Please standby, we are about to begin. Good day. And welcome to the GATX 2021 Fourth Quarter Conference Call. Today’s conference is being recorded. At this time, I’d like to turn the conference over to Ms. Shari Hellerman, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Jen. Good morning, everyone. And thank you for joining GATX’s fourth quarter and 2021 year-end earnings conference call. I’m joined today by Brian Kenney, President and CEO; Tom Ellman, Executive Vice President and CFO; and Bob Lyons, Executive Vice President and President of Rail North America. Please note that some of the information you’ll hear during our discussion today will consists of forward-looking statements. Actual results or trends could differ materially from those statements or forecasts. For more information, please refer to the risk factors included in our earnings release and those discussed in GATX’s 2020 Form 10-K and 2021 Form 10-Q. GATX assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. I will provide a quick overview of our 2021 fourth quarter and full year results and then Brian will provide additional comments on 2021, as well as our outlook for 2022. After that we will open the call up for questions. Earlier today GATX reported 2021 fourth quarter net income from continuing operations of $61 million or $1.69 per diluted share. It compares to 2020 fourth quarter net income from continuing operations of $17.8 million or $0.50 per diluted share. The 2021 fourth quarter results include a net positive impact of $4 million or $0.11 per diluted share related to Tax Adjustments and Other Items. For the full year 2021 GATX reported net income from continuing operations of $143.1 million or $3.98 per diluted share. This compares to net income from continuing operations of $150.2 million or $4.24 per diluted share in 2020. The 2021 and 2020 full-year results include net negative impacts of $1.08 per diluted share and $0.35 per diluted share, respectively, associated with various Tax Adjustments and Other Items. These items are detailed on page 13 of our earnings release. Total 2021 investment volume was $1.1 billion, as we continue to find attractive opportunities to invest in our businesses across the globe. Additionally, in 2021, GATX repurchased about 131,000 shares for approximately $13 million. As of December 31, 2021, we have approximately $137 million remaining under our existing repurchase authorization. Lastly, as noted in the earnings release, we currently expect 2022 earnings to be in the range of $5.50 per diluted share to $5.80 per diluted share. With that, I will now turn the call over to Brian.

Yeah. Thanks, Shari. Good morning, everyone. As Shari said, I’ll give you some brief color on our 2021 performance, but more importantly, get to some more detail underpinning our 2022 guidance. So let me get started. Shari gave you the numbers, so I won’t repeat them here, but I will say that, we increasingly outperformed our expectations as we move through the year. That was especially true in Rail North America. As you saw in the press release, absolute lease rates have increased now for six consecutive quarters and that drove our lease pricing index to be virtually flat in the quarter at negative 0.7%. But I’ll give you more on where we think lease pricing is going in 2022 in just a minute. So the pricing strength was different by solid demand, it’s driven by our diversified fleet composition and was driven by excellent execution by our commercial team. As the year progressed, they took more risk, they push the lease rates harder and they succeeded, and they enjoyed high lease renewals success, which drove lower fleet churn than we expected coming into the year and combined with lower railroad repairs and our ongoing efforts to drive more repairs into our own network, we thus experienced much lower maintenance costs than we originally expected. The last factor to talk about for 2021 around North America was high asset values, not only that the railcars that we sold in the secondary market realize the values that we originally planned, but continued high scrap prices also drove strap gains for 2021 as well. So it was a very strong year for Rail North America versus our expectations and the team really did take advantage of an improving market. Turning to International Rail, we expected a significant increase in profitability in 2021…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And we’ll go first to Allison Poliniak with Wells Fargo.

Thanks. Hey. On, I guess, the LPI, obviously, positive direction here. Could you maybe give a little color in terms of, obviously, absolute lease rates are going to be renewing higher than what’s being renewed. But relative to what you guys view as normal? Could you give us any like perspective, it’s kind of where we are with that at this point?

Allison, it is. Bob. I’m happy to take that question for you. As Brian mentioned in his opening comments, for the sixth consecutive quarter, we saw absolute lease rates move up. And as we look into 2022, with regards to the LPI, we have, for the first time in a very long time, both elements working in our favor, which is the average expiring rate is actually ticking down a little bit and the average expected renewal rate is going up. So that puts us in that positive 5% to 15% range. Where we are with regards to normalized long run lease rates, particularly with regards to the tank car fleet we’re getting closer to that equilibrium line, still some to go and the variability in freight is typically much higher than it is in tank, but all signs moving in the right direction.

Great. And Brian, I want to go back to a comment you gave with some of your color and outlook. You mentioned the high renewal rate, obviously, positive lease rate, but you said the renewal -- the lease rate renewal is going to be lower. Meaning, I guess, your percentage, I know it’s been high the past two quarters. I guess any thoughts there and why you’re thinking that? And then on top of that, maintenance flat, if that was going to be lower, I thought that would be higher, those just cars that are getting retired at this point, just any thoughts on that?

Well, what I said was, renewal success would be similar in 2022. I did say, we might have a slight drop in fleet utilization. Honestly, the only way it can go down when you’re at 99.2%. So it could be a slight drop there. But we expect similar renewal success in 2022 as we had in 2021. On the maintenance side, Bob, did you want to?

Sure. I think a couple things going on on the maintenance side, and again, to reiterate what Brian said in his opening comments, overall, we expect the net maintenance line to be relatively flat with where we were in 2021. So we are facing some pressures with regards to both labor rates, material costs, many of the things that other folks in our industry are -- in all industries are facing. We will be able to hold the line overall in costs because a lot of -- because of the number of efficiencies that we’ve been able to realize, the number of cars we’re running through our own network relative to where we were in years past. So we’re essentially offsetting some of those macro pressures with the things we’ve been able to do in our network over the course of the last few years.

Understood. Thank you.

We’ll go next to Justin Long with Stephens.

Thanks and good morning. I wanted to circle back to Allison’s question about absolute lease rates. Are you able to share the percent increase that we saw in the fourth quarter in absolute lease rates? And then circling back to the assumption on remarketing income, just because that’s something that can swing results around so significantly in North America, any color you can give us on the cadence quarterly of that remarketing income that we should expect in 2022?

Sure. Justin, it is Bob. I’ll take the first one. With regards to absolute lease rates between third quarter and fourth quarter, tank and freight combined, you’re looking at a number about 7% or 8% sequential increase. And again, what’s most powerful there is that, six quarters in a row with a positive number in front of it. That’s what it takes in this industry is consistent performance like that overall to turn rates and turn the tide and we’re definitely seeing that.

With regards to remarketing income, always difficult to predict quarter-to-quarter, just because of the way timing of transactions work, the number of transactions we have in the secondary market. Where we sit today, I think, we’ll get the year off to a pretty good start in the first quarter and second quarter. So it may be a little bit more weighted towards the front end, but again, always hard to predict.

Understood. And secondly, I wanted to follow-up on capital allocation, and Brian, you alluded to the over $1 billion investment in each of the last two years. Any thoughts around what that number could look like in 2022 just based on what you’re seeing in the market and valuations and maybe you could touch on buybacks as well. It sounds like we’re restarting things on that front, so curious how much that’s factored into the guidance?

Yeah. What we currently see in the market in terms of investment opportunities and this would not necessarily be speculative investment. I think we can have another $1 dollar year in 2022, Justin. And as I said, we’ve been able to realize without doing a speculative, we’ve had customers lined up in advance and we’ve been able to do that, especially Rail North America, in fact, I think, Rail North America in 2021 had over $200 million outside of their committed supply agreement that they closed -- that they arranged in customer investment. So, and we didn’t take a spec position in those cars. So they’re doing a really nice job identifying those opportunities. It’s also a sign of some strength in the underlying market. So I think we can do a $1 billion again this year. On the share repurchase side, Tom, do you want to?

Yeah. So just to reiterate what both Shari and Brian talked about, we have $137 million remaining on our authorization from the Board and we purchased about $13 million worth of stock in 2021. As Brian indicated in his openings, we’re able to find considerable amounts of attractive investment and we expect to be able to continue to do so going forward as evidenced by the $1 billion number Brian just talked about. But it is something where in 2021 we repurchase the stock on volatile trading days and we would look to continue to do that going forward. Our capital allocation framework always calls for us to prioritize those investment opportunities and we consistently talk with our Board of Directors about stock buyback decisions. In terms of our guidance, we have over the last few years purchased anywhere between zero dollars of buyback and $150 million, and the range that we’ve provided allow us for being somewhere within that historical framework.

Okay. That’s helpful. I appreciate the time.

We’ll go next to Matt Elkott with Cowen.

Good morning. Thank you.

Hi, Matt.

Good to see the average terms go up to its highest in two years. I think it’s still on the lower side relative to previous recoveries. My question is guys, given the continued rates trend over the last six quarters, do you think terms could keep rising throughout this year? And any insights on where we could end the year, are we -- could we be well into the 40 a month range would be appreciated?

Sure. Matt, it is Bob. We will hesitate to put a number on that, because it also can move around from quarter-to-quarter. I mean, 2021, it moved anywhere from 29 months up to 37 month, as you saw in the fourth quarter. Now anytime you have a renewal success rate close to 90% and you have lease rates going, finally, in the right direction, in certain car types, we will push term. But broadly speaking, we’re still in the phase where we’re really trying to focus more attention on making sure we’re getting rates up to the right level and then we’ll concentrate more on term. But with a fleet as diverse as ours, there are certainly pockets of car types where we’re already trying to stretch those terms out.

Okay. That’s very helpful, Bob. A year and a half into this recovery, is it looking like, does it feel like a prolonged recovery, your earnings cycle kind of lag the actual recovery on lease rates? So that -- is this starting to feel more like a multiyear earnings recovery to you guys?

Right. It does and I -- and the feeling of this recovery, quite frankly, is better than ones we’ve felt before, because when you look back to 2013 or 2014 or even the mid-2000s, some of the accelerant in the market, the spikes that we saw and incredible demand for very small pockets of car types, the crude boom, what have you. They’re real beneficial in the short-term, but long-term, they can cause some damage. And this recovery seems very different, more fundamental, and I think, hopefully, we’ll have much longer -- much more legs to it than prior ones.

Okay. And then, I think, Brian mentioned that the segment profit for Rail North America should be up in the $15 million to $20 million range if I got it correctly? And you guys are not expect -- you’re expecting gains to be in line or slightly up from this year. So, I guess, the $15 million to $20 million improvement is mostly from lease rate improvement, as well as cost controls based on your assumptions?

Yeah. I think that’s a fair assessment, Matt.

Okay. And just one last question, if I could, can you guys remind us of your existing supply agreements with manufacturers and what needs to happen this year for you guys to consider significant manufacturing orders or have orders become somewhat of a necessity at this point, in order to be able to serve your customers, given the near full utilization you have?

Sure. We have two supply agreements totaling 3,000 cars a year. That runs through the end of 2023. So we’re very well covered on the supply agreements. And just for reference, currently, the nearest available supply agreement availability is in the third quarter of 2022. So our commercial team has done a real nice job of placing those cars well in advance of when they’re scheduled to deliver. And no real comment yet, Matt, on where we’ll go with the supply agreement post-2023. We’ll be looking at that as the year progresses. It’s important for us to have a supply agreement in place for a base load, particularly on the tank car side, but no determination has been made yet on extension beyond 2023.

Got it. Thank you very much.

We’ll go next to Bascome Majors with Susquehanna.

Yeah. I want to follow-up on the earlier question about term versus rate. Can you talk about how you structure your sales incentives for 2022 in North American Rail to balance those and is there any historic corollary of, if you look back at year X or year Y, will look a lot like restructured those for this year? Thank you.

Bascome, it’s Bob. I’ll take that question for you. I won’t get into a tremendous amount of detail rather than to tell you our sales incentive plans provide with regards to our commercial organization the flexibility to adjust on an annual basis. So we can drive towards the outcome we want. In very difficult times, obviously, we focus on utilization and when the market is really strong, we focus on trying to make sure our sales folks are incentivized to get term. We’re fairly early on in the process here of finally getting some leverage with regards to lease rates. So I think we’re in the early innings of that type of recovery. Not one yet where you would be going very, very hard on term, as I mentioned earlier, certainly pockets of car types, that’s possible. But, overall, it’s really much more right now our focus is on trying to move those rates up consistent with what others in the market are doing and we will lead the effort there. So, we’ll have our sales force aligned accordingly. I’m sorry and you -- I think you had a second question.

No…

I think you’ve addressed it, Bob.

Okay.

To your other comments about the investment volume, hopefully, being another $1 billion year, you kind of made some directional comments about North American Rail in that response. It’s been a while since you’ve grown that fleet at least in unit terms, could this be a year where that happens if the investments do manifest as it for?

Yeah. I think, overall, where we look today, the secondary market has been so strong the last couple years, that there’s been some, I’d say, above normal sales activities in 2021, and likely, again, in 2022. And again, I want to be very clear about the fact that we are not chasing a car count. That can be a dangerous pursuit and we’ve seen over the years some other folks in the industry who’ve gone that route. You can always add cars, but can you do it economically, that’s the most important factor we’re looking at. So I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that next fleet growth could occur in 2022. But in the end, we’re going to do the right thing, Bascome, in terms of adding cars and in terms of optimizing the portfolio. We have massive scale in this business and whether the fleet 113,000 cars or 112,500 or 114,000, is less of a concern to me than generating the best possible return out of that portfolio. Thanks for that, Bob. And if I could ask one more, I know you don’t take over as CEO for another three months here and you’ve been with the company for a long time. The company’s remarkably consistent over a very long time. But is there anything that we should expect to see emphasize or focused on a little more under your leadership? If you could just give a preview of where your head is? I think that would be helpful. Thanks.

Sure. And I appreciate the question. As you noted, I’ve worked at GATX for 25 years and the management team has been together here a very long time. I’ve had the benefit of working side-by-side with Brian for that 25 years. A lot of the strategies that you’ve seen in place and you’ve seen deployed here at GATX over those years, particularly the last 17 years under Brian’s leadership, I’ve been involved in a lot of those decisions, extremely supportive of the direction and the philosophy that we deploy. So I wouldn’t endeavor to make any significant substantial changes in the way we think about how we deploy capital or the strength in the markets that we have. I am a firm believer in GATX is at its best. We’re in long live widely used assets with a service component and where we have asset knowledge that’s truly unique. That won’t change and you’re going to continue to see that, you’re going to continue to see us try to leverage the expertise in the markets we have and to do so more broadly and globally.

Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] And we’ll go next to Justin Bergner with Gabelli Funds.

Good morning, Brian. Good morning, Bob. Congratulations on the appointment. Good morning, Tom. Good morning, Shari.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Just to start, a couple quick, just detail oriented questions. There appeared to be a good chunk of other income in both Rail North America and Rail International in the fourth quarter. What was in that? Well, that re-curves at one-time?

Yeah. So I will take that. So in Rail North America, the primary uptick you saw was due to some insurance proceeds that came from a storm at one of our service centers and that was described on, it was one of the items described on page 13 of the press release that Shari mentioned. In Rail International, there’s really the key driver there was what Brian mentioned about some of the FX issues we had between those Lahti and the euro last year, that didn’t occur this year. And we also had some savings in our deal ratio expenses this year versus last year.

Okay. And then maybe a second, somewhat detail question, within RRPF, I mean, the absolute profit was still strong in the fourth quarter, I assume there are some asset gains in that number and are you expecting asset gains to continue in the joint venture as you look into 2022.

So, as Brian mentioned in his opening comments, we would expect next year, maybe to see a little bit less in terms of some of those gains relative to this year. As far as how the quarter went, the big driver of the uptick in earnings from affiliates at Portfolio Management was due to gains in the second -- gains on asset remarketing and residual realization.

Okay. And then, as you look at your gains on asset disposition outlook for 2022. Should I expect sort of it will look fairly similar in terms of the split between gains on scrappage and gains on rail cars sold or do you expect it to tilt even more towards scrappage versus sales of rail cars?

Yeah. So one thing to keep in mind is that, when it comes to scrap prices, it’s really difficult to predict the rail industry as a whole, it is not really a key driver of what happens there. But as far as a baseline expectation, assuming something similar to this year is a reasonable assumption, but that scrap price can move around quite a bit.

Okay. Thank you. And then, just lastly, should I be surprised that the guidance for other and sort of Trifleet they’re in is not for more than a $2 million to $3 million increase looking into 2022? I mean, are you continue to experience [Technical Difficulty] that’s fall into the P&L or how should I think about that $2 million, $3 million increase?

Yeah. I can take that. Justin, it’s Brian. It is a healthy increase. Remember, the size of this business is actually pretty small. They have around $30 million in revenue and that, in 2021, about $10 million in segment profit. So you think about it like a 20% increase.

Okay. That’s helpful. Thank you.

And at this time, there are no further questions. I’ll turn the call back to Shari Hellerman for closing remarks.

I’d like to thank everyone for their participation on the call this morning. Please contact me with any follow-up questions. Thank you.

This does conclude today’s conference. We thank you for your participation.