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Prologis owns and rents out giant warehouses used for storing and shipping goods.
Prologis is the world's biggest landlord of warehouses. Its customers are companies that need to move physical stuff — Amazon, FedEx, Home Depot, UPS, and thousands of smaller logistics and retail businesses. Prologis owns roughly 1.2 billion square feet of industrial space across North America, Europe, Asia, and Latin America, and it makes money mainly by charging rent. Most leases run for several years, so revenue is fairly steady. The company also earns fees by managing properties for institutional investors through its co-investment ventures, roughly a fifth of revenue.
Think of it as the parking garage business, but for pallets of goods instead of cars — when online shopping booms, everyone needs more space to store and sort packages, and Prologis owns the best-located lots near highways, ports, and big cities. That location advantage is its moat: land near population centers is scarce, so tenants pay up and rarely leave. Over the past decade, e-commerce growth pushed industrial vacancy to record lows, letting Prologis raise rents sharply. It also moved heavily into data centers, buying land and power for cloud computing needs, which is now a fast-growing side business. Recent focus has been on energy — putting solar panels on warehouse roofs and selling power — plus a push into build-to-suit mega-warehouses for large logistics tenants.
Prologis started in 1983 and went public in 1997 as a real estate investment trust, which means it must pay out most of its taxable income as dividends. It merged with rival Duke Realty in 2022, adding roughly 160 million square feet and cementing its lead. Because it is a REIT, it doesn't pay much corporate tax but distributes cash to shareholders. It funds growth by reinvesting cash flow, selling mature properties, and recycling capital into new development. Its biggest risks are simple: if e-commerce slows or interest rates stay high, rents and property values can cool, and tenants can shrink their space needs.
Saved answer · last researched 11 Oct 2026