United Rentals, Inc. (NYSE:URI) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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It wasn’t just the big ones, but it was secondary and tertiary airports. You’ve heard us talk about that. You’ve seen some restoration projects in the Everglades and elsewhere that we’ve won. So again, it ends up being more anecdotal feedback from the team. There isn’t some great summary or audit that the government has provided that we’re aware of. But certainly gaining momentum.

Matthew J. Flannery: I’d agree. I’d say there’s a lot more shovel ready to use your word work ahead, than there’s been behind us certainly. So we’re in the early innings of this. But I just want to remind everyone we’ve had growth and even in the fourth quarter, we’ve had good growth in our infrastructure sector really for the past couple of years plus. And this is something we started focusing on as early as 2017 with the NEF acquisition for those who have been covering us for a while. So we feel good about this. And we think, to your point, in what Ted’s comments, more room ahead of us on the infrastructure as far as shovel-ready active work over the next few years.

Scott Schneeberger: Great, thanks guys. Good color. Appreciate that. For the follow-up, Ted, probably more for you. Just a summary of what we’ve heard on this call, your guidance for revenue, a little higher than the guidance for EBITDA growth. I think I heard hey, same level of cold starts on a little less revenue growth and a lot of technology investment. That’s kind of my summary takeaway, but anything you’d add and is that accurate? Thanks.

William Ted Grace: So the used piece is a critical one to make sure that you understand, Scott, and I think you do, but anybody else who’s listening, we have talked for the last several years about the prospective normalization of the used market. You started to see that in 2023 versus 2022. Probably the easiest way to express this is in that recovery rate. In 2022, we recovered about $0.74 on the dollar selling 90-month old equipment. Historically, we get $0.50 to $0.55, and that really was driven by an extraordinarily unusual environment as everybody remembers. At that time, we went out of our way to tell people, those were not — we didn’t think those would be sustainable recovery rates. You wouldn’t expect to buy an asset, have 7.5 years of cash flow and then sell it for only 26% economic depreciation.

So you fast forward to 2023, we got back about $0.66 on the dollar. So that was part of that normalization. And if you think about what we expect for 2024 and what’s embedded in our guidance, it’s getting to about $0.60. It’s at $1.5 billion of proceeds relative to $2.5 billion of OEC sold. So down from 2023, but still well above those historical norms. As you’d expect, that will impact margins. Margins are still very high. In the entirety of 2023, I think we were about 57%. If you went back to kind of pre-pandemic levels, normal was more in the upper 40s. So we continue to see very strong margins there as well. But as I said, as you normalize that recovery rate, that will impact your margins. When you play through all of that, for the sake argument, if you assume that there was a linear relationship between that normalization on recovery and margins, you’d say, alright, if you guys get to, let’s say, the low 50s adjusted used margin and you apply that to the revenue, that will give you a way to dimensionalize what that EBITDA headwind is we’re facing and really overcoming in 2024 as used markets normalize.

So we gave you a kind of handholding to think about how to quantify this. When you do that, you play with those numbers, that’s where you see kind of flat margins year-on-year ex-use. Matt, anything you’d add there?

Matthew J. Flannery: Very thorough. We are good. Thanks.

Scott Schneeberger: Great, thanks guys.

Operator: Thank you. And this does conclude our question-and-answer session. I will now turn the call back to Matt Flannery for any additional or closing remarks.

Matthew J. Flannery: Thank you, operator, and thanks to everyone on the call. We appreciate your time, and I’m glad you could join us today. And I’d just remind everyone, you can go to our site, our Q4 investor deck has the latest updates. And as always, Elizabeth is available to answer any of your questions. So stay safe, and I look forward to seeing you all in April. Operator, you can now end the call.

Operator: This does conclude today’s call. We thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at any time.

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