Americold Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE:COLD) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

George Chappelle: I think we’ve seen the low end. I think the low end was the first half, let’s say, of the Q3, we’ve seen sequential improvement since. It really looks like we’ll see sequential improvement through the holiday season. That’s exactly — those are the indicators we see. Still off year over year, but not as dramatic, let’s say, as a portion of the third quarter. Now the third quarter did recover in the last month and a half or so, I think fairly well, and that’s rolling through the rest of the year. But I would say we’ve seen the bottom, and it was the first half of the third quarter. So hopefully that puts it in a certain context.

Nick Thillman : Yes, that’s helpful. And then maybe, Rob, going through some of your comments on build-to-suit and fixed commitments along development. As we’re looking at new starts from here, there’s going to be a lot of components of fixed commits associated with them. Are we going to have the traditional J curve? Just, I guess, trying to see what the value creation could be of the stuff that’s currently under construction versus maybe some of the takes of new starts in a J curve scenario?

Rob Chambers: Yes. So I would say our expansion projects, because they’re in markets where today demand is outstripping capacity. Our expectation in those expansion projects is that we’ll see significant fixed components associated with our expansions. Obviously, in customer dedicated builds, our second main focus from expansions, those will is to be fixed commitments. I think our partnership deals, our CPKC and DP World agreements will probably be is a little bit more mixed and may tend to lean a little bit heavier on the variable side of the equation, just the nature of that business. But categories one and two are expansions and customer build to suits. You should expect to see high fixed content.

Operator: That concludes the Q&A session. And with that, this concludes today’s conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.