CubeSmart (CUBE) Business

ITEM 1. BUSINESS

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Overview

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We are a self-administered and self-managed real estate company focused primarily on the ownership, operation, development, management, and acquisition of self-storage properties in the United States.

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The Parent Company was formed in July 2004 as a Maryland REIT. The Parent Company owns its assets and conducts its business through the Operating Partnership and its subsidiaries. The Parent Company controls the Operating Partnership as its sole general partner and, as of December 31, 2025, owned a 99.6% interest in the Operating Partnership. The Operating Partnership was formed in July 2004 as a Delaware limited partnership and has been engaged in virtually all aspects of the self-storage business, including the ownership, operation, development, management, and acquisition of self-storage properties.

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As of December 31, 2025, we owned (or partially owned and consolidated) 662 self-storage properties located in 25 states and in the District of Columbia containing an aggregate of approximately 48.4 million rentable square feet. As of December 31, 2025, approximately 88.1% of the rentable square footage at our owned stores was leased to approximately 399,000 customers, and no single customer represented a significant concentration of our revenues. As of December 31, 2025, we owned stores in the District of Columbia and the following 25 states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia. In addition, as of December 31, 2025, we managed 862 stores for third parties (including 49 stores containing an aggregate of approximately 3.3 million rentable square feet as part of five separate unconsolidated real estate ventures) bringing the total

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number of stores we owned and/or managed to 1,524. As of December 31, 2025, we managed stores for third parties in the following 39 states: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

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Our self-storage properties are designed to offer affordable, easily accessible and, in most locations, climate-controlled storage space for residential and commercial customers. Our customers rent storage units for their exclusive use, typically on a month-to-month basis. We offer climate-controlled units at 560, or approximately 84.6%, of our owned stores, and some of our stores offer outside storage areas for vehicles and boats. All of our stores have a storage associate on-site or virtually to assist our customers, and many of our owned stores have a manager who resides in an apartment at the store. Our customers can access their storage units during business hours, and some of our stores provide customers with 24-hour access through computer-controlled access systems. Our goal is to provide customers with the highest standard of physical attributes and service in the industry.

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Acquisition and Disposition Activity

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As of December 31, 2025 and 2024, we owned (or partially owned and consolidated) 662 and 631 stores, respectively, that contained an aggregate of 48.4 million and 45.8 million rentable square feet with occupancy levels of 88.1% and 88.8%, respectively. Additional information about our stores is included in Item 2 of this Report. The following is a summary of our 2025, 2024 and 2023 acquisition and disposition activity:

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The comparability of our results of operations is affected by the timing of acquisition and disposition activities during the periods reported. As of December 31, 2025, 2024 and 2023, we owned (or partially owned and consolidated) 662, 631, and 611 self-storage properties and related assets, respectively. The following table summarizes the changes in the number of owned stores from January 1, 2023 through December 31, 2025:

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Financing and Investing Activities

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The following summarizes certain financing and investing activities during the year ended December 31, 2025:

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Business Strategy

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Our business strategy consists of several elements:

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Investment and Market Selection Process

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We maintain a disciplined and focused process in the acquisition and development of self-storage properties. Our investment committee is comprised of five executive officers who oversee our investment process. Our investment process involves six stages — identification, initial due diligence, economic assessment, investment committee approval (and when required, the approval of our Board of Trustees (the “Board”)), final due diligence and documentation. Through our investment committee, we intend to focus on the following criteria:

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Segment

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We have one operating segment: we own, operate, develop, manage and acquire self-storage properties.

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Concentration

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Our self-storage properties are located in major metropolitan areas as well as suburban areas and have numerous customers per store. No single customer represented a significant concentration of our 2025 revenues. Our stores in New York, Florida, Texas and California provided approximately 17%, 14%, 11% and 10%, respectively, of total revenues for the year ended December 31, 2025.

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Seasonality

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We typically experience seasonal fluctuations in occupancy levels at our stores, which are generally slightly higher during the summer months due to increased moving activity.

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Financing Strategy

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We maintain a capital structure that we believe is reasonable and prudent and that will enable us to have ample cash flow to cover debt service and make distributions to our shareholders. As of December 31, 2025, our debt to total enterprise value ratio (determined by dividing the carrying value of our total indebtedness by the sum of (a) the market value of the Parent Company’s outstanding common shares and units of the Operating Partnership held by third parties and (b) the carrying value of our total indebtedness) was approximately 29.3% compared to approximately 23.3% as of December 31, 2024. Our ratio of debt to the undepreciated cost of our total assets as of December 31, 2025 was approximately 40.5% compared to approximately 37.4% as of December 31, 2024. We expect to finance additional investments in self-storage properties through the most attractive sources of capital available at the time of the transaction, in a manner consistent with maintaining a strong financial position and future financial flexibility, subject to limitations on incurrence of indebtedness under our revolving credit facility and the indenture that governs our unsecured notes. These capital sources may include existing cash and free cash flow, borrowings on our revolving credit facility, additional secured or unsecured financings, sales of common or preferred shares of the Parent Company in public offerings or private placements, additional issuances of debt securities, issuances of common or preferred units in our Operating Partnership in exchange for contributed properties and formations of joint ventures. We also may sell stores that have unattractive risk-adjusted returns and use the sales proceeds to fund other acquisitions.

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Competition

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Self-storage properties compete based on a number of factors, including location, rental rates, occupancy, security, suitability of the store’s design to prospective customers’ needs and the manner in which the store is maintained, operated and marketed. In particular, the number of competing self-storage properties in a market could have a material effect on our occupancy levels, rental rates and the overall operating performance of our stores. We believe the primary competition for potential customers at any of our self-storage properties comes from other self-storage providers within a three-mile radius of that store. We emphasize customer service, convenience, security, professionalism, and cleanliness and, therefore, we believe our stores are well-positioned within their respective markets.

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Our key competitors include local and regional operators as well as other public self-storage REITs, including, but not limited to, Public Storage, Extra Space Storage Inc., and National Storage Affiliates Trust. These companies, some of which operate significantly more stores than we do and have greater resources than we have, and other entities may be able to accept more risk than we determine is prudent for us, including risks with respect to the geographic proximity of investments and the payment of higher acquisition prices. This competition may reduce the number of suitable acquisition opportunities available to us, increase the price required to acquire stores and reduce the demand for self-storage space at our stores. Nevertheless, we believe that our experience in owning, operating, developing, managing, acquiring, and obtaining financing for self-storage properties should enable us to compete effectively.

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Government Regulation

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We are subject to various laws, ordinances and regulations, including regulations relating to lien sale rights and procedures, consumer protection measures and various federal, state and local regulations that apply generally to the ownership of real property and the operation of self-storage properties.

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Under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and applicable state accessibility act laws (collectively, the “ADA”), all places of public accommodation are required to meet federal requirements related to physical access and use by disabled persons. A number of other federal, state and local laws may also impose access and other similar requirements at our stores. A failure to comply with the ADA or similar state or local requirements could result in the governmental imposition of fines or the award of damages to private litigants affected by the noncompliance. Although we believe that our stores comply in all material respects with these requirements (or would be eligible for applicable exemptions from material requirements because of adaptive assistance provided), a determination that one or more of our stores or websites is not in compliance with the ADA or similar state or local requirements would result in the incurrence of additional costs associated with bringing them into compliance.

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Under various federal, state and local laws, ordinances and regulations, we, as an owner and operator of real property, may become liable for the costs of removal or remediation of hazardous substances released on or in our properties. These laws often impose liability without regard to whether we knew of, or were responsible for, the release of such hazardous substances. The presence of hazardous substances, or the failure to properly remediate such substances, when released, may adversely affect the property owner’s ability to sell the real estate or to borrow using the real estate as collateral, and may cause us to incur substantial remediation costs. In addition to claims for cleanup costs, the presence of hazardous substances on a property could result in a claim by a private party for personal injury or a claim by an adjacent property owner or user for property damage. We may also become liable for the costs of removal or remediation of hazardous substances stored at our properties by a customer even though storage of hazardous substances would be without our knowledge or approval and in violation of the customer’s storage lease agreement with us.

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Our practice is to conduct or obtain environmental assessments in connection with the acquisition or development of properties. Whenever the environmental assessment for one of our properties indicates that it is impacted by soil or groundwater contamination from prior owners/operators or other sources, we work with our environmental consultants and, where appropriate, state governmental agencies, to ensure that the property is either cleaned up, that no cleanup is necessary because the low level of contamination poses no significant risk to public health or the environment, or that the responsibility for cleanup rests with a third party. In certain cases, we have purchased environmental liability insurance coverage to indemnify us against claims for existing or suspected contamination or other adverse environmental conditions that may affect a property.

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We are not aware of any environmental cleanup liability that we believe will have a material adverse effect on us. We cannot provide assurance, however, that these environmental assessments and investigations have revealed or will reveal all potential environmental liabilities, that no prior owner created any material environmental condition not known to us or our independent consultant or that future events or changes in environmental laws will not result in the imposition of environmental liability on us.

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We have not received notice from any governmental authority of any material noncompliance, claim or liability in connection with any of our properties, nor have we been notified of a claim for personal injury or property damage by a private party in connection with any of our properties relating to environmental conditions.

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We are not aware of any environmental condition with respect to any of our properties that could reasonably be expected to have a material adverse effect on our financial condition or results of operations, and we do not expect that the cost of compliance with environmental regulations will have a material adverse effect on our financial condition or results of operations. We cannot provide assurance, however, that this will continue to be the case.

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Insurance

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We carry comprehensive liability, fire, casualty, extended coverage and rental loss insurance covering all of the properties in our portfolio. We also carry environmental insurance coverage on certain properties in our portfolio. We believe the policy specifications and insured limits are appropriate and adequate given the relative risk of loss, the cost of the coverage and industry practice. We do not carry insurance for losses such as loss from civil unrest, riots, war or acts of God, pandemics, and, in some cases, flood and environmental hazards, because such coverage is either not available or not available at commercially reasonable rates. Some of our policies, such as those covering losses due to terrorism, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and windstorms, are insured subject to limitations involving large deductibles or co-payments and policy limits that may not be sufficient to cover losses. Additionally, we use a combination of insurance products, some of which include deductibles and self-insured retention amounts, to provide risk mitigation for potential liabilities associated with automobiles, workers’ compensation, employment practices, workplace violence, general contractors, cyber risks, crime, directors and officers, employee health-care benefits, fiduciary obligations, managerial errors and omissions, and personal injuries that might be sustained at our stores.

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Offices

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Our principal executive offices are located at 5 Old Lancaster Road, Malvern, PA 19355 and our telephone number is (610) 535-5000.

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Human Capital

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At CubeSmart, we refer to our employees as teammates because collaboration towards shared goals defines our workplace. We care deeply about the experience our teammates have working with us. The CubeSmart work experience takes a holistic approach to our teammates’ total wellbeing. Our teammate value proposition includes promoting a sense of belonging to a team; providing opportunities to make a meaningful difference at work and in our communities; supporting ongoing personal and professional development; and offering competitive pay and rewards.

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As of December 31, 2025, we employed 3,121 teammates, all within the United States. Of our total teammate population, approximately 88% were hourly and approximately 12% were salaried. We have no union presence or collective bargaining agreements. Our average teammate tenure as of December 31, 2025 was 3.8 years.

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Company Culture and Teammate Experience

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We measure our teammates’ experience each year through our Teammate Engagement Survey. In 2025, our annual engagement survey participation rate was 92%. Results are communicated within individual teams to share what we learned and discuss both the positive

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aspects about working at CubeSmart and where we have opportunities to improve. Leaders with team engagement below a certain threshold are provided with coaching and set goals for improvement. In addition to the survey and our focused support for teams who need it, we have ongoing conversations and commit to continuous improvement.

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Teammate Development and Wellbeing

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As part of our culture, we seek to help teammates grow with us and leverage their development both at CubeSmart and beyond. We believe in providing all teammates with training and development opportunities to succeed in their roles. We plan, design, and deliver training programs for all levels of the organization, from orientation and general job skills to enhancing leadership capabilities through skills training and mentoring. In 2025, we provided an average of 15 hours of training per teammate.

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We believe that career growth and personal development are important parts of our teammates' personal and professional success. During the year ended December 31, 2025, 352 teammates were promoted and/or transitioned into new roles to further their career development. When recruiting new teammates, our talent acquisition team engages with our store management teams and corporate leaders to identify a pool of potential candidates to serve our customers and deliver best-in-class customer service. We recruited, hired, and trained 1,369 teammates during 2025, with teammate referrals accounting for 17% of our new hires.

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To support our teammates' success and wellbeing, we offer a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, vision, disability, and life insurance coverage. We also provide programs designed to help teammates rest, rejuvenate, and care for their families, such as paid holidays, vacation and sick time, and parental leave. Our Employee Assistance Program is available to all teammates, providing support as they and their families experience life changes and challenges.

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We believe teammate wellbeing also includes connection to a larger sense of purpose. There are many ways we help our teammates build those connections, including through our Idea Center, days of service, and matching gifts program. Our Idea Center provides a forum where teammates can connect with one another and with our corporate committee by submitting ideas to enhance the workplace, streamline systems and processes, and identify solutions and best practices. We encourage teammates to participate in community service and philanthropy by providing paid time off for these activities. Additionally, through our matching gifts program, we match qualified charitable contributions up to $100 per teammate each year.

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Teammate Composition

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As of December 31, 2025, of our total teammate population, 54% were female and 46% were male. Approximately 46% have self-identified as Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, Asian, American Indian, or of two or more races. The average teammate age was 43.

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At CubeSmart, we respect, value and celebrate the unique attributes, characteristics and perspectives that make each teammate who they are. Our goal for CubeSmart is to be a place where people feel supported, listened to, and able to do their personal best. Our Philosophy Regarding Respect in the Workplace defines our approach to creating a collaborative work environment. Our Policy on Inclusion can be found in the Corporate Responsibility section of our website (www.cubesmart.com). Nothing on our website, including our policies or sections thereof, shall be deemed incorporated by reference into this Annual Report.

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Sustainability

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We are focused on building the Company for the long term to generate sustainable growth. To that end, we have established a cross-functional committee responsible for establishing our sustainability priorities and objectives. Management regularly evaluates sustainability risks faced by our portfolio and believes the low obsolescence, geographic diversification, and low emissions of our portfolio help to mitigate those risks. Our senior management team reports annually to the Board on the status of our sustainability program, our progress against the goals we’ve set, and provides updates on the various initiatives we’ve undertaken to improve our sustainability. Our efforts to enact change are highlighted by our sustainability targets which look to track improvements across key sustainability metrics and are aligned to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

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We focus on minimizing the impact we make on the environment. Self-storage remains a low-environmental impact business as it consumes less energy and water while emitting fewer greenhouse gases than other real estate property types. We continue to look for ways to further reduce our already-low impact through a variety of initiatives including solar panel installations, HVAC upgrades, high-efficiency lighting retrofits, green roofs, energy management systems, and paper reduction through our electronic rental platform.

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We encourage you to review our Sustainability Report, which can be found in the Corporate Responsibility section of our website, for more detailed information regarding our sustainability programs and initiatives. Nothing on our website, including our Sustainability Report or sections thereof, shall be deemed incorporated by reference into this Annual Report.

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Available Information

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We file registration statements, proxy statements, annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K and amendments to those reports with the SEC. You may obtain copies of these documents by accessing the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. Our website address is www.cubesmart.com. You also can obtain on our website, free of charge, copies of our annual reports on Form 10-K, our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, our current reports on Form 8-K and any amendments to those reports, after we electronically file such reports or amendments with, or furnish them to, the SEC. Our website and the information contained therein or connected thereto are not intended to be incorporated by reference into this Report.

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Also available on our website, free of charge, are copies of our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics, our Corporate Governance Guidelines and the charters for each of the committees of our Board — the Audit Committee, the Corporate Governance and Nominating Committee and the Compensation Committee. Copies of each of these documents are also available in print free of charge, upon request by any shareholder. You can obtain copies of these documents by contacting Investor Relations at 5 Old Lancaster Road, Malvern, PA 19355 or by telephoning 610-535-5000.