Herc Holdings Inc. (NYSE:HRI) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Larry Stavitski: Hi guys, this is Larry Stavitski on for Seth this morning. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to ask about quarter-over-quarter, any evidence of cancellations or pushouts related to rising interest rates or macro concerns? You guys talked a lot about increased activity from infrastructure and construction and some of these mega projects. So, just wondering if any evidence of project cancellations that you’ve been seeing?

Aaron Birnbaum: Larry, this is Aaron. By the nature of my job, I’m out in the field, at least 15 — or the half the month every single month to envision the branches, customers, and our sales team. And my ears are open to see if I hear any anecdotal concerns along those lines. And I have yet to hear that every market I go to in North America, a very robust activity, no cancellations, no postponements, no cancellation due to interest rates. Most of these jobs are big planned investment jobs, strategic, reshoring, some public funding, and these projects are ploughing through as scheduled.

Larry Stavitski: Okay. Thank you. I’ll leave it there. Thanks guys.

Aaron Birnbaum: Thank you.

Larry Silber: Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Mig Dobre from Baird. Your line is open.

Mig Dobre: Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I want to follow up on that last comment about really not seeing any cancellation and momentum remains strong. What do you make of the ABI index being below 50? I mean obviously, you have that as a key indicator for your business. And I recognize that the mega projects are there, but what about the sort of regular mom-and-pop for lack of a better term of construction business?

Mark Irion: Yes, I mean, you can see on the chart that it’s been below 50 since October. I mean it’s obviously coming off extraordinarily high readings before that. It’s maybe an indication of activity 12 months to 18 months out. And we’re focused on the activity that’s in front of us. So, there’s strong demand now. There’s going to be strong demand in the next couple of quarters, and that’s what we’re focusing on. And we’ll adjust this as necessary to what the ABI might not be telling us for the 2024.

Mig Dobre: Understood. And then a clarification. I don’t know if I missed this. How are you thinking about gross CapEx? And maybe can you help us understand in your current outlook, what the planned fleet disposals might look like in 2023?

Mark Irion: Right. So, yes, we’re definitely going to return to a normalized level of fleet disposals. So, that will sort of pickup into that 2019-ish sort of range. We’ve been running maybe in the $200 million to $300 million zone of OEC for the last couple of years, and that will sort of pick up to the $500 million to the $600 million zone we expect. And the CapEx, the gross CapEx is rolling in faster than it was at the beginning of the year. And we expect to sort of see improvements throughout this year, but we’re getting a steady supply. It’s not as predictable as it is in a normal environment, but the supply is coming in and we expect to be able to get enough fleet to execute on the plan.

Mig Dobre: Understood. And then maybe the last question. This is kind of going back to the answer that you provided to my first question that I understand that you guys are focused on the opportunity at hand here. But if conditions do change, right, if the ABI is actually telling us something valuable here, what are the things that you’re looking for in your day-to-day business to make adjustments to either your CapEx or your cost structure as 2023 progresses?

Larry Silber: Yes. Look, I think we monitor on a daily basis, our dollar utilization across our districts and regions. We monitor our time utilization by category. We look at what the seasonality is to make sure that the planned seasonality movement is happening as we expect, whether it’s going into the spring construction season, we’ll monitor that closely. And then as we proceed into the hot weather to make sure we’re seeing that seasonality adjustments happen with our specialty businesses and then rolling into the fall and winter. We have an adjustment there again in terms of seasonality. So, we monitor that and we monitor the things I just mentioned on a daily basis, not only at our level here, but our region executives also monitor that closely down to our branches and districts. So, we’re very close to what’s happening in activity on a daily basis, Mig, and we make adjustments accordingly.

Mig Dobre: Very helpful. Thank you so much.

Larry Silber: Thanks Mig.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Brian Sponheimer from GAMCO. Your line is open.

Brian Sponheimer: Hey, good morning everyone.

Larry Silber: Hey Brian.

Brian Sponheimer: Just very curious about the entertainment business. You touched on pretty much everything I wanted to talk about, but this was an exciting vertical for you. I think it’s gotten a little bit softer. Anything you can add there as far as whether organic or organic growth is something you might be looking at?

Mark Irion: Yes. I mean it’s obviously an important piece of the business for us. It’s sort of been through some real cycles in the last couple of years. So, a real big driver of growth and mix in 2021 and less of a contributor in 2022, just as some of that — the growth rate slowed down. But we’ll remain committed, and we’re excited to the various parts of that business, both the sort of studio space and the entertainment space and it’s an important part of our mix that we’ll remain focused on.