PUBLIC STORAGE
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL TO OUR PROXY STATEMENT
FOR OUR ANNUAL MEETNG TO BE HELD ON WEDNESDAY, APRIL 24, 2019
Public Storage (“we”, “our” or the “Company”) hereby supplements the Proxy Statement dated March 15, 2019 (the “Proxy Statement”) with the following information. The letter included below will be sent to certain of our shareholders beginning on April 9, 2019:
Letter to Our Shareholders Regarding Executive Compensation
April 9, 2019
The Board of Trustees of Public Storage is issuing supplemental information to our proxy statement filed on March 15, 2019 in order to clarify certain aspects of our executive compensation program.
The Compensation Committee considered the following in structuring the 2018 compensation for our named executive officers:
| • | | In the last three years, there has been a marked increase in development of new self-storage properties in many of the markets we operate in. This has created significant new competition, negatively impacting our occupancies, rental rates and rental growth. |
| • | | The self-storage industry, our own properties included, is experiencing comparative challenges to many years of above-average growth in operating income. |
| • | | The aforementioned items caused our Core Funds from Operations per share (“Core FFO”) growth to decelerate from 10.0% in 2016 to 4.5% in 2017. |
The Compensation Committee determined it was in the best interest of shareholders for executives’ short-term incentives to be based on achieving positive Core FFO growth in 2018. This hurdle was difficult to achieve given the aforementioned market pressures, as was evident in the deceleration in our Core FFO growth in 2017. The target focused the team’s attention, while also making other operating thresholds necessary conditions for achieving it. Included among these was same-store revenue growth, which was an explicit target for our cash incentive program in 2017 and remained one for our restricted stock unit (“RSU”) program in 2018.
The Compensation Committee considered the following factors, among others, in awarding compensation to our executive officers in 2018:
| • | | Achievement of the positive Core FFO growth target for the cash incentive program. |
| • | | Achievement of 1.5% same-store revenue growth, which was within the “75% of target” range for RSU awards. |
| • | | Total returns to Public Storage shareholders of +0.6% during 2018. This was an outperformance of the S&P 500 and GICS 6010 negative total returns of-4.4% and-9.4%, respectively. We continue to have comparative challenges caused by a 38% total return to Public Storage shareholders in 2015, which was wellin-excess of the 1% total return for the S&P 500. This dynamic is not accounted for in three-year total return comparisons to our benchmarks. |