Tariffs are creating uncertainty in the global food production chain, causing shippers to pause or delay major decisions, officials at Lineage Inc. said in announcing their first-quarter financial results.

The Novi, Michigan-based global cold storage warehouse operator released results Wednesday before the market opened and held a call with analysts to discuss quarterly earnings.

“It’s just the unknown and the uncertainty of the tariffs,” President and CEO Greg Lehmkuhl said on the call. “We’re all over the world. We support consumption in all the major markets in which we operate, but our customers are telling us they’re not sure what they’re going to do. They don’t know where they’re going to build inventories. They don’t know how they’re going to direct trade flows. That could have a short-term disruption, even though we’re very confident we’ll support their needs in the medium and long term.”

Lineage (NASDAQ: LINE)  had revenue of $1.29 billion and earnings per share of 86 cents in the first quarter.

In comparison, first quarter revenue in 2024 totaled $1.32 billion, while earnings per share totaled 81 cents.

The company missed Wall Street analysts’ revenue estimates of $1.34 billion in the first quarter but beat earnings-per-share expectations of 82 cents.

Lineage manages more than 480 facilities with 3 billion cubic feet of space across North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. It also provides freight forwarding, customs brokerage, drayage and truck transportation.

During the call, Lineage officials announced a strategic agreement to acquire multiple, existing cold storage warehouses in the U.S. from Tyson Foods. (NYSE: TSN).

“In total, we expect to deploy approximately $1 billion of capital in the coming years on the acquisition and new retail development that once stabilized will generate over $100 million in annual income,” Lehmkuhl said.

Lineage will acquire and take over operations of four existing cold storage warehouses that comprise about 49 million cubic feet and have 160,000 pallet positions. Those facilities are in Pottsville, Pennsylvania; Olathe, Kansas; Rochelle, Illinois; and Tolleson, Arizona. 

Tyson Foods will occupy the warehouses as the anchor customer. Following the acquisition, Lineage plans to onboard over 1,000 of Tyson Foods’ employees.

The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter.

As part of the Tyson agreement, Lineage also plans to develop two fully automated cold storage warehouses for $740 million. The developments will add more than 80 million cubic feet and nearly 260,000 pallet positions to the company’s network.

The new warehouses are scheduled to open by 2028.

“[Tyson officials] are really smart about how they plan their future supply chain, and we were able to work with them for a full year on what that future supply chain should look like,” Lehmkuhl said.

Lineage officials said they are maintaining the full-year 2025 guidance that they discussed during their fourth-quarter earnings call in February.

The company expects full-year 2025 adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $1.35 billion to $1.4 billion and adjusted EPS of $3.40 to $3.60. 

“We feel very confident in these guidance ranges that we gave you,” Lehmkuhl said. “There are just a lot of moving pieces. It’s tough to quantify everything because you can’t predict the future, but we feel really good about these ranges and we’re aided by the acquisitions, and we’ll execute well the rest of the year.”

Lehmkuhl said he has met with a lot of Lineage customers in recent weeks. Many say they are waiting to see what happens with the Trump administration’s trade policy.

“I’ve met with 20 customers literally just in the last few weeks, and the biggest single impact is customers are delaying major decisions,” he said. “It’s just creating hesitancy. Our customers are just waiting for more clarity before they make major decisions, like where to expand operations, where to build plants, where to source long-term transportation, whether that be domestically to ports or internationally in the forwarding space, or where to shift position and build inventories, the kind of rapid changing of tariff policies that has caused as some call it short-term disruption.”

Lineage’s key first quarter performance indicators.

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