Prologis, Inc. ($PLD)

Well, thanks, everyone, for joining us today. Clearly, this is -- when I think of REITs overall and the biggest players in the space, Prologis is 1 of the first, if not the first that comes to mind. So super excited for have this conversation. I'm Michael Goldsmith, the U.S. REIT analyst from UBS. I'm joined by Dan Letter, the CEO of Prologis. Tim Arndt, the CFO; and Chris Caton, MD of Global Strategy and Analytics. Probably a list of questions that we're going to go through and just have a discussion to better understand the company and the current trends that are impacting the industrial warehouse fees, right now.

So maybe for those who are new to the story, can you provide a brief overview of the company and highlight what differentiates Prologis?

Sure. Thank you for being here. So Prologis, we're the global leader in logistics real estate. We own 1.3 billion square feet of logistics facilities in 20 countries in the world's most dynamic consumption markets we serve over 6,500 customers in these markets. What differentiates Prologis is really our scale the quality of our portfolio as well as all of the platform capabilities we've built adjacent to our business. Let me start with the quality. Our focus over the last 40-plus years has been curating the highest quality portfolio in the highest barrier to supply markets globally. We're in about 100 markets around the world. And again, the most dynamic consumption centers, the economies represent about 78% of the world GDP. We complement this portfolio with adjacent businesses. We have a scaled strategic capital business. We manage $68 billion of third-party capital through our strategic capital vehicles. We also have an unmatched development platform. We currently own or control 14,000 acres of land that we can build out another 225 million square feet out of that land bank, which represents about $42 billion in total investment. We also have built an adjacent energy business where we now have over 1.3 gigawatts of power that we generate through our solar and storage business. And we have a growing data center platform where we now control $5.6 gigawatts of power. And this model itself has allowed us to compound earnings and intrinsic value through cycles. It's a very unique platform. And given just the size of the opportunity in all aspects of our business, the future is very bright.

It's an excellent overview of a lot of the topics that we're going to discuss today. But maybe just let's get this 1 right out there. There's obviously a lot of geopolitical and economic uncertainty right now. What are you seeing in leasing activity and customer decision-making today? And how would you compare this period to last year when there was tariff uncertainty?

Yes. If you look back at our last 5, 6 quarters, we've actually continued to break records for leasing other than second quarter last year and 2025 when tariff uncertainty was introduced. We've continued to put up some really significant leasing numbers. We actually broke a record in the first quarter this year, leasing 64 million square feet. We continue to see our customers very constructive. Where we do see them have to take into consideration a lot more decisions -- a lot more issues in their decisions given the macro backdrop. We're seeing them continue to make decisions in leasing continues to be as we expected throughout the year.

And I think 1 interesting thing that came out of the first quarter earnings call was that data center suppliers appear to be a growing segment for warehouse demand, a new demand driver, if you will. So can you provide a bit of color on what you're seeing from this segment?

Yes, certainly a bright spot. Great to see another demand driver here. We had I believe about 10% of our leasing -- our new leasing in the first quarter came from these suppliers. These companies focusing on the current data center build-out, you're seeing it in the markets where you're seeing the largest build-outs in Texas, Illinois, Virginia. And again, these are users that are supplying the equipment, the cooling and they're signing long-term leases. We're seeing -- or at least market term leases. These are not short-term leases to just service the construction. We see this as a potential growing demand driver.

And just kind of given what we have built up to this point, do you believe the market has reached an inflection point in vacancy and fundamentals?

We do, I think, in short, we've described the nature of inflection because it's a complicated term to get everyone's a uniform definition around, but we said we will believe an inflection when we see demand grow and sustain itself, see that translate into occupancy stabilizing and growing. And then in the third phase, that, in turn, translating to positive market rent growth across our markets. Dan described a general demand environment in the last 6 quarters. That's been very productive in that regard. In our portfolio, in particular, we've had growing occupancy over the last 4, 5 quarters now. And that last stage, I described as positive market rent growth which we now did see on a full global basis this last first quarter. So we feel very good about all that reflecting inflection.

So starting to see market rent growth -- what needs to happen for that to reaccelerate from here and for pricing power to return in size?

Do you want to add to that.

Yes, I'll start. So I'd start by saying that we're facing a phase where vacancies are at a -- we're entering this next phase with vacancies not at a very elevated level, actually at a rather low level, 7.5%. So that presents recovery opportunity. but demand is still not up to a normal level. So it's running 70%, 80% net absorption as a share at normal levels. So I think the combination of customers increasingly moving onto their front foot -- they've absolutely had to navigate a ton of cross currents over the last 2 or 3 years. So I think the demand story is part of it. But then the vacancy story really sets you up for an earlier transition through this inflection phase as compared to prior cycles.

It looks like we have an international investor base in the room today. You have an international portfolio. So maybe you could talk a little bit about where you're seeing the most strength and weakness across your markets, globally today.

Yes. The strength has been pretty present over a few years now in LatAm. I would call that out in particular. We're located in Mexico and Brazil, both have been very strong markets from a perspective of occupancy market rent growth. Also, interestingly, development build-to-suit activity. Japan has been a good market for us in a similar regard, Europe. Also interestingly, quite stable. I would say about Europe that it has had a similar path that the U.S. had going through COVID and its normalization but all those trends less severe, so it had a better base to recover from. Around the U.S., Southeast markets have been the strongest. Our more interior central markets have also been surprisingly strong and well poised for -- to lead market rent growth out of this inflection, where some of the coastal markets are beginning their recovery and on their way.

What do you think is driving the stronger markets, what are the factors that are driving like the strength in Latin America, some in -- there are some of the other markets that you've called out?

Well, I'd say the primary driver that's really driving most markets, including in the U.S. is e-commerce. E-commerce has been a story in the U.S. for 15-plus years now. We continue to see about 100 basis points of penetration a year. in e-commerce and retail sales. And then if you look around Latin America, you look at Brazil, you look at Mexico, they're just 5, 10 years behind. Same thing in Europe. Europe is just -- it's catching up, and that's a major demand driver. I don't know if you have anything else to add, Chris.

Yes. I'll build on that by just saying the professionalization of supply chain as a global capability where not only is e-commerce bringing the sort of modernizing the retail experience, but also just how supply chains work in Mexico City and Sao Paulo, even in Europe, right Europe has really low levels of modern Class A penetration. So I think it's a combo of that e-com being a catalyst, modernization of commerce and then the supply chain to meet those -- that global standard.

And 1 topic -- 1 market I wanted to dig in a little bit further into is Southern California. Can you just talk about how you're thinking about that market right now, particularly given it's important to trade flows as well as the broader logistics market?

Sure. We're seeing Southern California improving. We still see it lagging the overall market by 2 to 3 quarters. We've already talked about the U.S. market making its way through this inflection period. And so SoCal is a bit behind there, but I look at our large format space in Southern California. As a matter of fact, go back to your question -- a couple of questions ago around strength. Large format spaces, 500,000 square feet and above in the Prologis portfolio globally are over 98% lease nearly sold out in large format basis. We're seeing that same trend in Southern California. We're large buildings in the [ Allen ] Empire are full. And we look at that market, 24 million consumers. Our thesis is have the best warehouses close to the consumers, and there's a $2 trillion economy in Southern California. So we see it's improving and we think it's a good story for the long term, given the land scarcity and regulatory barriers to supply.

That's helpful. And then maybe on the topic of development, how are you approaching industrial developments right now, particularly the balance between build-to-suit and speculative projects?

We're encouraged that all this backdrop is giving us more avenues to put that land bank that Dan described to work. Interestingly, in 2024, I mean, supply across the markets generally has been low. Folks should know that, probably about 35%, 40% of pre-COVID levels. That's been increasing again gradually, but supply remains low. -- we similarly were quite measured in our development starts. I think of 2024, we only had about $1.5 billion of starts globally for Prologis. And to put that in context, you ought to think of us as developing something on the order of $5 billion per year with $40 billion of opportunity available to us. So we in the market have been pretty disciplined. Areas of development have been predominantly outside of the U.S. in recent years and in build-to-suits, but this is a year where we've increased our development guidance and recognition of these conditions improving. We'll see more spec in the U.S. We expect to get a fair volume of build-to-suit activity as well. And I'm sure we'll get into this in just a moment, but that's all complemented with avenues for development starts in data centers as well.

Yes. So if you're into buzzwords, this is the time to really start to pay attention as we dig into data centers here. How does your push into data centers build on Prologis' core capabilities? What sets your strategy apart?

Yes. When you think about data centers, data centers start with land and then land and power. And we have been focused on energizing our land in our buildings now for a number of years. We've built a large energy team -- we have synergies across our platform between our development and our entitlement skill sets, our procurement network that we've got way out in front of procurement for our logistics buildings going back to COVID. It's a tool that we've built and honed over the years, and that's working very well for us as we get out in front of the long lead items on data centers. So -- we also built this platform close to these consumption centers, and that's where data centers need to be in the long term. So it really is a very complementary adjacency for us -- and we see demand is insatiable right now. We've got a large customer franchise. We're very proud of our customer franchise. We've really been leaning into these relationships on the hyperscaler front. We've been doing only build-to-suits on the data center front. And basically, all the power that we have control of right now is in some discussion with an investment-grade user. So it's a very natural fit for our development and capital stack.

Maybe sticking with the topic here. How large could data centers become as part of Prologis over time? And how do the returns compare to the logistics business?

I want to finish Dan's remarks with just a plug for the balance sheet to, obviously, A-rated balance sheet, huge balance sheet, tremendous access to capital and in this business. The capital needs are not really for the faint of heart, of course. So we're approaching it in a way that there's a range of dollars to spend here between Power Cell and turnkey as you probably are familiar with those numbers that you can think of it as roughly $3 million of megawatt on the power shell side, up to $15 million or more on the turnkey side with the gigawatts of power available to us, there's a very large pot of investment opportunity that we're taking on in the risk-mitigated way that Dan described and build-to-suits and selling assets thereafter. But we are with all that capitalization. We've described that we are in exploration of pairing it up with our asset management platform is a better miles trip to put the opportunity together.

And keeping it going on the data centers, what do you see as the biggest constraint to scaling your data center business? Is it power? Is it capital? Is it execution -- is it a combination of those?

Really, it's power, it's the barriers to entry, certainly more community pushback. So you really need to have a differentiated scaled platform in order to handle all of these issues. I certainly don't, to Tim's point, don't see capital as a constraint. We're able to diversify that. And as to mention, we're out exploring as to what the best setup is for the long term, but really it comes down to power and execution.

Got it. And obviously, a lot of excitement around the data center business, but you have a lot of other ancillary or connected businesses that are important to the narrative here. For example, you have a growing energy business. So can you remind us what that opportunity entails and why you're pursuing it?

Sure. We are unique in the fact that we approach our real estate business with a customer focus. We put the customer at the center of all our decisions. We've heard for years our customers' issues around labor. We see our customers lean into automation. We see them lean into robotics and electrification of their fleet. And with that comes the need for more power. So with our scale, we're able to take on these challenges, and we've built a large solar and storage business from there. We've got 1.3 gigawatts, as I mentioned earlier, and that's only covering 8% of our rooms globally. So this is a double-digit IRR business -- and again, it's there to service our customers ultimately. And as our customers' demands for power in our logistics, our core logistics buildings go from 5-kilowatt hours per square foot to 25 kilowatt hours to 50 kilowatt hours with all of these automation and EV and otherwise, it's important for us to be out there solving those problems for them.

And so we've talked about data centers. We talked about energy and maybe moving to your asset management business. You've launched several new funds in recent quarters. So can you walk through how this business supports the broader platform? And what kinds of additional vehicles you are pursuing or exploring?

Yes. So at $235 billion of assets, there's really a need to tap all quadrants of capital and strategic capital or asset management more classically is really the origin of our business, back to 40, 45 years ago. So we grew up in that business as we went public and became an owner-operator. We kept that business model as a central part of how we create and harvest value. Typically, you can think of us in most years, it's developing the volume of real estate I mentioned earlier, let's call it, $5 billion. Our business model has been to build those assets and offer them up to these core vehicles to own them thereafter recycling capital, and that's been the methodology for harvesting not only that development's value creation, but adding fee streams, et cetera. So it's a core central part of our business. It is something that very much differentiates us. At the same time, it's a landscape that's been evolving. The flavors of capital wanting to come into the business have evolved, the nature of how LPs want to consolidate around individual GPs has evolved. So we've been very much aware of that. That's what's given rise to a number of the new vehicles that you've seen us launch pretty successfully, I'll say, 5 new vehicles in the last few quarters. And it's all in an effort to continue to grow that business over time as a real differentiator on long-term compounding of growth.

Got it. And we've talked about a lot so far today. Maybe just putting it all together, how do you think about Prologis' long-term earnings growth potential from here?

Yes. We've -- look, we've described it as high single digits long-term earnings growth potential begins with the foundation on same-store growth at its simplest, of course. That is the core of our business. It's the bulk of our revenues. We feel great about where that business is today, not only the inflection that we're seeing we're seeing occurring, but also the secular drivers here on the demand side from continued growth in e-commerce and on the supply side, continued challenges. So all those inputs to same-store growth, we feel good about. We will lever that through the balance sheet, both financially and in operations. Those are the core building blocks on your way to high single digits. But the real differentiator is the value creation engine. What we can add in terms of value creation investing that value back into the balance sheet and the compounding and recycling model I described is a differentiator -- and then the adjacent businesses that you've done a nice job of helping us highlight here are all incremental to that growth. So we feel very good about the mousetrap that we've built and built an engine here that also is very favorable to the customer at the same time.

Well, we've touched on a lot of the key things here today. So I'll just kind of pass it back to you. Is there anything else that you want to message to this audience, anything else that we missed that you think is important anything else that you'd like to share with the group?

I just think the sheer size of the opportunity across our platform of 1.3 billion square feet. We have a 17% mark-to-market in that portfolio. Just churning through our leases over the coming years, $750 million worth of revenue will drop to the bottom line. Huge growth, just executing our business -- our core business. The development platform, it's unmatched. It's 14,000 acres of land in cities closest to these consumption centers. And $42 billion worth of opportunity at our historical margin of 29% that ends up being $54 billion worth of logistics buildings on top of our $235 billion worth, 5.6 gigawatts of power, 1.8 gigawatts of that is secured. 3.9 is in its advanced stages, so we'll have that ready for development in the next year or so. All of this power is in some sort of discussion with an investment-grade customer, hyperscaler, all with a build-to-suit approach. Our strategic capital platform at $68 billion and growing. We talked about a few new vehicles -- that's a huge growth engine as well. So the opportunity set across all aspects of our business is like we've never seen before.

That was amazing. So let's leave it right there. So please join me in thanking the Prologis team here today.