time to conclude now, and let's look at the final page 26. Thank you. The first half of the year has ended better than it started with the acceleration of the revenue growth and the significant contribution coming from our known same stores, but not enough versus our anticipation. Therefore, we revised our operational outlook for 2026. However, we have strong levers and strong things to play with. One, our focus on revenue growth through the ramp-up of our known same stores, plus customers retention and pricing dynamics for our same stores. Second, our cost optimization plans. Thirdly, our solid secured pipeline that will deliver significant additional NOI growth in the coming years.
Fourth, a very strong balance sheet with low leverage and our BBB+ rating from S&P. All in all, 2026 will be a transition year, positioning the company well for the future. On this, I turn to Caroline to open the Q&A session.
Thank you, Marc and Thomas. We are now pleased to open the line for your questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six. You can also ask a question by clicking the Raise Your Hand button on the player and by writing questions in the chat box under the player. Our first question is from Marios Pastou from Bernstein. Please go ahead.
The next question comes from Marios Pastou from Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, and good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. Two from my side. I will ask them one by one. Firstly, really into your guidance, of course, with the first quarter results, I think you would expect it to remain within that outlook range provided. What really has been the shift since then? Metrics at the time were also broadly unsupportive. I suppose, can you walk us through what you had anticipated would drive a recovery back then towards those targeted levels?
Okay.
Sure. So thank you for the question, Marios. The situation when we looked at the results in Q1 was that we saw the accelerating taking part. And we were looking at where occupancy pricing and the whole market were moving, and we therefore, at that point in time, considered that the acceleration would still be sufficient to close the gap. So when we recently then looked at the past performance and plugged that into our latest forecast, while we saw this good Q2 momentum, we eventually had to conclude that it was not sufficient, the acceleration, to close the gap until year end.
Okay. I suppose a bit of a follow-up to that one is what is driving then your view that this momentum you are seeing now will be supported through the second half?
The momentum which we are currently seeing is continuing. That is, I think, the very supportive message. In all of our key markets, and particularly in the U.K., we see that what we observed in the last month is continuing at the moment.
Absolutely. For our own stores, the U.K., and also the same stores.
Okay. Then just secondly, of course, you have mentioned that you have stepped away from your prior medium-term guidance. Should we think about 2026 as being a bit of a reset year before returning to growth? Whether that revised all store revenue growth guidance for this year is a more realistic run rate going forward versus the prior 6%-8% that you had?
Well, I think that the new outlook or the revised outlook that we have given, obviously is corresponding to what we think we will do in 2026. In 2027, we have our disclosure for the full-year 2026 in early March. There will be also an outlook given for the year 2027 at that moment.
Okay. So, no pointing towards-- because it's clear that you obviously aren't reaffirming that guidance, but I think the expectation for that 6%-8% top line, I'm assuming people are going to be looking to see if that's still achievable. Is that step down we're seeing this year, is that basically a function of what we're now going to be seeing in future years in light of what you're seeing in terms of the market progression?
I think, Marios, that to be, let's, completely transparent and clear, we need to wait for the end of the year to see where we are exactly, and also the start of 2027 to be able to come back with a realistic, let's say, numbers and outlook.
Okay. Thank you. That's it for questions.
Hello?
The next question is from Ana Escalante from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Good morning. My first question is on guidance for 2026. I think we all appreciate that it might be challenging forecasting revenues, given it is difficult to predict consumer behavior accurately. However, when I look at the implied operating expenses inside your EBITDA margin, based on your revised revenue and EBITDA guidance, it looks like now you are guiding to operating expenses, including FD&A, around 2%-3% higher than the previous guidance. What has changed versus May? What has happened since May that you were not anticipating back then in terms of the expenses?
No. From the operating expenses perspective, we are not expecting that the costs are going higher than what we were guiding for before. I think it is important to note is that the expenses really developed in line what we were expecting when it comes to, from an operating perspective. The only exception is when we decided to invest more in our marketing to drive conversion and get the revenue in. That will likely continue for the rest of the year, and therefore, that is the only probably exception to what we were thinking before. But that is fully in line with our aim to get the revenue and the occupancy where it is supposed to be. All the other costs were behaving exactly in the way how we were expecting them, and we expect them to end in line with our estimates before.
Thank you. That was very clear. My second question is on capital allocation. You have mentioned in the release that there is a challenging macro environment, but you also quoted the challenging competitive environment.
Why keep building new stores then, particularly in markets where are performing a bit weaker? Why do you think that's the best capital allocation?
Well, obviously, when a pipeline is secured, the pipeline has to be delivered. That's why we are already in 2026, 2027, and 2028 with projects where we have the building permits, and therefore, those one will be delivered. Secondly, medium term, we believe that, and we had that, the demonstration, for example, in Sweden, when we faced a couple of years ago, if you remember, a very tough situation in terms of competition. One competitor was aggressively developing and ramping up the properties. In the end, today, when you look at the result of Sweden, we are very happy to be in Sweden and to do what we are doing there. More than +5% revenue for year-to-date, I think.
For us, medium term, we don't fear competition, and we still think that growing the platform where it makes sense, meaning the capital cities where we are with redevelopments and organic or even M&A, is a good way to do. After that, monitoring the volume of investment year-on-year for pipeline, you have a lead time that you need to respect. That's where we are.
Okay. Thank you.
You are welcome.
Our next question is from Frédéric Renard from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Wait, it is from here.
Welcome, Frédéric.
Hi. Hi, guys. Good morning.
Hello, Frédéric.
Just a few, hi. Just a few follow-up. You dropped the midterm guidance. As I understand it, well, you have probably a lower confidence in the midterm outlook, but then the question would be, how do you expect the consensus to modelize Shurgard on a two, three years basis while it's difficult for you to give a proper guidance for the next year? What do you think about that?
Well, we think that analysts have talents first. Secondly, we are a public company for now more than eight years. We are in Europe, the one disclosing quarterly detailed numbers per market, which is very different than what our peers are doing. I think you have plenty of information to be able to modelize the company for the future. That's our belief.
But versus what you just said to the question of Marios.
Yes
In the sense that for me, my conclusion was to say, okay, maybe you don't have a visibility on your future revenue. Would that be correct to interpret?
No, I said that the visibility would be obviously because we have given a revised guidance, and if we have given this revised guidance, obviously we're going to make it. And by the end of 2026, and especially early 2027, when we'll have in March to give an outlook for the year, we'll have already two months, more or less, of trading for the year 2027. So it will give us, I suppose, more comfort to give an outlook 2027 than obviously now.
Mm-hmm. Okay.
That is the point, Frédéric.
Okay. Because for instance, if I look at the Q1 you publish in mid-May, you had already six weeks in the Q2. I am just struggling to understand what happens over the last or the remaining six weeks that force you to revise, clearly downward guidance. Was there really any?
Mm-hmm. Look, I am sorry to interrupt, but I think it is what Thomas explained previously in the answer I think to Marios'. We saw a pickup of the revenue in late Q1, and in Q2 it started too. But in the end, what we are expecting to see in May, June, even if there is an acceleration, the acceleration was not at the level that we are anticipating. That is simply what happened.
Okay. Then maybe on another topic, and that would be the last question. You mentioned that the pipeline is actually a growth engine for the future growth. But actually, if you look back for the last three, four years, the more you have been adding property, the lower you have been able to grow on an EPS basis. And I appreciate you gave some elements to boost EPS and page 24 of the presentation, for instance. Among other, you mentioned that you were targeting a pricing which was relatively, or you called it aggressive, a more aggressive pricing across non-same store. But how can you increase pricing with limited occupancy at the moment?
Let's be clear. If you take the two elements of this portfolio, the segmentation with, on one side, the same store and the other side the non-same stores, the ones that are in a ramp-up position. Now we start with this one, which is I think quite obvious, is what we decided to do is simply to be more aggressive on pricing. When I mean more aggressive, I mean to discount more. That's what I meant when we say aggressive. It's not that we're going to increase to customers.
Okay.
Sorry. So maybe that's the misunderstanding, Frédéric. When we say more aggressive pricing, meaning that the public prices to new customers are lower than what initially we were planning to do. That's what I meant, or what we meant.
That's very important to keep that in mind. We are fighting for the occupancy. That is our strategy. We are very happy to get the customers in at the right price, and we are very aggressive on that front. But we are not doing that in isolation to just burn money because what we also know is that we have an industry-leading churn, and we have the probably most sophisticated ECR tool. We can actually then, once the customers are with us, we are able to retain them longer and increase them significantly. That's why we are very happy to make those investments now.
If I was to make it even clearer, I would say that for the non-same store, the new stores, when you start, the occupancy is very low. Let's say 5%-10%. The question is not at the price you make them in, it's simply get them in, fill up the property, and at the same time, as said Thomas, increase these customers when they are in. It's always more than zero when it's empty. That's the basic principle, I would say, of what we are doing on the non-same stores. We saw also a good pickup in different markets in the U.K., in Germany, where we have lot of non-same stores.
And that is why, for example, ex Lok'nStore portfolio have been able to reach 110,000 sq m rented guidance for the year early August, I think a couple of days ago, and it continues to grow. That is the way we do. For the same stores, back to your question. Here, it is a little bit different. The way we do is two things. First, yes, we are also giving potentially more discounts to new customers in order to be attractive with the pricing that they see publicly on our shurgard.eu website. Secondly, we make, I would say, more noise. So we beat the drum by simply spending more money on Google, meaning advertising. That is back to the question of Ana regarding the cost and the OpEx for the second half.
We have factored in our guidance revised for 2026, the fact that we will spend more advertising during the second half.
Okay. If I just may, to rebound on what you just said. You mentioned more aggressive pricing, more aggressive also expenses on marketing. So you also announced that you are going to revise upward a few quarter back the NOI yield target on new development. Can we conclude that this NOI yield target that you gave to the market is actually a function of time? So maybe before you were expecting to reach it at four or five years, now maybe at seven, eight years?
No, I do not think so because it is simply that the shape of the curve would be different, but the ending point and the time to get to that ending point does not change. If you think IRR wise, we are still absolutely on this because the IRR over 10 years will be probably 1 basis point even above the 9-10. So it will be probably 10-11. So it does not change.
Okay. Thank you.
You are welcome.
Our next question is from Ashnaa Vyas from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi. Morning. Thanks for the question. Two questions from me. The first one on your CapEx numbers, for 2026, you have revised that down. Is that primarily just timing related, or is that just you have sort of taken a more selective approach to development? Can you talk a bit more about the future pipeline and the CapEx related to that? The second one is just on the cost management that you have got undergoing. You talked about clusterization. Is there more meaningful opportunity to take costs out of the business from here? Maybe you can help quantify that if possible, or even when the timings of the benefits come in.
Okay. Sure, Ashnaa. Ashnaa, sorry. Let's start with the first part of your question, the one related to the pipeline. Yeah, it is exactly as you said. It is more phasing approach. That is it. Some of the projects have been moved to 2027. But 75%, as I said, of the 2026 pipeline will be delivered in the second half. If you look at what we have disclosed, and I think we have disclosed with the different quarters for the year 2026, you see that there are a lot in the Q4 2026, and some also in 2027.
We might have good surprises, some stores that were initially planned for early 2027 that will jump in the end and being opened in 2026. Others that in 2026 maybe will be postponed by a couple of weeks to 2027. But to me, it is purely a phasing stuff. It is nothing more than that. The second question was related to-
On clusterization in future-
The clusterization? Yeah, what we call clusterization. I would say that we have done a lot the past three years, to give you an idea. Four years ago, on average, we had 2.5 people per property. We did not have any clusters, did not exist. Now at the end of this year, when France will be completed, you will have 80% of all the properties of Shurgard in what we call clusters, meaning you have two properties and one is managing the other one. Instead of having 2.5 x 2, there are two stores, so five people, you have three people, which is two people less, and two people out of five, it means 40%. It is what happened.
Meaning that what we have done the past three years has fed the NOI growth by having reduced labor cost, despite, by the way, increases related to the different spikes of inflation in the years 2023 and also to 2024. For the future, you can do always more. Today, I do not want to commit to any numbers on that. But there is still some stuff to do. Then the magnitude of it, we will come back to you in early 2027 with that.
Okay. Thank you.
Welcome.
The next question is from Aakanksha Anand from Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. This is Aakanksha Anand from Citigroup. Two questions from my side. I will take them one by one. The first one is just on the drivers. So what are the main drivers that you attribute the lower than anticipated acceleration to? And maybe split them out by geography if there are specific dynamics in each one of them. And with that backdrop, do you expect the second half same-store performance to broadly be in line with H1? That is the first one.
Okay. I can start with that. Aakanksha. Regarding the drivers, I would say that it is mainly due to more competition if you take the U.K. When I mean more competition, probably combined maybe with the sentiment due to the macros. But if you specifically look at the U.K., and especially in 2025, some competitors have changed their pricing policies. Some of them have opened properties and they have to ramp them up.
Therefore, we had to simply react to this because as Thomas has explained, the model we have is, we believe, creating more lifetime value for us, meaning that as soon as we have a customer in, we are able to apply increases of prices to the customer and adding a lifetime value to the churn we have, which is quite low, to be able to, let us say, to increase the lifetime value of that customer. So what we experience in the U.K., which is an acceleration but not at the level of what we are expecting, and I would say the same potentially for Germany, it is related to this, to the fact that competition has been more fierce and we had to react to that.
But the good point, at least, is that we are increasing, and we see an acceleration Q2 versus Q1 in these two key markets, I mean Germany and the U.K. Even in Q3, as we mentioned, quarter-to-date, we see another level of acceleration for these two countries. You might remember that what we said last time is that what we saw from a move-in perspective is we saw that the move-ins were comparable to the year before, but that what we were not seeing is that we were able to close the gap.
That is why we have taken now the additional actions, and that is why you now see that we actually start to get this additional kick in there. That brings us now to this new guidance. Therefore, we think that H2, back to the second part of your first question, H2 in terms of revenue growth, total company will be, of course, higher than H1. Same thing for the same stores.
Okay. Could you just put some more color around what is happening in France, then what are the main drivers for the growth in Sweden and Denmark?
Okay. For France, here I would say there are maybe two different situations, Paris region and outside Paris. You know that out of the portfolio we have in France, I would say that 70% almost is in Paris region, and the remaining 30% are outside Paris region. If you take Paris, clearly here, or Paris region, there are some competitors also more aggressive, and we have decided to grow and bring occupancy to 90%, back to the model that we have. We continue to invest into public prices to customers, and we start to see an increase of occupancy. Slower than what we are thinking of, but it is starting to take place. That is why the revenue, all in all, between the gain of square meters and the investment we do on the prices are more or less flat.
But the positive thing is that occupancy starts to grow there, and we will get the benefit of that in the coming quarters. Outside Paris, I would say it is a bit different. Things are doing, I would say, better in a way. We do not have to invest more than what we do in Paris region, and the results are actually quite positive there. For Sweden? Sweden, well, I think that Sweden is facing two things. The macros are much better than what they were, if you remember, three years ago. At the same time, three years ago, we had, as I mentioned, the second major effect that was the competition. The development of our competitor, Green, that was opening properties and had a lot of properties in ramp-up, and we are defending our market share by lowering our public prices in order to keep the occupancy.
Now we have the benefit, I think, of both, meaning that Green, they are private, I do not have their numbers. But we think that the occupancy has reached more or less where they want to be. So they have a more stabilized portfolio than three years ago. Mechanically, they are less aggressive. Secondly, the macros have turned to be much more positive than it was three years ago. I think the two engines that we have in Sweden are those two ones.
Thank you. That is very clear. The second question is just on the NOI margin. When can we expect the platform gains to start to deliver? Basically reflect and contribute to an increase in NOI margin.
You mean as a percentage of margin or the value of margin?
Just the overall percentage of margin, because I see that NOI margin was down over the H1 in 2026.
Yes. Also-
Is that a trend you expect continues? Is that a trend that you expect continues over second half and next two to three years? Or do you think there might be some scope for improvement on that front?
Don't forget that H1 has impacted that we are having the full real estate cost in our NOI in the first half of the year. That's obviously a very significant driver, both on the absolute value, but also on the increase which we saw this year. In the second half, we should see on that front obviously a significant improvement, and that might explain why we're guiding in the way we're guiding on the NOI. The other important part is in that I probably need to be clear on that. We mentioned that in H2 2025, we changed our ERP system to the SaaS solution, which meant that as of July 2025, we have this on our NOI in there, but not in the first half of the year.
For the second half of the year, when it comes to that, we are fully comparable, while in the first year, we didn't have those costs in the comparable period. Overall, that's what is driving NOI. Combined with what Marc was saying, that we are expecting to continue higher investments in marketing, obviously only as long as it makes sense. We are watching very carefully with the teams, how are the returns on the investments, how is the conversion? As long as we see that it makes sense, we are making those investments.
Okay, great. That's all my questions. Thank you.
Thank you.
Our next question is from Stéphane Afonso from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hi, everyone. Thanks for the presentation and for taking my question. Just on the medium-term EPS guidance. Until last May, you were still very confident in the target. Just what has changed since then? Because there is no strong shift in demand, the build-on cost, like the 19.2% is unchanged. Pipeline is secured. I recall that no extra overheads are required for the 2026, 2030 pipeline. On top of that, it appears that refinancing conditions are not deteriorating. Could you just please explain what I am missing about the business that could explain this change in confidence?
Well, Stéphane, it is pretty clear, as I think we mentioned that already before, during the start of the call. We first want to deliver our revised outlook 2026. We will be early 2027 able to give an outlook for 2027, which is more reliable, and therefore taking into account how we ended exactly in 2026. Secondly, how the start of the quarter will be. That is why we will come back to the market early March with an outlook 2027.
Okay. When you are saying that you are becoming more aggressive, can you just please quantify it?
Well, it is difficult to quantify this, to be very frank. We have some numbers, but we do not disclose them, one. Secondly, it is really store per store. I would say that it is not even store per store. It is per category of size of units in a given location for a certain period of time. Then it makes the thing very different. So we do not want to give these numbers because most of them actually are in a way important for us. Regarding the competition, we do not want to share this kind of information with them.
Okay. More generally, should investors consider the possibility that some of the original medium-term targets were simply too ambitious given the market environment that we are seeing today?
Well, obviously, if we have decided to put them on hold, it is yes, you are right, but maybe not. As I said, let us wait for the end of Q2 2026. Let us see how the start of 2027 will be. Then at that moment, you will be able to say exactly what you are saying now, actually.
Okay. Thank you.
You are welcome. Thank you, Stéphane.
Our next question is from Sultan Awan from Van Lanschot Kempen. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, everyone. Thank you for the questions. Just two from me. One on the EBITDA margin. Can you talk a bit more about the moving parts on OpEx? Payroll expenses have increased, marketing is increased. How should we think about this moving forward? Are these more structurally increases that is more a reality now of all the competitive pressures, or are they really temporary moving forward? Should we see these flush through?
Yeah. First of all, I think I mentioned that for the rest of the year, we feel that the costs are developing in line with what we expected at the beginning of the year. This is not something where there are any surprises. The main gap comes from the revenue miss, which we were not able to close fast enough. The only exceptional cost, and again, I just want to repeat that, is we have the higher marketing costs, which are part of the NOI, and we have higher share-based payments cost, which is part of G&A. Those two together really result a little bit in the situation on that front. If you then go further down the P&L and go to EPS growth, it is about interest expenses. The interest expenses are not higher than we expected.
They are actually lower than expected because we were able to get with our financing more flexible solution on that. But this is the consequence of the additional debt which we raised in the past there. Those are the main drivers in there. Taxes, just to round that up, we expect to be rather stable. On the cost front, there's nothing which we were not really anticipating except the few items which I just mentioned, and especially on the marketing front, I would like to repeat that we are making those investments as long as we think it makes sense. If we are seeing that this becomes too expensive or we don't see the return on that, we are going to drive that number down again.
Got it. Thank you. Just one on the U.K. So same-store revenues is still negative, but seems to have stabilized a bit with, I think you mentioned the last month turning a bit more positive. How confident are you on this trend? Are you kind of expecting similar rates moving forward? Do you expect the U.K. to remain a bit challenging?
Well, thank you for the point. I would say even if we're anticipating more, it's still good in the sense that if you look at the same-store performance in the U.K., Q1 2026 was at -1.3% versus Q1 2025, and Q2 was -0.5%. But this -0.5% was actually embedding still a negative growth for April, but positive already in June, and July is positive. August up to now is positive. So we have three months in a row in the U.K. for our same stores that are positive and more positive month-on-month. So there's a certain level of confidence, clearly, but reasonably confident. Need to be obviously careful. But we have not seen this trend, I would say, since a couple of months in the U.K. at all. So we are pretty happy with the performance of, I would say, our same stores in the U.K.
I think that this is back to what the first question you had, Thomas answered, related to how we are pricing our products to customers and how we show that, meaning how the noise we make through the level of advertising, clearly, it does pay off.
Got it. Thank you.
You are welcome.
Our next question is from Kanad Mitra from Barclays. Please go ahead. Kanad, you are still put on mute, so maybe you need to unmute yourself. Yes.
Hi. Kanad from Barclays. Thanks for taking my question. At this point, I just have one. Can you just shed some color on your clusterization model and how you aim to achieve it? The second part of that question is, while it probably reduces your labor cost, but in the end, it is also possible that you kind of compete with your own existing stores, because it is in the same locality. We have heard similar things from peers and also probably you mentioned something similar in Belgium.
Okay. Thank you for the question, Kanad. Back to the clusterizations. As I initially said, this is a process that we started three years ago, more or less, testing it. It has been pretty successful, to be very frank. But why it is successful, because two things. First, we have never given up on how customers actually are served, how we are securing the properties. The purpose is not to do simply labor cost and cost saving. We do not want to do cost killing versus customer killing. We have been very careful with that, and we have monitored all of this country per country, because you could have different behavior for certain citizenship. In the end, it is not the case, it has been the same kind of reactions.
Customers have been very positive about actually the fact that there is still people taking care of them, but the people are not in this location. They are, let us say, 10, 15, 20 minutes away. That is one. Secondly, we have been able to make it happen because our e-rental, so the contracts that we are doing through the website, so simply between customers, well, prospects and our website, have reached more than 50% of penetration of all our contracts in all the countries where we are operating. By having this situation, it is helping us obviously to reorganize the work of the people and the magnitude, meaning the number of people working simply in the properties. That is what we did, and that is why it took three years. Now we are at the end, I would say, of that process, as I said. The U.K. is done.
Was it July this year? So a month ago, less than a month ago, actually. In France, it was a bit longer because you have to go through, in France, through a legal process with the unions and work also. This has taken place, and we got a deal, and then it will be executed before the end of this year. There was a question, I think one of your colleagues, okay, how we can envisage more from this clusterization. Clearly, we can always do more, but I think we have done, I would say, the major part of the job, and it will be more marginal in the coming years.
To add, as you have heard, we have rolled out now a European call center, sales call. That obviously will help us also to optimize again what we are using our staff in the stores for, because we can free up time. That means we can have more efficient processes in there, which we will have to monitor what is possible on that front. So the sales call center is not only helping us with reaching customers where they are, having more efficient conversion, but also getting the actual cost of the conversion better under control.
Thanks for that.
Thank you, Kanad.
Our last question is from Vincent Koppmair from Degroof Petercam. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I had one question maybe mainly on the capital allocation point and on your pipeline. In the beginning of this year, you highlighted that you increased the hurdle rate of new CapEx to now 9% and 10%. However, since the beginning, or since the announcement at least, you haven't added anything to the pipeline. Is it fair to say that maybe the hurdle rate was too aggressive, or could we expect some announcements in H2? Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, Vincent, for the question. If you look at organic and M&A, which is very different, and also the redevelopments actually. No, there's no, let's say, slowdown regarding the organic, neither the redevelopments. It's simply it takes regular time, and we have always the time to be able to get a deal with an owner of a land, from that deal to get actually the building permit and all of that. Here, from that front, to make a long story short, we don't see a slowdown related to that due to this increase of the hurdle rate. In M&A, there is two things in M&A. Clearly, the market is still showing signs of activity, so there are still activities, clearly. So there are potential deals on the market.
But the expectation of the sellers, knowing that the vast majority of them, I would say almost all of them, are private companies, are still with a disconnect between what they think they can sell and the price that, let's say, private equities or even ourselves or other operators that are public are willing to pay. And we have said we want to be accretive in terms of EPS for the first full-year of operations for M&A. Obviously, this condition is, I would say, limiting our capacity to say yes to prices that do not take into account the fact that there's a complete disconnect between private valuation and public valuations.
All right. Clear. But just following up on the organic side specifically.
On the 9%, of course, you highlight, maybe you have something, of course, you are working on. Good, and I am hoping for that. Just when you reconcile this hurdle rate with what appears to be now a more maybe generalized environment of competition or heightened competition across most or all markets, do you not see maybe also the hurdle rates, so there is more issues potentially on price and occupancy going forward, where this hurdle rate could be too high?
Well, up to now, I would say no. I think one of your colleagues mentioned that or raised a point that was close to this question, Vincent. No, I really believe that we are able to have some savings, and I think the clusterization is clearly helping on the NOI. This NOI yield is fed for sure by the occupancy slash the prices slash therefore the revenues. But in the end, also how you are managing your costs. Clearly, the larger the platform is, the more fixed costs are absorbed, first of all. Secondly, the clusterization is helping. What Thomas added regarding also the call center has to be factored in. So for the time, no, we are not at all, I would say, anxious about this 9-10. I think we will make it.
When we did, I remember, post-IPO, we were having a hurdle rate of 7-8. Then two years ago, we raised actually this hurdle of 7/8 to 8/9 due to the cost of capital. We have been able to find, to develop projects with this increased already hurdle rate. So 9-10 should follow. Secondly, it is an NOI yield, meaning that the teams are also working on the total cost of, let us say, development, meaning the price of the land, brokers fee, the way we build the building. There, there are some savings that the team is working on. So we believe that the 9-10 for organic and redevelopment will be there.
Yeah. Vincent, just as a reminder, again, this is what we believe is the required return on our capital from the market. It is not that we are choosing this number. We are looking at what is our cost of equity, what is our cost of debt, and that drives our return requirements because we want to be sure that we make the required returns. But as Marc was mentioning, this is not done in isolation, because if we indeed just would increase that would be difficult to achieve. But we also see that while it is at the moment a little bit slower, that the same store, and that means our actual performance and the cash flow continue to improve. We see that we are able to reduce construction costs by being more efficient in the overall process.
Those two things together will help us to hopefully get to that level. Again, this is not us wishing. This is what the market demands.
To add on what Thomas said, it is not a slam dunk. It is not easy, for sure. We think that we can make it.
All right. Thank you. Very clear. I am looking forward to that announcement. My last question is, again, not wanting to accentuate it again, but on the midterm guidance, you have highlighted that you want to come back on it once you have more visibility. Let us say now after three quarters of somewhat subdued performance, what do you actually fundamentally need in terms of visibility in an environment where we fully agree that volatility is now the new normal? What is your requirement to be able to give a midterm guidance? Thank you.
Again, more time, simply. Time will tell, Vincent. I think we will be more knowledgeable on February 2027 than now. That is it. That is the reasoning.
All right. Thank you very much.
You are welcome.
Thank you all for joining us today. We appreciate your continued interest in Shurgard and look forward to speaking with you soon again.
Thank you. Goodbye.
Thank you.