In Age of Amazon, a Warehouse Powerhouse Is Getting Bigger

  • Buying DCT to deepen Prologis presence in California, New York
  • Both real estate investment trusts serve e-commerce tenants

Hamid Moghadam

Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

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For Prologis Inc., the world’s largest warehouse owner, the biggest challenge to growth has been acquiring land in the markets most important to its e-commerce tenants. The solution: buy a rival.

The real estate investment trust agreed to acquire DCT Industrial Trust Inc. for $8.4 billion in stock and assumed debt. Stockholders in DCT will receive 1.02 Prologis shares for each of theirs, the companies said in a statementBloomberg Terminal Sunday. That represents a premium of about 16 percent over DCT’s closing price of $58.75 on Friday. DCT shareholders will receive a 36 percent increase in their dividend, executives said on a conference call Monday.