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

Real estate investment trusts that lease out space at warehouses and logistics centers have been outperforming those that focus on malls, rental apartments or office buildings. Shopping at Amazon.com Inc. and other internet retailers still accounts for less than 10 percent of retail sales in the United States, but e-commerce is reconfiguring supply chains and shaping the fortunes of industrial landlords. Demand is especially high in and around large cities, where online shopping has caught on fastest.

DCT's 71 million square feet of real estate will help San Francisco-based Prologis deepen its presence in high-growth markets including Southern California, the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, South Florida, New York and New Jersey, the companies said. Those are the places that have seen the greatest demand for warehouse space and logistics services, thanks largely to e-commerce.

"DCT markets are 100 percent aligned with our markets," Prologis Chief Executive Hamid Moghadam said in an interview. "There's perfect alignment between the portfolios. Think of DCT as a smaller, U.S.-focused version of Prologis. In the U.S. we're very similar — the same kinds of customers; the same customers, in many cases."

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