Greetings. Welcome to the Americold Realty Trust First Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question- and -answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Scott Anderson. You may begin.
Good afternoon. We would like to thank you for joining us today for Americold Realty Trust's First Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. In addition to the press release distributed this afternoon, we have filed a supplemental package with additional details on our results, which is available in the Investors section on our website at www.americold.com. On today's call, management's prepared remarks and answers to your questions may contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements address matters that are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ from those discussed today. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. Forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, assumptions, and beliefs, as well as information available to us at this time, and speak only as of the date they are made.
Management undertakes no obligation to update publicly any of them in light of new information or future events. During this call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. More information about these non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations to the comparable GAAP financial measures is contained in the supplemental information package available on the company's website. We also would like to note that numbers presented in today's prepared remarks have been rounded to the nearest million, with the exception of per share amounts. This afternoon's conference call is hosted by Americold's Chief Executive Officer, Fred Boehler, and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Marc Smernoff. Management will make some prepared comments, after which we will open up the call to your questions. Now, I will turn the call over to Fred.
Thank you. Welcome to our Q1 2020 earnings conference call. We hope everyone on this call and their families are well. This afternoon, I will provide a brief overview of the temperature-controlled food supply chain and how it's been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. I will discuss our Q1 2020 results and activity and how these results were influenced by COVID-19. Marc will review our quarterly results in more detail and discuss our balance sheet and guidance for 2020. After our prepared remarks, we will open the call for your questions. Let me begin by saying I have never been prouder of the Americold family than I am today in the midst of this COVID-19 pandemic. Our global network of temperature-controlled infrastructure and the services we provide are an integral part of the temperature-controlled food supply chain.
Our people are our greatest asset. This has been underscored by our nearly 13,000 team members at 183 sites around the world who have been working tirelessly day after day to help make sure grocery store shelves are stocked. Our infrastructure is absolutely mission-critical. Our team is truly essential and deeply proud of their role in protecting and providing access to food at this time. I am very grateful for their dedication and want to thank them for their incredible efforts. Further, the resilience of our diversified business model has never been more evident. Keeping our people safe and healthy has been and continues to be a priority. In addressing COVID-19, we took immediate action at the onset by mobilizing a global response team, following the guidance of the CDC, and enhancing our standard protocols to help protect our associates and safeguard the integrity of our supply chain.
Since the start of COVID-19, we have invested in additional cleaning efforts and sanitation supplies at our facilities and staggered shifts and breaks as appropriate. We are taking the temperature of each person, including all associates, contractors, and visitors who enter our facilities. We are making masks and gloves available to all. I'd also like to point out that although we are classified as essential workers in the supply chain, the nature of our work is naturally socially distant and very different than workers in a manufacturing line or in a grocery store. While actual COVID-19 cases have not had a material impact on our business, we remain vigilant in limiting the risk to our associates and operations. The broader effects of COVID-19 have also added significantly more visibility to the food supply chain.
Before we discuss results, I would like to take a moment to discuss the supply chain, starting with the consumer endpoint, the grocery store. A typical grocery store in the U.S. carries about a 30-day supply of food to meet normal consumer demand. These grocery stores are supplied by retail distribution centers, which also carry, on average, another 30-day supply of product. This inventory is generally owned by the retail establishment. Approximately 22% of Americold's warehouse revenue is generated through the ownership and operation of some of these retail distribution centers. These retail distribution centers receive product from major market distribution centers, which are located in major distribution hubs such as Atlanta, Dallas, and Northeast Pennsylvania, and carry product from multiple manufacturers. Many of you on this call have been to our Tradewater site here in Atlanta, which is a great example of a major market distribution center.
That facility, and others like it, stores customer products from all over the country and typically represents another 30-day supply of inventory. Major market distribution centers are supplied by production-advantaged sites, which are usually either attached or adjacent to food manufacturing facilities. Food manufacturing facilities are located across the U.S. in areas where land availability and local climate support individual commodities. They process and package the protein and the agricultural goods that are grown regionally. At these sites, product is brought down to temperature, preserved, and stored until it is forward deployed. Americold's production-advantaged sites also carry, on average, a 30-day supply of food and are dedicated to specific customers. The food supply at the point of manufacture and the inventory and major market distribution centers are owned by the manufacturer.
As we have discussed in the past, food manufacturers outsource 96% of their cold storage needs to companies like Americold. Approximately 76% of Americold's warehouse revenue is generated by food manufacturers. As you can see, at any given time, there are typically four months of goods in the supply chain spread across multiple nodes, many of which are owned and operated by Americold. We have one of the most diversified networks, both location and product-wise. Please see page 24 of our Q1 2020 supplemental for more information on this diversity. This diversity helps us withstand changes in food supply and demand. Before I go further, I'd like to address one portion of the food supply chain that has been in the press recently, the protein supply chain. For perspective, pork is 7% and beef is 3% of our business.
In the same way that grocery stores need to adjust to remain open as essential businesses, protein manufacturers are working to overcome certain challenges at this time. As demonstrated by the recent executive order, they are an essential part of the nation's food supply chain, and we are critical partners with vital infrastructure that supports them. As production ramps up at the plants that have experienced short-term shutdowns, our facilities will continue to serve them. It is also important to note that our fixed commitment structure reduces volatility in our cash flows from potential temporary shutdowns. Finally, as we have stated in the past, proteins are substitutable. For example, consumers will shift from pork to chicken as needed. Our incredibly diverse portfolio enables us to minimize volatility from these shifts. This example of the protein supply chain also relates to other areas of the food supply, such as agriculture.
Typically, the general supply of food is not meaningfully impacted by the macroeconomic climate, though individual food items may be. People are going to eat, but what they eat and where they eat may change. Consumption is served through a balance of food service and retail, where food is either consumed via food service channels like restaurants, schools, universities, hotels, hospitals, sporting events, and government programs or the remainder is consumed via retail at grocery stores, big box stores, and convenience stores. In general, when the economy is good, heavier weighting goes towards the food service side. When the economy isn't doing well, it shifts to heavier retail. With COVID-19, we've seen an unexpected and very rapid shift from food service to retail, creating disruption. The supply chain was tugged, first with the consumer rush to retail as everyone stocked up on essentials.
Retailers who were operating in ordinary course were challenged with responding to the almost instantaneous and significant shift of consumption happening through the channel as grocery stores were emptied. Please keep in mind that the supply chain was designed for steady -state and holiday demand, not an unexpected event like this, akin to a sustained hurricane hitting the entire country at once. This created a ripple effect as retail distribution centers surged to replenish the stores. Major market distribution centers surged to restock retail distribution centers. Production -advantaged sites surged to restock major market distribution centers, and food manufacturers had to adjust production for retail-centric products. Every part of our infrastructure was tasked with excess activity to replenish these various nodes in the supply chain. Food service products are now sitting longer because of reduced demand, but we are still preserving product and collecting the associated rent and storage fees.
Retail is now taking up more space, but it's flowing through at a higher rate than normal. I'd also like to address e-commerce for a minute. There is a lot of talk in the market about the growth of grocery e-commerce and the implications for temperature-controlled infrastructure. While we expect to see strong growth in e-commerce, that doesn't necessarily translate to outsized growth in the infrastructure to support it. E-commerce does not drive additional demand. It is simply another acquisition point for consumers. As we have also discussed previously, temperature-controlled products that are purchased online by end consumers to be delivered to their homes are mostly serviced out of individual grocery stores. We know that grocers carefully select their store location, typically within three to five miles of the targeted population.
As a result, the best place for grocers to serve last-mile logistics, including both home delivery and click and pick, is the store itself. This is because transportation costs are typically the most expensive part of the supply chain, so utilizing space that is closest to the end consumer is the most advantageous. Increased e-commerce demand is pushing retailers to invest in automated solutions in the backroom of their stores for added efficiency. The supply chain and infrastructure requirements to get product to these stores remain unchanged. As we've seen with the surge in e-commerce orders as a result of COVID-19, the increased demand has been filled by the grocery store, which has been supplied by the retail distribution center, or by a restaurant, which has been supplied by a food distributor.
Both channels were supplied by major market distribution centers, which in turn were supplied by the production-advantaged sites and the food manufacturer. In summary, our diverse infrastructure is built to withstand shifts in food demand. Our incredibly large, diverse portfolio spread across multiple locations, multiple customers, facility types, product types, and nodes in the supply chain enables us to minimize volatility driven by specific commodity disruption. Having one standard operating System across our fully integrated network enables us to service our customers efficiently, regardless of shifts in demand. Professionalizing commercialization helps to stabilize our revenue streams and ensure customers have space when they need it. Our Fixed Commitment Model has demonstrated a real benefit for our customers during this pandemic, as they have rushed to find space and service as a result of the change in demand. Those with Fixed Commitments have protected space, ensuring efficient operation.
Those without fixed commitments have faced challenges in obtaining space and, in many cases, were unable to secure optimal support. Now turning to our results. In the first quarter, our Global Warehouse same-store pool generated total revenue growth and NOI growth of 6.8% and 11.1% , respectively, on a constant currency basis. Our first quarter results reflect the impact of nationwide stay-at-home orders, which affected the business as follows. Our retail customers experienced a pronounced increase in consumer buying at grocery stores. As a result, throughput at our retail distribution centers increased significantly, resulting in higher services revenue at these sites. As I mentioned earlier, we also saw an increase in product through other nodes of the supply chain, mainly our major market distribution centers.
Some products produced by our food manufacturer customers for food service and export channels remained in storage, being preserved at our production-advantaged sites and major market distribution centers. While we saw increased economic occupancy in this type of customer, the reduction in throughput resulted in lower services revenue. Additionally, we would note that the increase many of us are seeing in delivery to home and buy online, pickup in-store shopping does not meaningfully impact us. Once again, those methods of distribution are generally serviced by local grocery stores, and our infrastructure supports it accordingly. Let me now make a few points to provide further detail on our first quarter activity. During the first quarter, all 183 of our facilities remained fully operational.
While we have always operated in accordance with strict safety standards to ensure the quality of product flowing through our facilities, cleaning and sanitation processes were enhanced, and we put additional protocols in place to safely manage our labor resources as well as those of our transportation partners. These incremental activities occurred late in the first quarter and are reflected in our operating expenses. We also continued to grow externally during the first quarter with the completion of our previously announced acquisitions, including Newport Cold, NovaCold Logistics, and a 15% interest in a strategic joint venture with Brazil-based SuperFrio. Regarding our development pipeline, we delivered our expansion project in Columbus, Ohio, early in the first quarter and are now fully operational.
With respect to our ongoing developments in Savannah and Atlanta, we can report that construction serving the food supply chain in the state of Georgia is considered essential, and so we have been able to continue at both sites. Savannah has a temporary certificate of occupancy, and we have started operations on time and on budget to support certain customers. At our major market project in Atlanta, we have remained on plan with construction, and the demand pipeline remains strong. Finally, due to COVID-19, we are delayed on our expansion project in New Zealand due to the government shutdown of all construction activity. We are hopeful we will restart in the second quarter. In the midst of this pandemic, our food manufacturer customers and our retail customers want to make sure they are adequately prepared from a supply chain perspective through periods of dislocation.
As a leader in temperature-controlled storage with an integrated network, we are uniquely positioned to support them in this effort. At this time, our development pipeline remains robust. As we look ahead, we believe market conditions overall remain favorable for our business. First, in the near term, we expect that stay-at-home orders, state reopen plans, and social distancing guidelines resulting from COVID-19 will continue to influence our business. Our first quarter results show the effect of families stocking up on food to fill their freezers, much like one would see in preparation for a big storm or a hurricane. They also reflect the impact from reduced food consumption at restaurants, sporting events, schools, universities, and hotels, which ultimately resulted in products sitting and being preserved in our sites. In the second quarter, we have seen a slight sequential slowdown in grocery activity but still elevated from normal levels.
Thus, we are starting to see a leveling off in the second quarter as it relates to our retail customers. Since COVID-19, some restaurants continue to operate by providing curbside pickup and drive-thru service. As some states slowly open, we will see how consumer behavior responds as it relates to food consumption in the food service channel. Second, we want to note that any benefit we typically see from Easter was masked by the increase in food shopping due to COVID-19 in terms of its benefit to our business in the second quarter. Finally, we want to remind you that food manufacturers and retailers are still working hard to adjust to this unprecedented situation, and we will work diligently to continue to support them. Over the long term, barriers remain high for new development, while customer relationships and an integrated network remain more important than ever.
Our decades-long investment in technology, process, and infrastructure continues to be crucial to our ability to serve current and prospective customers. Our customer-centric focus and leading supply chain innovation, combined with our portfolio that has the right assets in the right locations, will serve us well as we seek to deliver consistent and profitable growth. In a post-COVID-19 world, we believe our customers, and ultimately their customers, will continue to focus on building and maintaining resilient supply chains. Americold is well-positioned for this environment. Before I turn the call over to Marc, I would again like to thank our associates for their dedicated work during this difficult time.
Thank you, Fred, and good afternoon, everyone. Today, we'll provide updates on our actual performance, as well as certain metrics on a constant currency basis. We will also highlight areas of our business that were impacted by COVID-19. Let me begin by echoing Fred's comments, which bear repeating. Our results this quarter capture the impact of increased overall activity by our two largest customer types, food manufacturers and retailers. We are focused on being strong partners to our customers as we provide mission-critical infrastructure that enables them to adapt their supply chains through this pandemic. Both sets of customers were responding to elevated end customer purchases driven by COVID-19 and stay-at-home requirements across the country. This activity was above what we typically see in the first quarter.
For the first quarter, we reported total company revenue of $484 million and total company NOI of $135 million, which reflects a 23.1% increase and a 37.2% increase year-over-year, respectively. Core EBITDA was $104 million for the first quarter of 2020, an increase of 46.5% year-over-year. This was driven by our 2019 and 2020 acquisitions and solid growth within our Core portfolio, including increased activity due to COVID-19. Our Core EBITDA margin grew by 343 basis points to 21.5%. For the first quarter of 2020, we reported net income of $24 million compared to a net loss of $5 million for the same quarter of the prior year. Our first -quarter Core FFO was $60 million, or $0.29 per diluted share. Our first quarter AFFO was $67 million, or $0.33 per diluted share.
As a reminder, the full definition and reconciliation of Core EBITDA, Core FFO, and AFFO to reported net income can be found in our supplemental. For the first quarter of 2020, Global Warehouse segment revenue was $381 million, which reflects growth of 31.6% year-over-year. The Global Warehouse segment NOI was $127 million, which reflects growth of 39.6%. The Global Warehouse segment margin was 33.3% for the first quarter, a 191 basis point increase compared to the same quarter of the prior year. This NOI growth and increase in margin was primarily due to improvements in our Core business, accretive acquisitions, increased customer holdings due to COVID-19, same-store economic occupancy growth, and the benefit of the Americold Operating System. These results were partially offset by the strength of the U.S. dollar and the significant incremental expense we undertook to address COVID-19.
These included sanitation and higher labor costs and added certain inefficiencies due to social distancing, staggered break schedules, and other changes to processes. At quarter -end, $258 million of our annualized rent and storage revenue was derived from customers with fixed commitment storage contracts. Compared to $251 million for the fourth quarter of 2019 and $222 million for the first quarter of 2019. Our recent acquisitions have a lower percentage of fixed -commitment contracts as a percent of rent and storage revenue. For the first quarter of 2020, 40.1% of rent and storage revenue was generated from fixed commitment storage contracts on a combined pro forma basis, which is a 50 basis point decrease over the sequential quarter. We view this as an opportunity as we bring these acquisitions onto Americold's commercialization standard.
As of March 31st, 2020, our global portfolio consisted of 183 facilities, five more than we had reported at the end of the fourth quarter of 2019, due to the acquisition of Newport Cold and NovaCold Logistics in the quarter. Our total facility count includes 172 facilities in our Global Warehouse segment portfolio and 11 facilities in our third-party managed segment. Now, I will turn to our same-store results in the Global Warehouse segment, which reflects 136 facilities. As a reminder, a facility is counted as same-store if it meets our definition at the beginning of the year. For the first quarter of 2020, our same-store Global Warehouse segment revenue was $292 million, which reflects growth of 5% year-over-year and 6.8% on a constant currency basis. Same-store Global Warehouse NOI was $97 million, which reflects growth of 9.8% year-over-year and 11.1% on a constant currency basis.
Same-store Global Warehouse NOI margin increased 147 basis points to 33.3%. For the first quarter, same-store global rent and storage revenue grew by 4.4% year-over-year or 5.7% on a constant currency basis. This was driven by increased customer activity due to COVID-19, increased economic occupancy from higher commodity holdings, and a slowdown in food service activity and exports. This was partially offset by the impact of the strength of the U.S. dollar. Our same-store economic occupancy was 81.8%, which reflects an increase of 337 basis points from the prior year. Our same-store global rent and storage NOI grew by 6.2% year-over-year or 7.3% on a constant currency basis. Same-store global rent and storage NOI margin increased 117 basis points to 68.8%. The NOI growth and margin expansion was a result of the revenue metrics cited above.
Additionally, this was driven by continued portfolio management, efforts to grow our fixed commitment storage contract, disciplined cost control through the Americold Operating System, and the impact of currency translation on costs in our international segment. This was partially offset by higher property taxes, property insurance, and increased sanitation costs from COVID-19. Same-store Global Warehouse services revenue for the first quarter grew by 0.4% year-over-year, or 7.5% on a constant currency basis. This revenue increase resulted primarily from increased customer throughput due to COVID-19 and a favorable mix, which shifted late in the quarter towards higher grocery activity. This generated 4.7% growth in our same-store warehouse services revenue per throughput pallet on a constant currency basis. As Fred previously mentioned, any benefit we would have seen from the Easter holiday was masked by higher grocery activity.
Our same-store global warehouse services NOI was up 51.5% year-over-year, or 54.7% on a constant currency basis, again, driven by increased customer activity, including a higher use of grocery-related value-added services. While the late -quarter surge in volume and implementation of social distancing guidelines did cause inefficiencies, we attribute this growth to cost control embedded within the Americold Operating System, disciplined underwriting, and a more favorable customer mix. Finally, same-store warehouse services NOI margin was 6.4% for the quarter, an expansion of 195 basis points driven by the same factors. I would also note that while this pandemic continues to evolve, we did not see a material increase in our healthcare costs related to COVID-19 in the first quarter.
Within the Global Warehouse segment, we had no material changes to the composition of our top 25 customers, who on a pro forma basis account for approximately 58% of our Global Warehouse revenue and who have been with us on average for over 30 years. Our recent acquisition activity has enhanced our wallet share of our key customers while providing further diversification. Additionally, our churn rate was approximately 3.4% of total warehouse revenue. We are proud of our customer service during this COVID-19 pandemic. Corporate SG&A totaled $37 million for the first quarter of 2020 as compared to $31 million for the comparable prior year quarter. This increase is primarily a result of the SG&A absorbed with our recent acquisition, net of realized synergies, and additional investments made to support our expanded development pipeline.
Additionally, this was driven by increased stock compensation expense and additions to our executive management team. Now let me update you on our development and acquisition activity. We spent $30 million in the first quarter on expansion and development capital, mostly related to spending at our Atlanta major market expansion and our Savannah, Georgia, new build. We will officially deliver our new Savannah build in the second quarter and have started inbounding product. At our automated expansion project in Chicago, we have seen strong demand and have signed up customers for over 80% of space. We'll be onboarding them throughout the remainder of the year. The automation ramp-up has slowed because of COVID-related travel restrictions of our European-based automation partners. However, we do not expect this to materially change the timing of stabilization.
From a demand perspective, we are similarly well-positioned at each of the three expansion projects we acquired as part of the Cloverleaf acquisition. As a reminder, our supplement has additional disclosure on expected yields and target stabilization dates for these projects. As Fred mentioned, our expansion projects for our major customer in Auckland, New Zealand, were substantially on hold during the first quarter. We are assessing the impacts of this COVID-19 related delay and will provide updates in the future. Additionally, in the first quarter, we received AUD 64.5 million from the sale of our land in Sydney and associated carrying costs. During the quarter, we completed previously announced acquisitions of NovaCold Logistics in Canada and Newport Cold in Minnesota. Additionally, we closed our strategic investment in a joint venture with Brazil-based SuperFrio. Turning to our balance sheet.
We believe that maintaining prudent leverage, access to multiple sources of capital, and ample liquidity are important at any part of the cycle, but especially in the current environment. We are committed to maintaining a strong, flexible balance sheet as we finance our business and growth plans. As of March 31st, 2020, our total debt outstanding was $2 billion, of which 77% was in an unsecured structure and 86% was at a fixed rate. Our real estate debt has a weighted average remaining term of six and a half years and carries a weighted average contractual interest rate of 3.89%. At quarter -end, we had total liquidity of approximately $1.2 billion, consisting of cash on hand, revolver availability, and $135 million of outstanding equity forward. We had no activity on our ATM program during the quarter. Our net debt to pro forma Core EBITDA was approximately 4.2 x.
During these uncertain times, we have maintained our Days Sales Outstanding, or DSO, as our customer cash collections remain strong. Our DSO has been consistent from year-end to the end of quarter one and now in April. During the quarter, we completed the refinancing of our unsecured credit facility as we expanded its capacity to $1.225 billion and CAD 250 million. We also tightened the credit spread on the revolver and term loan by five basis points and enhanced our flexibility by improving financial covenants and extending final maturity on this facility until 2025. I'd like to take a moment to discuss our outlook for 2020. Our first quarter results were certainly driven by elevated customer activity in response to COVID-19. Let us remind you that we look at our business on an annual basis.
There is some uncertainty related to the timing of state reopening plans and the resulting consumer behavior. However, we believe that food consumption will remain fairly constant, and we continue to benefit from the scale and diversity of our portfolio as well as our strong market share. At this time, we are maintaining our AFFO per share guidance in the range of $1.22-$1.30. Please refer to our supplement for updates on certain components related to tax and currency translation rates embedded in this guidance. Please keep in mind that our guidance does not include the impact of acquisitions, dispositions, or capital markets activity beyond what has been previously announced. Now let me turn the call back to Fred for some closing remarks.
Thanks, Marc. The events of the past few months have been unprecedented, and uncertainty remains high as major sectors of the economy remain significantly slowed down. However, at Americold, our infrastructure has been proven to be essential. Our business has demonstrated its resilience, and our team of associates are proud to be important members of the global food supply chain. They have risen to the occasion to support our customers with incredible dedication, and I cannot thank them enough for their tremendous effort. Thanks again for joining us today, and we will now open the call for your questions. Operator?
At this time, we will be conducting a question -and -answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. We ask that all participants please submit only one question and one follow-up only. One moment , please, while we poll for questions. Our first question is from Dave Rodgers from Baird. Please proceed with your question.
Yeah, Fred and Marc, good afternoon. Thanks for all the details on the quarter and the last couple of weeks. I wanted to go back to the temporary production shortfalls or your customer shutdowns that we've been reading about in the paper and that, Fred, you tried to address. I guess a couple of things around that. I would say the first is that you did talk about how you have contracts in place that would help mitigate some of the rent and storage. Can you tell us on the protein side how much maybe that 25% of your business is in a fixed commitment? Maybe a broader question around that is how would that impact your services business if you were to see those shortfalls coming through the channel?
Thanks, Dave. Most of our protein, and I think we've talked about this before, most of our plant advantage sites that are connected to a manufacturer via a tunnel across the street or such are plants that are dedicated. The vast majority of that business is on a fixed commitment. They're paying for the space regardless of the volume. That's one place in our supply chain where you can count on, because that space is dedicated to having fixed commitments. To your point, yes, the real impact that we feel is throughput, which, as you know, is kind of our lower -margin business, if you will. That would affect the services side of the house.
Again, plant shutdowns—look, I think we have experienced a couple plant shutdowns, but not nearly to the magnitude that some people are stressing it out there in the news. Many of these shutdowns that have been in the press literally are plants that were down for one day or for two days max. That's a blip. That has no impact on us. As a matter of fact, a lot of these plants tend to shut down to do maintenance and cleanings and such at some point during the year.
The plants that are shut down right now, that are getting ready to ramp back up as a result of the executive orders, I guarantee what they're doing right now in those plants, in addition to the cleaning, is they're taking care of any maintenance and those types of things that ordinarily they might do at another point in time in the year. Bottom line is very little impact on us. Again, in those particular plants, there is the art of substitutability where people need protein. If pork's not available or beef's not available, they're going to switch to fish or chicken. We might see a minor hit to services in one plant, but we pick it right up in another.
Great. Thanks for that. Then a follow-up, if I could. Just Marc, you mentioned healthcare costs in the first quarter and that you saw no material increase from COVID-19. As you moved into the second quarter and we think about employee costs, things like compensation, overtime, and additional healthcare costs as the virus spread, do you have any comments about kind of the last five weeks? I think that would be really helpful as well.
Yeah, look, as we look, as Fred said, we definitely, to deal with the surge, witnessed higher labor costs because we're seeing higher throughput to support that business. Obviously, with the surge, we're definitely not as ideally efficient as we'd like to be, but we've really focused on making sure we could serve our customers and get that product out and through the supply chain, as Fred described in his prepared remarks. All that being said, overall, I think you saw through our business, we've been able to maintain or grow our margin there. On the healthcare front, the interesting phenomenon there is that with many of these stay-at-home orders, you're actually seeing a reduced usage of some typical healthcare benefits as people have not been able to go to the doctor in the ordinary course. We haven't seen regular healthcare costs rise.
We're not expecting any major moves in healthcare as we move throughout the year.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Dave.
Our next question is from Nate Crossett from Berenberg. Please proceed with your question.
Hey, good evening, guys. Hope you're doing well.
Hey, Nate.
Hey. Obviously a strong quarter from a metrics perspective. You noted that you're expecting the demand to normalize. I guess my question is, when we do normalize, do we go back to levels such as occupancy that we saw pre-COVID, or do you expect some customer behavior to permanently change? If it does, what does that look like?
Yeah. Boy, I'll tell you, week to week, you're given different inputs. I think a lot of this is really going to be dependent on how states reopen, how quickly consumers kind of switch their habits, and how fast they kind of flood the restaurants, for example. That's really still kind of up in the air. If you think about our first quarter, it's very similar to a fourth quarter for us, right? I mean, if you kind of compare metrics. There was just a massive rush to retail. I liken it, I use the phrase, it's like a hurricane. I'm an ex-grocer, and I know the impact that hurricanes have on a marketplace for a short period of time. Everybody stocks up, and then that next week, nobody's shopping, right? They already stocked up. We've got to kind of watch how those consumer patterns fly.
This is obviously far more complex than a typical hurricane, if you will, because it's sustained and it's going to take a while to recover from. It's really hard to predict exactly how it's going to balance out. I guess the point that I would make, though, is given the resiliency of our network and the diversification of our portfolio, we're going to easily be able to adjust and adapt. It won't be abrupt like what we saw in the first quarter. It'll probably be more even -keeled and even -paced. We expect retail to be up at least for the next several months because we still think that retail will get a predominance of the buy versus pre-COVID. When that levels back out to pre-COVID levels, whew. If I had that answer.
Well, just now, you mentioned that 30-day supply across the supply chain a couple of times. I'm just wondering if that number goes up after this—
Oh
...a bit more forward.
Yeah. Actually, there's a 30 days of supply of inventory at all four nodes. At any given time, there are about four months of inventory. You're right, there were a lot of reports in the press about food shortages right after the spike of emptying out the grocery stores. People thought we were out of supply. No, it was a massive tug, and the whole supply chain had to react overnight without warning to replenish the forward nodes. There are four months of inventory at any given time in the supply chain. There might be specific items that run out that are on order, but there's a lot of inventory. I have a lot of full warehouses. I don't expect that there's going to be a huge surge. That said, the manufacturers and the retailers are making those decisions.
Some will probably be more conservative and might add a little bit more inventory. Others may say, Hey, four months of inventory is enough. We're good. Unfortunately, we don't control that. My prediction, and being a supply chain guy, I would say that after we clear the deck and COVID's well behind us, I would expect things to kind of return to normal.
Okay, that's helpful. If I could just quickly ask about dairy. Is there anything going on there? There have also been kind of reports of farmers dumping milk and stuff, and I just want to know if that would have any effect.
Yeah. Not a strong impact on our supply chain. We do have some dairy that flows through and cross-docks, but it's pretty minimal. Obviously, the stuff that's going to retail is still cross-docking through in higher volumes. I think the dumping that you're seeing is because of their lack of ability to sell it through some of their other channels, which we wouldn't normally be involved in.
Okay. Thanks, Fred.
Sure. Thanks, Nate.
Our next question is from Ki Bin Kim from SunTrust. Please proceed with your question.
Thank you. Let me maybe take a step back and start at a high level. When did you guys start to see the benefits of people stockpiling food? If you can kind of just paint a picture for us of how that played out till May 7th.
Yeah. We actually had two phenomena going on early in the first quarter. Speaking of protein , we were amping up supply with the intention of exporting. Mainly to China, and obviously this hit China first, and all the shipping lanes slowed down. We couldn't get containers, so export kind of got jammed up and just stayed in inventory. We started obviously receiving benefits very early on because of the extra holdings associated. It was kind of that late first -quarter period of time, maybe three weeks before the end of the quarter, where you really started seeing some of the rush to the grocery stores. It kind of happened in two big cycles, right?
You had the early people that jumped in and were in panic mode right away and went and did it, and then things started getting serious, and you kind of had another surge, right? It's kind of evened out because people have been putting limits on different types of products that you can go after, and therefore, we don't see as much of the surge and the tug that you saw in those very early stages. We continue to see high demand, but there was a drop-off in retail right after that surge. They got the grocery stores replenished, and now it's kind of leveled off. What we're seeing today is more leveled off retail volumes, albeit higher than pre-COVID volumes.
Okay. You mentioned in your remarks the difference between retail that goes through the supermarkets and food service for the restaurants and other venues like that.
Yeah.
What is the split in your portfolio for how much money you make on retail versus food service? Generally speaking, what segment is more profitable?
Well, I think two things. Number one, remember, the vast majority of our income, 76%, is by the food manufacturers. We really are kind of agnostic as to whose truck we're putting it on. We don't care if it's Sysco's truck or Kroger's truck, right? We're agnostic to the vast majority of that. We don't really care which direction it's going. I will say that we actually run retail distribution centers. We don't actually run food service distribution centers. We do get a little extra benefit associated with the retail distribution centers from a standpoint of throughput, albeit lower margin volume, retail moves a lot of cases, right? Over the course of a year, we move 750 million cases through retail. We do get a little extra benefit associated with that retail volume.
Okay. If I could just squeeze a third one in here. Tying that all together, you obviously had a really good first quarter. You talk about the throughput pallets leveling off but still being higher than pre-COVID-19 levels, I'm assuming that means higher than last year. Your same-store NOI is 11%, strong rent and storage revenue. How come guidance does not change?
Look, I think that the big picture is we're reiterating guidance in this environment. What we would say is when you look across the full year, and we do really focus on the full year, overall food consumption isn't changing. Even though while we saw a slight acceleration in this first quarter as people procured more, it didn't mean they necessarily consumed more. When you think about our guidance over the full year, and just as Fred mentioned, we're a little bit agnostic as to what channel, but on an overall basis, for the most part, people aren't eating more as a result of COVID-19.
The big question to play out, which we just can't answer at this point, Kim, and just like we couldn't predict that this was going to happen in the first quarter, is we don't know if personal preferences have changed, right? We talk about caloric consumption not changing over the course of a full year, but which calories you're consuming is anybody's guess, right? I joke and say I've probably eaten more frozen pizzas than I care to share in the last few weeks. I don't know if that's going to be a permanent shift for somebody or if somebody's going to say, Hey, I love those pizzas. I'm going to buy more frozen goods in the future. Somebody might say, I'm sick and tired of that frozen pizza.
I'm going to take a break, and I'm going to eat something else. It's just really hard to predict exactly what that flow is going to look like. Again, as Marc said, we're confirming our guidance. We're not pulling our guidance like most people are. We're excited about the business. We're demonstrating the resiliency associated with it. There's just a lot that can happen with the way that these state reopening plans occur and with the consumer consumption habits that we just can't predict right now. We need a little bit more time to get a better understanding of that.
I see. Well, I'll tell you, I'm doing my part, and I'm definitely eating more, so. Thank you.
All right. Thanks, Kim.
Our next question is from Manny Korchman from Citi. Please proceed with your question.
Hi, everyone. If we think about sort of the other sectors, we talked about tenants asking for rent relief. You talk about your food service customers who are keeping their product with you, but their businesses may be closed or suffering from lower revenues. Have any of them come to you and said, "Yeah, we've got this fixed contract with you, but we just can't pay it right now"? Help us out. Cut rents. Let us defer. Anything along those lines?
As we said with our DSO, our days sales outstanding have remained constant from last year through Q1 and through April. We have not seen any slowdown in cash collection. Clearly, our customers, even though many restaurants are open for some sort of takeaway, may not have done the regular sit-down business that they've historically done, but there still is some activity flowing. It's just slower than what was the historic norm going into the food service channel.
I think the other thing to remember is that maybe an industrial landlord, for example, might be more impacted by that because whoever they're leasing it to may have ceased manufacturing operations or processing operations or distribution, right, depending on who they were. In the temperature control sector, remember, even if the product's not moving, we're still providing a service, a very valuable service. We're preserving their goods. Those goods can sit in our freezers because they're held at the right temperatures for a long period of time. We're still providing value. We're still protecting their assets during these difficult times. The other thing to remember is the vast majority of our customers serve both channels. They're seeing a shift from food service to retail, focusing more energy on retail. There are folks out there that are primarily dedicated to food service.
Most of those are pretty sound, healthy companies. There might be pockets of smaller guys, but like I said, we haven't really faced any of that and don't expect it.
How much of your portfolio is exposed to sort of other industries that are going to take longer to catch up and may not be necessarily replaced by their users? I'm thinking something like the airlines or the cruise ships or casinos where it's less of are you eating at home, are you eating out as sort of maybe a third channel of consumption?
Yeah. Again, those channels are typically serviced out of a food service provider like a Sysco or a US Foods or someone like that. They're our manufacturer's customers. We ship products to Sysco and US Foods. They may have a slowdown. They may see a slowdown when shipping to the airline from there or somebody else, but they'll sell those same types of goods to restaurant channels and others. We've even seen stories of some of the food service guys shipping bulk chicken and beef products and that type of thing to grocers. The grocer, the butcher , is cutting it into different retail-friendly types of packaging and then packaging it right there in the back of the store at your local grocery store. We expect those channels to keep on going. Again, they adjust and they adapt and find other ways to consume.
Thanks, Fred. Marc, on guidance, it looks like your assumptions for income tax expense came down, and guidance was maintained. I guess that would mean that there was an offset somewhere else in the sort of operations or elsewhere. Was it just a matter of it all being within the range, and you chose not to move things around? Or is there something else we should be thinking about in terms of where your guidance landed with the two items that you did point out in the release, sort of going against the other way?
No, two things. Just that when you look at the overall guidance altogether, you have your current income tax expense come down. You actually had kind of the deferred piece come up and that range tighten, which is an offset on overall taxes. That factors in as well as some of the FX headwinds. Clearly, the U.S. dollar has strengthened against most of our international ops. All that being said, when we pull it all back together, we're comfortable reiterating our full-year guidance.
Thanks, Marc.
Thanks, Manny.
Our next question is from Michael Carroll from RBC. Please proceed with your question.
Yeah, thanks. Fred, I don't know if this is too difficult to do or not, but can you quantify the surge of activity you saw in March versus today? I mean, obviously, the earlier surge pushed the Q1 results noticeably higher. I mean, should we expect that this still elevated pace is going to continue to drive elevated organic growth as we move into Q2?
Look, like I mentioned on the other question, it's really hard to predict exactly how things are going to pan out. Again, Q1 was unprecedented in the fact that there was this major surge that occurred. That surge did not happen in Q2, right? That surge kind of leveled off. It dropped off after the surge and then kind of came back up to a steadier level, albeit higher than, from a retail perspective, higher than pre-COVID. That surge, again, is very much like a hurricane. When a hurricane's predicted to hit South Carolina or North Carolina or wherever, people rush to the store, they buy everything in the store, and then their refrigerators and freezers are full. They don't need to go to the store the next week, so they don't buy.
They start to consume, and then they kind of come back into their normalized buying habits. I know that's a microcosm, but hopefully that helps to explain kind of that binge and purge type of thing that happens. It's yet to be determined, like I said, with the pizza example. It's yet to be determined how consumer behavior is going to change in terms of what they consume as a part of their caloric intake. Hopefully that helps. I mean, at every single facility, like I described in the press release, every facility was pressed immediately and unprecedentedly to respond to the next node in the supply chain. That's what you saw happen in the first quarter.
Okay. Then, I mean, how should we expect the environment to be normalized? Is it just typical of people to have their freezers filled up and not need to go grocery shopping anymore? I know you kind of mentioned this a couple times in the Q&A. Is it really the restaurants opening up? I guess since you have more grocery DCs than food distributor DCs, is that a big driver? As long as we're in this stay-at-home environment, you're going to continue to see pretty strong activity through your system?
Well, sure. If the restaurants absolutely do not open, then that whole balloon exercise that I do, where the caloric intake, if it's 50/50 pre-COVID, you're squeezing the restaurants closed, all that consumption needs to be fulfilled via the other channel, which would be retail. Of course, if the restaurants are closed, we see benefits because of the retail distribution centers seeing more throughput. Albeit, that's services revenue, right? The fixed commitment for those retail distribution centers is in existence regardless of the amount of volume that's going through it. Really only left is the retail services revenue, right? Again, as this balances back out and goes more to food service, we're just loading up food service trucks instead of loading retail trucks, and we'll see a dip in volume from the services side on retail, and we'll see more throughput going to the food service distributors.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Okay, thanks Michael.
Just as a reminder, please limit yourselves to one question and only one follow-up. Our next question is from Joshua Dennerlein from Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.
Hey guys. Appreciate all the color in the beginning on the supply chain and some of the detailed commentary. I guess I'm curious to kind of think through where maybe your margins are going forward. Maybe on the service side, I'm not sure if we really touched on labor. Did you guys have to tap temporary workers at all in the first quarter or overtime that might normalize in Q2? Maybe you have started to see that in Q2, if any workers have gotten sick at all?
We've had fantastic attendance and very little turnover. Part of that is because we jumped on this early and protected our employees, so we haven't had those types of issues with the people. It's very similar to a fourth quarter. When we go into a fourth quarter, we're building up for the season. We have to bring in temporary workers, that type of thing, to be able to support the business. The difference is, during that time, we have the time to train them up and get them into a highly productive state. In this particular case, because the ramp was so quick, so immediate, we did a number of things. We moved people around between different facilities that felt the impact faster than other facilities. We went and hired a lot of people.
We worked with a lot of people like Great Wolf Lodge, an example of an employer that had to unfortunately shut down a lot of their operations. We worked with them, their CEO and I aligned, and we got our HR teams together, and we were able to take people that worked near one of their facilities and were able to employ them at one of our facilities. The great news is a lot of them were pre-trained, so we were able to bring them in pretty quick and get them in. Yeah, we went ahead and we got extra labor. We worked overtime. We did all of those things. No doubt labor cost was higher than our normal labor costs. As you can see, with that volume going through our full boxes, we converted it.
Okay. Yeah. Wow. Impressive. I don't think we touched on it, the Rochelle, Illinois development. I believe that was going to start leasing after the holiday season. Where does that kind of stand on that NOI J-curve? Has it started generating positive NOI, or is that something we'll kind of kick in later in the year, like Q2, Q3 ?
As we said, we're really pleased. We've seen very strong demand for that site. As we mentioned in the prepared remarks, we have demand for over 80% of the space in that site, and that demand will be ramping up through the rest of the year. We are performing consistent with our outlook for that site.
Our goal, just to remind people, is we expect that building to be fully stabilized from a run rate perspective in Q1 of next year.
Okay. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Joshua.
Our next question is from Michael Mueller from JP Morgan. Please proceed with your question.
Yeah. Hi. Let me see. Just two quick ones here. One, Marc, can you talk a little bit about where you see the spot borrowing costs? Then just in terms of the margin improvement for the quarter of the up 130 basis points , do you have a sense as to how much of that was directly tied to COVID?
Yeah. Two things. On the spot borrowing costs, as you saw, we actually did refinance our overall credit facility in the quarter, and we were able to actually tighten our overall credit spread by five basis points. I think especially people have really seen, as Fred mentioned, just the strength and the resiliency of the platform, especially through all these cycles. Not only do we think our lending community really saw that, but we've also obviously been approached by others of our lenders in our longer -term paper who have also expressed interest should we need to tap that market; they'd be available there to support us. If you look at our overall business, you think about the split and the overall growth, especially in the same store, roughly the 11% growth.
We think about half of that is related to the additional activity from COVID relative to the ordinary course of the business. When you think about kind of our full -year guidance, obviously we've been performing very well. When we look at our recent trends of Q1 results, kind of Q1 over Q1, you'll see that roughly it's about 5%-6% typically. I'd say overall this year from the NOI perspective, about half of that overall 11% is reflective of COVID-related growth.
Okay. That was it. Thank you.
Great. Thanks, Michael.
Our next question is from Bill Crow from Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.
Yeah, guys, just taking a couple of the topics that have already been broached and maybe restating a little bit. The 30% that goes out to food service goes to US Foods or Sysco. How worried do you have to be about the underlying health of their clients, of the restaurants that are out there that are closed?
Yeah. Very little. Not to act cold or callous there, but very little. At that point, that's their transaction. By the way, food service is not 30%. I don't know where that number is from. If we say pre-COVID, I would estimate, depending on who you talk to, call it 50/50, right? Half of the volume that food manufacturers make goes through retail, half goes through food service. Again, what we saw was a squeezing of the bloom, where more is going to retail than food service at this point. The bottom line is, and I think I mentioned this, those food service guys are getting creative and figuring out who else they can sell to, right? They're actually selling to retail grocery stores and finding other avenues to be able to ship that product to.
I can't necessarily speak to the health of their customers in some of these restaurant chains and such. We're really kind of agnostic to that.
Yeah. I just want to just remind everyone, when you look at our customer base, roughly 76% is focused on food manufacturers that typically service both channels. We've seen, as Fred mentioned earlier, them shift towards their retail-centric product in this environment.
The other 22% is predominantly retail.
Okay. Then any comments on the poultry side of things? I think we've talked about beef and pork. We haven't said much about poultry.
Yeah, no. I've got a lot of full warehouses of chicken. Look, I think the protein industry as a whole is healthier than what's being portrayed out there. We have lots of inventory across the enterprise. Again, I applaud what the grocers are doing, and they're making sure that we don't have another toilet paper fiasco on our hands by doing the limits early on based on the news. The supply is flowing. The product is flowing across all those protein categories. Again, we might see spot short-term shortages, if you will, in terms of throughput happening. I think this executive order gets everybody back to work, and I don't think we'll really feel it.
The other thing I want to say while we talk about these percentages is that often business is spread across multiple sites and supports multiple manufacturing nodes. One of the things I think more of the news has been around is the beef and pork sites that have seen higher instances of COVID. Even if you look across our network, we service multiple manufacturers across multiple nodes. The business is extremely diversified even within those categories.
That's right.
Okay. Thank you. That's it for me.
Yep. Thanks, Bill.
We have reached the end of the question -and-answer session, and I will now turn the call over to Fred Boehler for closing remarks.
Thank you. Again, thanks for joining us tonight. I know it's a busy week of earnings here. I just want to end with we're very proud of what we've been able to accomplish, very proud of the 13,000 associates that we have around the world. They're really doing a great job out there in servicing all of us, quite frankly, as consumers. I think that if you look at our business, the things that we've been touting for the last couple of years, I think, really rang true as we're going through this crisis, and that's the resiliency of our business due to the diversification of our portfolio and the commercialization of our business and the way that we operate in a consistent manner with the Americold Operating System. Again, I think these things have never rang truer. Again, excited about where we're heading.
I know it's difficult to predict where we're going, but we were able to confirm guidance, and I think that's a good thing in this environment where a lot of people are pulling that and withdrawing it. We're in a good state. We'll watch it closely and see how this business transpires with consumer behavior through the rest of the year. Thank you. Have a great evening. Stay safe. Be well.
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