Why did the National Storage (ASX:NSR) share price rise 3% today?

The National Storage REIT (ASX: NSR) share price was a top S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) performer today. National Storage shares are up a healthy 3% today to $2.07 a share at the time of writing. That compares pretty favourably against the ASX 200, which only managed to eke out an o.o4% gain for the day.

So what's going on here?

About the National Storage share price

This ASX real estate investment trust (REIT) has had an interesting few months. The National Storage share price is up a solid ~8% in 2021 so far, and a little more than 23% over the past 12 months.

It was briefly the talk of the ASX town last year when it received competing acquisition offers from a range of potential suitors over 2019 and 2020.

US private capital firm Warburg Pincus and Chinese firm Gaw Capital both offered $2.20 per share at one point, while the publically-listed US company Public Storage made an offer at $2.40 a share a little later. The shares hit $2.40 soon after. But that was on the eve of the coronavirus pandemic outbreak, and acquisition talk has been all but quiet ever since.

What's been happening recently with National Storage?

The National Storage share price has been busy in the past month. The company made a new 52-week high of $2.21 on 16 April. So today's move is a positive one, but still not quite at that level.

The company appeared to enjoy a boost in sentiment from the announcement of the Australia-New Zealand travel bubble. National Storage did seem to shoot higher in the days following that announcement. That makes sense, seeing as more travellers would conceivably result in a higher demand for temporary storage facilities.

National Storage has not made any official announcements or ASX releases since 13 April. So perhaps today's move is a result of more travel-fuelled optimism.

Or perhaps a group of investors (or one large investor) thinks that National Storage's trailing distribution yield of 3.55% is too good to pass up. Further, if National Storage's next two dividend distributions come in at the same levels as what this REIT paid for 2019 (8.1 cents per share), it would have a forward yield of 3.89% on the current share price.

Whatever the reason for today's upward move, I'm sure National Storage investors will be pleased. At the current pricing, this REIT has a market capitalisation of $2.13 billion.