Lineage (LINE) Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Lineage (LINE -7.35%)
Q3 2024 Earnings Call
Nov 06, 2024, 8:00 a.m. ET

Contents:

• Prepared Remarks
• Questions and Answers
• Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Lineage third-quarter 2024 earnings conference call. [Operator instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Evan Barbosa, vice president of investor relations. You may begin.

R. Evan Barbosa — Vice President, Investor Relations

Thank you. Welcome to Lineage’s discussion of the third-quarter 2024 financial results. Joining me today are Greg Lehmkuhl, Lineage president and chief executive officer; and Rob Crisci, Lineage’s chief financial officer. Our earnings presentation, which includes supplemental financial information, can be found on our investor relations website at [email protected].

Following management’s prepared remarks, we’ll be happy to take your questions. Turning to Slide 2, before we start, I would like to remind everyone that our comments today will include forward-looking statements under federal securities laws. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties as described in our filings with the SEC. These risks could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by our comments. Forward-looking statements in the earnings release that we issued today along with the comments on this call are made only as of today and will not be updated as actual events unfold.

In addition, reference will be made to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Information regarding our use of these measures and a reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP measures can be found in the press release that was issued this morning. Unless otherwise noted, reported figures are rounded and comparisons of the third quarter of 2024 are to the third quarter of 2023. Now, I would like to turn the call over to our president and CEO, Greg Lehmkuhl.

Greg Lehmkuhl — President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Evan. Good morning, and thanks everyone for joining us today. Turning to Slide 3, given this is our first earnings call, I’ll kick off the call with a quick Lineage overview. I’ll then cover our third-quarter highlights and share some updates around capital deployment before turning it over to Rob, who will provide insights into our business segment results and an update on our capital structure.

He will also share our outlook for the remainder of the year. Moving to Slide 4. For those of you getting to know us for the first time, Lineage is the world’s largest tech-enabled, temperature-controlled warehouse REIT, growing from a single warehouse to over 480 with more than 3 billion cubic feet of warehouse capacity and LTM adjusted EBITDA of $1.3 billion. We’re the global leader in our space with high-quality assets in locations most critical to our diversified customer base.

Lineage is also differentiated by our industry leading position in technology, data science and automation, as well as our ability to grow rapidly over the last 16 years, completing over 115 acquisitions. The cold storage industry is fragmented, and we are well positioned to continue to grow organically and through strategic capital deployment. Next on Slide 5, like the great composers of our era, we generate strong durable cash flows driving future growth and attractive long-term returns. For Lineage, the engine of our flywheel is our NOI and our same warehouse growth which creates additional investment capacity.

These strong cash flows, paired with a tax-efficient restructure, help to create an efficient cost of capital which we can deploy in accretive development projects and strategic M&A supporting future NOI growth. Our IPO in July only accelerated this flywheel by reducing our leverage and lowering our cost of capital, positioning us even better for long term compounding. Moving to our third-quarter highlights on Slide 6. I think it’s fair to say that successfully executing the largest IPO of the year and the largest REIT IPO of all time certainly tops our highlight list.

This was an important milestone for our company, and I want to sincerely thank the Lineage team, our board of directors, and our bankers and advisors who worked so hard for so long to make the IPO a tremendous success. I’d also like to thank our existing and new investors who recognize what a well-positioned specialty unicorn that Lineage is, as well as our embedded long-term growth potential. Our IPO proceeds were used to pay down debt, bringing our leverage under five times earning US investment grade ratings at both Fitch and Moody’s. The IPO also positions US for future capital deployment as we’ll speak about more in a moment.

Financially. In Q3, we delivered strong 20% AFFO per share growth, aided by our successful IPO and strong operational execution by the team. Notably, we continue to successfully navigate market headwinds, driven by customer inventory rationalization, high interest rates, and pressures from inflation limiting consumer demand as food prices remain elevated, we have seen limited seasonal lift as occupancy levels remain steady, but below last year. In select markets, we are seeing some competitive pressures as speculative development and new supply has come online.

Despite these industry headwinds, we are well positioned to win given our No. 1 market position, technology investments, long-term relationships with over 13,000 customers, leadership and automation, network effects, our global farm to fork service offerings, and our strong balance sheet. To that end, we believe we remain the acquirer of choice in the industry, ideally poised to take advantage of market opportunities. As demonstrated in the quarter, we controlled the controllables and were able to deliver strong financial performance, further demonstrating our ability to perform well in various economic environments. In the third quarter, we also achieved outstanding safety performance, which is our No.

1 priority in first corporate value. We saw all-time best turn times, the metric that matters most to our customers. I can’t say enough about how Jeff Rivera, our COO, and our entire global operations team are performing for customers. We saw all-time high customer service scores as reflected in our daily customer pulse surveys.

We also saw strong productivity in warehouse margin expansion despite lower volumes. Additionally, we continue to win new business helping to offset the industry headwinds. Thank you, and great job to our global sales and commercial finance teams. We awarded equity or cash IPO bonuses to our team members around the globe, making the majority of our team members owners of the company.

We were proud to be awarded our 100th patent, underscoring our commitment to remaining the industry’s innovation leader as we are a tech and data science driven company. We also declared our first quarterly dividend representing an annualized rate of $2.11 a share. Lastly, we continued to fuel our long-term growth flywheel by deploying over $350 million in growth capital, including our acquisition of ColdPoint Logistics closed November 1st. We remain well positioned to continue to execute on our attractive pipeline of opportunities moving forward.

On Slide 7, we continue to execute on our significant pipeline of greenfield and expansion projects. In September, we successfully opened what we consider to be the most state of the art and innovative cold store in the world in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. The facility has fully automated full-pallet layer pick and case pick capabilities, and is driven by our patented LinOS technology and algorithms. I would like to thank our network optimization, project management, operations, engineering, technology, and our data science team for delivering another complex project on time and on budget.

On the M&A front, we fired up our acquisition engine after pausing for the IPO. Our first post-IPO acquisition was Luik Natie for $66 million, which fits perfectly into our strategy of mission-critical, hard-to-replace assets strategically positioned in port locations. The business is in the Port of Antwerp, which is the second largest port in Europe and supports our sustainability efforts by producing 80% of the energy it consumes with onsite renewables. Moving to Slide 8, we’re excited to announce the largest deal since our IPO, ColdPoint Logistics, which we closed on November 1st for $223 million.

The acquisition expands Lineage’s existing presence in the strategic Kansas City area and enhances our ability to provide an efficient solution for customers, along with protein corridor, with direct access to major U.S. ports via onsite rail. ColdPoint is expected to earn $16 million of EBITDA in 2024, and is well aligned with our investment criteria with an excellent management team, attractive locations, high-quality, young and owned assets, and of course, it’s financially accretive. On behalf of our over 26,000 team members around the world, I’d like to formally welcome the Luik Natie and the ColdPoint teams into the Lineage family.

Now, I’ll turn the call over to our CFO, Rob Crisci, before answering your questions.

Robert Crisci — Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Greg. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for your interest in Lineage. Starting on Slide 9 and looking at our financial results for Q3, our total revenue for the quarter was $1.3 billion, up 0.5% versus prior year. Our adjusted EBITDA increased 5.4% to $333 million with adjusted EBITDA margin increasing 110 basis points to 24.9% as our team continues to execute well with strong labor productivity driving margin growth and a flattish top line environment.

Our adjusted funds from operations or AFFO for the quarter was up 52% to $208 million aided by the substantial interest savings generated by our debt reduction post IPO. Importantly, AFFO per share was $0.90, a 20% increase versus prior year. Overall, as Greg mentioned, a very strong operational quarter. Next slide.

Looking at our global warehousing segment, which represented 87% of our total NOI in the quarter, total segment revenue grew 1.3% and total segment NOI increased by 4.4% to 383 million, delivering warehouse NOI margin of 39.4% and 120-basis-point increase. Same warehouse NOI grew 2.4% on top of last year’s 11% Q3 growth. So nice to see a quarter of same warehouse growth against another challenging comp. Looking at a few of the KPIs, our same warehouse economic occupancy was 84.1%, which is down 190 basis points versus last year, but flat sequentially to what we saw in Q2.

Physical occupancy was 77.6%, which ticked up slightly sequentially. Our same warehouse throughput pallet decreased by 1.7% versus last year, but were flat sequentially. So to summarize, overall demand is stable, but down versus prior year as our industry continues to rebalance after the supply chain disruptions over the past few years. We have seen less-than-typical seasonal occupancy increases, which is a trend we expect to continue through the fourth quarter.

On the operational front, we continue to drive labor efficiencies, and our energy operating expenses remain well managed reflecting our commitment to cost management and sustainability. As a reminder, labor and power are our two largest operating costs. We continue to control the controllables well, and are positioning the business for strong operating leverage when volumes increase. We are grateful for our outstanding operating and sales leaders who are dedicated to serving our customers and our team members as Lineage continues to transform the global food supply chain.

Next slide, shifting to Slide 11. In our global integrated solutions segment, which represented 13% of our total NOI in the quarter, we saw a slight decrease in total segment revenue, which came in at $363 million, down 1.6% year over year Additionally, our total segment NOI was down 11% to $56 million and segment margin decreased 170 basis points to 15.4%. As a reminder, our global integrated solutions segment offers value-added solutions for our customers which helps to benefit our warehousing business. The declines in the GIS segment are primarily driven by the challenging demand environment for transportation deportation due to lower volumes and excess capacity.

Notably, transportation costs are significantly higher than warehousing costs for the majority of our customers. Our farm-to-fork solutions drive efficiencies across their supply chains, deepening our relationships and aiding customer stickiness. Turning to Slide 12. On capital structure, we use the net proceeds from the IPO to repay the entire $2.4 billion balance on our delayed draw term loan, retire our five CMBS loan, and pay off $1.2 billion of revolver.

This strategic use of IPO proceeds has significantly improved our leverage profile with our leverage ratio, defined as net debt to adjusted EBITDA, at 4.9 times at the end of the quarter. Our total liquidity at the end of the quarter stood at $2.1 billion, including cash and capacity on a revolving credit facility. Subsequent to the end of the quarter, as Greg mentioned, we completed the ColdPoint acquisition using a combination of cash on hand and a draw on our revolver. Our strong balance sheet and newly attained investment grade credit ratings positions us well to continue to execute on our large pipeline of capital deployment opportunities.

Next slide, turning to our outlook for 2024. We expect full-year AFFO per share of $3.16 to $3.20. This implies Q4 AFFO per share of $0.70 to $0.74, and total Q4 AFFO of $180 million to $190 million. A little more color on the Q4 guide, we see low single digit same-store NOI growth against last year’s 9% comp.

This is based on our expectation of similar market conditions to Q3 with less-than-typical seasonal inventory increases. Notably, we experienced a rooftop solar panel fire on third-party equipment at our large Los Angeles Big Bear facility, which most importantly was extinguished without any injuries. However, the damage from the fire unfortunately has closed about half of the facility, creating an approximate $6 million headwind to Q4. Lastly, we have added some additional modeling support in the appendix.

For Q4, we have an estimated average share count of 257 million which represents a full quarter of post IPO shares. On interest expense, we are estimating 60 million for the quarter, again, representing the impact of a full quarter post IPO. So with that, I will turn it back over to Greg to wrap up our prepared remarks.

Greg Lehmkuhl — President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Rob. I’ll conclude on Slide 14. We delivered strong financial results in our first quarter as a public company, with 5% adjusted EBITDA growth and 20% AFFO per share growth. We have significantly reduced our leverage to obtain an investment grade ratings and restarted our capital deployment engine.

Moving forward, we expect to continue to benefit from our leadership position in the global food supply chain with strong long-term demand trends. We are executing well and controlling the controllables like productivity, energy management, and admin expense. We have the largest platform driving significant network effects. The best assets are the industry leaders in technology, automation and data science are the most diversified geographically and across our more than 13,000 customers.

We provide the most comprehensive set of services with our global integrated solutions segment. We are leaders in lean operational excellence, and believe we remain the acquirer of choice in the industry. We have the balance sheet and attractive cost of capital to take advantage of market opportunities through strategic M&A and capital deployment. In summary, we believe we’re well positioned to succeed in any economic environment, and our leadership team is hyper focused on compounding growth to drive long-term shareholder value.

Lastly, I want to thank our over 26,000 team members around the world for the great work they do to safely serve our customers every day. With that, we’ll now turn the call over to the operator for your questions.

Questions & Answers:

Operator

Thank you. We’ll now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator instructions] Your first question comes from Ronald Kamden from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Ronald Kamden — Morgan Stanley — Analyst

Great. Congrats on a strong operational and cash flow quarter. I guess, my question is you characterized demand as occupancy being stable, but still under pressure from customer inventory rationalization. As the market sort of is thinking about next year, and you take a step back on the Lineage platform, can you talk about your ability to have pricing power in an environment where, again, demand is maybe stable and customers are still rationalizing inventory? Thanks.

Greg Lehmkuhl — President and Chief Executive Officer

Good morning, Ronald. Thanks for your question. So I think it’s no secret that overall food volumes have been soft this year both on the retail side, and even a little bit more recently, on the food service side. And as we speak to customers, I think they’re very much in kind of wait-and-see mode.

They know food prices, while rising slower than previous years, are still high in the consumer’s feeling. So while our customers are still seeing soft demand in Q4, they are certainly anticipating a rebound but are uncertain on when that rebound will occur. At Lineage, we’re focusing on controlling the controllables, pulling the levers we have, managing our costs, our labor productivity, firing up our M&A engine. And I think in the third quarter, we performed well and are still growing despite the soft market, and believe we’re extremely well positioned to see operating leverage when volumes do recover, especially given our recent productivity gains and technology investments.

On the pricing question as a reminder, our customers warehousing costs usually constitute only low single digits percent of their revenue. So while our price is important, it’s not nearly as important as having the peace of mind that they can safely store their products and we can get them to their customers safely. So we’re constantly working with our customers to reach mutually beneficial pricing, storage guarantees, contractual structures. All that said we think even in this environment we can get inflationary level increases from customers given that they know that we have- they know our costs are going up.

They know we’re going to pay our people more next year. And the alternative to us doing that is someone else with a slowly rising cost structure like the customer themselves or other third parties.

Ronald Kamden — Morgan Stanley — Analyst

Really helpful. Thank you.

Greg Lehmkuhl — President and Chief Executive Officer

Of course.

Operator

Your next question comes from Caitlin Burrows from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Caitlin Burrows — Goldman Sachs — Analyst

Hi, good morning, everyone. Congrats on your first quarter as a public company. I guess maybe as we think about automation, how would you compare the margin of a fully automated facility like the one in Hazleton versus maybe one that’s been converted, versus a traditional location, realizing that wide ranges could be possible. Just trying to get some sort of sense of how impactful automation can be.

Greg Lehmkuhl — President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Caitlin, and good morning. So we look at each development project uniquely based on what the customer needs are. And so, whether they’re conventional or automated, and there’s a lot of different levels of automation that we’re considering. We have network optimization teams and automation teams on all three continents that collaborate and optimize the builds and expansions that we do.

And so, as far as the underwrite and the margins, we’re not focused on margin, we’re focused on return on capital. We have a very disciplined investment committee process where we’re looking at each one of these. I think we published that our yields on these projects are between 9% and 11%, and that’s regardless of whether they’re automated or conventional.

Caitlin Burrows — Goldman Sachs — Analyst

Got it.

Greg Lehmkuhl — President and Chief Executive Officer

Caitlin, you broke up there.

Caitlin Burrows — Goldman Sachs — Analyst

Oh, sorry. I wasn’t necessarily wondering on the development side, but that’s all helpful. I was more wondering on like a best-in-class Hazleton-type location versus a traditional-type property you have, and trying to figure out more from how much labor cost savings there could be from automation. And maybe margin’s not the right KPI, but is there some way that you could compare like the productivity or margin or whatever it might be of a fully automated, best-in-class location like that versus a more traditional location?

Greg Lehmkuhl — President and Chief Executive Officer

Sure. I’ll restate that automation has a lot of different flavors. Certainly in Hazleton, we’re looking for substantial labor savings, more than 50%, given how much of that building is automated, but they vary a lot even across automated buildings. In Hazleton, like our other development projects, we expect to hit our underwrite and hit our projected returns.

Caitlin Burrows — Goldman Sachs — Analyst

Got it. Thanks. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from Alexander Goldfarb with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Alexander Goldfarb — Analyst

Hey, good morning, and congrats on the successful IPO. Just looking at the acquisition market, clearly, you guys have been strong in that especially synthesizing individual assets to your platform. How is that pipeline looking, and was there any slowdown during the IPO process? Presumably, would be understandable if deal volume slowed due diligence just given all the focus on the IPO. So just trying to get a sense of how we should think about acquisition volumes, and if there was any sort of IPO pause that we should plan for.

Greg Lehmkuhl — President and Chief Executive Officer

Good morning, Alex. Thanks. Absolutely, we paused- we intentionally slowed a full year before and through the IPO, so we could focus on executing that successfully. But I mean, listen, we believe we’re clearly the acquirer of choice in our industry because we’re a people and culture-centric company that people love to join.

We’ve also been winning for a long time, and people love to join a winning team. The $223 million ColdPoint deal is just another great example of a nice-sized transaction where we were able to work directly with the sellers and the management team to make a deal that everybody felt great about and we avoided a broader sale process. So we are truly excited to fire back up our acquisition engine. We have a huge pipeline of M&A opportunities globally.

We evaluate all these opportunities in all markets against our investment criteria and literally meet every single week with our investment committee includes, which includes Rob and me; Jeff, our COO; Brian McGowan, our chief network optimization officer, who we fondly refer to as our canoe. But the Lineage have an A team. And Adam and Kevin, our chairmen, are actively involved in every one of those calls. So as an executive team, we’re highly incented on AFFO per share growth, and our focus on the deals that have the best risk adjusted return and will be most accretive to shareholders.

I mean, while we have literally billions in our M & A pipeline, we are going to remain patient and disciplined and pursue only the deals that deliver the highest risk-adjusted return.

Alexander Goldfarb — Analyst

Thank you.

Greg Lehmkuhl — President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from Michael Carroll with RBC. Please go ahead.

Michael Carroll — Analyst

Yeah, I want to circle back to what Rob said in the prepared remarks regarding the fire, I believe, at Big Bear. I guess, when did this fire happen and did the repairs already take place? And basically, should we expect the weakness in 4Q, any of that going to flow into 1Q ’25? Or is it just going to be contained in the fourth quarter, and we won’t have any of those issues going into 2025.

Greg Lehmkuhl — President and Chief Executive Officer

So I’ll start then turn it over to you, Rob. So I’ll just start by saying safety is our No. 1 priority, the safety of our team members, partners, communities in which we work and live. It is our company’s first corporate value.

And to that end there were no injuries to our team members nor first responders as a result of the of the fire. In LA and Big Bear, which many of you have toured, the investigation is still ongoing. The fire appears to have started in the solar arrays on the roof that the solar arrays are leased and operated by a third party. We’ve we promptly requested inspections of all of our solar arrays across our network and are continuing to monitor that and don’t see any reason that this would reoccur.

As far as the financial impact, I’ll turn it over to Rob to provide some more color.

Robert Crisci — Chief Financial Officer

So the date of the fire, it was in mid-August. We’re obviously working hard to get everything back online. We removed it from the same store pool. We mentioned the headwinds.

So I think we’ll be able to update you in February with the progress we’ve made. But there is certainly a lot of work that still needs to be done to get the facility back to where it was. I think as you all are aware, because many people toured it, it’s a great, very big facility, so it’s very important to us, and we’re excited to get it back online.

Michael Carroll — Analyst

OK, great. Is there insurance proceeds that we can expect from this?

Robert Crisci — Chief Financial Officer

Yes. I think, over time, yes, we are insured, and so and so that would come in over time. Yeah, we expect to recover our losses.

Michael Carroll — Analyst

OK, great, thanks.

Robert Crisci — Chief Financial Officer

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from Mike Mueller with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Mike Mueller — Analyst

Yeah, hi. How indicative of market pricing would you say the ColdPoint acquisition is? And on that transaction, how much higher do you think you can drive EBITDA, say, over the next couple of years?

Greg Lehmkuhl — President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, so I think it was a deal that we sourced. We had a great relationship there, so we’re excited to add that company to the portfolio. I think we mentioned on the call, if you do the math about a 14-times multiple. like anything we buy, we do expect to improve that over time.

We’re excited to welcome the team to the Lineage family, and we’ll get to work right away on how we can make each other better. So I think over time, we certainly will drive improvement like in all of our acquisitions, but the good news is we bought it here at a nice multiple, and so all that improvement will accrue to us moving forward and our shareholders.

Mike Mueller — Analyst

OK, OK, thank you.

Greg Lehmkuhl — President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Mike.

Operator

Your next question comes from Joshua Dennerlein of Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Joshua Dennerlein — Analyst

Yeah, hey, guys, thanks for the time. A big part of your pitch at the IPO is the technology advantage you guys have built out and are continuing to build out. I guess, how should we think about those benefits- the benefits of your tech platform rollout on the business? I guess I’m most interested in just maybe how it’ll impact EBITDA margin? And then, is there anything that’s rolling out in the next, say, 12 months that we should be aware of that might kind of benefit you guys in any way?

Greg Lehmkuhl — President and Chief Executive Officer

So the biggest thing that we talked about most on our roadshow was LinOS. And as a reminder, LinOS is our proprietary warehouse execution system that we’ve developed and implemented already in multiple automated facilities. The software uses our proprietary algorithms to optimize effectively all the movements and activity within the warehouse. The goal of the software is to attack our largest controllable cost which is labor.

We spend about $1.4 billion globally in labor. Our current efforts are focused on rolling out LinOS in our conventional buildings, which we just began piloting in the last few weeks. In the first site we launched, we saw clear opportunities for things like task interweaving and eliminating the waste that the software is intended to eliminate. So we remain super excited about LinOS and our technology investments.

The early results are certainly promising, and we look forward to providing some more color next year as we roll out our pilots.

Robert Crisci — Chief Financial Officer

So yeah, I know I think as we mentioned, it’s really attacking um labor efficiency and getting more efficient, and helping people not spend as much time in the freezers and remove the number of trips with forklifts that are empty, and a lot of really good stuff. We’ve got a billion for labor expense, and that’s really what we’re attacking there. If you look moving out, as Greg mentioned, we’re just rolling it out, so I don’t I wouldn’t expect benefit to ’25. I think ’26 and beyond, certainly, we would.

and that’s what we’re working toward.

Operator

Your next question comes from Samir Khanal of Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Samir Khanal — Analyst

Hey, good morning, everyone. I guess Greg or Rob, I know you talked about occupancy still under pressure and the muted seasonal pickup in 4Q. I guess how does that translate into mid-single digit NOI growth for next year, which I know you’ve talked about in the past, I think in the road show. Thanks.

Robert Crisci — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, so we’re working on controlling the controllables, as Greg mentioned. And so, we’re hyperfocused on labor efficiency and controlling energy costs and all the things that we talk about, and that will drive really good leverage when the market does improve. So certainly this year, we gave the guidance number low single digit for Q4. That’s against a 9% comp.

Throughout this year we’ve had double digit comps, right. So we did 2.4% in Q3 against 11% comp. And so, that- if you look at that over two years, you’re sort of in that mid-single digit flywheel that we talk about, and moving forward to next year, again, we will benefit from easier comps, all the work that we’ve done. And then, we’ll certainly update in February on what we expect we will do for next year.

We go through a very comprehensive budget process here that has already started. We’re working next week, meeting with all of our people. It’s a great process. And so, we’re going to go through that, and then we’ll be able to update the Street in February.

But we’re certainly doing all we can to make sure we stay on that flywheel, and we are very, very confident that we will deliver that flywheel moving forward.

Samir Khanal — Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from Ami Probandt from UBS. Please go ahead.

Ami Probandt — UBS — Analyst

Hi, thanks. I was hoping that we could dig into the acquisition market just a little bit more. Understanding that you have a unique position where you are the acquirer of choice, but if you were going to look at deals that are just on the market, how would you be — what’s the competitive landscape look like? Are there a lot of bidders for these products? And what sort of pricing would you expect?

Robert Crisci — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, sure, I can start on that. There’s competition. I mean, these are attractive assets. We’re in a great market.

We’re in the food end market, which grows over a long period of time. These are, though, very operationally intensive assets, so you’ve got to be a really, really good operator in order to succeed in our industry. And so, that definitely gives us an advantage. We have a much improved cost of capital, right, which was the whole point of doing the IPO.

We got to investment grade, and so we’re in a great position. We did a deal 14 times this quarter. Every deal is different, right? So there’s going to be sometimes multiples are lower than that, sometimes higher. It’s really an exciting place to be sitting here in America, but having this wonderful global business.

So we look at things in Australia and New Zealand where we have a great management team. We look at things in Europe where we’ve got great leadership. And we can really find the best risk-adjusted returns, and again, as Greg mentioned, we’re hyper focused on AFFO per share, so we take into account tax and interest costs and everything else, but we can sit here and just find the best risk adjusted returns for our capital globally. That’s a really powerful position to be in.

And for myself, as someone who’s still new to the company after a couple of years, it’s really exciting to be here looking at our deployment opportunities moving forward. It’s a great time.

Ami Probandt — UBS — Analyst

And any details that you can provide on pricing, understanding that there’s a wide range?

Robert Crisci — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, I mean, individual deals, I think over time, like we mentioned, you saw what we did this multiple, and things are — could be a little higher, a little lower, but we’re always going to do financial accretive acquisitions, that will benefit our AFFO per share.

Ami Probandt — UBS — Analyst

OK. Thanks.

Operator

Your next question comes from Greg McGinniss with Scotia. Please go ahead.

Greg McGinniss — Analyst

Hey, good morning. Rob, I just wanted to touch on the mid-single digit same store target again. So Lineage appears to be operating well in a somewhat challenging environment, but from our view, the key driver of future same store and growth is a recovery in consumer demand. Are you seeing anything from your customers, or more broadly, economically, that’s giving you confidence in an improving market?

Robert Crisci — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. I mean, I think Greg touched on a couple of those points. You want to –

Greg Lehmkuhl — President and Chief Executive Officer

Certainly, there’s no doubt over the last couple of years. There was just in case inventory built up, especially. And with higher interest rates, customers have been focusing on optimizing their supply chains. And in many cases, that’s led to inventory rationalization most predominantly this year.

But given our scale and global reach, we’re right in the middle of those conversations with our customers. We’re working with the C-level and their executive leadership teams to help them streamline their supply chains and best position their inventory around the world. So we’ve always taken a long-term approach with customers, and believe that will lead to them growing their business with us over time. I think what we’re hearing directly from customers is they are seeing new demand, they are seeing discounting at the retail and food service level to get products flowing faster again.

I think historically, we’re at very low inventory levels right now, and we would expect restocking to happen at some point. And when it does, like we’ve talked about, we’re in an excellent position given our productivity and tech-embedded investments to take advantage of that and see great operating leverage.

Greg McGinniss — Analyst

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from Blaine Heck with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Blaine Heck — Analyst

Great, thanks. Good morning. Given that it’s the morning after the election, I wanted to ask whether there are any Trump policies that you guys find particularly encouraging or concerning with respect to the business, and in particular what impact increased tariffs might have on your business given your exposure to port locations. And maybe you can also remind us how much of your portfolio is in or adjacent to port markets?

Robert Crisci — Chief Financial Officer

I’ll just say Greg had prepared many election-related jokes. We cut them, so we’ll just go right to the answer to the question.

Greg Lehmkuhl — President and Chief Executive Officer

Fine, Rob. So listen, we’ve been around for more than more than 15 years, and performed well across various administrations, across various policies, and through a myriad of economic cycles. So we’re confident in our in our plan moving forward. Specifically if you want to talk about tariffs, for example, food is a global business around the world.

The fact is people need to eat. And regardless of what happens with policy or tariffs, we feel extremely well positioned to support the global food supply chain. That’s what we’re built for. For example, I was meeting with an executive of one of our seafood customers not very long ago, and he was talking about how this could impact the seafood business.

And he said, listen, if we see, for example, higher tariffs on China, we can simply shift and buy from Vietnam, or Malaysia, or Thailand, or somewhere else in the world. And in all cases, with presence in 250 ports around the world, there’s a really good chance that we’re going to be able to support that product flow regardless of where it ends up.

Blaine Heck — Analyst

Great. Thanks, guys.

Operator

Your next question comes from Omotayo Okusanya from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Omotayo Okusanya — Analyst

Yes, good morning. I also wanted to add my congratulations on your first reporting quarter. Question around expenses. Again, you guys did an amazing job on controlling the controllables, as you mentioned earlier on in the call.

And I guess when I kind of think about 4Q and some of the industry headwinds you’re still kind of mentioning, how much more kind of operating leverage do you have in that regard to really kind of flex labor up and down as you kind of see kind of changes in demand going forward?

Robert Crisci — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. So I think over the long term, as we talked about, there’s a lot of room for improvement. We talked about LinOS and a lot of things that we’re rolling out. So I think there will be continued great operating leverage.

Just specifically to Q4, we do, as you saw last year, if you look back, I mean, seasonally, admin and maintenance capex are relatively high in the fourth quarter. That’s really just a seasonal trend. A lot of that has to do with a lot of sort of year-end expenses. And so, that’s built into our guide, if you look at AFFO per share.

We gave, hopefully, some helpful modeling numbers where you have the interest in the share count which is now full quarter post IPO that counter each other. The other thing I’ll say on the quarters, right, is historically, we’ve always run this company as a private company, as a full-year basis company. We have this great budgeting process. We work across the budget.

Everyone’s kind of focused annually. So we’re still building our muscle around quarterly forecasting. I think over time, we won’t have a lot of our maintenance capex hitting in the fourth quarter. We’ll be able to smooth out over the year.

But that’s just a few puts and takes on the Q4 guide. But we definitely feel that there’s a lot of room to continue to drive labor efficiency, admin. From an admin perspective, this company has been built to grow and double again and again. We have a lot of costs.

We’re going to work to leverage that cost moving forward. And so, hopefully, we can have just not just great operating leverage in terms of sort of warehousing, but also looking at the admin line as well.

Omotayo Okusanya — Analyst

That’s helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from Daniel Guglielmo from Capital One Securities. Please go ahead.

Daniel Guglielmo — Analyst

Hi, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. I think that the lean operations are a big piece of the story. So how many warehouses do you all have certified now? And then, as you continue to roll this out, are there specific learnings or improvements you’ve made to the program that you’d be willing to share?

Greg Lehmkuhl — President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. We have 40-plus buildings that are certified and lean, and many more that are being launched as we speak.

Robert Crisci — Chief Financial Officer

About 10% of our total portfolio.

Greg Lehmkuhl — President and Chief Executive Officer

But it’s much more than that in NOI, but as far as facility count, it’s about 5%. And yes, we’re learning with each lean implementation, with each lean certification. And all those best practices are posted on our lean SharePoint and shared across the network, even if buildings are not formally integrated in the process. As you know, lean is all about supporting the operator that does the hard work every day and making their job easier to serve our customers and eliminating waste in every process.

It’s continuous improvement. It’s always improving. It’s never ends. That that spirit of always getting better is within our operations and warehousing.

It’s across our — our global integrated solutions segment and across our admin functions. It’s really a philosophy for which we run the company and we think there’s, you know, a whole lot of room to grow or to go to continue to optimize in all areas across the organization.

Daniel Guglielmo — Analyst

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from Nick Thillman with Baird. Please go ahead.

Nick Thillman — Robert W. Baird and Company — Analyst

[Inaudible] down year on year in 3Q and I guess maybe part of that could be power related savings that you couldn’t pass through or the customer can achieve some goal on that. But just overall taking a step back like what leverage do customers have in pricing discussions today? Do larger customers have more advantage there? And then, maybe geographically speaking, you guys touched on SPEC construction? We know like markets like Texas and like Jacksonville are a little bit more hampered by that, but maybe talking on — touching a little bit on some of the soft spots you’re seeing there?

Greg Lehmkuhl — President and Chief Executive Officer

The very beginning of the question cut off. Can you repeat the first sentence? Sorry about that, we couldn’t hear you.

Nick Thillman — Robert W. Baird and Company — Analyst

Yeah, it’s — the first part was just on kind of rent per occupied pallet was down year on year, maybe the leverage like customers have and pricing discussions today. Do larger customers have a little bit more advantage there? A little bit of commentary there. And then, on the geographic mix.

Greg Lehmkuhl — President and Chief Executive Officer

I think customers do have a little bit more leverage than they had over the last couple of years. I mean, we cost — our customers are going through a very, you know, tough time right now in a soft market and we’re partnering with them to — to create solutions that make sense to them and prices is one component of that. And I think you’ve seen — you saw some of that play out in the results this year. As Rob talked about, you know, there’s been growing excitement in the cold storage category over the last several years.

This is — this is logical given the institutionalization of our industry and in part because of the Lineage story. And as champions of our industry, we’re — we welcome that excitement because it reinforces cold storage as a — as a really important subsector of the industrial real estate market and critical infrastructure of the — of the global food supply chain, just like data centers, cell towers and public storage have become in their markets over the last 20 years. So not surprisingly this has drawn capital into our space and created some new competition and even some speculative developers similar to what’s happening in these other exciting categories. I mean, you know, that said we have clear advantages over any new market entrants.

I mean, we have — as we spoke about in the prepared remarks, we have the largest network with over 480 warehouses globally. And the network benefits that come with scale including the largest network of port locations and distribution centers. We have a newly formed investment grade balance sheet and superior access to capital. We have — we have a track record for accretively deploying capital and growing the company through M&A and development, which just further increases our scale advantages and network effects.

We have long standing relationships with over 13,000 customers interfacing like I mentioned with their CEOs and leadership teams which is — which is a barrier that’s very, very hard to replicate for new competition. We have our farm to fork service offerings with our — with our Integrated Solutions group. So we can truly look at our customers end to end supply chain and help them optimize this and make price not the — not the only thing if you will. We have world class safety, M&A, development operations, sales engineering and commercial finance teams around the world with — with decades of experience.

So we feel you know really well positioned to continue to partner with our customers and grow and again they understand that when we have labor increases and other cost increases that it’s fair to give us inflationary-ish level increases moving forward.

Nick Thillman — Robert W. Baird and Company — Analyst

Greg, that’s helpful. So just following up on just geographically, any markets where you’re seeing a little bit more strength when it comes to kind of market conditions or is it more of a broad softness?

Greg Lehmkuhl — President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, there’s — absolutely we have — we have a lot of markets that are — that are performing very well. We have a bunch of regions. We have 22 regions in the — in the U.S. We have a bunch of regions that are performing very well; Pacific Northwest, Australia led by Brooke Miller, our president there is doing outstanding.

Our Canadian team is rocking it, I can’t say enough about them. So, yeah, we have — we have a bunch of pockets around the world that are performing very well.

Nick Thillman — Robert W. Baird and Company — Analyst

Thank you.

Greg Lehmkuhl — President and Chief Executive Officer

Of course.

Operator

Your next question comes from Vince Tibone with Green Street. Please go ahead.

Vince Tibone — Green Street Advisors — Analyst

Hi. Good morning. I wanted to follow up on an earlier comment that you’re facing pressure from new supply in certain markets. Could you share what those markets are and also just discuss high level industry wide supply trends in the cold storage sector? And if you’re able to kind of frame that in terms of percentage of stock, I think that would be helpful.

And just your general views about supply pressures going forward. Are you seeing a slowdown or acceleration in development starts today from your competitors? Any commentary on the supply side of things would be very helpful.

Greg Lehmkuhl — President and Chief Executive Officer

Yes, certainly as I answered in the last question, there has been an influx of capital into our industry. Frankly, we think there’s going to be some fallout from that and people that maybe thought it was easier than it is and — and don’t understand that the scale advantages that the larger players have. We do think that that — you know, the cost to build that they experienced over the last couple of years is kind of at all time highs and they have you know, investment hurdles to — to overcome. That said we do think speculative development and new development will subside over the next couple of years.

And as the industry, you know, continues its long term growth trend, that capacity will be — will be absorbed. So we feel — you know, we feel great about that. About how we kind of line up against these. As far as specific markets, it’s been — you know, it’s been pretty widespread.

I’d say one market that was maybe oversupplied in Florida in general. We’ve seen some softness there due to — due to new competition.

Vince Tibone — Green Street Advisors — Analyst

That’s really helpful. Maybe just one quick follow up is how do you view net lease cold storage spec product as competitive, where someone’s trying to lease to a single user? Or is it really more the operating multi-tenant model that is more competitive here with your exact portfolio?

Greg Lehmkuhl — President and Chief Executive Officer

I would say more on the multi-tenant, but both certainly. I mean, if — you know, if a spec builder is going to build for a producer, we would — we would rather be the people to operate that and build for them. Many, many of the spec buildings don’t have a — an operator yet or a tenant and those become, you know, I would say risky investments. And we will evaluate, you know, acquiring those as they come online.

We do net lease deals as well and that’s, you know, that’s part of our capital deployment as well. Every market’s different. It’s really about how much capacity and how much demand and so you kind of add it all up and what’s great in our position being the leader, we have the most information. We have the most data we have.

We have capabilities that are — that are unmatched and really give us a lot of. confidence in which markets that we want to expand, which markets we don’t want to expand competitive pressures and so we’re — we’re in a great position.

Vince Tibone — Green Street Advisors — Analyst

Great. Thank you for the time.

Greg Lehmkuhl — President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Operator

And your last question comes from Todd Thomas with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Todd Thomas — Analyst

Hi. Thanks. Good morning. Greg, I just wanted to follow up on the customer rationalization that you discussed a little bit that’s contributing to the weaker demand environment.

Are there other underlying trends impacting that rationalization that your customers are experiencing or is it solely related to some weaker consumer and end user demand? And along those lines, should we assume that the challenging environment continues to impact the global integrated solutions segment of the portfolio or can GIS stabilize without a recovery in demand? What’s the interplay look like there as we think about ’25?

Greg Lehmkuhl — President and Chief Executive Officer

I’ll start briefly. So what’s great about our market is long term demand trends are very good. There’s — people are always eating that’s growing. The more markets that are developing, the more markets that want access to what we do, which is being able to get the best food to people all throughout the world.

So that’s a great place to be. So the demand trend is up into the right and so it’s a matter of getting back to sort of what’s normal. I think in terms of the GIS segment that is largely transportation, right? I’m sure people follow transportation companies. This is very consistent with what everyone else is saying.

There’s more cyclicality there. Importantly, as we mentioned in the prepared remarks, we — you know, the reason why this is so important for us is the farm to fork and driving more business into our — into our warehouses. And so, moving forward, yes, there will be a rebound there. That’s going to be a little bit more cyclical.

But it’s always going to be benefiting our warehousing business, which should allow the warehousing business to grow faster over time.

Todd Thomas — Analyst

OK, that’s helpful. If I could just sneak one last one in around the model. Appreciate some of the color around the fourth quarter. You mentioned the higher capex budget seasonally in the fourth quarter.

Are you able to share a 4Q maintenance capex range that’s embedded within the — the fourth quarter guide? And also can you talk about DNA?

Greg Lehmkuhl — President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. As we mentioned, we really focus on AFFO per share. So that’s the main part of our guide moving forward. There are a lot of levers that can be pulled within a quarter, right? As we talk about the market gets better than it is a little bit higher, maybe you spend more the market softens.

Yes, you saw it last quarter, there’s — you know, there’s certainly things we can do to make sure we deliver the results. So we really want to focus people on AFFO per share, and when we — when we put out guidance, we certainly feel that that those are good numbers to use.

Todd Thomas — Analyst

OK. Is there — but is there a specific maintenance capex range that’s embedded in the — in the fourth quarter guide the 70 to 74?

Greg Lehmkuhl — President and Chief Executive Officer

No.

Todd Thomas — Analyst

OK. All right. Thank you.

Greg Lehmkuhl — President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Operator

There are no more questions. I will now turn the conference back over to Evan Barbosa for closing remarks.

R. Evan Barbosa — Vice President, Investor Relations

On behalf of the entire Lineage team, thank you for joining us today and for your interest in Lineage. We look forward to speaking to you again on our next quarterly earnings call. Thanks.

Duration: 0 minutes

Call participants:

R. Evan Barbosa — Vice President, Investor Relations

Greg Lehmkuhl — President and Chief Executive Officer

Robert Crisci — Chief Financial Officer

Ronald Kamden — Morgan Stanley — Analyst

Caitlin Burrows — Goldman Sachs — Analyst

Alexander Goldfarb — Analyst

Michael Carroll — Analyst

Rob Crisci — Chief Financial Officer

Mike Mueller — Analyst

Joshua Dennerlein — Analyst

Samir Khanal — Analyst

Ami Probandt — UBS — Analyst

Greg McGinniss — Analyst

Blaine Heck — Analyst

Omotayo Okusanya — Analyst

Daniel Guglielmo — Analyst

Nick Thillman — Robert W. Baird and Company — Analyst

Vince Tibone — Green Street Advisors — Analyst

Todd Thomas — Analyst

Evan Barbosa — Vice President, Investor Relations

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