Federal Signal Corporation (NYSE:FSS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Jennifer Sherman: Yes. Let me start with, this is a deal that I’ve been working on. Our team has been working on since 2015. We have — our JJE team, as we talked about in the prepared comments, is the largest distributor of Trackless equipment. So we know the company well. It’s just an outstanding company. With respect to — yes, they do purchase large engines from a large engine supplier. Yes, we believe there are synergies there, and we’re excited about that. This acquisition, although is smaller, is a — I just think has great growth opportunities. We’re planning on having a kind of winter attachments package and a summer attachments package. The summer attachments package would include the mower attachment that you referenced.

And we believe, again, that this particular company very well managed, it just a great company. We’ll be able to offer depending on the geographies, either summer, winter, I mean, or both or either or. And it really helps our customers reduce their carbon footprint also because instead of having several multi-purpose vehicles, they can have one vehicle with multiple attachments. And then again, we believe with our footprint, the opportunity to grow their aftermarket business that attachment is great. So just — I was absolutely thrilled, the management team is fantastic, and we really think there’s a ton of opportunity going forward.

Operator: Next question is from Felix Boeschen with Raymond James.

Felix Boeschen: I was just curious on the topline guide, if we could maybe talk about some of the key puts and takes. As I think about going from ’22 to ’23, I think there’s going to be obviously some M&A impact, some price impacts, you mentioned aftermarket being a growth source. I’m wondering, Ian, could you bucket those for us? And maybe talk about what you’re implying on sort of core volumes in the guide?

Ian Hudson: Sure. So I think, obviously, the guide is a year-over-year increase at the aggregate level of between 10% and 20%. The organic component is around about 6% to 16% with the delta obviously been the acquisition contribution. So of the organic growth component, it’s a pretty wide range, I think, and that’s reflected mainly of supply chain, particularly on the dump truck side of the business. So I think when you look at the organic growth of 6% to 16%, on the lower end, price would probably be about half of that with volumes making up the difference. And then obviously, as you go further up the range, that’s going to be mainly volume-driven.

Felix Boeschen: Okay. Got it. Super helpful. And then you talked about adding to the rental fleet, and I think you talked about doing it in the first quarter. And I guess maybe this is just a bigger picture question. But how do you think about utilization of that rental fleet today? And sort of what do you think the fleet size could go in the next coming years here just as we think about, obviously, infrastructure being a driver and so on?

Jennifer Sherman: Yes. So let me start with, quotes are up so far this year pretty meaningfully. So we’re expecting to have a good year on rentals. Number two is, we have strong rental partners. So we’re not, as you know, the only entity that rents our equipment. We have several strong rental partners. And our expectation is to continue and invest in those rental partners. We expect the fleet partly because of supply chain challenges. There’s a tremendous amount of demand for used equipment in 2022. So we’re replenishing in Q1 to kind of get back to where we are — where we were. And it’s important, we do that in Q1, because as we get into the summer, particularly in areas of Canada, in the northern half of the U.S., so that equipment has pretty high utilization.

I’ll share with you that our utilization has been strong throughout 2022, and we expect that to continue into 2023. In terms of the size of the rental fleet, we don’t have plans to dramatically grow the fleet. We’re going to respond to customer demand and continue to be disciplined, and we’re also going to rely upon our rental partners.