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Americold Realty Trust, Inc. (COLD)

Q3 2020 Earnings Call· Fri, Nov 6, 2020

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to Americold Realty Trust Third Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Scott Henderson, Senior Vice President of Capital Markets and Investor Relations. Please proceed.

Scott Henderson - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Good afternoon. We would like to thank you for joining us today for Americold Realty Trust third quarter 2020 earnings conference call. In addition to the press release distributed this afternoon, we have filed a supplemental package with additional detail on our results, which is available in the Investors section on our website at www.americold.com. On today's call, management's prepared remarks and answers to your questions may contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements address matters that are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ from those discussed today. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. Forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, assumptions and beliefs, as well as information available to us at this time and speak only as of the date they are made. And management undertakes no obligation to update publicly any of them in light of new information or future events. During this call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. More information about these non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations to the comparable GAAP financial measures is contained in the supplemental information package available on the company's website. We also would like to note that numbers presented in today's prepared remarks have been rounded to the nearest million with the exception of per share amounts. This afternoon's conference call is hosted by Americold's Chief Executive Officer, Fred Boehler; and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Marc Smernoff. Management will make some prepared comments, after which we will open up the call to your questions. Now, I will turn the call over to Fred.

Fred W. Boehler - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Thank you. And welcome to our third quarter 2020 earnings conference call. We hope everyone on this call and their families are well. This afternoon I will discuss our third quarter 2020 results and activity. I will then discuss our recently announced acquisition and development activity and provide some perspective on what we are seeing as we move toward year-end. Marc will then review our quarterly results in more detail as well as the financial benefit of our recent external growth initiatives. He will also comment on our guidance for 2020. After our prepared remarks, we will open the call for your questions. In a year that has been truly unpredictable, our business remains steady and consistent on an annual basis. Our global network of temperature-controlled infrastructures and the services we provide are a mission-critical part of the food supply chain. While the reopening has been uneven around across individual states, regions, and countries, food continues to move through the temperature-controlled supply chain to meet demand. Consistent with our expectations, our third quarter results showed a small pickup in food service with continued elevated retail activity. As we stated last quarter, food service activity is well below historic norms and protein processing plants are not yet running at full capacity. Additionally, as expected, we continue to experience incremental costs related to COVID-19, including higher sanitation and PPE costs and certain inefficiencies due to social distancing, staggered schedules and other changes to processes. In the third quarter, our Global Warehouse same-store pool generated total revenue growth and NOI growth of 1.2% and 7.9% respectively on a constant currency basis. Please recall in the third quarter last year, we incurred elevated healthcare expenses. Adjusting for these, our same-store NOI growth this quarter would have been 4.4%. For the year-to-date, same-store revenue and…

Marc Smernoff - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Thank you, Fred and good afternoon everyone. Today we will provide updates on our actual performance as well as certain metrics on a constant currency basis. We will also provide further detail on our recent acquisitions, our capital markets activity and our outlook for 2020. For the third quarter, we reported total company revenue of $497 million and total company NOI of $135 million, which reflects a 6.7% increase and a 12.1% increase year-over-year respectively. Core EBITDA was $104 million for the third quarter of 2020, an increase of 11.5% year-over-year. This was driven by our 2019 and 2020 acquisitions and solid growth within our core portfolio, partially offset by higher COVID-19 related costs and higher corporate SG&A. Our core EBITDA margin increased by 89 basis points to 20.9%. For the third quarter 2020, we reported net income of $12 million compared to net income of $27 million for the same quarter of the prior year. Our third quarter core FFO was $59 million or $0.28 per diluted share. Our third quarter AFFO was $63 million or $.30 per diluted share. As a reminder, the full definition and reconciliation of core EBITDA, core FFO and AFFO to reported net income can be found in our supplemental. For the third quarter of 2020, Global Warehouse segment revenue was $388 million, which reflects growth of 6.1% year-over-year. Global Warehouse segment NOI was $128 million, which reflects growth of 12.7%. Global Warehouse segment NOI margin was 32.9% for the third quarter, a 190 basis point increase compared to the same quarter of the prior year. The NOI growth was primarily due to improvements in our core business, accretive acquisitions and the benefit of the Americold Operating System. Our NOI growth and margin expansion was partially offset by increased property insurance and property tax…

Fred W. Boehler - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Thanks, Marc. We are very proud of our ongoing work to support our customers as a mission-critical part of the global temperature-controlled food supply chain. Even with the impact of COVID this year, our business remains steady and consistent on an annual basis. We continue to drive internal growth through our commercialization efforts and the Americold Operating System and drive external growth through development and acquisitions. This growth strategy is supported by our conservative low levered balance sheet. Finally, we again want to thank all of our frontline associates and the entire Americold team for their hard work and dedication. We are pleased to welcome the AM-C, Caspers and Hall's teams to the Americold family. And we look forward to welcoming the Agro team upon closing. We believe we all have a very exciting opportunity to grow together through these transformative transactions that position us to better compete on a global scale. Thanks again for joining us today, and we will now open the call for your questions. Operator?

Unknown Speaker

Operator

Thank you. At this time, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Our first question comes from Dave Rodgers with Baird. Please proceed with your question. David Bryan Rodgers - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc.: Yeah. Good evening, everyone. Fred, Marc, you guys have done a really good job of getting everyone focused on the economic occupancy number that was flat year-over-year and largely flat sequentially as well. The bigger delta came in the physical occupancy, which I know we're not paying as much attention to, but I'm wondering if there's an ability to maybe talk about the third quarter into the fourth quarter and really the ability to see that economic occupancy percentage start to move higher into fourth quarter and into 2021, and then maybe the reasons why it's kind of lagging in terms of growth? I think there's upside there and I don't know if that's just COVID, if that's the protein shortages, capacity issues, but any help that would be helpful.

Fred W. Boehler - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Yeah. No, thanks, Dave. Those are definitely metrics that are difficult to manage given COVID. The bottom line is we have over 2,600 customers and every one of those customers is doing something inherently different with their supply chains and it's highly unpredictable. It was funny, I was just with the GCCA, the Global Cold Chain Alliance board meeting a couple of weeks ago and we all kind of looked at each other and talked about what we saw going on in the marketplace, and it's just a lot of unpredictable sporadic behaviors by customers. So some customers are trying to push inventory forward, some are helping manufacturer and kind of keeping product back at point of production, and some are kind of in between, right. We do have the protein plants, especially the larger (00:40:11) protein plants that are not up to 100% efficiency just because of what they had to do in their plants in terms of social distancing and such. So there's just a lot of COVID noise and that's why we really kind of focus our attention on the year-to-date results and kind of the full-year aspect, because I think this year more than ever as we look back and do our statistics on quarter-to-quarter fluctuations and what happens in the marketplace on a normal year and how that matches this year, it's just kind of crazy this year, right. So obviously a lot was pulled forward into the third quarter and kind of more evenly spread. We are seeing some lift as we go into October which we would expect in terms of volume for the holidays, but I don't think it's as steep as what it normally is. I think the whole supply chain kind of flattened out over the course of the year. But again, the important thing to note here is that consumption during this 12-month period will be very, very similar. It's just what's going on month-to-month and quarter-to-quarter that's a little kind of out of cycle given all that has happened. And look no further than our same-store results, if you look on a year-to-date basis, 3.6% on the top line and 6.5% from an NOI perspective as we head into this fourth quarter. Again, great confidence that we're going to be able to deliver on what we've said that we're going to do. So, the economic occupancy and physical occupancy thing (00:41:55), again, there is a correlation, albeit not necessarily a direct correlation as you can see in our financial results. David Bryan Rodgers - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc.: Thanks. Thanks for all that detail, Fred. Appreciate that. And then maybe just one follow-up for you. You had mentioned in your comments the small food service pick up. Can you put that in the context of maybe where you would have been pre-COVID to where you are today and maybe the trajectory that you think could come back to you?

Fred W. Boehler - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Yeah. Very, very small pick-up, and then that's kind of reversing itself a little bit as states like New York and California lock things back down. So I expect that not to continue that that trend line. But it was a very, very slight pick-up. I mean, retail is still ruling the day right now. Remember pre-COVID, I'd say 50% was going food service and 50% was going retail. When the light switch went off, that immediately switched to 90/10 retail. And I'd say that we're still in that 75/25 range. So, a slight pick up just meaning if it was 80/20 last quarter maybe now it's 75/25 but not material in nature. David Bryan Rodgers - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc.: Okay. Thank you.

Fred W. Boehler - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Sure.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Michael Carroll with RBC Capital. Please proceed with your question.

Michael Carroll - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst · RBC Capital. Please proceed with your question.

Yes, thanks. Fred, I want to talk a little bit about the developments you announced and obviously with the Ahold deal and Conagra deal, it seems like the development yields are around 10% to 12%. I know some of the other expansions (00:43:38). Is there anything unique going on there driving those yield lowers? Is it just an – kind of individual investment bases, so you still expect to kind of be around that 10% to 15% range going forward?

Fred W. Boehler - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

I think we're just trying to be a little bit more transparent in terms of kind of giving you a more realistic range. Here's what I would say. I mean, it's all about risk, right. And so, if I'm building a dedicated facility for a high-quality customer, whether it's Ahold Delhaize or Conagra, you de-risk that project, right. I mean, it's a 20-year commitment, fixed commitment, right out of the gate, very little risk going into it. So you're probably willing to accept a slightly lower yield, right, versus a market development project like Chicago, like Italy and like Calgary, like Clearfield, those types of projects, we've got great confidence, albeit we have several different clients that we're bringing into it, right. So we're bringing a solution to the market because of overall market demand, not because of an individual's dedicated build. And so therefore, you have more of the J-curve. You got the slope to be able to bring all the individual customers in, et cetera. So, that's why you're going to vary a little bit between the different types of builds based on kind of that risk assessment.

Michael Carroll - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst · RBC Capital. Please proceed with your question.

Okay. And then can you explain I guess the difference between the Conagra build-to-suit and why is there a 12-plus month J-curve with that asset versus the Massachusetts build-to-suit that you completed a few years ago when it was stabilized almost immediately?

Fred W. Boehler - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Yeah.

Michael Carroll - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst · RBC Capital. Please proceed with your question.

I guess (00:45:36) differences with those assets?

Fred W. Boehler - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Sure. No, that's a great question. Look, the Massachusetts asset, if you recall, was for Ocean Spray. And we opened that building. So same fixed structure, okay. So both of them were under a fixed variable structure where they're paying for the full facility day one upon completion. The difference is, one is the agriculture and one is consumer products. So the agricultural facility we happened to open that facility in September right at the time of the harvest. So literally that building filled up overnight. So, we got all the variable components (00:46:21) immediately. With Conagra, they'll take care of the fixed component day one, but it's going to take them time to ramp that plant, ramp that facility up. And it will take about 12 months before we get all of that volume actively running through there from a variable standpoint. Now the J-curve on that facility, and Scott, I'm sure will have follow ups to give more details on it, but the J-curve associated with that facility won't be like a J-curve on a major market facility. We're not going to go negative, right, because you're getting the fixed commitment out of the gate. It's just you'll be ramping up kind of that variable component and hit that full run rate coming out of the first year. Hope that makes sense.

Michael Carroll - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst · RBC Capital. Please proceed with your question.

(00:47:07). Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Ki Bin Kim with Truist. Please proceed with your question.

Ki Bin Kim - Truist Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Truist. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks. I guess, first I want to say you guys have had a pretty busy year. So congratulations on that.

Fred W. Boehler - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Thanks.

Marc Smernoff - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Thank you.

Ki Bin Kim - Truist Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Truist. Please proceed with your question.

So, when I look at the G&A guidance for fourth quarter, I think you have implied that G&A goal (00:47:32) increases from $35 million to $45 million. I'm curious if, is that the new run rate, $45 million, or is that really a function of some acquisitions that are coming online where you're carrying some G&A?

Marc Smernoff - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Yeah. It's function of timing and just the acquisitions and the G&A absorbed through those recent acquisitions.

Ki Bin Kim - Truist Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Truist. Please proceed with your question.

I see. So $45 million is a good run rate going forward?

Marc Smernoff - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

$45 million, yes, that would be a decent run rate. As we look forward, we'll give guidance next year because that's the gross run rate Ki Bin, and then we have synergy targets against all these acquisitions. So we'll be giving full-year guidance with our next reporting. But just remember I think we've built up the grocery. What you see here is really our same-store or our organic business with two months of the Hall's acquisition now layered in. And then, obviously next year we'll be building on the full year of Hall's as well as the full impact of the Agro acquisition, which ramps up and we've quoted that as being roughly $32 million in free synergy.

Ki Bin Kim - Truist Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Truist. Please proceed with your question.

Okay. And so, (00:48:56) into the fourth quarter, I know the holiday sales season this time around it's a lot more volatile. Any kind of early reads into October-November in terms of how the business might shape up in the fourth quarter?

Fred W. Boehler - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Yeah. No, I'll just repeat what I said earlier today. It's slightly different curves in terms of ramp up, but the volume is definitely picking up like we would expect going from September to and October if you will. So I'm here to tell you Thanksgiving, Christmas, R&D is going to happen. Again, it's just going to look a little bit different Ki Bin. And I think the way the volume is going through, it's really hard to predict. I mean, put yourself in that ConAgra Foods position, they have no idea how much food you have stocked up in your refrigerator or freezer at home, right. It's really hard because the buying habits of the consumers have really kind of been all over the place. So we've got to kind of get a little bit further into the fourth quarter to really understand the overall volumes, but again, we're reconfirming here, and actually upping the midpoint of our guidance, which tells you that we believe that the fourth quarter will come in commensurate with the rest of the year.

Ki Bin Kim - Truist Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Truist. Please proceed with your question.

Okay. Thank you.

Marc Smernoff - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

And then, Ki Bin, I apologize. You said 45% or 35% on SG&A? I just want to make sure you heard the correct number.

Ki Bin Kim - Truist Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Truist. Please proceed with your question.

Well, your guidance for the full year for G&A increased to about $142 million?

Marc Smernoff - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Yes. Yes.

Ki Bin Kim - Truist Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Truist. Please proceed with your question.

And I was just doing (00:50:42) kind of whatever is left that implies for the fourth quarter (00:50:38) that's about $40 million, right? $40-plus-million?

Marc Smernoff - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Yes. Sorry. Just want to make sure we're talking about correct numbers there. Thank you. Yes.

Ki Bin Kim - Truist Securities, Inc.

Analyst · Truist. Please proceed with your question.

Yeah.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Nate Crossett with Berenberg. Please proceed with your question.

Nate Crossett - Berenberg Capital Markets LLC

Analyst · Berenberg. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, good evening, guys. For the Hall's acquisition, I was just curious how did that come about? Was it a competitive process? And then, is there any development potential in there?

Fred W. Boehler - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Yeah. Thanks for the question, Nate. We're extremely excited about this Hall's acquisition. It actually came to the market four years ago – 4.5 years ago on a competitive bid. It was a family-owned business and one of the family members wanted out, so they took it to auction. And that was an unsuccessful sale at the time. They did not agree and did not want to sell at that time. So they bought one of the brothers out. Fast forward to today, they decided that it was time. I mean, they've been in the business – the three brothers were in the business for 50 years. Their dad started 60 years (00:52:00) ago and they decided that it was time and ran a competitive process. So it was a competitive process.

Nate Crossett - Berenberg Capital Markets LLC

Analyst · Berenberg. Please proceed with your question.

Okay. Can you kind of speak to what the competition is like outside of Lineage just in terms of the depth of potential buyers for cold storage? Because obviously you guys and Lineage have been by far the most acquisitive, and so it'd be interesting (00:52:31) looks like outside of you two?

Fred W. Boehler - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Yeah. So there's actually been just a number of especially infrastructure-focused private equity firms that have been very active in all these deals as well. Yeah, actually I think – yeah, there's a Bloomberg article about (00:52:50) in Canada actually going to one of those types of funds and we know they've been competitive. So we do continue to see interest from significant pockets of capital going after this market. Clearly I think both ourselves and others, when there are probably auction, they're drawing – there is a lot of attention on (00:53:12) and they're drawing broad interest.

Nate Crossett - Berenberg Capital Markets LLC

Analyst · Berenberg. Please proceed with your question.

Okay, that's helpful. And then, I just had one on the Argo transaction. I'm just wondering how it's (00:53:24) into your discussions with multi-national customers, and if you actually are getting increased kind of business flow because of that?

Fred W. Boehler - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Yeah. I mean, that'd be premature for that to happen overnight. But it will definitely happen, right, because there is overlap in those customers, and remember, we're not closed on the deal yet. So we're not able to really dig in and go re-commercialize the business with customers until we close that. So, not going into that depth yet. But we fully expect, as Rob Chambers and his team go out and work with our customers and look at the overlaps and look at the networks. New opportunities are going to occur, not just within the existing infrastructure, but I think what we're excited about is we've been asked a number of times, hey, can you build us a facility in Europe. And we're like, well, we're not there. So we're not going to build an individual facility, standalone facility sitting in Europe. That answer will look very-very different going forward, because now we have people on the ground in Europe that can manage overseas and operate that infrastructure when we determine it makes sense to go ahead and build. So I really see those opportunities and advantages taking hold. But it's not something that will happen day one. That is something that we will kind of transition to as we're having those conversations.

Nate Crossett - Berenberg Capital Markets LLC

Analyst · Berenberg. Please proceed with your question.

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Joshua Dennerlein with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

Joshua Dennerlein - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

Yeah. Hey, Fred, Marc and Scott, hope you're all doing well. I've noticed the Argo and the Hall's Warehousing acquisition both came with a transportation component...

Fred W. Boehler - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Yes.

Joshua Dennerlein - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

Just kind of curious if this is something we should expect to see more of going forward. Is this just something...

Fred W. Boehler - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Sure.

Joshua Dennerlein - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

...you guys want to grow into. Yeah, any color there would be great.

Fred W. Boehler - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Sure. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. We do not set out to go buy transportation companies, right. But what you find with some of the larger and certainly the more mature operators is, they offer that transportation component as another value-added service to their offering. And they do it for the same reason that we have transportation within our portfolio. It helps to create stickiness within those customers, especially small customers where you're doing consolidation like programs. And Hall's actually started off as a transportation company. That's what their dad (00:56:19) started the operation off as, and then they got into the warehousing and then really got out of dedicated transportation and then solely focused on consolidation programs, which is exactly what we want to do with transportation, because again it creates stickiness for our customers for our warehouse business. So, that one was easy. Agro, obviously, with it being as large as it is, it has miscellaneous transportation programs that were attached to some of the enterprises that they had previously brought into the family. We'll (00:56:58) those as we go through and find ways to make sure that we're keeping it to our core, if you will. And that's all part of our integration programs as we go forward. But, again, lots of these guys, even a single warehouse operator might have a couple of tractor trailers that they're running shuttle programs for their customers or something like that. So, none of them are pure – well, I shouldn't say none of them, but a lot of these enterprises are not pure, clean just warehouse and types of operators.

Joshua Dennerlein - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

Okay. And thanks for that color. Appreciate it. And then just maybe one, you did the private placement in euros. Just curious how we should think about your debt strategy going forward, is this something we'll see more of, like you guys tapping the European (00:57:50) cost of capital from that.

Fred W. Boehler - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Yes. Look, I think it was the right place to raise that capital especially when you think about the $1.7 billion Agro acquisition and the strong presence in Europe and the strong cash flow that the European business will generate. So obviously we're sizing – we sized the offering to where it makes sense to give us the best natural hedge to lower our overall cost of capital as you can see from the source and used I laid out. We are going to use part of the proceeds to repay US dollar term loan. And so ultimately we're ending up better allocating, better matching in terms of naturally hedging the portfolio in terms of where the dollars going forward will be generated from, just all the way through the debt component now, the capital structure. And then obviously we're able to do so where it actually lowers our overall cost of capital too based on the rates available in the European market as opposed to the US market.

Marc Smernoff - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

(00:58:59)

Fred W. Boehler - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

And (00:59:02) we increased our overall duration on our real estate debt by roughly 2 years to 10 years. So...

Joshua Dennerlein - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

Great. Thanks, guys. (00:59:11).

Fred W. Boehler - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

(00:59:14).

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Mike Mueller with JPMorgan. Please proceed.

Michael W. Mueller - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please proceed.

Yeah. Hi. Couple of question. I guess first on the Hall's acquisition. How does that portfolio compare to yours say age wise out of curiosity?

Fred W. Boehler - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

It's maybe a couple of years, two years younger than our average age. So it's really driven – most of their infrastructure is new. I think one of the assets is slightly older, but, yeah, it still is absolutely doing the job. So – but their infrastructure is in great shape.

Michael W. Mueller - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please proceed.

Got it. And then, I guess, we were talking about Agro (00:59:57) regulatory approvals. What are some situations where you wouldn't get granted, not necessarily for this transaction, but just in general as you're going around the globe? I mean, what would be a situation where you'd run into a problem where you wouldn't get an approval?

Fred W. Boehler - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Well, look, in this situation there's two countries that we had to get approval from. One was Austria, which is kind of ironic because we don't have any competitive landscape there. So we don't expect that to be an issue at all. And then there's Australia where we do have competitive landscape, we do have operations. So that just needs to run through its normal course. Look, absolute worst case if something happens, I'm sure we'll figure out a way to split off that single asset to not hold off the rest of the deal.

Marc Smernoff - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

We're not anticipating any trust concerns on this transaction.

Fred W. Boehler - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

So yeah, just got to go through the process.

Michael W. Mueller - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please proceed.

Got it. Okay. That was it. Thank you.

Fred W. Boehler - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Yeah. Thanks, Mike.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Eric Frankel with Green Street Advisors. Please proceed.

Eric Frankel - Green Street Advisors

Analyst · Green Street Advisors. Please proceed.

Thank you very much. I'm just curious, obviously, this is such a unique year and your mix of retail and food services sales is quite lopsided, but we've kind of observed that overall food demand for dry warehouse (01:01:22). So I was wondering if you could speak to that trend and maybe if there's some upside relative to kind of what's happening with supply chains in the future?

Fred W. Boehler - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Yeah, I think when you look at the dry food grocery warehouse, I think unfortunately that also contains some of the consumables like toilet paper and gel and napkins and those types of things. And I think that that takes up a lot of cubic feet. And I think that's probably the bigger push versus canned foods, dry box cereals and that type of thing. So I think it's overall general it gets labeled as food but anything that would go through your grocery store, general merchandise and food is probably what's driving that up a little bit.

Eric Frankel - Green Street Advisors

Analyst · Green Street Advisors. Please proceed.

Got you. Got you. And your retail food customers, sorry to kind of get into e-commerce further, but – (01:02:26) question regarding that subject, but obviously grocery – online grocery sales (01:02:32) a lot. I understand that consumption is consumption and that's growing at a steady pace. But can you speak to how you think your retail customers are kind of are adjusting to online grocery this year?

Fred W. Boehler - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Yeah. No, look, I think hats off and please pay your respects to your local grocery store. They've done an incredible job. I mean, think about it, they had a tidal wave of people come in and empty out those grocery stores and have to contend with customers coming in there and not being able to find the right sized ketchup that they want. So our grocery workers out there deserve a tremendous round of applause for what they've been able to do in those operations. You couple that bliss with e-commerce and the changing way that they're doing business. And they've done an incredible job. I mean, you go to your local grocery store and you see what they've done and a lot of other retailers have done this too, like Best Buy, for example, where they have parking spaces out in the parking lot that you pull into and you dial a number and you tell them what space you're in and they bring your product to your door. Again, remember, that's all registered as e-commerce. The vast majority of e-commerce growth is being driven through your local grocery store by Instacart or customer pickup. So that's where all the e-commerce is coming from. It's not like all these (01:04:07) go back ways, are all of a sudden coming up and taking huge market share. I mean, I'm sure FreshDirect in New York is doing a great job. But that's where all your e-commerce is coming from. And I think they're doing a phenomenal job handling it. All of that volume is obviously coming through our retail distribution centers to get to those stores for fulfillment. And you asked what they're doing. Aside from some of the small changes that I just mentioned that they're doing at your local store, they're also investing a lot of capital in the back room just to put automation in. So, the vast majority of retailers out there are investing in that automation that takes the 10,000 fastest volume, highest volume skews in the stores and put them in the back room so that they can automate the selection of those goods for those customer pickup orders or a store delivery orders. So, they're ramping that ahead and we're hearing nothing but great things from that automation that's going in at various retailers.

Eric Frankel - Green Street Advisors

Analyst · Green Street Advisors. Please proceed.

Got you. Got you. Switching gear, if you could touch upon the Agro Merchants deal? Can you discuss just a little bit more detail your growth plans there and what type of values or yield do you think you could get on bolt-on acquisitions or development projects and whether the absolute yields are any different than (01:05:39)?

Fred W. Boehler - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Yeah. We expect development and M&A yields to be commensurate with the development and M&A yields that we get out of our core business. So we don't expect that to really change a whole lot. The added juice obviously that we get from Agro is it gives us access like I was mentioning earlier to be able to do those development projects in Europe because without their presence, before that was not a market that we would go out and develop in developing a single site. So it gives us access to do that development. We expect those yields to be very-very similar. From an M&A perspective kind of same thing, I wouldn't go over there and just buy a one-store operator or a two-store operator. We wanted to get something of substance to create that base and then it will be a lot easier for us to bolt-in and do those tuck-in acquisitions. And again, very, very fragmented industry over there. The top 10 players in Europe only represent about 20% of the market share. Again, comparing that to the US where the top 10 represent about 60%. So, very fragmented market. That will open it up to additional M&A, and again, we expect to see similar yields. And then the other value prop obviously with Agro is the one that we disclosed in talking about where we would grow that yield through the implementation of the Americold Operating System and our commercialization efforts. So through those integration efforts, over the course of five years, we'll get SG&A benefits, we'll get operating benefits, and we'll get commercial benefits, which will increase that yield. So...

Eric Frankel - Green Street Advisors

Analyst · Green Street Advisors. Please proceed.

Got it. Appreciate the color. One final quick question, maybe for Marc. So, (01:07:35) healthcare cost, do you foresee – I know you don't want to dig too much into 2021 guidance, but do you foresee any expense issues going into next year? I think everybody's healthcare costs are probably going up due to COVID and all the insurance company related issues relate to that? So do you see that affecting expenses next year?

Marc Smernoff - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

No. If you think about it, we see overall (01:08:07) healthcare costs. And obviously, we're not immune to that, but obviously we have a lot of initiatives in place to diversifying the overall pool. We think just like our healthcare costs are embedded in the same-store results that Fred talked about earlier, we're really overcoming that in the ordinary course. So we don't anticipate any headwind from healthcare (01:08:28).

Eric Frankel - Green Street Advisors

Analyst · Green Street Advisors. Please proceed.

I think the other thing to keep in mind too is, remember, we're an activity based costing house. So as our cost structure goes up, that gets embedded into our pricing models and pass-through. So our exposure is not zero, but it's certainly mitigated by the fact that we have these sophisticated pricing models that take all of our cost elements into play (01:08:53).

Eric Frankel - Green Street Advisors

Analyst · Green Street Advisors. Please proceed.

Got you. Thank you for taking my questions.

Marc Smernoff - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Sure.

Fred W. Boehler - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. At this time, I would like to turn the call back over to Mr. Fred Boehler for closing comments.

Fred W. Boehler - Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

Management

Great. Thanks. Thanks, everyone for joining us tonight. I know it was a long call. A lot of activity that obviously happened in the quarter and post close, so we're very excited about all the activities we're striking on, we're really delivering on all three of our growth strategies, organic growth, in terms of delivering the same-store, continuing to mature our operations with the Americold Operating System and our commercialization efforts, continuing to bring very, very attractive development opportunities both dedicated operations for strategic customers as well as more market-driven types of deals that take care of a lot of different customers. And then certainly on the acquisition front, we've really stayed true to what we have said that we're going to do. We're going to buy quality companies that we can merge in to our way of doing business. We are one company and we will continue to focus on that integrated model and deliver upon it. So, just very excited about what we were able to execute on all three of those platforms in this last quarter. Very proud of what the team has accomplished. And, again, thank you all for your continued support. So, good night to everyone.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time and thank you for your participation and have a good day.