Stor-Age

Stor-Age, or Stor-Age Property REIT Limited, is a South African public company based in Cape Town. The company is a real estate investment trust that owns, acquires, develops and manages self storage assets throughout South Africa's metropolitan cities. Stor-Age is the largest self-storage property fund in South Africa and has been listed on the Johannesburg STOCK Exchange since 2015.

History

Stor-Age was founded in 2004 to fill a vacuum in self storage facilities in the greater metropolitan areas of South Africa. Gavin Lucas, the current CEO of Stor-Age, who was certified as a CA at the University of Cape Town, began working with his father, Les Lucas, his brother, Stephen Lucas, and fellow accountant, Steven Horton, to build a real estate investment trust. The four set up a "hotel pool rental scheme", raising R10 million by selling 200 units valued at R50,000 each. In 2007, they conducted extensive market research and secured a site in Edgemead, Cape Town. By 2013 they had 33 properties, 17 trading stores, eight greenfield sites and eight acquisitions.By 2015, Stor-Age controlled 40 properties with a total value of two billion ZAR.

On 16 November, 2015, Stor-Age became South Africa's first self storage property fund to be listed on the JSE's main board. Between September 2015 and September 2017, the company's market capitalisation tripled to reached approximately 3.5 billion ZAR, its annual revenue increased by 43% to 124 million ZAR and its annual operating profits increased by 50% to 84.5 million ZAR. However, as Business Day noted, South Africa's macroeconomic conditions are at least partially responsible for these rapid gains as self-storage conditions usually thrive in poor economic conditions since many people have to downsize or keep goods in storage before selling them.

In 2018, Stor-Age owned 50 properties in South Africa and the United Kingdom with a total value of 3.9 Billion ZAR (R2.5 Billion in South Africa and R1.4 Billion in the United Kingdom). In early 2018, Stor-Age also performed unusually well amongst real-estate stocks on the JSE having 4% growth in the first few months of 2018, while the overall returns from real-estate sector declined by 18.56%.

Acquisitions

In September 2016, Stor-Age acquired Storage RSA, which owned seven properties at the time of its acquisition (four in Cape Town and three in Gauteng). This was part of Stor-Age's strategy in order to seek a consolidation of the South African storage industry in order to potentially enhance their portfolio over time through digital marketing and revenue management initiatives.

In September 2017, it acquired Storage King, a U.K.-based self-storage company, to gain a foothold in the British market. In November, Stor-Age then acquired StorTown, the largest self-storage facility in KwaZulu-Natal, from the DanCor Properties Group for 1.45 billion ZAR. This sale included four properties located in Brackenhill, Durban CBD and Durban North and increased the company's Gross Lettable Area (GLA) by over nine percent.

Stor-Age further expanded its operations in Cape Town by purchasing All-Store Self Storage for 52 million ZAR. This acquisition included properties in Belville, Kuils River, and Brackenfell, which are suburbs north of Cape Town. Lucas approached All-Storage Self Storage and expressed an interest in buying them out since 2011.

Corporate Social Responsibility activities

As part of CSR Stor-Age's campaigns have been involved in:

• During the Cape Town water crisis, Stor-Age ran a water saving campaign where it volunteered its storage facilities for conserving water. Capetonians were invited to donate store-bought, five-liter bottles of water to Stor-Age's facilities.

• The company also sponsored the 40th Annual Pirates 10K race on 2 August. In addition to providing the funds for this event, Stor-Age also managed both the water stations during the race.

• Stor-Age's English subsidiary, Storage King, participated in a "Wave of Gratitude" campaign in 2018 which involved acknowledging the women who contributed to their communities in World War I, as well as being a part of the Royal Legion's "Thank You" campaign to celebrate the centenary of World War I.