Note 1. Organization

SmartStop Self Storage REIT, Inc., a Maryland corporation (the “Company”), is a self-managed and fully-integrated self storage real estate investment trust (“REIT”), formed on January 8, 2013 under the Maryland General Corporation Law. Our year-end is December 31. As used in this report, “we,” “us,” “our,” and “Company” refer to SmartStop Self Storage REIT, Inc. and each of our subsidiaries. Our Common Stock began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "SMA" on April 2, 2025.

We acquire and own self storage facilities; we operate the self storage facilities owned by us, we also operate the properties owned by the entities sponsored by us and, as of October 1, 2025, owned by third parties. As of September 30, 2025, we wholly-owned 177 operating self storage facilities located in 20 states (Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin), the District of Columbia, and Canada.

As discussed herein, we, through our subsidiaries, currently serve as the sponsor of Strategic Storage Trust VI, Inc., a publicly-registered non-traded REIT (“SST VI”), Strategic Storage Growth Trust III, Inc., a private REIT (“SSGT III”) and Strategic Storage Trust X, a private net asset value REIT launched in January 2025, ("SST X" and together with SST VI and SSGT III, the “Managed REITs” or, the "Managed REIT Platform").

We manage the properties owned or operated by the Managed REITs, which together with the properties owned by the Delaware statutory trusts (“DSTs”) sponsored and operated pursuant to a lease with the DSTs by one of the Managed REITs, and one other self storage property we manage, as of September 30, 2025, represented 49 operating properties consisting of approximately 40,000 units and 4.4 million rentable square feet. Through our Managed REIT Platform and the DSTs, we originate, structure, and manage additional self storage investment products. Effective October 1, 2025, we now manage more than an additional 225 operating properties owned by third parties consisting of more than approximately 100,000 units and 16.6 million rentable square feet through our transaction with Argus Professional Storage Management, LLC ("Argus"). Please see Note 14 – Subsequent Events, for additional information.

SmartStop OP, L.P. (the “Operating Partnership”) owns, directly or indirectly through one or more subsidiaries, all of the self storage properties that we own. As of September 30, 2025, we owned approximately 94% of the common units of limited partnership interests of our Operating Partnership. The remaining approximately 6% of the common units are owned by current and former employees, members of our executive management team, board members, or indirectly by Strategic Asset Management I, LLC (f/k/a SmartStop Asset Management, LLC), our former sponsor (“SAM”), its affiliates, and unaffiliated third parties. As the sole general partner of our Operating Partnership, we have the exclusive power to manage and conduct the business of our Operating Partnership.

On March 12, 2025, our board of directors (the “Board”), upon recommendation of our Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee, approved an Estimated Per Share Net Asset Value (“NAV”) of our common stock of $58.00 for our Class A Common Stock and Class T Common Stock (defined below) based on the estimated value of our assets less the estimated value of our liabilities, or net asset value, divided by the number of shares outstanding on a fully diluted basis, calculated as of June 30, 2024.

On March 20, 2025, we effected a one-for-four reverse stock split (the “Reverse Stock Split”) of each issued and outstanding share of Class A common stock (“Class A Common Stock”), $0.001 par value per share, and Class T Common Stock (“Class T Common Stock”), $0.001 par value per share. Concurrently with the Reverse Stock Split, we also effected a corresponding one-for-four reverse unit split (together with the Reverse Stock Split, the “Reverse Equity Splits”) of units of our Operating Partnership. As a result of the Reverse Equity Splits, every four shares of our common stock and every four Operating Partnership units that were issued and outstanding as of the date of the Reverse Equity Splits were automatically changed into one issued and outstanding share of common stock or one issued and outstanding Operating Partnership unit, as applicable, rounded to the nearest 1/1000th share or Operating Partnership unit. The reverse stock and unit splits impacted all classes of common stock and common operating partnership units proportionately and resulted in no impact on any stockholder's or limited partner's percentage ownership of all issued and outstanding common stock or common Operating Partnership units. In connection with the reverse equity splits, the number of shares of common stock and Operating Partnership units underlying the outstanding share-based awards were also proportionally reduced.

Immediately after the reverse stock split described above, we reclassified and designated 225,000,000 authorized but unissued shares of Class A Common Stock and 340,000,000 authorized but unissued shares of Class T Common Stock as authorized but unissued shares of common stock, $0.001 par value per share (the “Reclassification”), without any designation as to class or series. As a result, the Company had 565,000,000 shares of unclassified common stock, $0.001 par value per share, authorized but unissued.

On April 1, 2025 we executed our underwriting agreement, and on April 3, 2025, we closed our registered underwritten public offering (the “Underwritten Public Offering”) of 27,000,000 shares of common stock, $0.001 par value per share (the “Common Stock”), at an initial price of $30.00 per share, pursuant to a registration statement filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") on Form S-11 (File No. 333-264449) (the “Registration Statement”) under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”). The underwriters also exercised an overallotment option to purchase 4,050,000 additional shares of Common Stock on April 3, 2025. Certain of our directors, officers, and employees, and friends and family members of certain of our directors, officers, and employees were able to and did purchase shares through us or our underwriters at the public offering price of $30.00 per share. Under this program, officers and directors purchased 31,500 shares. All of these shares purchased in the Underwritten Public Offering are listed on the New York Stock Exchange ("NYSE") under the ticker symbol "SMA". The gross and net proceeds received on April 3, 2025 were approximately $931.5 million and $875.6 million, respectively.

On June 12, 2025, we filed Articles of Amendment to our charter to decrease our total number of authorized shares of stock from 900,000,000 to 225,000,000. As a result of such decrease through September 30, 2025, our authorized shares of stock consisted of: (i) 175,000,000 shares of common stock, $0.001 par value per share, of which 31,250,000 shares were designated as Class A Common Stock, 2,500,000 shares were designated as Class T Common Stock, and 141,250,000 were common stock without designation as to class or series; and (ii) 50,000,000 shares of preferred stock, $0.001 par value per share.

On October 1, 2025, the six-month anniversary of the listing of our Common Stock issued in our Underwritten Public Offering for trading on the NYSE, each share of Class A Common Stock and Class T Common Stock automatically converted into one share of our undesignated listed Common Stock. In preparation for this conversion, on July 30, 2025, we completed a fractional share redemption related to our Class A Common Stock and Class T Common Stock of approximately $0.3 million, such that a total of approximately 8,000 shares were redeemed at a purchase price of $35.63 per share, which was the closing price of the Company’s Common Stock as of the end of that day. Each stockholder that held any fractional shares received a cash payment for such shares, and as a result, thereafter no stockholder of the Company owned any fractional shares.

From January 2014 through January 2017, we conducted multiple offerings for sales of shares to the public through multiple registration statements and sold approximately $493 million in Class A Common Stock and $73 million of Class T Common Stock, excluding shares sold pursuant to our distribution reinvestment plan, as described below.

In November 2016, we filed with the SEC a Registration Statement on Form S-3, which registered up to an additional $100.9 million in shares under our distribution reinvestment plan. On May 14, 2024, we filed a new Registration Statement on Form S-3 with the SEC which registered up to an additional 1,125,000 Class A Shares and 125,000 Class T Shares under our distribution reinvestment plan (our “DRP Offering”).

On May 1, 2025, we terminated our distribution reinvestment plan. As of such date, we had sold approximately 2.7 million shares of Class A Common Stock and approximately 0.3 million shares of Class T Common Stock through our distribution reinvestment plan. See Note 12 – Commitments and Contingencies for additional information on our distribution reinvestment plan.