Safestore announces 7.3% growth in annual revenue

An increase of more than 7% in revenue compared to twelve months earlier was the highlight of an impressive series of results announced by Safestore Self Storage as part of its 2011 annual report.

The company has continued to go from strength to strength in the last twelve months, cementing its position as the undisputed leader in the UK self storage market, while remaining the only one to offer a full geographical spread of self storage facilities across the country.

Self storage customer base continues to grow

Safestore now has over 41,500 individual customers, each of whom stays for an average of 100 weeks.

Of this total, 72% are classified as ‘personal’ customers, while the remaining 28% are businesses. However, business customers tend to rent disproportionately large self storage units, meaning they actually account for 51% of the total occupied space.

This growth in the number of customers is a very positive sign for the UK self storage market as a whole, indicating that awareness of the service offered by storage companies is continuing to grow.

However, the Chief Executive of Safestore, Peter Gowers, argues in his review of these results that there is much more unmet need for the market to pick up on, given that more than 2 million changes of domestic circumstance take places year each year (new babies, marriages, house moves, divorces etc.) – all of which potentially create new needs for storage space.

He also notes that there are more than 4 million small businesses, which are likely to use self storage if they don’t have room in their main premises for large quantities of paper records, tools or stock.

Making space for new self storage facilities

The company’s portfolio has continued to expand through their technique of clustering large numbers of self storage centres strategically around key urban markets.

Safestore has 22 facilities located in the Paris region, operating under the brand name Une Pièce en Plus  (‘A Spare Room’), making them the only UK self storage firm to have made a major investment in another European market. The venture has clearly been successful, as they are currently building stores at a further three sites, although their momentum in France was somewhat stalled by a fire in December 2010 at the storage centre in La Défense which contained Une Pièce en Plus’s head office.

However, their annual report reassures investors that the damaged property was covered by insurance, both for the building and loss of profits. Taken together, their Paris stores have an average occupancy level of more than 70%, higher than in the UK, and produce 25% of the Safestore Group’s total revenue, indicating this part of their business is in a very strong position going forward.

The company’s total property portfolio comprises 118 stores, with two new openings in the UK last year at Bolton and Southend. Including properties still under construction, the entire portfolio was valued at £693.6 million in April 2011, £6.4 million higher than it was a year before.

This gives the company a maximum lettable area of 4.9 million square feet, of which 2.92 million (59.5%) is currently occupied. Additional revenue has also been raised from successfully increasing the prices customers pay to use this space, with £26.33 now the average cost of renting a square foot per year.

Safestore profits show a light dip

However, profits after tax were down -6.8% on last year despite the increase in revenue, a trend that – the company argues – was caused by the cost of constructing their new stores and high inflation, especially for utility bills and the business rates charged by local authorities.

Despite this marginally negative trend, the company was able to offer an interim dividend of 1.75 pence per share to its investors – 2.8% higher than the one it paid last year.

2 Responses to “Safestore announces 7.3% growth in annual revenue”

1. Phillip says:

   July 15, 2011 at 10:14 am

   didn’t realise this thats very good

2. David Anderson says:

   August 5, 2011 at 1:22 pm

   Safestore Self Storage has really showed an amazing surge in profits and its number of increasing individual customers is indicative of its overall development. Great going!