Lineage, Inc. (LINE) Business Profile

What it does

Lineage is a real estate investment trust, or REIT, that owns and operates temperature-controlled warehouses. Its customers include food retailers, manufacturers, processors and food service distributors that need to store frozen and perishable products as they move through the supply chain. Greg Lehmkuhl is its president and chief executive officer.

The company provides space for products ranging from seafood and dairy to fruit, vegetables and packaged foods. It also handles pallets as they enter, move around and leave its facilities. Some warehouses serve multiple customers near cities or ports; others are near customers’ production facilities. Lineage also manages warehouses owned or leased by customers.

Alongside storage, Lineage offers services to move products, including trucking, freight forwarding and refrigerated rail car leasing. It also provides foodservice distribution and e-commerce fulfillment in select markets. A customer can use the network for storage as well as transportation and related services.

As of December 31, 2025, the network comprised 501 warehouses with approximately 88 million square feet and 3.1 billion cubic feet of capacity. Lineage owned approximately 80% of its global warehousing portfolio by square feet, including certain properties with purchase options or ground leases; it leased or managed approximately 20%.

How it makes money

Lineage reported $5.4 billion of revenue for 2025 and approximately $320 million of adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter of 2026. The latter is an earnings measure, not quarterly revenue.

Global Warehousing generated $4.0 billion of revenue in FY2025, or 73.8% of the company’s revenue. It earns storage fees for occupied or reserved space, fees for rapidly freezing products, rent from customers leasing space, and fees for handling and other warehouse services. Handling charges are generally transactional, so the volume of pallets entering and leaving warehouses affects service revenue.

Contracts range from short-term, on-demand arrangements to warehouse agreements and leases. Typical warehouse agreements generally start with terms of one to five years, while build-to-suit agreements generally run 10 to 20 years. Some agreements include minimum storage guarantees: customers pay for a minimum amount of space even when the reserved positions are not occupied. As of December 31, 2025, 46.1% of Lineage’s storage revenues were subject to those guarantees. Agreements can also include mechanisms for adjusting prices as costs or customer requirements change.

Global Integrated Solutions generated $1.4 billion of revenue in FY2025, or 26.2% of the total. Its revenue is primarily driven by transportation fees, which can include fuel and capacity surcharges. Services include consolidating smaller shipments, moving containers to and from ports, arranging freight and providing refrigerated rail cars. In 2025, transportation and refrigerated rail car leasing together accounted for approximately 57% of this segment’s revenue.

Warehouse occupancy and revenue are seasonal: they generally peak between mid-September and early December and are lowest during June and July.

Customers and how it sells

Lineage serves food producers, processors, distributors and retailers, with products held at different stages from raw materials to finished goods. As of December 31, 2025, it served more than 11,000 customers. The top 25 customers accounted for approximately 33.0% of 2025 revenue, and no customer accounted for more than 3.6%.

Customers can contract for space and services across the network, although a customer more typically has multiple contracts, potentially reflecting different locations, products or business units. Some lease space and manage their own operations; others use Lineage’s handling and transportation services. Lineage acquired four cold storage warehouses and related assets from Tyson Foods in 2025 and agreed to build and operate automated warehouses with Tyson as an anchor customer.

The United States accounted for 64.8% of FY2025 revenue, while Europe accounted for 21.5% and Asia-Pacific for 8.31%. As of December 31, 2025, Lineage’s network included 326 warehouses in North America, 89 in Asia-Pacific and 86 in Europe. Its locations include metropolitan markets, ports, transportation hubs and food production areas.

Suppliers and costs

Lineage’s warehouse operating costs consist primarily of labor, power and other facility expenses. Labor is the largest component and includes employee wages and benefits. Staffing levels, wage rates, third-party labor, productivity and customers’ handling requirements affect that expense.

Power is the second-largest warehouse operating cost. The temperature required, the type of product and the frequency of freezing all affect consumption. Lineage sometimes uses fixed-rate agreements to hedge power prices and may seek to recover changes through contract escalators or surcharges. It also uses equipment and practices intended to reduce energy consumption, including refrigeration controls, solar panels and rapid-close doors.

Other warehouse costs include property taxes, insurance, maintenance, rent, equipment and supplies such as pallets and shrink-wrap. In Integrated Solutions, costs consist primarily of charges from third-party carriers; where Lineage operates its own transportation assets, it also pays for drivers, fuel, tolls, insurance and maintenance.

The company also incurs depreciation and amortization on its warehouses, equipment, software and transportation assets. Administrative spending includes personnel, technology, professional fees and other costs of running the business.

Competitive position

In warehousing, Lineage competes with Americold, NewCold and regional operators including US Cold and Interstate Warehousing. Some food producers and distributors also meet their own needs by building or leasing private warehouses. Customers weigh location, available space, warehouse design, service, automation and price. Transportation capabilities matter because refrigerated food customers’ transportation costs are typically greater than their warehousing costs.

In temperature-controlled transportation, Lineage names Americold, US Cold and CH Robinson as main competitors. Trinity Rail is its main competitor in refrigerated rail car leasing. Competition in Integrated Solutions varies by service and geography.

Lineage states that approximately 95% of its global warehousing segment revenue comes from countries where its local network is the largest by cubic feet of capacity. Its top 25 customers use approximately 22 facilities per customer on average, and seven of its top ten use facilities in multiple countries.

Our reading: The network is a meaningful competitive advantage because customers can use multiple locations, while land, zoning and construction make replacement difficult. Our reading: Automation and software offer another potential advantage, but their benefit depends on deployment and performance across warehouses with differing requirements. Our reading: These advantages do not remove price competition or the option for customers to operate their own facilities.

Growth opportunities

Lineage seeks to grow existing-warehouse income by filling more space, increasing the use of minimum storage guarantees and aligning customer rates with the cost of service. It also pursues labor productivity and energy-efficiency initiatives, including software and automation in warehouses.

Its LinOS system allocates and prioritizes warehouse tasks. Lineage reported that it was meeting internal savings targets across 14 conventional buildings and remained on track to deploy the system in 20 conventional buildings by year end. The company reiterated a goal of $110 million in EBITDA impact from the investment; that is a company goal, not a result already achieved.

External growth includes acquisitions, new warehouses and expansions. During 2025, Lineage acquired warehouses from Tyson Foods, completed a new warehouse in Bremerhaven, Germany, and worked on an expansion in Hobart, Indiana. The company also had 20 facilities under construction or in the process of ramping and stabilizing as of the second-quarter update. It had invested $1.1 billion in those projects and expected them to deliver over $134 million in incremental net operating income once stabilized.

Lineage has also added customers in adjacent product categories. It launched a confectionery account in June and expects confectionery to become a top 10 category over time. Developments and new accounts must ramp before their full contribution is realized.

Structural risks

• Industry concentration: Lineage’s investments are concentrated in temperature-controlled warehouses. A downturn in that industry or in markets for customers’ products could reduce demand for space and services, increase vacancies or lead to lower rates and customer concessions.
• Costs and volumes: Energy, labor, fuel and carrier costs can rise. Lineage experienced pressure on Integrated Solutions margins in the second quarter of 2026 when carrier rates rose before it passed the increases through to customers. Trade-related container volumes also fell in the quarter.
• Development and automation: Projects can be delayed by financing, approvals, labor, equipment or materials. New facilities may take longer than expected to reach occupancy or fail to earn targeted returns; automation projects may not deliver anticipated efficiencies.
• Facility disruption: A fire at the Big Bear facility in Los Angeles created lost revenue and additional costs. Lineage expects to recover lost profit through business interruption insurance, but its guidance did not include an insurance benefit.
• Financial reporting controls: Lineage identified a material weakness in internal control over financial reporting as of December 31, 2025. A failure to maintain effective controls could prevent accurate, timely reporting.
• Capital and financing: Lineage needs funding for operations, capital expenditures, development, acquisitions, debt service and distributions. It faces the risk that capital is unavailable or available only on less favorable terms.

Bottom line

Our reading

Lineage combines a property network with an operating business that stores, handles and transports customers’ food. Its locations, contracts and services support recurring activity, but results also depend on occupancy, pallet movements and the cost of labor and power. Development and automation offer paths to growth, while financing needs, execution and disruptions such as the Big Bear fire remain material exposures.