AMERICOLD REALTY TRUST

Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements

1. Description of the Business

The Company

Americold Realty Trust, Inc. together with its subsidiaries (“ART”, the Company, or we) is a Maryland corporation that operates as a real estate investment trust (“REIT”) for U.S. federal income tax purposes. The Company is the world’s largest publicly traded REIT focused on the ownership, operation and development of temperature-controlled warehouses. The Company is organized as a self-administered and self-managed REIT with proven operating, acquisition and development experience. As of December 31, 2023, we operated a global network of 245 temperature-controlled warehouses encompassing approximately 1.5 billion cubic feet, with 197 warehouses in North America,27 in Europe,19 warehouses in Asia-Pacific, and 2 warehouses in South America. In addition, we holdtwo minority interests in joint ventures, one with SuperFrio, which owns or operates 35 temperature-controlled warehouses in Brazil, andone with the RSA JV, which owns 2 temperature-controlled warehouses in Dubai.

During 2010, the Company formed a Delaware limited partnership, Americold Realty Operating Partnership, L.P. (“the Operating Partnership”), and transferred substantially all of its interests in entities and associated assets and liabilities to the Operating Partnership. This structure is commonly referred to as an umbrella partnership REIT or an UPREIT structure. The REIT is the sole general partner of the Operating Partnership, owning 99% of the common general partnership interests as of December 31, 2023. Americold Realty Operations, Inc., a Delaware corporation and wholly-owned subsidiary of the REIT, is a limited partner of the Operating Partnership, owning less than 1% of the common general partnership interests as of December 31, 2023. Additionally, the aggregate partnership interests of all other limited partners was less than 0.1% as of December 31, 2023. As the sole general partner of the Operating Partnership, the REIT has full, exclusive and complete responsibility and discretion in the day-to-day management and control of the Operating Partnership. The limited partners of the Operating Partnership do not have rights to replace Americold Realty Trust, Inc. as the general partner nor do they have participating rights, although they do have certain protective rights. The terms “Americold,” the “Company,” “we,” “our” and “us” refer to Americold Realty Trust, Inc. and all of its consolidated subsidiaries, including the Operating Partnership.

No limited partner shall be liable for any debts, liabilities, contracts or obligations of the Operating Partnership. A limited partner shall be liable to the Operating Partnership only to make payments of capital contribution, if any, as and when due. After a capital contribution is fully paid, no limited partner shall, except as otherwise may be legally required under Delaware law, be required to make any further contribution or other payments or lend any funds to the Operating Partnership.

The Company grants Operating Partnership Profit Units (OP Units) to certain members of the Board of Directors and certain members of management of the Company, which are described further in Note 14-Stock Based Compensation. These units represent noncontrolling interests in the Operating Partnership that are not owned by Americold Realty Trust, Inc.

On March 22, 2021, the Company filed Articles of Amendment to the Company’s Amended and Restated Declaration of Trust with the State Department of Assessments and Taxation of Maryland to increase the number of authorized common shares of beneficial interest, $0.01 par value per share, from 325,000,000 to 500,000,000. The Articles of Amendment were effective upon filing. The Company also has 25,000,000 authorized preferred shares, $0.01 par value per share; however, none were issued or outstanding as of December 31, 2023 or December 31, 2022.

On May 25, 2022, the Company completed its conversion from a Maryland real estate investment trust to a Maryland corporation, pursuant to the Articles of Conversion, as approved by the stockholders at its annual stockholder meeting on May 17, 2022. Each issued and outstanding share of beneficial interest in Americold Realty Trust was converted intoone share of common stock in Americold Realty Trust, Inc. As a result of this conversion, several references in this Form 10-K have been updated accordingly. Despite this conversion, the Company continues to operate as a REIT for U.S. federal income tax purposes.

The Operating Partnership includes numerous disregarded entities (“DRE”). Additionally, the Operating Partnership conducts various business activities in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and South America through several wholly-owned taxable REIT subsidiaries (“TRSs”).

Recent Capital Markets Activity

Universal Shelf Registration Statement

In connection with filing our ATM Equity Offering Sales Agreement on March 17, 2023, the Company and the Operating Partnership filed with the SEC an automatic shelf registration statement on Form S-3 (Registration Nos. 333-230664 and 333-230664-01) (the “Registration Statement”), registering an indeterminate amount of (i) the Company’s common stock, $0.01 par value per share, (ii) the Company’s preferred stock, $0.01 par value per share, (iii) depositary shares representing entitlement to all rights and preferences of fractions of the Company’s preferred shares of a specified series and represented by depositary receipts, (iv) warrants to purchase the Company’s common stock or preferred stock or depositary shares and (v) debt securities of the Operating Partnership, which will be fully and unconditionally guaranteed by the Company.

At the Market (“ATM”) Equity Program

On March 17, 2023, we entered into an equity distribution agreement pursuant to which we may sell, from time to time, up to an aggregate sales price of $900.0 million of our common shares through an ATM Equity Program (the “2023 ATM Equity Program”). Sales of our common stock made pursuant to the 2023 ATM Equity Program may be made in negotiated transactions or transactions that are deemed to be “at the market” offerings as defined in Rule 415 under the Securities Act, including sales made directly on the NYSE, or sales made to or through a market maker other than on an exchange, or as otherwise agreed between the applicable Agent and us. Sales may also be made on a forward basis pursuant to separate forward sale agreements. During the year ended December 31, 2023, we sold 13,244,905 common shares sold under the 2023 ATM Equity Program for net proceeds of$412.6 million. The net proceeds from sales of our common stock pursuant to the March 2023 ATM Equity Program were used to repay a portion on the revolver borrowings.

On November 9, 2023, we entered into an equity distribution agreement that was substantially identical to and replaced the March 2023 equity distribution agreement, and pursuant to which we may sell, from time to time, up to an additional $900.0 million of our common shares through our ATM Equity Program.

Termination of Certain Employee Benefit Plans

On February 28, 2023, the Company’s Board of Directors approved a plan to effect the termination of the Americold Retirement Income Plan (the “ARIP”). Additionally, on February 28, 2023, the Company amended the ARIP plan agreements in order to provide for a limited lump-sum window for eligible participants. The Company filed the Application for Determination Upon Termination with the Internal Revenue Service in July 2023. The Company has chosen to proceed with the distributions without waiting for the final letter of favorable determination. The Company filed the appropriate documents related to the termination of the ARIP with the

Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation and any other appropriate parties during the three months ended September 30, 2023.

On November 17, 2023, the Company and Principal Life Insurance Company (the “Insurer” or “Principal”) executed a Standard Single Premium Guaranteed Annuity Contract Purchase Agreement (the “Purchase Agreement”) by which the Insurer provides a nonparticipating single premium group annuity contract to the Company for a cash premium, to relieving the Plan Sponsor from any future payments to annuitants or beneficiaries under the ARIP. The transaction was completed and settled on November 27, 2023.

The Company’s purchase of the annuity contract from Principal constituted a settlement of the ARIP. The relief of the related net liability and recognition of deferred loss in "Accumulated other comprehensive loss” (AOCI) on the Consolidated Balance Sheet, coupled with the cash annuity payment of $1.3 million, resulted in the recognition of a settlement loss of $2.5 million recognized in “Acquisition, cyber incident and other, net” on the Consolidated Statements of Operations.

Cybersecurity Incident

On April 26, 2023, the Company became aware of a cybersecurity incident impacting a certain number of our systems and partially impacting operations for a limited period of time (the “Cyber incident”). The Company engaged an external cyber security expert to initiate responses to contain, remediate, and commence a forensic investigation. Actions taken included preventative measures such as shutting down certain operating systems and supplementing existing security monitoring with additional scanning and other protective measures. The Company also notified law enforcement and its customers, informing them of both the incident and management’s efforts to minimize its impact on the Company’s daily operations. Technology information systems were reintroduced in a controlled phased approach and all locations successfully resumed normal operations prior to June 30, 2023.

The Company is continuing to invest in information technology with the intent of strengthening its information security infrastructure. We engaged a leading cybersecurity defense firm that completed a forensic investigation of the incident and provided recommended actions in response to the findings. As of December 31, 2023, the Company has completed the material remediation activities associated with the Cyber incident and continues to enhance its policies and procedures meant to assess, identify, and effectively manage cybersecurity risks, threats, and incidents. For example, the Company reset all credentials across the enterprise and strengthened security tooling across its servers and workstations. The Company has also reinforced its strategy to further strengthen the resiliency of its information security infrastructure, which is intended to accelerate the detection, response, and recovery from security and technical incidents. The Company is also engaged with cyber security experts to manage the remediation. Incremental charges recorded in conjunction with remediation and response efforts associated with the Cyber incident were $28.9 million during the year ended December 31, 2023, and have been recorded within “Acquisition, cyber incident, and other, net” in the Consolidated Statements of Operations. This amount was primarily comprised of incremental internal labor costs, professional fees, customer claims, and related insurance deductibles.

Project Orion

In February 2023, we announced our transformation program, “Project Orion,” designed to drive future growth and achieve our long-term strategic objectives, through investment in our technology systems and business processes across our global platform. The project includes the implementation of a new, best-in-class, cloud-based enterprise resource planning (“ERP”) software system. Since going public in 2018, we have acquired over 100 facilities, or approximately 40% of our total warehouse facility network. Project Orion will enable us to better integrate many of these recent acquisitions and position us well for the integration of future acquisitions. The primary goals of this project are to streamline standard processes, reduce manual work and incrementally improve our business analytics capabilities. Highlights of the project include implementing centralized customer billing operations, a global payroll and human capital management platform, next-generation plant maintenance capabilities, global procurement functionality and shared-service operations in certain international regions, among others. We expect the benefits of these initiatives to include revenue and margin improvements through pricing data and analytics and heightened customer contract governance, finance and human resources cost reductions, information technology applications and infrastructure rationalization, reduced employee turnover, working capital efficiency and reduced IT maintenance capital expenditures. The activities associated with Project Orion are expected to be substantially complete within three years. Since inception, the Company has incurred $61.8 million of implementation costs related to Project Orion of which $43.9 million has been deferred within “Other Assets” on the Consolidated Balance sheet and $13.9 million and $3.9 million were recognized within Acquisition, cyber incident, and other, net for the years ended December 31, 2023 and 2022 respectively.