Americold Realty Trust COLD is adding another large European retail customer, this time through a multi-year agreement with Jeronimo Martins, Portugal’s leading retail group. Under the deal, Americold will manage storage and store case-pick fulfillment for about 12 million frozen-product cases a year, serving roughly 300 retail stores from its Lisbon facility.
This move deepens its role in higher-value retail logistics, not just basic cold storage. The company has upgraded the Lisbon site by refurbishing cold storage chambers and increasing throughput capacity, while the new work has added more than 80 jobs and expanded the site’s workforce by more than 40%.
The Jeronimo Martins win also follows Americold’s recent expansion with PLUS in the Netherlands, where it is supporting centralized frozen logistics for a supermarket cooperative with about 440 stores. That agreement uses Americold’s Barneveld distribution center for storage, handling and distribution, showing that the company is building a broader European retail platform rather than relying on one market.
For investors, the timing matters because Americold is still working through mixed operating trends. In the first quarter of 2026, revenue was nearly flat at $629.9 million, while adjusted FFO fell to 29 cents per share from 34 cents a year earlier. Core EBITDA also declined 7.3% to $136.8 million, and warehouse volumes remained pressured by competition, cautious consumers and added industry capacity.
Nevertheless, Americold has positives such as a global network of 224 facilities, roughly 1.4 billion refrigerated cubic feet, better customer wins in Europe, and a strategic focus on retail and QSR logistics. This suggests a Neutral view is reasonable for now, as investors wait for clearer volume recovery. In the past three months, shares of this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company have gained 8.3%, outperforming the industry's increase of 3.3%. COLD’s FFO per share consensus estimate also exhibits upward revisions.
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Stocks to Consider
Some better-ranked stocks from the broader REIT sector are W. P. Carey Inc. WPC and Stag Industrial STAG, each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
The consensus mark for W. P. Carey’s second-quarter 2026 FFO per share has been revised a cent upward to $1.32 over the past month.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Stag Industrial’s second-quarter 2026 FFO per share suggests a 3.17% increase year over year.
Note: Anything related to earnings presented in this write-up represents funds from operations (FFO), a widely used metric to gauge the performance of REITs.
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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).