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spk00: Greetings and welcome to the AmeriCold Realty Trust third quarter 2022 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Scott Henderson. Please go ahead.
spk11: Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us today for AmeriCold Realty Trust third quarter 2022 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 investor relations section on our website at www.americold.com. This afternoon's conference call is hosted by AmeriCold's Chief Executive Officer, George Chappell, Chief Commercial Officer, Rob Chambers, and Chief Financial Officer, Mark Smirnoff. Management will make some prepared comments, after which we will open up the call to your questions. On today's call, management's prepared remarks may contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements address matters that are subject to risks and uncertainties and 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. 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, including Corrie Bada and AFFO. Full definitions of these non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations to the comparable GAAP financial measures are contained in the supplemental information package available on the company's website. Now, I will turn the call over to George.
spk02: Thank you, Scott, and welcome to our third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. This afternoon, I will provide an update on our four near-term priorities and summarize our financial and operating results. I will then comment on our outlook for the remainder of the year. Rob will provide an update on our recent customer initiatives, and Mark will provide an update on our investment and capital markets activity, along with a detailed walkthrough of our guidance for the remainder of the year. Turning to our four near-term priorities. First, we continue to demonstrate we can reprice our warehouse business to offset inflationary pressures in our cost structure, and protect margin dollars. For the third quarter, rent and storage revenue per economic occupied pallet in our same store on a constant currency basis increased by 8.1% versus the prior year's quarter. Service revenue for throughput pallet increased by 7.7%. As a reminder, some of these price increases were implemented during the third quarter, meaning the full run rate will not be seen until fourth quarter results. During the third quarter, the majority of the inflationary pressures were in power costs, property taxes, and warehouse supplies costs. We have implemented additional targeted pricing and power surcharge initiatives to address this known inflation, and we will exit the fourth quarter at a run rate covering all known inflation incurred through the third quarter. Moving through the fourth quarter, we expect the majority of the inflationary pressures to continue to be primarily in power costs, particularly in our international markets and in warehouse supplies costs. As such, we will continue to revisit our pricing and power surcharge initiatives. Please note that at this time and based on current market conditions, we do not anticipate significant moves in our labor costs going forward. As a result of our pricing initiatives, We are pleased to see progress in the recovery of our global same-store warehouse NOI margin, which for the quarter was 29.4%. This was an increase of 125 basis points, driven by an improvement in services NOI margin, which increased 116 basis points from the prior year on a constant currency basis. Second, we are focused on differentiating our platform by providing best-in-class customer service. We are beginning to see a positive shift in our customer service levels with the increase in our perm to temp ratio, which I will discuss momentarily. As we expected, our service levels are improving as our newer associates get more familiar with the AmeriCold operating system and our workforce ratio improves. We expect this trend to continue with our efforts to reduce turnover. I firmly believe that servicing our customers at best-in-class levels will ultimately lead to increased market share and has meaningfully contributed to our recent increase in occupancy. Third, we continue to focus on labor management with the goal of optimizing our mix of permanent and temporary associates in our facilities while also reducing our turnover rate. As we have mentioned in previous calls, temporary associates cost more per labor hour and are less productive than permanent AmeriCold associates. Higher turnover is also costly and drives inefficiencies in our business. During the third quarter, we are very pleased to have achieved a perm to temp hours ratio of 72-28. This is 10 points higher than our third quarter 2021 levels and slightly better than our pre-COVID levels of 70-30. We are making progress toward our longer-term goal of achieving a consistent 80-20 ratio. Our turnover rate is still significantly elevated when compared to both last year and pre-COVID levels. We ended September this year at an annualized turnover trend approximately 21 percentage points higher than that of September 2021. Compared to 2019, a pre-COVID year, we were approximately 33 percentage points higher. A stable, well-trained workforce is critical to operating efficiently and returning to pre-COVID margins in our warehouse services business. Our final focus area is ensuring that our development projects are delivered on time and on budget and then deliver the underwritten returns. This quarter, we are pleased to announce that we have completed our projects in Dublin, Ireland and Barcelona, Spain, and we are currently inbounding our customers' products into both of these facilities. We expect these projects to stabilize during the timeframes and at the return levels disclosed. Turning to our third quarter results, AFFO per share was 29 cents, an increase of 7.4% compared to prior year. This performance was principally driven by our global warehouse same-store pool, which generated total revenue growth of 9.6% and NOI growth of 14.4%, both on a constant currency basis. This same store revenue and NOI growth was a result of our pricing initiatives combined with a 437 basis point increase in economic occupancy over the third quarter 2021, partially offset by declining throughput volumes of 1.3%. On the cost side, the majority of inflation continues to be in our power and warehouse supplies costs. In certain markets, we have also seen larger increases in property taxes. Additionally, while our associate turnover ratio remains significantly elevated, which negatively impacts our productivity and efficiency, we did see improvement in our same-store warehouse services NOI margin, primarily driven by our pricing initiatives. On the whole, in the same-store pool, we were able to drive NOI growth higher through a combination of, first, higher pricing across our warehouse business to overcome increasing costs, and second, increased economic occupancy, which is very accretive to our bottom line. Now let me comment on a specific customer agreement within our third-party managed segment, which, as a reminder, is a segment that generates approximately 2% of AmeriCorps' total company NOI. After a strategic review of this part of our business, we have made the decision to exit a relationship with a national retailer for whom we manage four facilities, and have no ownership in the land, buildings, equipment, or any other assets. This management agreement generates approximately 1% of AmeriCold's total company NOI. The operations for this retailer consume a vast amount of time and energy for little economic benefit. Of AmeriCold's 16,000 plus associates, approximately 2,500, or 16% of our company's associate base, is dedicated to this retailer's business. To put this in context, 16% of our associates support 1% of our total company NOI. On or around December 1st, we are ending our management agreement with this retailer and are in the process of transitioning the business and associates to new third-party service providers. This will enable us to focus our attention on labor management in our core warehouse business, where we own, operate, and utilize our assets to create value for our customers and shareholders, and where we generate approximately 92% of AmeriCold's total company NOI. On an annual basis, this agreement with this retailer contributes approximately $300 million in revenue and $8 million in NOI to AmeriCold. This equates to a 2.7% NOI margin. the lowest margin business we have at our company, and in fact, the total company NOI margin increases by 235 basis points when we exit this business. This $8 million in annual NOI translates to approximately 3 cents per share in annual AFFO. We do not expect any material impact in this fiscal year. The remaining businesses in the managed segment adds value to our company and shareholders, and we have no plans at this time to exit what remains. As a result of the progress we have made in our operations, combined with a recovering global food supply chain, we are increasing our full year 2022 AFFO per share guidance to the range of $1.08 to $1.12. Mark will provide commentary around the individual components. Despite no shortage of macro headwinds, high inflation, challenging labor market, continued disruption in the global supply chain, and increasing base interest rates, to name a few, we are very pleased with our progress year to date and expect continued operational improvement for the rest of the year. We are deeply committed to providing best-in-class customer service, and the results show up in our incremental occupancy improvement throughout the year. We continue to be laser-focused on our pricing initiatives to cover known inflation. As it relates to our cost structure, We have added tighter controls, created more robust processes, and strengthened our team to ensure that we have an accurate, timely view of each cost component. In short, we are a better operating company today than we were one year ago. Lastly, before I hand it over to Rob, let me comment on our ESG initiatives, which is a key priority for us here at AmeriCorps. I am happy to report we recently received our 2022 Gresby score of 75, which is an improvement of 12 points versus last year's score. Additionally, against our peer set, we also improved our rank to second versus third last year. We are very pleased with this outcome and look forward to continued progress in our ESG journey. One example of this continued progress is our recently completed refinance of our senior unsecured credit facilities. In this refinance, we incorporated a sustainability-linked pricing component tied to our annual Gretzky rating. With that, I will turn it over to Rob.
spk03: Thank you, George. For the third quarter, we are pleased to report total company revenue and NOI growth of 7% and 16% respectively, driven by our warehouse business. We are seeing positive results in the top-line fundamentals in our warehouse business across both food manufacturers and retailers. These improved fundamentals combined with an intense focus on customer service are leading to an enhanced win rate on our new business development opportunities and driving higher occupancy. I cannot underscore enough the importance of our customer service initiatives, which are helping drive our incremental occupancy gains. As we have discussed on previous calls, we will continue our pricing initiatives within our global warehouse business in order to address known cost increases from inflation. We have taken multiple pricing actions over the past 12 plus months, and these actions are protecting our margin dollars. As George mentioned, we successfully exited the third quarter with price increases in place in order to cover known inflation from the second quarter. Some of these increases were implemented during the third quarter, meaning the full run rate will not be seen until fourth quarter results. Conversations with our customers continue to be productive around our pricing initiatives. We are being very targeted and data-driven in our approach. As a result, we continue to demonstrate AmeriCold's ability to protect margin dollars through pricing initiatives to offset inflationary pressures. As we have discussed previously, the path to achieving pre-COVID same-store NOI margin levels consists of the following five prerequisites. First, we need to continue our pricing initiatives to offset inflation. Second, we need to continue to integrate and fully commercialize recently acquired facilities. Third, we must achieve and stabilize the proper mix of perm to temp hours ratio and reduce our turnover to normalized levels. Fourth, we need occupancy to continue to recover and stabilize at pre-COVID levels. And finally, we need throughput volume to recover. We are at various stages of progress across these five prerequisites and are working diligently to improve in these areas. On to our commercialization efforts. At quarter end, within our global warehouse segment, rent and storage revenue from fixed commitment contracts increased on an absolute dollar basis to $396 million compared to $346 million at the end of the third quarter of 2021. On a combined pro forma basis, we derived 40.9% of rent and storage revenue from fixed commitment storage contracts. Enhanced commercialization, which includes our fixed commitment initiatives, is a critical component of our strategy. We look forward to continuing to improve this metric. Within our global warehouse segment, we had no material changes to the composition of our top 25 customers, who account for approximately 48% of our global warehouse revenue on a pro forma basis. Additionally, our churn rate remained low at approximately 3.2% of total warehouse revenues, consistent with historical churn rates. Turning to development. We are very pleased to announce that we recently opened two new facilities, one in Dublin, Ireland, and one in Barcelona, Spain. The Dublin facility is a greenfield build that is 6.3 million cubic feet and 20,000 pallet positions. This building brings much needed capacity to a key market for AmeriCold and was designed with features and technology to support the demand in this market including blast freezing, mobile racking, and conveyor systems. The facility is approximately 50% pre-sold and is expected to ramp to full occupancy by the second half of next year, supporting customers in our retail and dairy sectors. Our Barcelona facility is an expansion project on land already owned by AmeriCold that adds 3.3 million cubic feet and 12,000 pallet positions into a critical distribution market. This expansion is conventional in nature and will offer storage capacity across multiple temperature zones. This expansion is part of a campus optimization project that also included adding glass capacity to our existing Barcelona site to further support growth in the protein market. We look forward to multiple development deliveries in the coming quarters as outlined in our financial supplement. It should be noted, however, that we continue to experience disruption within the global supply chain as it relates to automation components and other parts. Please note that in addition to these disruptions, the elevated cost of construction is pressuring the business case for potential new development starts. Despite these challenges, AmeriCold is committed to adding best-in-class capacity around the globe to support our customers' growth, and our pipeline for new potential projects remains robust. Lastly, I want to thank all of our AmeriCorps associates who are working hard every day during this quarter, our busiest time of the year, to ensure that we are playing our part in getting food through the supply chain and available for families as we gather for the holiday season. We are encouraged by the growth we've experienced in our occupancy across our portfolio, and it is a direct reflection of the great work of our associates, the innovation of our solutions, and the criticality of our infrastructure. We thank our customers for their partnership and the opportunity to fulfill our mission of helping our customers feed the world. Now I'll turn it over to Mark.
spk04: Thank you, Rob. Today I will discuss our investment and capital markets activity and then turn to full year guidance. Regarding our recent investment activity, we closed on our Australian acquisition for approximately $25 million Australian dollars on July 1st and closed on our New Zealand lease buyout and renovation for approximately 18 million New Zealand dollars on August 1st. Both of these investments were funded using a combination of cash and our multi-currency revolver. Additionally, in September, as planned, we exited a lease building in Brisbane, Australia that came with our acquisition of Lago Cold Store. At the time of the acquisition, we plan to consolidate business from the lease facility into our owned infrastructure. Now, turning to our capital markets activity. During the quarter, we closed on the upsize and extension of our new $2 billion sustainability-linked senior unsecured credit facilities. We subsequently entered into interest rate swaps to fix a significant portion of the base rates for these facilities. As part of this refinancing, we raised an unsecured term loan that we funded on November 1st to pay off 264 million of secured CMBS debt. These transactions enabled us to increase our liquidity by $200 million by upsizing our U.S. dollar term loan, extend our overall debt duration with no real estate debt maturities until 2026, Pay off our CMBS debt, reducing the corresponding interest rate from a fixed 5.7% rate to a fixed 4.1% rate and transitioning our capital structure to almost all unsecured debt. Reduce our floating rate debt exposure from 30% of total debt at the end of the second quarter of 2022 to 20% at the end of the third quarter of 2022. and incorporate an ESG component, which results in a one basis point interest rate reduction if our Gresby score improves by 5% or more next year. At quarter end, total debt outstanding was $3.2 billion. We had total liquidity of $700 million, consisting of cash on hand and revolver availability. Our net debt to pro forma Corey Vidal was approximately 6.5 times. At this point, we have invested approximately $480 million on development projects in process, which reflects almost one turn of leverage. We have approximately $111 million remaining to invest in announced in-process development projects over the next 15 months. Now let me discuss our outlook for the remainder of 2022. As George mentioned, we are increasing our guidance for full year 2022 AFFO per share to be in the range of $1.08 to $1.12. Please see page 44 of the IR supplemental for the individual components. At this point, I will comment on the primary building block to get to AFFO per share and provide a bridge for each as it relates to the full year. Please note the comparisons described represent comparisons to corresponding prior year results. For the full year, we are now expecting constant currency revenue growth in the same store to be in the range of 7.5% to 8%. Year-to-date through the third quarter, we are at 7.9% growth. Let me provide more detail around the key revenue components. For occupancy and throughput volumes. For the full year, we expect economic occupancy to increase by approximately 275 to 300 basis points. Year-to-date, it increased by 249 basis points. This implies economic occupancy increases in the fourth quarter by approximately 350 to 450 basis points as we expect food manufacturers to continue to ramp up production. For the full year, we expect throughput volumes to decrease by 1.3 to 1.5%. Year-to-date, they decrease by 1.1%. This implies throughput volume decreases in the fourth quarter by approximately 1.9 to 2.7%. For pricing, for the full year, we expect constant currency rent and storage revenue for economic occupied pallet growth in the low sevens to mid sevens percent. Year to date, it increased by 6.8%. This implies growth in the fourth quarter to be in the low eights to mid eights percent as we continue are pricing and power surcharge initiatives to cover known inflation, which is being driven primarily by power costs within the rent and storage business of our same store. For the full year, we expect constant currency service revenue for throughput pallet growth in the high sixes to low sevens percent. Year-to-date, it increased by 7.3%. This implies growth in the fourth quarter to be in the high fours to low sixes percent. As you may recall, Last year in the fourth quarter of 2021, we started taking additional pricing in our services business due to inflationary pressures, mostly in labor costs. This creates a tougher year-over-year comp in the fourth quarter for our services revenue pricing metrics. As George mentioned earlier, while we are not seeing significant moves in our labor costs at this time, we continue to see inflationary pressures in warehouse supplies costs. We continue to implement our pricing initiatives accordingly. For the full year, we are now expecting same-store constant currency NOI growth to be in the range of 6% to 7%. Year-to-date, we are at 4.4% growth. This implies growth in the fourth quarter to be in the range of low double-digit percent to mid-teens percent. This implies fourth-quarter increases being driven by our expectation of continued increases in pricing and occupancy. Onto other line items that I will be describing in actual dollars, not on a constant currency basis. Turning to the non-same store pool. At this time, we are pushing back the completion date by one quarter to the first quarter 2023 of our customer dedicated automated site in Pennsylvania. The facility is complete and we have received a certificate of occupancy. However, in consultation with our customer, Given the high level of volume this particular customer experiences during the holiday season, we felt it was prudent to take this approach. We did not want to begin the onboarding process during this crucial time. We look forward to starting the process with this customer early next year. Please note, while this does impact the performance of our non-same store pool in the fourth quarter, we still expect this project to ramp and stabilize during the time frame and at the return level disclosed. For the full year, we expect the non-same store pool to generate approximately $34 to $38 million of NOI, which is net of approximately $14 million of startup costs related to our development projects. Year-to-date, these startup costs have been approximately $8.5 million. The startup cost number has increased primarily due to the change in the completion date for this Pennsylvania project. Turning to our managed and transportation segments NOI. For the full year, we expect these segments combined to generate approximately $57 to $60 million. Year to date, these segments combined have generated $44 million of NOI. This range incorporates the exit of the managed business of the national retailers for facilities that George covered earlier. Turning to our core SG&A expense, adding back stock compensation expense to our total SG&A expense arrives at what we call a core SG&A expense, which is what truly impacts AFFO. For the full year, we expect core SG&A expense to be approximately $200 to $204 million. Year to date, it was $149 million. Turning to interest expense. For the full year, we expect interest expense to be approximately $114 to $115 million. Year-to-date interest expense was $83 million. This range implies interest expense of approximately $31 to $32 million for the fourth quarter. The slight increase versus $30 million in the third quarter of 2022 is being driven by the increase in base rates for our credit facilities, partially offset by the actions we took during the quarter to convert floating rate debt to fixed and paying off CMBS debt with less expensive fixed-rate unsecured term loan debt. Onto our cash tax expense, which is the number that impacts AFFO. For the full year, we expect this expense to be approximately $4 to $6 million. Year to date, it was $3 million. As a reminder, most of the corporate income taxes we pay at AmeriCold are from our international operations. Turning to our maintenance CapEx, for the full year, we expect the investment to be approximately $84 to $86 million. Year to date, it was $59 million. This implies maintenance capital expenditures of approximately 25 to 27 million in the fourth quarter. Please note this implies a meaningfully higher number in the fourth quarter of 2022 versus last year's fourth quarter, which was 21 million. At the AFFO per share level, year to date, our AFFO per share was negatively impacted by approximately one cent, and for the third quarter, approximately a quarter of a cent. due to the impact of unfavorable foreign currency exchange rates. Broadly speaking, as our guidance page of the IR Supplemental shows, we expect continued currency translation headwinds due to the strengthening of the U.S. dollar for the remainder of the year. Turning to the full-year ASFO per share. For the full year, we are increasing our ASFO per share guidance range to $1.08 to $1.12. We have provided detail around the building blocks. But let me comment on this implied fourth quarter range as it relates to fourth quarter 2021 ASFO per share of 31 cents, which is a challenging comp due to the low NOI line items, even though we are increasing full year 2022 guidance. Comparing the implied fourth quarter ASFO per share range to fourth quarter 2021, please note the following. Operating performance is expected to be up meaningfully at the total company NOI level for the fourth quarter 2022 versus last year's fourth quarter. However, core SG&A, interest, cash taxes, and maintenance capital expenditures are all expected to be higher, which are offsetting this operating performance improvement and weighing on AFFO per share. Additionally, FX headwinds are weighing on AFFO per share in this comparison. Please keep in mind that our guidance does not include the impact of acquisitions, dispositions, or capital markets activity beyond which has been previously announced. Lastly, please refer to our IR supplemental for detail on the additional assumptions embedded in this guidance. Now let me turn the call back to George for some closing remarks.
spk02: Thanks, Mark. Overall, I'm very pleased with our performance this quarter and our path forward. We continue to enhance our internal capabilities around controlling what we can control. We have made good progress on our four near-term priorities. Our core same-store pool is recovering nicely as we see economic occupancy meaningfully improve, and we continue to reprice our business to offset known inflation. Within the same-store pool, we can expect to see service NOI margins continue to improve as we move towards our optimal perm-to-temp ratio and stabilize our turnover rate. I would like to thank the AmeriCold team for their hard work and contributions to our performance. These positive improvements are a result of the combined efforts of all of our associates around the world and I'm extremely proud of all they've accomplished so far this year. Thank you again for joining us today and we will now open the call for your questions.
spk00: Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. We ask that you limit your questions to one and one follow-up. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Your first question comes from Samir Kanaal with Evercore. Please go ahead.
spk07: Yeah, good afternoon, everybody. George, can you maybe comment on how we should think about throughput volumes? You know, I mean, considering that next year probably will have sort of an economic slowdown. I know you're down sort of 1.3% in the quarter, you said, but how do you, how should we think about that? So that volume level, you know, if sort of 23 and 24 remains challenged from an economic perspective?
spk02: Well, I think it will remain challenged. If I if I listen to our retail customers, they're citing smaller basket sizes and and less foot traffic through the store, so I think it will remain down. As you know, there is some fixed costs in there, so that's why when it is down we can successfully take out the variable cost, but we can't really deal with the fixed costs which which isn't which impacts us to a degree, but I don't expect it to improve and I don't expect that expected to materially decline.
spk07: Okay, and I guess my second question is on labor turnover remaining, you know, elevated. Maybe talk generally about sort of the initiatives you're sort of implementing at AmeriCold and, you know, to sort of retain the workers.
spk02: Yeah, well, we're making progress. I mean, we added about 150 permanent positions in Q3. So, if you recall, we quoted that we were down about 2,000 open positions at the start of the year. We've reduced that to about 1,500 by the middle of the year, and now we're down around 1,400. We've got a ton of different activities in terms of increased recruitment and buddy systems, compensation based on performance. You know, we've got it surrounded as best we can. It's just a very challenging market and very difficult to retain people. Easier to attract people than it was in the past, much more difficult to retain them.
spk00: Next question comes from Michael Cairo with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
spk13: Yeah, thanks. George, I kind of wanted to talk about how operating results today compared to pre-COVID levels. It looks like economic occupancy in the third quarter is over 80%. I mean, that's well above where it was pre-COVID. So, I mean, is it fair to say that occupancy is all the way back to where it was pre-COVID?
spk02: I don't think it's well above. I think it's, if I remember correctly, just a little short. I think we're at 81 versus 80. But to your point, it's come back very well in the U.S. It never really changed in Europe, to be honest. I mean, we've held our occupancy there very well, and we've had a little bit of change in Australia and New Zealand. But I would say it's 95% of the way back, and the challenge for us now is to operate efficiently with brand-new associates.
spk03: And one thing, Mike, this is Rob, that I would add is Our fixed commitments have increased pretty significantly since even pre-COVID, and that's definitely helping us even in an environment where there's still a gap between economic and physical occupancy.
spk13: Okay. And then what is the difference in, I guess, I know margins are lower today just given the issues that you're having with labor and all these inflationary costs. I mean, I guess how much more, I guess you said this in your preparing remarks, but how much more can rates are going to go on the run rate basis between what you reported in the third quarter and what you're going to realize in the fourth quarter? And then how far are you away from like pre-COVID margins based off of that?
spk02: I'll take the first one. I would expect that there's typically one or 200 basis points of pricing that does not impact the quarter we're in and kind of rolls into the – The next quarter, I think in the last quarter, we said we were at 7% and expected it to be closer to 8 on a run rate basis. So there's a basis point to two in there when we price during a quarter. So that's the first half. We're still, I would say, significantly off historic margins in the handling business. And that gets back to the retention, the turnover, the fact that we have so many associates new to their job. At one point, we calculated close to 40% of our associates were in the job less than 12 months. That's not unusual in the industry right now. And, you know, until they become well-trained and skilled at what they're doing, we're going to have efficiency issues. So until we get that under control, retention gets back to pre-COVID levels, then I think we get back to margins that are pre-COVID levels.
spk00: Next question comes from Dave Rogers with Baird. Please go ahead.
spk05: Yeah, good evening. George, I wanted to follow up maybe on what you were just touching on. I think you said in your prepared comments, no more pressure on labor costs. And I don't know if that was just net of your pass-throughs or you think you've actually solved kind of the gross organization of that problem. And then you had said, I think previously, you had anticipated kind of stabilization of the business from a top line second half of 23 and six months later getting to that margin recovery. Do you move that up today? Do you feel like you're just much closer to full stabilization today?
spk02: Well, I feel like auction fee is recovering nicely, obviously. Dave, I still think we've got a real challenge on labor. I mean, the retention... you know, the loss at 77% of people. So seven out of 10 people don't stay with us long enough to become productive. We'll never be efficient with those numbers. Those retention numbers have to get better and they have to get to pre-COVID levels before we can get our services margins to pre-COVID levels. So I'd say that that's the challenge. And at the rate we're going, we certainly will not achieve the retention rates we need this year and probably will struggle next year to get it all the way back to pre-COVID levels.
spk05: So top line coming back faster, maybe margin coming back a little slower, net-net maybe equal to where you were last quarter, a little better?
spk02: I think that's a fair way to say it. Top line coming back faster, driven by price, right, mostly, and occupancy, and margins coming back slower due to the drag in the services business with labor.
spk05: That's helpful. And then just as a follow-up maybe on Europe, I wanted to ask about your ability to kind of pass through the utility costs there. Clearly has been a concern and an overhang. Are there any differences between what you're experiencing in Europe, maybe from a cost pass-through perspective versus the U.S.?
spk02: Not from a cost pass-through perspective. We can price surcharge in Europe just as we did in the U.S., and we can pass through the labor costs just as we did in the U.S., It's just that the power increases came very fast in big percentages, right? We've got markets that have 2x power pricing and 3x power pricing. You know, they're big numbers, and we're passing them along, but the lag is 30 days on that, and you know in our normal pricing it's 60 to 90. So it's just getting the pricing caught up with the inflation and the difference being it's really come on fast in Europe.
spk00: Next question, Mike Mueller with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
spk01: Yeah, hi. Are there any noticeable differences that you're seeing in terms of activity levels coming from, say, retail versus food services?
spk02: We don't really measure the business that way. We measure it more on a site basis. Maybe, Rob, you can comment. I don't know of any velocity differences I would point out between manufacturing and retail. I don't know if you do.
spk03: No, not a lot between those. I mean, certainly we're pleased with some of the recovery that's happened in our food manufacturing business, but I wouldn't say anything to speak of there between food service and retail.
spk17: Thanks.
spk00: Next question, Vince Tabone with Green Street. Please go ahead.
spk14: Hi, good afternoon. How do you think the Kroger-Albertsons merger will impact your business, assuming the deal is completed?
spk02: I don't know that it will. We don't have any business with Kroger at the moment, or shortly we will not. And Albertsons is not a huge customer of ours. So you might want to comment, Rob.
spk03: Yeah, we had, you know, there's a facility that we have that has a long-term agreement in place, fixed commitment with Albertson's Safeway, and I think we feel, you know, very confident that that business will continue. Outside of that, we don't see any real significant impact of that merger on our business.
spk14: Great. That's helpful. Can you just quantify the Albertsons in terms of the percentage of rent or NOI just to help frame it?
spk15: Yeah, I'm almost immaterial.
spk14: Okay, thanks. And then maybe just one more for me. I mean, you mentioned the challenges you're experiencing on the development front. Could you discuss, you know, the current supply landscape for the cold storage industry more broadly in the U.S. and any notable changes in recent months?
spk02: I didn't get the question.
spk14: Vince, can you repeat the question? Oh, sorry about that. My comment question was just on the supply landscape broadly in the U.S. Any notable changes you're seeing in recent months?
spk02: No, I can't point to anything noticeable in our landscape and certainly impacting our business.
spk03: There have been some announcements, but I'll tell you, we haven't seen You know, a lot of those come to fruition, to be honest with you, and there's been no noticeable impact on any of our business as a result of potential new capacity. We quoted our churn rate in our prepared remarks, and it's remained very consistent, so no material impact.
spk16: And obviously, our occupancy is rising, so we feel like we're positioned pretty well, and the landscape really hasn't changed.
spk00: Next question, Keebin Kim with Truett Securities. Please go ahead.
spk06: Thank you. Good evening. So taking a step back and looking at the labor situation that we've gone through for the past couple years, and even before this period, labor has always been a big part of the business, and even like workers' comp issues have come up time and time. Isn't the past two years the kind of biggest case to make for more automation in this business, and how do you think about that, and have you started, have you, what kind of ideas have you come across, maybe thinking outside the box, I'm not sure if partnering with some technology companies might make sense, just curious on your overall thoughts there.
spk02: Well, automation, as you know, when we came out of COVID, automation was what everybody wanted, or our largest customers, I should say, wanted. We constructed several automated facilities, one right here in Atlanta and two coming on next year for a large retailer. And then building supplies and inflation hit, and that's really put a damper on large-scale automated facilities. We priced one recently identical to one of the buildings I just mentioned, and costs were up almost 40%. So that makes the business case tough to pencil out, and it also makes customers nervous about that type of investment in terms of how they get a return on it. So it's slowed down the automation bills pretty significantly. We do have programs to semi-automate conventional facilities. We run those through our supply chain solutions group. We use consultation with customers to demonstrate how we can semi-automate facilities, but there's no substitute for a building that's built specifically to be highly automated. So there are some things we can do on a hybrid basis, but beyond that, it's either conventional or a large-scale automation building that's right now difficult to pencil out.
spk06: Okay. And turn to your development pipeline. You obviously have several projects that are slated to contribute cash flow in the coming year. Can you provide some guidance on that part of the puzzle for 2023? Like, how much NOI contribution should we expect from the development projects that are currently not in the run rate today?
spk04: Yeah, we'll be providing full year guidance as we normally do in February for next year. I think what you can see as detailed in the supplement, there's a number of development starts planned for next year. You know, many of those, especially the larger, more complicated sites that will be coming on as high automated sites, those typically have a ramp period that will span out beyond that first year period. product. So we'll be providing further guidance for the full year on that pool as it relates to our guidance for next year. But I would look to the SUP. We haven't moved off of any of the timing to full stabilization as detailed in the SUP.
spk03: And we're really excited about the three deliveries that we had in the back half of this year, our Dunkirk facility and the two that we announced today with Dublin and Barcelona. Both those facilities are inbounding product as we speak. And so they'll have a nice
spk15: you know, kind of wraparound impact as we go into next year.
spk00: Next question comes from Anthony Powell with Barclays. Please go ahead.
spk12: Hi. Good evening. I want to dig into some of the market share comments you made in the prepared remarks. Who do you gain share from? Is it from your large competitors or from smaller players? And where can market share go, you think, as you continue to improve service levels?
spk03: Yeah, I mean, I think we're seeing that we're winning, you know, more than our fair share of new business development opportunities. I do think some of those come from, you know, smaller competitors as we have the opportunity to, you know, deploy more capital than others. Also, we're seeing customers that may have done some of this business themselves more interested in outsourcing the business to somebody like us. As the environment's gotten more challenging, we're taking advantage of that opportunity as well.
spk12: Got it. So if pre-COVID occupancy was 81% and you're gaining share, where could occupancy kind of top out? Could you go much higher than 81% as you gain market share?
spk04: Look, I think we're focused on getting recovery back to pre-COVID levels, and we are making very good progress, as you saw this quarter, where we saw in our same store overall occupancy improve 437 basis points on the economic basis. But we are still well below. prior commentary you know our manufacturing clients in particular people and even our retailers are very focused on adding some resiliency to their supply chain and efficiency and we think over time that should benefit outlooks around yeah I just want to add also with growing with existing companies as well as they solve their staffing issues and they ramp up their manufacturing capabilities
spk02: We're growing with them as their output increases. So while that's not technically market share, that's not business that we didn't have to win back. Everybody has to win back business in this environment.
spk16: And we've been successful in recapturing what we owned in the past as well as taking what Rob mentioned.
spk00: Next question comes from Bill Crow with Raymond James. Please go ahead.
spk10: Hey, good evening. Thanks. we're a long way away from this, but what happens when we get to disinflation? What happens when energy prices go back down, assuming they do at some point? How quickly do your tenants come back to you and look for rate adjustments?
spk04: Yeah. In particular around power, that's why we use a surcharge mechanism, because it's designed to move up and down. So, it does on the way down.
spk02: So that's a pure pass-through. There's no accretive margin there. It's strictly cost recovery. On the labor inflation side, I don't think anybody expects labor rates to go back to where they were. So those increases would be permanent on the basis that, you know, again, the labor rates are here to stay. We don't view those as transitory at all.
spk10: Do you get more pushback on these increases for certain geographic areas, or is it I mean, I know they have to take it to do business, but is there a different attitude, different geographic locations?
spk03: Yeah, no, because we are really data-driven and targeted in the approach. So this is not like a peanut butter approach where it's the same rate increase across every site or every geography. you know, we're using indices, we're using real data, we're using actual invoice-level detail from our facilities to share with customers, and that allows the conversations to be extraordinarily rational, and, you know, I think it's appreciated that we take that approach versus the peanut butter spread.
spk00: Next question, Craig Mailman with Citi. Please go ahead.
spk08: Thanks. George, I just want to go back to your commentary on the improvement here in less temp labor. I'm just kind of curious, you know, at the time of the call last quarter, clearly this was still a pressure. I mean, is that an end-of-quarter metric, that 10% improvement? Was that average? And how are you guys managing that given the churn that you're having with, I guess, the employee base, even though you're bringing in people faster?
spk02: That's an end-of-quarter metric, Craig. We snap the line at the end of the quarter and we essentially do a tally so we know where we are on a like-for-like basis. We're managing it through a number of programs we've got in place, whether it's buddy systems so that an individual can learn from a peer versus a supervisor or a boss, introducing people to one another, trying to create an environment where where people essentially make friends at work. You know, the data shows that when you like coming to work and you like the people that you work with, you show up more often and you stay with your job. I mean, there are all kinds of techniques. We've got a ton of effort focused on it in our human resource group and in our ops group. It's just a very challenging environment. I think people like the pay rates and they like the benefits, and that's why we're seeing a lot of people show up at the door. But they underestimate what it takes to work in a cold environment. And I think that's contributing to the churn. I'm less concerned about the churn as long as we keep adding permanent people as we have been, because I view it as a process you have to go through. And that's why I believe that the rates we're paying are appropriate. Now, if people stopped showing up, we'd have to take a different action. But right now, we're getting plenty of applicants. And the churn is just trying to find the few applicants that can work in our environment and then enjoy the paying benefits we have.
spk08: Right. I guess my point is that was a pretty positive statement in the beginning of the call, but it's a point in time. I'm just kind of trying to get a sense of how that trends. Is it sustainable? And, you know, does the third quarter just – were there a couple things that just came together? that drove the beat, then the decision to raise here after, you know, the whole discussion last quarter about not raising, right? There's been just a little bit of a whipsaw in the messaging here almost since June, when it seems like things are getting better, then we pull back, and now it seems like things are getting better again. It's just, it's hard to, you know, calibrate, I guess, as we're heading into 23... to say is this the bottom from an ASFO standpoint, and we're going to bounce off of here, or is this, you know, going to be kind of a slower ramp off the bottom, or have we hit bottom, if that makes sense?
spk02: So I understand the question. Look, if you go back to June, we cited the headwinds that we had, and which were largely unknown in terms of scope and magnitude. We didn't have our refinance done. There were a lot of issues there. At the core, business performed very well in the second quarter. Third quarter got a lot better due to occupancy. That was the main driver. We did make progress on labor. We did make progress on pricing and handling. We didn't make tremendous progress on productivity and handling, and that gets back to the labor issue we just discussed. But I would say the main driver between Q2 and Q3 is occupancy, and we don't expect that to go backwards. So hopefully that helps.
spk08: Just one quick final one. Someone hit on it earlier, just the price increases and the tenant response to that. I mean, if we are going into sort of a weaker environment, what's the pushback outside of the NRE surcharge has been from tenants regarding just the continued kind of adjustment in rate here if they're worried about kind of weakness people have smaller baskets at the grocery stores um their significant food inflation right um are are they girding for a pullback here in terms of head counts and um kind of how does that fit in with you guys continuing to try to kind of keep pushing through the the costs and improve your margins potentially at the expense of those
spk02: Well, I don't think that, you know, if you go back to our script, we said we do not expect labor inflation going forward. We seem to have found the equilibrium on what we need to pay people to show up and at least join us and see if they can work in our environment. So, again, with all the applicants showing up, that tells me that our rates are probably stable and we don't see inflation going further. Our customers understand that we have to pay people to work on their behalf, and they are pretty realistic in terms of what it takes to hire somebody today, both in terms of pay rates and benefits. And as Rob mentioned, when we lay out that data specific to a location and a customer location, they're not contentious discussions that might be around timing when we take the price, or do we take it in one chunk or two chunks, or, you know, those type of discussions we always have. But there's nobody who is come to us and said we just don't believe the numbers or we think you're trying to margin up because this has been all about trying to get back to pre-COVID margins. That's all we've been trying to do through pricing, and customers understand that because they're trying to do the same thing, quite frankly.
spk00: Thank you. This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and thank you for your participation.
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