Christopher Marr, president and CEO of CubeSmart L.P. (NYSE: CUBE), joined REIT.com for a CEO Spotlight video interview at REITWorld 2014: NAREIT’s Annual Convention for All Things REIT at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis.
CubeSmart owns and operates self-storage facilities in the United States and Puerto Rico. At the end of the third quarter, CubeSmart owned 390 facilities with an occupancy level of 91.5 percent.
Marr noted that CubeSmart has completed a combination of equity raises so far this year. CubeSmart utilized its at-the-market (ATM) equity program and a follow-on offering. The two approaches enabled the company to raise slightly more than $400 million in equity during the year, which will be used to fund the company’s acquisition program. CubeSmart has also pre-funded all of its 2015 delivery commitments under its build-to-suit program and its joint-venture development program, according to Marr.
Marr also discussed the outlook for fundamentals in the self-storage sector.
“Fundamentals look fabulous in self-storage. We’ve had a period of lack of new supply, which has been a wonderful tailwind for the business,” Marr said. At the same time, “our consumer continues to find innovative ways to use our product that we never would have thought of before, so we’re excited about 2015.”
Marr explained that one of the major changes the company is seeing concerns the way in which customers do business with CubeSmart.
“Increasingly our customers want to transact immediately, so mobile devices are very important to us as we’re trying to attract new customers,” he noted. “Customers want to make an immediate decision in an easy and simple way.”