Custom Truck One Source, Inc. (NYSE:CTOS) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Tami Zakaria: Great, thank you.

Ryan McMonagle: Thanks Tim.

Operator: The next question comes from Justin Hauke with Robert W. Baird. Please go ahead.

Justin Hauke: Yes. Hi, good afternoon. I guess I just wanted to ask about the implied revenue guidance for 4Q, the $105 million range. It’s like 8% growth at the high end, and it’s a 13% decline at the low end. So I guess, I was just curious the variability between those. I mean, it seems like working down your backlog from the sales inventory is pretty well known. And I guess the variability is how much you put out on the rental fleet based on that utilization uptick? Or just what are the puts and takes for the top and the high end of the guidance assumptions for 4Q?

Chris Eperjesy: Hi, this is Chris. I think the way I would characterize it is we don’t see each one of those segments coming in at the low end of the range. And so that’s probably not a scenario we see, obviously, as you put those ranges at the low end and at the high end. The variability, certainly, we’ve kind of given you a sense of where we think utilization is going to be in the quarter, and the rates have continued to improve. The rental asset sales, that tends to be a little bit more challenging to predict in terms of what customer demand is going to be a month or two months from now. And so that’s one area where there could be some additional variability. Same thing on the new equipment sales. While supply chain has certainly improved, there can be potential issues there if we don’t have certain equipment or just the timing to get goods title, get them off the door at year-end, could play a little part in that as well.

And so that’s why we gave the broad range. But I would say we feel comfortable that we’re certainly not going to be at the low end of that range.

Justin Hauke: Okay. And then I guess, my second question is just on the capital allocation and the decision to kind of accelerate the buybacks here in the quarter and keep the leverage a little bit higher. I mean, maybe the question is what is right now the weighted average interest rate on the ABL and kind of thinking about how you want to prioritize debt repayment versus continue to buy the stock given that it’s kind of stayed at these similar levels?

Ryan McMonagle: If I understood one of your questions, I think you asked what was the average interest rate on the ABL, and that it’s a little over 7%. I want to say it’s roughly 7.2%.

Chris Eperjesy: Yes. But Justin, I think the way we’re thinking about it, so we’re comfortable with that marginal cost right to borrow at 7%. I think that’s number one. But two, we just continue to believe that with the growth that we’ve put up, right, between EBITDA growth going from $290 million – $291 million when the deal closed, $433 million now on an LTM basis and leverage trending down from 4.6x to 3.3x, that where we’re trading from a multiple of you – or whatever multiple we want to use, just we think it’s a great use of capital to continue to reinvest in Custom Truck. The management team feels that way. Certainly, the Board feels that way, which is why we made the announcement in the quarter of increasing capacity from a buyback standpoint. So we just feel like it is an incredibly compelling use of capital if we’re going to continue to trade kind of where the stock has been trading for the last several months.

Justin Hauke: Okay, great. Thank you

Ryan McMonagle: Thanks Justin.

Operator: The next question comes from Mike Shlisky with D.A. Davidson. Please go ahead.

Mike Shlisky: Good afternoon and thank you for taking my questions. I want to follow up one of your answers earlier about the sales of this equipment on the rental fleet and the fourth quarter outlook there. If we look to like last year, quarter-over-quarter, I believe those sales doubled than previous years and there was a M&A but there was a further uptick from the third and fourth quarter in the sale of used equipment. Can you comment on whether you said that to happen this year? And just what is that all about? Is that more just maybe seasonal flush out at the end of year of anything used, or it’s certainly you’re taking up as far as fleet needs during that particular time of the year, et cetera?

Ryan McMonagle: Yes. Let me – Mike, let me start. You were a little broken up at the end of your questions, but I think I got it. We don’t expect the fourth quarter to be as high as it was last year. We still think there’s a lot of demand for equipment. But I think we certainly don’t expect it to increase the way it did last year. So I think there is good demand. We don’t think it will be as significant or certainly a significant of an increase there. But it will be – and that is the hardest part of our business to have a forecast. The reason, which I think the second part of your question, Mike, was around why the reason our customers are buying there is they’re managing their own CapEx plans, CapEx budgets, that’s when there is, oftentimes, kind of a meaningful increase in the fourth quarter. And so we will see how that plays out. So I think Chris made some comments in his call and made some comments around the fact that demand continues to stay strong.