Custom Truck One Source, Inc. (NYSE:CTOS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Custom Truck One Source, Inc. (NYSE:CTOS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript March 14, 2023

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Custom Truck One Sources. Fourth Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. I would like to hand the conference call over to your host today, Brian Perman, Vice President of Investor Relations for Custom Truck.

Brian Perman: Thank you, and good afternoon. Before we begin, we would like to remind you that management’s commentary and responses to questions on today’s call may include forward-looking statements, which, by their nature, are uncertain and outside of the company’s control. Although these forward-looking statements are based on management’s current expectations and beliefs, actual results may differ materially. For a discussion of some of the factors that could cause actual results to differ, please refer to the Risk Factors section of the company’s filings with the SEC. Additionally, please note that you can find reconciliations of the historical non-GAAP financial measures discussed during the call in the press release issued today.

The press release we issued this afternoon, and our quarterly investor presentation are posted on the Investor Relations section of our website. We filed our 2022 10-Q with the SEC this afternoon. Today’s discussion of our results of operations for Custom Truck One Source Inc., or custom truck, is presented on a historical basis as of or for the three and 12 months ended December 31, 2022, and prior periods. While our reported results can only include Custom Truck OneSource, LP for the period since the April 1, 2021 date of the business combination, we have presented and will be discussing today pro-forma combined results as if Nesco and Custom Truck had operated together for all periods. All references and comparisons to 2021 results are made on a pro-forma basis.

We believe such combined information is useful to compare how the combined company has performed over-time. Joining me today are Fred Ross, CEO; Ryan McMonagle, President and COO, and Chris Eperjesy, CFO. I will now turn the call over to Fred.

Fred Ross: Thanks Brian and welcome everyone on today’s call. I’d like to begin by thanking all of our employees, customers, and suppliers, who supported our business and helped us achieve our fantastic results, as we navigated the challenges our industry faced last year. The entire team continues to work tirelessly to maintain record levels of production so we can fulfill our goals of providing unrivaled service to our customers, growing our market share, and creating value for our shareholders. Last quarter, we delivered record revenues, adjusted gross profits, and adjusted EBITDA. We generated $487 million of revenue and $124 million of adjusted EBITDA in Q4, up 37% and 30% respectively versus Q4 of 2021. We sold $244 million of new equipment in the quarter, which is a quarterly record for the sales organization.

Additionally, we continue to grow the fleet adding $27 million of net OEC to the quarter. While our supply chain continues to improve, we are working closely with our vendors to continue to address remaining issues and have 2023 be a better year than the last year. Our ERS business continues to perform very well with utilization increasing by 250 basis points over the prior quarter. Our TES business continues to see very strong demand with backlog growing to a record of $754 million, more than 83% higher than a year ago. Strong demand for both rental and new sales provide us the opportunity to focus on improving profitability through margin expansion. And finally, we remain well capitalized and our focus on reducing our net leverage, which Chris will discuss later.

Our fourth quarter results provided continued momentum for us and a strong foundation for this year. We are confident that our team will continue to execute well and deliver strong results during 2023. We expect to see continued strong revenue, adjusted gross profit, and adjusted EBITDA grows across all our business segments. As after founding Custom Truck more than 25 years ago, I will retire from CEO role next week. Building this business has been one of the greatest accomplishments of my life. Leading our employees and serving our customers is something I have been passionate about my entire career. I have worked with Ryan for more than eight years and I’m confident in his leadership ability in the rest of the custom truck leadership team.

I look forward to seeing what they achieve in the years ahead. With that, I’ll now turn the call over to Ryan.

Photo by Josiah Farrow on Unsplash

Ryan McMonagle: Thank you, Fred. I am tremendously grateful for your leadership and guidance. I am deeply honored to have the opportunity to build upon the enduring legacy that you created here at Custom Truck. As CEO, I want to continue to serve our customers, create more opportunities for our employees to grow and develop and push forward our objective to establish Custom Truck One Source as the leading provider of specialized trucks and heavy equipment solutions in North America. Demand remains strong in each of our strategically selected four primary end markets, T&D, telecom, rail and infrastructure. We continue to believe that these markets offer compelling long-term growth opportunities, well in excess of GDP and should for the foreseeable future.

This can be seen in the reported backlogs of the utility and telecom contractors, our largest customer base, which continue to be extremely strong and at or near record levels. We see this reflected in both our new sales backlog and the rental fleet’s performance and the rental fleet’s performance. Additionally, we continue to experience strong demand from our customers to both rent and purchase assets in the rental fleet, which we see as a positive leading indicator for sustained demand. Strong investment in the rental fleet and sales of certain aged assets in the quarter resulted in the reduction of our fleet age to 3.7 years, which we believe remains the youngestt in the industry. Continued supply chain issues were the only significant headwind to our ability to meet customer demand last year.

During Q4, we saw solid improvements in the number of chassis and attachments we received, which was reflected in our near record production and growing levels of inventory. Overall, our inventory increased by $41 million versus Q3, which we see as a positive indicator and positions as well for 2023. Because of our strong vendor relationships and the efforts of our team, we continue to experience increased inventory flows from our suppliers with deliveries up more than 50%, during Q4. compared to Q4 last year. We met our target of adding more gross CapEx to the rental fleet in the second half of last year than we did in the first half, deploying $214 million into the Myrtle fleet in the second half versus $127 million in the first half. We also met our stated goal of both sequential quarterly and year-over-year revenue growth in our TES segment in the fourth quarter.

Strategically, we remain focused on optimizing our production and investing to ensure we deliver the service levels our customers expect from TES. Our production team performed very well in the fourth quarter and continues to deliver strong results so far. In 2023, our sales organization was able to deliver record volumes in the fourth quarter, in the infrastructure and system investments we have made, provide confidence we can deliver our expected 2023 volumes. We will continue to invest in our footprint and service organization to ensure we can support our rental fleet growth. As we look ahead to this year, we believe that favorable in-market tailwinds, robust customer demand, improving supply chain and continued solid execution by our team, all positioned custom truck to deliver strong revenue adjusted gross profit and adjusted EBITDA growth.

While Chris will discuss our 2023 outlook in greater detail, we are currently projecting 2023 total revenue in the range of $1.61 billion to $1.73 billion, an adjusted EBITDA from $415 million to $435 million. We know our employees are the key to delivering the record financial results and unmatched customer service. We saw last year, and I’d like to extend a sincere thank you to them. I will now turn it over to Chris.

Chris Eperjesy: Thanks, Ryan. As Fred and Ryan have indicated Q4 was a record recorded, despite the supply chain challenges, we continued to face total revenue of $487 million was up 37% compared to Q4 2021 and 30 — 36% versus the prior quarter. Adjusted EBITDA was $124 million, a 30% improvement compared to Q4 2021 results and 36% sequential growth. For all of 2022, adjusted EBITDA was up 18% compared to 2021. Net income for the quarter was $31.1 million, the highest since the combination. Gross profit excluding rental depreciation was $169 million, representing an adjusted gross margin for the quarter of 34.7% down marginally from 35.1% for Q4 2021 and down from 36.6% last quarter both solely as a result of mix. ERS and TES segments both experienced significant improvement in adjusted gross margin versus last year, driven primarily by our strategic focus on pricing across all of our operating segment, SG&A was $59 million for Q4 or 12% of revenues, which is down from almost 14% in Q3.

Turning to our segment results, Fred referenced our continued strong utilization within our ERS segment for the quarter, which was more than 86%, up from 84% for Q4 2021 and up 250 basis points compared to last quarter. Average OEC on rent increased by more than $85 million compared to the previous quarter and was up $116 million for 2022. On rent yield was 39.5% for the quarter, up from 39.1% for Q4 2021 and up a hundred basis points versus Q3. Our OEC ended the year at $1.46 billion up by more than $27 million in the quarter and $92 million for the year. We deployed $117 million of new equipment into our rental fleet in the quarter, which is the most CapEx we have ever deployed in a quarter, and we expect to continue to invest heavily in the fleet in 2023.

For Q4, ERS rental revenue was $123 million, a 13% increase versus Q4 2021 and a 10% increase versus Q3. Reflecting our comments from last quarter regarding strong demand for rental asset purchases, ERS equipment sales for the quarter were a record $78 million up more than 120% versus Q4 2021 and up more than 110% from Q3. ERS Gross profit excluding rental depreciation was a record $118 million for Q4, up 33% from Q4 2021 and up 24% from Q3. Adjusted gross margin was 58.3%, a decrease from Q3 solely as a result of revenue mix as rental adjusted gross margin continued to improve, and rental sales adjusted gross margin was essentially flat to Q3. For TES, we achieved a quarterly record with revenues of $247 million, which were up more than 42% sequentially from $174 million in Q3, as this segment benefited from record backlog, continued strong inventory flows in near record levels of production.

Gross profit increased by more than 90% in the quarter compared to Q4 2021 and by more than 63% sequentially. TES gross margin for the quarter was 18%, up from 13% in Q4 2021 and a 230 basis point improvement from Q3. Our sales activity continues to be extremely strong with backlog growing by more than 6% sequentially from Q3 to $754 million. This strength was very broad based across our product portfolio. While supply chain issues, albeit at a moderated level are resulting in near term headwinds to our ability to fully take advantage of the strong demand, we believe the continued growth in TES sales backlog reflects growing demand for equipment indicative of our favorable end market dynamics, our strong market share gains, and our pricing discipline.

We have been successful encountering inflationary pressures through the implementation of ongoing production efficiency initiatives in addition to gaining favorable price increases with our customers. As this quarter’s TES results show, we are confident we will be ABLe to hold or improve margins over the coming quarters, even with elevated levels of inflation. Our APS business posted revenue of $38 million up 9% versus Q4 2021 and of 8% over Q3. Gross profit margin in the segment was negatively impacted by higher inventory costs due to shifts in product mix. maintaining a strong liquidity position, improving leverage remain priorities for us as do investing in the rental fleet and pursuing selective strategic growth through M&A. Pursuant to our previously announced stock repurchase program, we purchased $8 million of our stock during the quarter.

We also reduced borrowings under our ABL by $9 million with the outstanding balance at ending the year at$ 438 million as of December 31, we had $309 million available and $189 million of suppressed availability under the ABL. With the ability to upsize the facility with LTM adjusted EBITDA $393 million, we finished 2022 with net leverage of just over 3.5 times an improvement of more than a turn since the close of the transaction and down from just under 3.8 times last quarter. Achieving leverage below three times remains our target and one that we believe we can achieve by the end of fiscal 2023. We will continue to seek to make incremental investments and prudent acquisitions when we believe they create long-term shareholder value. With respect to our 2023 outlook, we believe ERS will continue to benefit from strong demand from our rental customers as well as for purchases of rental fleet units, particularly older equipment in 2023.

We also expect to further grow our rental fleet Nesco by mid to high single digits regarding TES supply chain improvements, improved inventory levels exiting 2022 and record backlog level and record backlog level should improve our ability to produce and deliver more units in 2023. We are providing guidance for our segments as follows, we expect ERS revenue of between $665 and $705 million. TES revenue is in the range of $800 to $870 million and APS revenue of between $145 and $155 million. As Ryan mentioned previously, this results in total revenue in the range of $1.61 billion to $1.73 billion, and we are projecting adjusted EBITDA from 415 to 435 million. In closing, I want to echo Fred’s and Ryan’s comments regarding our record 2022 performance.

Despite the significant challenges that we experienced, we have executed a transformational integration with Nesco delivered double digit adjusted EBITDA growth, expanded margins in an inflationary environment, reduced leverage, and continue to deliver the highest levels of customer service. With that, I will turn it over to the operator to open the line for questions.

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Q&A Session

Operator: Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. . Thank you, and our first question is from Scott Berger with Oppenheimer. Please proceed with your question.

Scott Berger: Thank you very much. Good afternoon all. My first question, I, — it still feels like the most important question out there is the supply chain. It, it demand was excellent in 2022, yet there were the, the, the constraints on, on the supply end of it. You guys highlighted it a bit here on this call, but I’d love if you just talk a little bit more about what you’re seeing from the suppliers. You said it’s gotten better on both chassis and, and attachments, but if you could just take us a, a level or two deeper into, into what you’re seeing and what gives you confidence for that clearing up and, and, and allowing you to give the guy that you have for ’23? Thanks.

Ryan McMonagle: Sure. Scott, good to hear from you and it’s Ryan. I, I’ll start but we, we are seeing good improvement on the supply chain side, Scott, so it’s, we referenced it in two comments that we made one. About inventory, our receipts in Q4 was up 50% over where it was last fourth quarter. And so we take that as a really positive sign, and then inventory levels are up as well sequentially. And so we are seeing we are seeing that flow and then we’re seeing the production side of things continue to improve too. So, and I’d say right now we’re feeling good with the chassis, with our chassis partners. We’re seeing good inflows on the chassis side and on the attachment side of things too, where we have continued to, to have good relationships with our partners there.

So I think we’re seeing good flows on both the attachment and the chassis side, and then with, with bodies as well, we are have to identify additional partners who can help us with our bodies as well. So, so we’re feeling good and sitting here in the middle of March. I think, as we said in some of the prepared comments, the year is off to a good start from a, from a supply chain standpoint as well.

Scott Berger: Sounds good. Can we speak a little bit or discuss a little bit what you’re seeing across the end markets? Have you seen any, any discernible benefits from the infrastructure bill funds flow yet? And, and just kind of end market perspective on, it sounds like broad base demand, but maybe a little bit more from, from each of the areas. Thanks.

Ryan McMonagle: Yeah, I’ll start on left or, and then Fred, do you want to, well, yeah, so basically if, if you look at our, dump trucks and water trucks, which, is usually part of pure infrastructure are, are really up and, doing well. Demand is high, sales are high, and the rental fleet is also expanding with those, with those products. So I, think we’re starting to see the beginning of, of the infrastructure lift that we’ve been talking about for a year and a half or so, and I, I think it is beginning now. So I think that’s, that’s where we see the infrastructure bill the most immediately, Scott, is and, and then utility, we’re still, we still are very bullish on utility broadly. Both transmission and distribution made that comment in, in the prepared remarks around our customer’s backlog.