Greetings and welcome to the Americold Realty Trust third quarter 2019 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. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Scott Henderson, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Capital Markets. Please proceed.
Good afternoon. We would like to thank you for joining us today for Americold Realty Trust third quarter 2019 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 of 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. I will turn the call over to Fred.
Thank you, and welcome to our third quarter 2019 earnings conference call. This afternoon, I will provide highlights for the quarter, discuss macro trends driving our business, and update you on our growth activity. Marc will follow with a review of the third quarter results, and then discuss our balance sheet and outlook. After our prepared remarks, we will open the call for your questions. The third quarter was a strong quarter for Americold. We reported total company revenue growth of 16%, total company NOI growth of 18.9%, and core EBITDA growth of 21.6%. This was driven primarily by three factors. First, the contribution from our second quarter acquisition. Second, as our platform and scale grow, we continue to benefit from improved operating efficiencies and integration synergy.
As a result, total company NOI margin increased 65 basis points to 25.9%, and core EBITDA margin increased 92 basis points to 20% compared to the third quarter last year. Third, our core portfolio continues to perform well. On a constant currency basis, same-store global warehouse segment revenue grew by 3.3% and NOI grew by 2.3%. Year to date, same-store global warehouse segment revenue grew by 3.2% and NOI grew by 3.4%, also on a constant currency basis. Our performance is supported by favorable macro trends. We continue to expect that demand will rise steadily with population and consumption growth. In addition, consumer preferences continue to shift towards healthy, perishable food. Manufacturers are supporting this demand through the introduction of new products and reformulations of old. This increases the need for temperature-controlled storage.
Across our portfolio, we see no signs that these trends will change, and we believe we are uniquely positioned to capture outsized market share utilizing our fully integrated infrastructure. On the supply side, significant barriers to new development remain in place. Our systems and processes are backed by many years of research and millions of dollars of technology investment. Further, our customers trust us to maintain their brand integrity, and we take this responsibility seriously. We believe this customer-centric focus, combined with our portfolio that has the right assets in the right location, will serve us well as we seek to achieve consistent and profitable growth over the long term. In other news, during the quarter, we were extremely pleased to receive an investment-grade rating of Baa3 with a stable outlook from Moody's.
This rating, combined with our BBB ratings from Fitch and DBRS Morningstar, significantly reduces our cost of capital. As our growth activity remains robust, this magnifies the benefit to the bottom line for our shareholders. Across our active development pipeline, we have five projects currently underway, totaling 42 million cubic feet and representing $261 million of total investment. These projects remain on track to be completed at dates ranging between the end of the fourth quarter 2019 to mid-2021. At our recently completed 15.7 million cubic foot state-of-the-art automated expansion project in Chicago, we continue to ramp up systems and onboard customers. However, due to the weather-related delays in completing construction, customer requirements to utilize the space for the upcoming holiday season, and our prioritization on meeting our customer service requirements, full stabilization of this facility may take 12 to 18 months.
Our goal is always to get our operations right for our customers, and our stabilized return expectations remain unchanged for this project. With regard to the acquisitions we announced earlier this year, we continue to integrate the operations onto our platform and implement our Americold Operating System and commercial business practices to capture expected efficiency gains. As noted previously, we transitioned core SG&A functions to our headquarters, including HR, finance, IT, and engineering. I am excited about the progress to date, and we are on track to achieve our synergy goals. As we mentioned last quarter, our percentage of fixed commitment storage contracts in our global warehouse segment decreased as a result of the acquisition, which had fewer fixed commitments.
I'm pleased to say that in the third quarter, we increased our percentage of fixed commitment storage contracts by 170 basis points sequentially, and we are now back to 40%. Also, as previously discussed, we sold our minority JV interest in China during the third quarter. This sale generated approximately $15 million in cash proceeds. Finally, I'm pleased to welcome Khara Julien as our new Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer. Khara brings a wealth of experience in human resources and will play a valuable role in developing our associates to support the company's growth. We are excited to have Khara on our team. I will now turn the call over to Marc, who will provide more details on our quarterly results, balance sheet, and outlook.
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 reported total company revenue of $466 million and total company NOI of $121 million, which reflects a 16% increase and an 18.9% increase year-over-year, respectively. core EBITDA was $93 million for the third quarter of 2019, an increase of 21.6% year-over-year, primarily driven by our 2019 acquisitions, solid growth within our core portfolio, and continued improvement in operating efficiency. Our core EBITDA margin grew by 92 basis points to 20%.
Please note our strong core EBITDA growth and margin improvement were impacted by factors including higher healthcare expenses related to an increase in high dollar claims, the J-curve associated with implementing and aligning our recent acquisitions to the Americold Operating System and practices, startup costs related to our Chicago development project, and the currency translation impact of the strengthening of the U.S. dollar. It is important to note that higher healthcare costs were not related to workers' comp, but rather made up of certain high dollar claims from associates and their dependents utilizing their healthcare benefits. As we have noted in the past, our quarterly results can be lumpy due to the timing of certain factors such as healthcare expenses, which is why we recommend continuing to focus on an annual rather than quarterly result.
For the third quarter 2019, we reported net income of $27 million compared to net income of $25 million for the same quarter of the prior year. Our third quarter core FFO was $59 million or $0.30 per diluted share. Our third quarter AFFO was $52 million or $0.27 per diluted share. As a reminder, the full definition and reconciliation of core EBITDA, core FFO, and AFFO to reported net income can be found in our supplemental. For the third quarter of 2019, global warehouse segment revenue was $366 million, which reflects growth of 23% year-over-year. Global warehouse segment NOI was $113 million, which reflects growth of 21.1%. Global warehouse segment margin was 31% for the third quarter, a 48 basis point decline compared to the same quarter of the prior year.
This decrease in margin was primarily due to the factors impacting core EBITDA previously discussed. At quarter end, $244 million of our rent and storage revenue was derived from customers with fixed commitment storage contracts as compared to $232 million in the second quarter of 2019 and $215 million in the third quarter of 2018. For the third quarter of 2019, 40% of rent and storage revenue was generated from fixed commitment storage contracts, a sequential increase of 170 basis points from the second quarter 2019 on a combined pro forma basis. As of September 30th, 2019, our global portfolio consisted of 176 facilities, two less than what we reported at the end of the second quarter of 2019.
We ended the third quarter of 2019 with 165 facilities in our global warehouse segment portfolio and 11 facilities in our third-party managed segment portfolio. During the third quarter, we exited a lease facility in Heyburn, Idaho, which was classified as non-same store. In connection with the exit of this lease, we relocated the majority of customer product within this facility to other owned facilities within our network. Additionally, we exited the operation of one of our third-party managed facilities in Crete, Nebraska, and there was no material contribution to NOI in the third quarter from this facility. Now I will turn to our same-store results in our global warehouse segment. We define same store as facilities that have at least 24 months of normalized operation. For the third quarter 2019, 138 of our 165 warehouses were included within our same-store pool.
The remaining 27 non-same-store warehouse facilities include the 24 facilities that were acquired in 2019 and three legacy facilities that are in various stages of operational stabilization. For the third quarter of 2019, our same-store global warehouse segment revenue was $298 million, which reflects growth of 2% year-over-year and 3.3% on a constant currency basis. Same-store global warehouse NOI was $93 million, which reflects growth of 1% year-over-year and 2.3% on a constant currency basis. Same-store global warehouse NOI margin decreased 31 basis points on a constant currency basis to 31.1%. This comparison was impacted by approximately $3 million of healthcare expenses related to higher claims reported in the third quarter that I previously mentioned. I will now discuss our same-store results in a little more detail.
For the third quarter, same-store global rent and storage revenue grew by 1.4% year over year or 2.6% on a constant currency basis. Our same-store economic occupancy was 79.2%. This reflects a decline of 108 basis points from the prior year, while partially offsetting the 196 basis point decline in physical occupancy. Our same-store global rent and storage NOI grew by 2.3% year over year or 3.4% on a constant currency basis. Same-store global rent and storage NOI margin increased 54 basis points on a constant currency basis to 64.1%. The NOI growth and margin expansion was a result of continued portfolio management combined with our efforts to grow our fixed commitment storage contract and disciplined cost controls through the Americold Operating System of our power and facility related costs.
Same-store global warehouse services revenue for the third quarter increased 2.4% year-over-year or 3.9% on a constant currency basis. These results included the benefit of one extra business day in the third quarter 2019 and excluding this, same-store warehouse services revenue would have increased 2.4% quarter-over-quarter on a constant currency basis. This revenue increase resulted from a favorable mix, which generated 4.1% growth in our same-store warehouse service revenue per throughput pallet on a constant currency basis. Our same-store global warehouse services NOI declined by 8.3% year-over-year or 5.9% on a constant currency basis as a result of the increased healthcare costs previously discussed. Despite these higher costs, same-store warehouse services NOI margin was 6% on a constant currency basis in the quarter, a decline of only 63 basis points.
Using the same-store pool for the first nine months of the year, which represents 137 facilities, our same-store global warehouse revenue growth was 3.2% and NOI growth was 3.4% on a constant currency basis. Please note that the nine-month period this year contained the same number of business days as last year. Year-to-date, same-store revenue and NOI growth were impacted by the same factors that drove the quarter-over-quarter performance. Adjusting for the $2 million non-recurring workers' comp benefit realized in the first half of 2018 that we previously discussed, our NOI growth would've been 4.2% on a constant currency basis. Within our 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 60% of our global warehouse revenue and who have been with us on average for over 30 years.
Additionally, our churn rate was approximately 3% of total warehouse revenue, a 30 basis point reduction from the same period last year. We believe our strong focus on customer service and active portfolio management contributes to our ability to retain customers. Corporate SG&A totaled $32 million for the third quarter of 2019 as compared to $27 million for the comparable prior year quarter. This increase is primarily a result of the SG&A absorbed from our recent acquisitions net of synergies, higher SOX compliance costs, increased stock compensation expense, and additional investment made to support our expanded development pipeline. Additionally, we incurred total costs of $4 million for the third quarter as shown in the acquisitions, litigation, and other line items within our statement of operations, which primarily reflect M&A-related integration, retention, and severance costs.
Of the $10 million in total cost savings that we expect to realize from the Cloverleaf integration, we have already eliminated approximately $6 million on an annualized basis, and we have taken action to eliminate $4 million more of costs on an annualized basis. As we stated, we expect to capture the full benefit of the synergies by the end of the first 12 months after closing. Now, let me update you on our development spending. In aggregate, we have spent $155 million year-to-date on expansion development capital, including $50 million in the third quarter. As Fred mentioned, in Chicago, we have completed construction, are commissioning our systems, and are currently onboarding and serving our customers. Our active expansion and development projects are on track and are expected to achieve our targeted return.
It is important to note, during the period after completion until stabilization, we will incur startup costs, such as making key facility hires, training employees, bringing down the temperature in the facility, fine-tuning automation systems, and ramping up and onboarding new business. As we work towards stabilization during this time, which normally takes approximately 12 months, there may be instances where the revenue generated for the period may not cover these startup costs. Turning to our balance sheet. As of September 30th, 2019, total debt outstanding was $1.9 billion, of which 76% was in an unsecured structure, 92% was at a fixed rate. Our real estate debt has a weighted average remaining term of 6.5 years and carries a weighted average contractual interest rate of 4.29%. At quarter end, we had total liquidity of approximately $1.5 billion.
This includes $372 million of net proceeds from our previously announced equity forward. Our net debt to pro forma core EBITDA was approximately 4.1 times. Additionally, during the third quarter, we filed a $500 million at-the-market program as an additional capital source to support our growth strategy. At this time, we have not utilized our ATM. Finally, we received an investment-grade rating of Baa3 with a stable outlook from Moody's. This rating, combined with our BBB rating from Fitch, reduced our annual spread on our $475 million term loan from 145 basis points to 100 basis points, resulting in a $2.1 million in annual interest savings. Additionally, our annual spread on our $800 million revolver, which at the end of the quarter was not drawn, is reduced from 145 basis points to 90 basis points, resulting in significant interest savings when the revolver is being utilized.
As a result of this rating, we moved to a flat 20 basis point facility fee on our revolver. Assuming an undrawn revolver, this results in $1.2 million in annual interest savings. Before I turn the call back to Fred, I would like to update our outlook for the remainder of 2019. For the full year 2019, we expect the following. We are reiterating our global warehouse segment same-store revenue growth range of between 2%-4%. Given the higher-than-expected healthcare costs experienced year-to-date, we now expect same-store NOI growth for this year to be at the bottom half of our stated range of 100-200 basis points higher than the associated revenue growth. Both of these growth rates are expressed on a constant currency basis. Selling general administrative expense as a percentage of total revenue is expected to range between 7%-7.2%.
Recurring maintenance and IT capital expenditures are now expected in the range of $50 million-$60 million. Growth and expansion capital expenditures are expected to be $205 million-$215 million. This includes spending related to the company's announced development project. Anticipated AFFO payout ratio of 65%-68%, reflecting a full-year weighted average diluted share count of 180 million-184 million shares. I will now turn the call back to Fred.
Thanks, Marc. We are very pleased with our performance so far in 2019. We continue to generate strong results from our same-store portfolio, as well as grow our business through strategic developments and acquisitions, which are fully funded with long-term capital. As we look towards the end of 2019 and into next year, we believe Americold is uniquely positioned to continue to drive long-term growth and create shareholder value through best-in-class operational expertise and accretive portfolio growth. I'd like to thank all of our associates for their continued hard work and outstanding contributions as we continue to grow our company and serve our global customers. Thanks again for joining us today, and we will now open the call for your questions. Operator?
Thank you. At this time, we'll 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 key. One moment please, while we poll for questions. Your first question comes from the line of Ki Bin Kim with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question.
Thanks. Good afternoon, everyone.
Hi, Ki Bin.
Hi. Can we first start off on the expenses side? If I just try to remember correctly, I thought the expense comp, it'll still be comp in the second half, but I thought it was supposed to get better, because I think you had a $2 million negative comp variance last quarter, year-over-year, and it was supposed to be like $1 million in the second half. It was supposed to just get better, but it looks like it got worse. Can you help me understand that better?
Clearly, as we spoke about in our prepared remarks, the third quarter we had a higher number of high dollar health insurance claims, approximately $3 million in our same-store portfolio. If you look at that contributed roughly to a 330 basis points reduction in what we would have seen in our normalized NOI growth rate for the warehouse segment or for the same-store warehouse segment. We will say, over time, look, we have roughly several thousand of our employees on our healthcare programs, and we are self-insured, and we will see, over time, some variation in that number. I would say that we don't believe this is a trend, but over time, over a long thing, given that population, you may have quarters where you have higher healthcare costs. This happened to be one of them.
Okay. That $3 million, I'm just trying to get a better sense of how that dissipates over time.
It was fully incurred this quarter.
Yeah. Is it one year from now that'll be gone, or will it kind of ratchet down pro rata somehow over the next four quarters?
Oh, these are like costs for medical procedures that happen during the quarter, so they're fully accrued.
I see. Maybe bigger picture, are there ways that you're thinking about to maybe take the edge off these kind of volatile expenses? I'm not sure if reinsurance is even a possibility, but are you looking into anything like that?
Yeah, we do retain reinsurance for extreme high dollar claims. The increase that we saw this year, when we talk high dollar claims, we're talking about claims in excess of quarter of a million dollars for an individual claim. We had a significant number in this quarter. We don't believe, again, that it's a trend, and we do retain reinsurance above that level. Just as you know, just like with regular car insurance, you don't have a zero deductible. It's prohibitively cost expensive. We believe over the long term, we retain the appropriate level of reinsurance to manage the risk of the business.
Thanks.
Ki Bin, just to follow up on that, again, looking at it on an annual basis, this is one of those items that we've called out before that can fluctuate on a quarterly basis. Over the span of the year, it tends to work itself out through these expenses. Again, just another reason why we kind of focus on the full year.
Okay. In terms of the revenue side of the business, the business trends, can you just give us a little more clarity on some operating stats, like the lease spreads year to date in 2019 and maybe the rent growth that you've seen? I know customer retention is probably a tricky stat, given that 60% of your revenue is on month to month or non-fixed rate commitments, but maybe just providing us a little more color just so that we get a better business sense of what's going on.
Yeah. As I mentioned in the individual categories and breaking them apart, you probably best see this in our same-store portfolio. We're actually seeing decent revenue growth, and we continue to hold our guidance for the full year. Specifically in the quarter, on a constant currency basis, we saw rent and storage revenue growth of roughly 2.6%, and we saw warehouse services growth of 3.9%. For the whole segment, roughly 3.3%, which is just above the kind of midpoint of our guidance range.
Yeah, I guess I was asking about what line items contributed to that 2.6% growth. For example, I think as I get your lease expiration schedule, you obviously ran eight more into the expirations for this year. Just what kind of rental rate trends are you seeing when you are re-signing leases?
If you come back to look at, and this is in our supplement. Our same-store rent and storage for occupied pallet is roughly going up about 4.4% year-over-year on average, and on a constant currency basis, closer to 5.5%. We are seeing strong growth, and as we mentioned, roughly 4% growth on revenue per throughput pallet. We continue to see strong revenue growth in the business. I think, remember on the leases and the renewals and such, our churn rate is very, very low, right. I think we're talking about 3%-4% churn rate. Very little rotation. Our customers are with us long-term, and we renew their contracts as we go.
Okay. Thank you.
Thanks, Ki Bin.
Next question comes from the line of Michael Carroll with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.
Yeah, thanks. Fred, I want you to touch on the Rochelle development. I believe I heard you correctly saying that you don't expect it to be stabilized in 12 months, now you expect it to be stabilized in 18 months. Can you walk through why it's taking a little bit longer and what's your expectations there?
Yeah. I think we said in the release that we expect it to be between 12 and 18. It's all about ramping up and commissioning the automation. If you recall a quarter ago, we talked about the fact that we experienced some extreme weather delays in getting that building built, about 140 days above and beyond our original expectations. The building's 140 feet high. Wind gusts, ice, snow, rain, any weather condition you can think of affected our ability in being able to erect the racking and then the siding that's attached to the racking. What that does is that prevents us from being able to fully test and commission all of the automation that's within that building until you get the building wrapped.
As a result, that testing and fine-tuning the automation didn't occur until late in the year when we were opening and we were expecting to onboard some business for a particular customer who was in a pinch, running up against an expiration with their current provider. We onboarded that product in at the same time that we're commissioning. We're burning in, if you will, the automation and getting it fine-tuned. We've made some decisions as we're getting late in the year to be a little cautious about overburdening that during the holiday season, the most critical time of the year. We've onboarded, we've got a couple of different customers in there. The system is working. It's just we're right up against the holiday schedule, which was unplanned due to the 140 days in delay.
We're just giving ourselves a little cushion there to say that coming out of the holidays, we'll start ramping more business into there, and that stabilization could be somewhere between 12 and 18 months.
What happened in the third quarter related to the financial impact? I guess how much money did Cloverleaf add? I guess I'm assuming fourth quarter is going to be fairly stable, and then we start seeing a ramp up as you go into 2020. Is that correct?
As we mentioned in our prepared remarks, typically with a launch of a facility, there will be a J-curve, and I think we called out certain of the types of expenses that you'd expect to see at the launch of a facility. Obviously, we're bringing on the labor, we're bringing down the temperature before the business is ramping in. We're dialing in the automation. It's not uncommon, and this is why we talk about the typical standard year to stabilization being the first six months roughly being break even, just because you have much higher costs as you're onboarding, learning the business, making sure you're servicing the business, and then it really ramps from there, and we expect to exit, just as we've always said, that first year on our stabilized run rate.
Was there a contribution in the third quarter? Because I guess it was completed, wasn't it, between the first and second quarter. If you're not bringing on new customers in the fourth quarter, should we expect a J-curve ramp there, or is it going to be kind of similar to what it was this quarter?
Yeah, as I said, that J-curve typically could take upwards of the first six months. You think about really a beginning of Q3 launch as a facility. We expect to have those costs through the balance of the year.
Okay, great. last question, Marc.
That's reflected in our full year guidance.
Last question, Marc. I think you said in the guidance that you still expect NOI growth to be about 100 basis points higher than your revenue growth. Through the first nine months, it seems like it's only 20 basis points higher. What's going to happen in the fourth quarter? Is it just that you typically see higher margins the fourth quarter, given the seasonality, and that's what's taking it up so significantly?
Yeah, Michael, this is the busiest time of the year, so this is when you typically convert a little bit more. Again, this is why we look at the full year.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Dave Rodgers with Baird. Please proceed with your question.
Hey, good afternoon, guys. Just wanted to follow up on Mike's question. It sounds like you're at a full expense run rate for Rochelle in the fourth quarter, if not before. Is that right?
That's correct.
Okay. I guess on the second question with the margin enhancement, can you kind of walk through what's going to get you to the 200-400 basis points of margin expansion in the fourth quarter to kind of get you on pace for the year? I mean, it's almost upwards of 400 you'd need. That'd be a great performance in the fourth quarter, and obviously you guys have confidence in that. Just on top of the occupancy and the throughput, we just haven't seen that yet. Just kind of curious if you could walk through some of the mechanics of kind of getting up to that number.
No, look, I think the warehouse segment performance actually is very strong. As I said in my prepared remarks, we had a significant dollar amount, roughly $3 million within our same-store of costs that burdened our healthcare costs that burdened our same-store, the services margin, and that item alone was 330 basis points that impacted our same-store revenue growth. We're talking about going from a 2.3% revenue growth up to a 5.6%. That's what I'm saying. The business continues to perform. We don't expect to see the heavy healthcare that we saw this quarter.
While the item is lumpy, it tends not to be sustained over long periods of time. We look at that, the core business performs, and you can also take a look at our year-ago margins too to see the impact of the volume that the fourth quarter has in the overall business.
Yeah. Again, normalized healthcare as well as the ramp-up in business. When you talk about occupancy at this type of year, remember, we've got such a diversified portfolio and assets that service a lot of different parts of the food supply chain. This time of the year, this is where it's your key logistics centers, your key logistics markets, our distribution centers that really ramp up, and every single one of those markets are operating at 85% or higher. They're very full, but not too full, which means that we're going to be able to operate it highly efficiently by not overfilling the facilities and being at 100% like we used to be in the past. This is a high efficiency quarter for us, and that's why the NOI is outsized.
Got you. I appreciate the added color. On the G&A, maybe for Marc, you did talk about the synergies that you were getting post the Cloverleaf transaction. I wanted to ask, the G&A was up sequentially, even if you kind of back out, I think, some of the one-time items in the quarter. Is that still a good run rate kind of going forward, or do you expect to be able to take some of the synergies out of that line, or are we seeing them come from somewhere else?
No. As I said, roughly, we've identified and actioned an additional $4 million on an annualized basis of synergy that we should continue to see benefit overall spend on the go-forward basis.
Was the $6 million annualized fully reflected in the third quarter?
Well, the $6 million on an annualized basis. It wouldn't be all $6 million in that quarter.
Right.
It'd be the annualized impact of that kind of midway through the quarter, if you think about it.
More midway, there's some benefit of the fourth quarter. Okay. That's helpful.
Right.
Last, maybe just, Fred, can you talk about kind of the outlook or the appetite, obviously the appetite, but the pipeline for acquisitions, the opportunity that you're seeing out there given your liquidity today?
Yeah. No, the same opportunities that we've seen. We've got, as I say, on the acquisition front, we cast out a very wide net. We're going to remain disciplined, and make sure that we're buying things that make sense and fit within our portfolio in a way that we can fully integrate our enterprise. Again, our approach is full on integration, and that's important to us. Look, we're looking at a number of things. If something happens, we'll action it. If not, remember the other part of our growth pipeline is the development pipeline, and that continues to be very robust. Still have a pipeline in excess of $1 billion. You'll see us continue to execute on that in addition to the five active projects we've got going right now.
Thank you.
Sure.
Thanks, Dave.
Your next question comes from the line of Manny Korchman with Citigroup. Please proceed with your question.
Hello. Thanks. Fred, maybe to follow up a little bit on Dave's question. In your press release, you talked about a wealth of potential opportunities. Is there something special you're looking at now that you would include that line in the release? With that line, were you talking about acquisitions and development, or were you talking about sort of lease-up opportunities more specifically?
I think we were speaking more about acquisitions and development. We were talking about growth.
Is there something going on at the moment that you chose to sort of lead with that in your prepared quote in the release, or is it just more the same and you chose to just highlight it?
Yeah. No, I think we highlight it in every press release, because it's a fundamental part of our growth strategy. We don't give guidance on acquisitions. We say that that will be lumpy because of the fact that we are kind of hunting and pecking to find the right acquisitions. The development pipeline continues to be really strong. This development pipeline's been this size, ever since we went public. We've executed on a tremendous amount of it, and we plan on continuing to do so. We're just calling out that that growth continues to be strong and as fuel for us.
Yeah. I mean, our long-term model, I think as you've heard us talk about is, our goal is to start roughly between $75 million-$200 million in new development projects in a given calendar year, and we believe our pipeline is robust and continues to support that level of development growth.
Okay. If we can hop back to the discussion on the healthcare cost. Just to help frame sort of what's going on, what is sort of your annual outside of just the premium spend So those costs that you highlighted in the quarter, what's your total sort of annual spend on those? What were they in, I guess, in total in the quarter that would've been higher than what you expected, if that makes sense?
Yeah. No, exactly. As we said, on an annual basis, our total healthcare spending in our same-store could be close to in aggregate dollars around $40 million. This gives you a sense of that $3 million move is about roughly a 10% move on an annual basis, and obviously a much larger percent move if you think about the quarterly impact to that.
Instead of $10 million, you spent $13 million in a quarter?
Right.
We should think about it being sort of at that $10 million mark. There's no base fees , things will be higher going forward.
No, look, when we've looked back at our healthcare expenses over time, not dissimilar. We've seen roughly about 5% growth over the long term in overall healthcare spending. We factor that into our cost models and our escalation. What I would say, the thing I think we look at, while we will, as a business, going forward in the future, we may see this level of lumpiness in select quarters. Overall, what I would say is this is the least controllable of all the expenses that we manage, the core business expenses, the operations, the efficiencies, the workers' comp, those are performing. This is one of those items that's probably a little more unique to our business than others. We do our best to manage it. We have a lot of investment through HR around health and wellness programs.
Look, I wish we all had a crystal ball to make sure if we knew we were going to get sick to do something about it.
Last one for me, the preferred income tax benefit in the quarter was much higher than we had expected. Is that an item that's going to continue sort of at those levels? What would be a more normalized level to think about going into the future?
Yeah. What that particularly related to was the fact that our legacy business had some NOLs in our TRS. With the addition of the acquisition, we were able to take advantage of some of those NOLs which were previously reserved. As we acquire businesses in the future, and we continue to grow our earnings, we do think that there could be some level of benefits, but I think you'll see the bigger moves in connection with where we'll make acquisitions.
Thanks, Marc.
Thanks, Manny.
Your next question comes from the line of Mike Mueller with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question.
Yeah. Hi. Two questions here. First, apologize for another Chicago one.
That's okay.
The start-up costs in the third quarter, should we expect a similar number? I know you touched on this, but I don't think it was answered explicitly this way. Should the drag or the start-up costs in 4Q be fairly similar to what we saw in 3Q, or will they be notably different for some reason?
The cost base is more in there. As Fred said, this fourth quarter is the busiest quarter of the year. Our focus as a business is really on making sure we are serving our customers and performing for them during this busy season. I would expect not significantly greater cost, but I would also expect the ramp to really not be focused until the early part of next year.
Got it. Okay. I guess when we're thinking about development investment over the next three years, five years, what do you think the most, in terms of annual development spend we'll see is in a given year once you're ramped up?
Look, I think we gave guidance today of 75-200. Certainly, we're excited about the pipeline that we have out there. You've got a mix of opportunities out there, some of which are customer-dedicated builds and some of which are more market builds, like our Chicago or like our Atlanta projects. Those market builds, we have a little bit more control of over the timing. The customer builds, as we've discussed in the past, can fluctuate because we're really kind of at the mercy of the customer and their timing. It's really hard to kind of pinpoint the exact number.
Got it. Okay. That's it. Thank you.
Your next question is a follow-up from Ki Bin Kim with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey. Please proceed with your question.
Thanks. Any new updates on the Woolworths development in Australia in terms of timing?
Sure. Speaking of customer driven timelines, that's a good one, Ki Bin. We continue to work with that customer. I don't anticipate any news coming up soon. Just with a lot of things that are going on. They are working in their fourth quarter, which is their busiest time of the year right now, and they've got an automated dry facility of their own that they're working through. So, look, we continue to work with them and commercialize the deal as well as work through detailed design. We'll know more as soon as the customer is ready to go. As you know, we took action and pushed out the forward because of our belief of matching funds with development projects. If we're not breaking ground at the beginning of the year, we're confident that something else will be. Again, thanks to having a rich pipeline.
What's the probability of that deal actually ever even canceling? Is there almost like zero probability of that happening?
Well, I'll never say zero, Ki Bin. It's a big project. It's a big customer. Will it look exactly like it was when we started working on this two years ago? Probably not. We expect to get the same returns out of whatever we do for them, and we'll announce that as it comes about.
Okay. Just last question. Do you see much different rent growth patterns when you look at your distribution facilities versus the Production Advantage facilities?
No. Really across our entire portfolio, even our public warehouses, we tend to see the same types of rent increase and storage handling increases throughout all of our services and throughout all of our distribution types. Yes. The numbers I quoted earlier are kind of the weighted average across the broad portfolio. Yes. They're pretty consistent. Yes. Not a whole lot of fluctuation between them.
Okay. This is a hard concept for me, and I think a lot of people to understand, and that's like the market rent growth, right? Not the in-place rents you're getting or higher revenue per pallet, but just the market overall. How would you describe the market rent growth in cold storage? Is there any kind of big trends between different cities or geographies?
Look, I think the market is, as Fred's mentioned, and we've talked about for some time, remains tight. This is still a market where you do not see people building on spec. These are very expensive, purpose-driven, mission-critical assets. I think the market remains very disciplined. I think the other thing to remind you of is, again, this is an industry, there's not rack rates. There's nobody out there publishing per square foot rental rates and that type of thing. Our pricing is unique to every individual customer based on the profile of their business, the space that they take up, the size of their pallets, the amount of times it turns, the amount of handling, lots of different things that go into our pricing.
Typically what happens, Ki Bin, is if we're giving increases on an annual basis of 2%-4% a year, and we are at the end of a five-year contract, and we're renewing a new five-year contract, it pretty much carries on through into the new contract.
That 2%-4% increase trend, you mean?
Correct. Correct.
I see. All right. You said your turnover rate is 3%-4%. I think that meant annually? I mean, that's pretty low.
Yep.
How do you do the calculus of, are you pushing rent enough versus a turnover rate that's, from an industry standpoint, whatever real estate.
Correct
sector you're looking at, is pretty low.
No. Look, it is pretty low. There is a little art and science to pricing, right? You want to be careful not to push it up too high and push customers out. We keep our eye on the market. Obviously, we do bid on business on a regular basis through RFPs, and that helps us get some intelligence. We also have, the thing to remember here is we do have customer profitability. We've got pricing by customer, by market. We have over 2,600 customers across 178 sites. That gives us a very, very large database to understand what the market will bear in terms of pricing. We leverage all of that data and all of that intel along with participating in Requests for Proposal and pricing on new business that's coming in. Again, there's nowhere to really go for published guides on it.
It's a little bit of art and science.
All right. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Ki Bin.
Your next question comes from Bill Crow with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.
Hey, good evening, guys.
Hey, Bill.
Fred or Marc, just on the insurance thing, $40 million a year in costs or $43 million maybe this year. Is that net of whatever premiums you're getting from your employees, or how does that work?
That's correct.
Yeah. What would be the cost to Americold if you went to traditional insurance?
It would be significantly greater. You see this with most large companies. Once you get, look, 200 people is statistically significant. Once you get to portfolios where you have thousands of employees, you tend to find that it's much cheaper to self-insure. We do that, and we do retain stop loss coverage. That isn't to say that people don't get sick at times with certain illnesses that are very expensive to treat. Sometimes it's not illnesses, it's just people having babies and such, right? Yeah. It's any medical procedure that one of our 13,000 associates is having. We have about, I think just over 7,000 associates that are participating in our healthcare plan.
Do you kind of budget that on a per employee, or how do you think about the cost?
We do.
on an annual basis?
We do. We do.
Yeah.
Yeah. As I said, if you look back over time, on average, we've seen healthcare costs rising roughly about 5% a year. I don't think that's too dissimilar than what you've seen in the broader marketplace. Yeah.
I think if you could, we're all trying to square the bottom line results with all the great fundamentals that you guys are talking about.
Yeah
Can you make sure that we understand the non-recurring items in the quarter that caused EBITDA to go down from IIQ to IIIQ, and where would we be? I get the $3 million in healthcare and 3% change to same-store. What else is in that number that we need to know about that we can use to justify that the fundamentals remain strong?
Yeah, actually, overall, I think the business is growing. Our total EBITDA is growing. Overall EBITDA margin is growing. I think the one area where we were down slightly was the warehouse services in our same-store portfolio.
The margin flipping, as we said, we reported overall growth in the same-store of roughly 2.3% NOI. That's after these $3 million of healthcare costs. You can do the math and add back the $3 million. If you pro forma that $3 million back, we would've seen services growth of 5.6% in the quarter, which would've been pretty consistent with what you've seen from prior.
Right.
Remember, again, we got to look on a full year basis, Bill, because the problem is, one of the things is, in addition to healthcare not being controllable, we also have the volume that fluctuates from quarter-to-quarter, from month-to-month, that we don't have direct control of. That's our customers or our customers' customers that are pulling that. Remember, keep in mind, the year-to-date number on NOI growth was 3.4%, and that's with the burden of that healthcare cost on top of it. Without that, we're smack dab right in the middle of everything that we've guided to.
Yeah. We're still in the guidance.
Please understand, our overall cost structure isn't steady by quarter. As Fred mentioned, this is the back half of the year, and especially going into the fourth quarter, this is our busiest time of the year, so you will see us spending more on labor. There's greater activity, working through the warehouse. Also a great opportunity for us to get efficiency.
All right. We can continue this later on off this call. Thank you for your time.
Sure.
Thanks, Bill.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of the question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the call back to Mr. Fred Boehler for closing remarks.
Thank you. Thank you everyone for joining the call and for the questions that were asked. We understand that we are two years young as a public company, and people are still trying to get their heads around our business. That's why I'll continue to guide to look at the annual aspect of this business. It's a very strong underlying business, continues to perform strong on a same-store basis. If you really look at it from a full year standpoint, we've reconfirmed all of our full year guidance. I think we had a similar type of situation between first quarter and second quarter, where I think people were expecting more out of first quarter and we kind of said, "Give us the year and it will smooth out." Sure enough, after second quarter came through, it did.
This is really a full year business, and we hope that you can see that. Again, we reconfirm guidance for the full year. Thank you for all of your support, and have a great evening.
This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.