McGrath RentCorp (MGRC) Q4 2013 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good day, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the McGrath RentCorp Fourth Quarter 2013 Conference Call. At this time all conference participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] This conference is being recorded today, Thursday, February 27, 2014. Now I would like to turn the conference over to Geoff Buscher of SBG Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon. I’m the Investor Relations Advisor of McGrath RentCorp and will be acting as moderator of the conference call today. Representatives on the call today from McGrath RentCorp are Dennis Kakures, President and CEO; and Keith Pratt, Senior Vice President and CFO. Please note that this call is being recorded and will be available for telephone replay for up to seven days following the call by dialing 1-800-406-7325 for domestic callers, and 1-303-590-3030 for international callers. The pass code for the call replay is 4659462. This call is also being broadcast live over the internet and will be available for replay. We encourage you to visit the Investor Relations section of the Company’s website at mgrc.com. A press release was sent out today at approximately 4:05 PM Eastern Time or 1:05 PM Pacific. If you did not receive a copy but would like one, it is available online in the Investor Relations section of our website, or you may call 1-206-652-9704, and one will be sent to you. Before getting started, let me remind everyone that the matters we will be discussing today that are not truly historical are forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21-E of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, including statements regarding McGrath RentCorp’s expectations, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding the future. All forward-looking statements are based upon information currently available to McGrath RentCorp and McGrath RentCorp assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. These and other risks related to McGrath RentCorp’s business are set forth in the documents filed on McGrath RentCorp with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Company’s most recent Form 10-K and Form 10-Q. I would now like to turn the call over to Keith Pratt.

Thank you, Geoffrey. In addition to the press release issued today, the Company also filed with the SEC the earnings release on Form 8-K. the Company also announced a 2% increase of the cash dividend to $0.245 per share for the first quarter of 2014, representing on an a annualized basis a 2.7% yield on the February 26, 2014 closing stock price. For the fourth quarter 2013, total revenues decreased 7% to 94.6 million from $102 million for the same period in 2012. Net income decreased 1% to $11.8 million from $11.9 million and earnings per diluted share decreased 4% to $0.45 from $0.47. Reviewing the fourth quarter results for the Company’s mobile modular division compared to the fourth quarter of 2012, total revenues increased $3.8 million or 13% to $34.5 million, due to higher rental, rental related services and sales revenues. Gross profit on rents increased $0.3 million to $11.5 million, primarily due to higher rental revenues, partly offset by lower rental margins of 52%, compared with 56% in 2012. Lower rental margins were a result of $1.5 million higher other direct costs for labor and materials. Selling and administrative expenses increased 11% to $9.7 million, primarily as a result of increased personnel and benefit costs. The higher gross profit on sales, rental and rental related services revenues, partly offset by higher selling and administrative expenses resulted in an increase in operating income of 0.2 million, or 4%, to $5.9 million. Finally, average modular rental equipment for the quarter was $560 million, an increase of $28 million. Equipment additions were primarily to support growth in Texas, Florida and the Mid-Atlantic region and for our portable storage business. Average utilization for the fourth quarter increased to 70.5% from 66.8%. Turning next to fourth quarter results for the company’s TRS-RenTelco division…

Thank you, Keith. Although we are disappointed that company wide net income was relatively flat and EPS down 4% from last year’s fourth quarter, we continue to be pleased with the underlying business activity levels and rental revenue growth outlook in our rental business portfolio. Now let's take a closer look at each business for the quarter. Modular division wide rental revenues for the quarter increased $2 million or 10% to $22.1 million from a year ago and $1 million or 5% sequentially from the third quarter of 2013. During the fourth quarter we experienced a 21% increase in division wide year-over-year first month’s rental revenue bookings for modular building with an increase of 104% in California and a decline of 37% outside of the state. For all of 2013, we experienced a 19% increase in division wide year-over-year first month’s rental revenue bookings for modular building as compared to 2012 with an increase of 31% in California and 10% outside of the state. Rental bookings for 2013 were at their highest annual levels since 2007 prior to the great recession. Rental bookings for the first two months of 2014 are up very favorably as compared to the same period a year ago. We’re also continuing to see rental rates rise for various sized products as demand exceeds readily available supply. Modular division ending utilization for the fourth quarter 2013 rose to 70.7%, compared to 66.7% a year ago and 70.4% sequentially from the third quarter of 2013. Modular division income from operations for the quarter increased by $0.2 million or 4% to $5.9 million from a year ago. The lower percentage increase in income from operations, compared to rental revenues is primarily related to the increase in divisional booking levels and the significant increase in related inventory center cost…

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from the line of Scott Schneeberger with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Looking at modular, it does look like the ship is turning here gradual but occurring and I'm curious to get your take on what you expect to see kind of in a seasonality quarter-by-quarter progression if the trends in bookings or what’s implied by these trends in bookings persist throughout 2014? What do you expect to see on a quarter by quarter basis?

Scott I would look at 2014 this way. It’s likely we’ll have elevated inventory center processing costs minimally through the first half of the year because our backlog and strength of the order book is still good and those are very good expenses to have. At the same time we’ll start benefiting from all the equipment we put on rent this past year as it comes to the 2014 and even turns the corner into 2015. So those are kind of the dynamics in play. How much margin goodness we get above current levels and absolute betterment in terms of total profitability, we’ll have to see, because that will really be dependent on two factors; the second half of the year and how much spend occurs in the inventory center. If we continue to spend at these higher rates, that’s actually the best thing that can happen because it means that we’ll continue to get further rental revenue and utilization lift. If that turns off and changes significantly, if the market cools, we'll actually be more profitable this year than we would be otherwise because those costs will come down pretty quickly and we’ll benefit from that that way. But if I had my desire, we’d continue to be growing rental revenues and utilization to come out of the lower levels sooner rather than later. But that kind of gives you an overview. Those are kind of the push pull that we have. The other item that should mention is that none of this kind of takes into consideration a very robust California school market. We’re still -- those dynamics are still working out with budgets and bond issues and so forth. We plan to have a better year in educational rentals from what we’re already seeing in booked and we’ll have to see how that plays out towards the second half of the year and our bookings in spring and how much equipment goes out in the three to four months after the middle of the year. But the good news is that’s a big item there that we have not yet seen a big uptick on but we have certainly seen a very strong commercial uptick in California, commercial strong in our other markets and educational rentals are strong in Texas, Florida and the Mid-Atlantic by market. So the only real weakness in the business today is California schools but even that is markedly better than it has been over the last couple of years.

And two follow ups in module and then I would like to up to the segment for a second. But I noticed in the fourth quarter very strong increase in California but I believe it was down outside the state a decline. Could you speak to that? Is that an anomaly? Is that a comparison issue? Just is there anything to read into on that and a quick follow up still on modular but I’ll let you see that one.

Yes, that’s based on bookings, first month’s rental booking. So it really just how the order flow came in for one market versus another throughout the year and I wouldn’t read anything into that. When you kind of look at the overall numbers for the year we have a strong year in 2012 in our markets outside of California and they still increased 10% overall in 2013. So I think you look at that total year number is a very good picture and of course California had a great second half of 2013 and is going very strong.

And going back to my prior question and your response to it, I realize you have a pretty big range and there are lot of variables that you mentioned. But as that progression through the year you’d mentioned first half. Should I think a way that it's still going to be probably a headwind -- although a good thing conceptually for the long term but probably still a headwind in the first half and then kind of the TBD in the back half?

I think that’s a very fair assessment. It's a good way to characterize it.

I’m going to shift it up now. In TRS-RenTelco, general purpose equipment, you also listed that as an uncertainty going forward. Could you take us a little bit deeper on just -- that’s a fairly broad category. What kind of you puts and takes on what’s occurring there and your confidence that there will be a rebound versus this recent hiccup? Thanks.

Well, general purpose test equipment really started slowing towards the latter half of 2013 and coming around the quarter in 2014 it’s weak. Even when you look at Agilent’s most recent earnings call and other industry information, it's fairly week across the Board and that’s related to the semiconductor industry, general electronics and businesses that tend to use that type of test equipment more. We’re not - there is some aerospace and defense weakness in there as well and within our efficiency to look at pipeline, our pipeline still looks pretty favorable in those in-markets. However we have not seen and again we’re just about at the end of February, we just haven’t really seen much strength coming back in that. In fact it's actually probably that a little weaker since start of the year. However, again looking at the pipeline, the pipeline tells a slightly different story but again pipeline is just that. That has to materialize.

And then I have one more and I’ll turn it over. Within Adler, could you speak a little bit to the CapEx plans for 2014. Specifically you see that, I think you said downhill, the fracking percentage, it may be down to 12% I believe. Just kind of curious what type of tanks you’re purchasing? How aggressively? And anymore kind of color or feel you can provide to each of the end markets which you serve there? Thank you.

Well with respect to CapEx, we really have not in the last probably 18 months to two years purchased in effect a standard frack tank. What the equipment we have been buying has been different types of specialty tanks or boxes everything from vacuum boxes to stainless steel tanks, double wall tanks, the watering boxes. So its equipment that is not what when we used in the fracking world but it’s really used industrial environment, it used in the landfills, it’s used in waste collection processing. So from that standpoint, that equipment tends to be shorter term in nature but higher price. So we get, utilization tends to lower than our product then we get better rental rate, but there is more churn and we get - it’s not a like a fracking project where it goes out and it stays for eight to 12 months, which is a lot what we’ve experienced overtime in the Marcellus et cetera. So you don’t have that really contiguous rental statements, as much as you have shorter terms, either couple of months couple of weeks. But the dynamic of how we’re spending on CapEx really relates to non-fracking equipment that is serving a number of these other verticals that we’ve developed.

Just in terms of numbers, we spent $56 million with Adler in 2012 and that dropped to $31 million last year. So based on what Dennis described for those specialty units, a lower rate of spend and we’d expect to continue in that mode as we enter 2014.

Okay, thanks Keith. And any greater feel on vertical-by-vertical level 1 how things are going. You covered fairly well on a general basis, but are you able to take us any deeper or want to leave it at that? Thanks.

In I my prepares remarks I talked about a number of different verticals that we participate in and overall I won’t give any one of those any particular commentary, but we’re very broad-based. Based on what regional we’re in, some of those are more pronounced than others. But we’re participating in all those verticals and I think we’re doing very well with those opportunities that are out there. But from a competitive standpoint, I'll let Randle remark to that.

And, Scott, as we indicated in the comment, the real challenge area has been the fracking business. It’s a very tough year in 2013, continued to decline and for the full year the rentals we're getting from fracking were down 41% compared to the non-fracking business growing 19% for the year.

Our next question is from the line of Joe Box with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Just wanted to go to back to mobile modular business. Dennis, I appreciate the comments earlier regarding the California K-12 business that you’d mentioned somewhat weak. I'm guessing that’s going to move up with the budget looking a little bit better buy my question is really in regard to mix. What tends to be more beneficial to McGrath? Is it just a budget increase that we’re seeing now or is it a bond funding that would come back and we’d eventually see more construction of schools or are you basically indifferent to that mix?

Well, let me answer that by saying that historically the way - first of all modernization work today, there really three buckets of - I will take all the way back to this. There are three buckets that we run into in school environments. One is student population growth where it happens fairly rapidly and they don’t have permanent facilities to house the students and they need to rent modular building typically for multiyear terms. Second is modernization which is schools that are being reconstructed for asbestos abatement or seismic retrofitting et cetera and third is class-size reduction. So those are really the three buckets. Now if you look at California, they've austerity in class-size reduction. That’s the first area that has the severe budget pressures. They cut back on that dramatically. So that’s an area which I know is high in a lot of people’s list in the state to be able to bring back down or should say bring back down those ratios of students to teacher. That’s one area. The other area that’s probably the most significant is modernization work. The way modernization work historically have gotten funded in California is 50% comes from local districts funding either through bond measures or parcel taxes or other sources and the state's 50% comes from statewide bond initiatives. And the California population has always supported both local bond issues and statewide bond issue facilities for schools, very high passage rate. During the Great Recession, local districts were able to pass parcel taxes, bond measures et cetera very favorably. So they had -- that money is on the sidelines. The state hasn’t passed a facility bond measure since November of 2006. So it’s been eight years and that’s highly and you at the first time in my 31 career with…

Switching gear over to TRS, can you maybe just talk about some of the levers that you have to pull to drive growth in the business? Are still seeing an international opportunity and maybe can you grow the communication business more to offset some of that weakness in general purpose?

When you look at our electronics business, we’re one of two of the largest rental companies really in the Americas, ourselves and a competitor, REX. And when you look at the U.S. as a growth market, as we’ve talked about, it's low to middle single digit on rental revenue growth, and even though this year we were fairly flat, maybe up just a little on total rental revenues, obviously we grew profitability more than that because we’ve got well-oiled machine. So I think the U.S. market, very healthy but it's slow growth for the most part and if you look internationally we obviously have made investments in various countries from Southeast Asia, from Mexico and South America and we’ve actually at one time about a year ago, UNESCO, about 14% of our total renal revenues were from outside of the U.S. and Canada and that has shrunk some really here over the past year or so. Now we’ve just entered in the last year India, which we feel is a wonderful market for us and primarily to do business initially with U.S. multinationals and we’ve only set up a lot of infrastructures to be able to conduct business there. So that’s an entirely new market that it’s taken us about a year to get into. We've set up our facilities there. We've hired people and we’re just now really to see starting some of the rental revenue flow from the India market. But overall, we will grow faster outside of the U.S. and Canada on a percentage basis the years ahead and that’s a great opportunity, especially with our prowess and success that we've done really in the Americas. And remember, it’s a highly capital intensive business. There are technology obsolescence dynamics. It's not an easy business to enter and be successful in, but we’ve certainly been able to do that. So there is some kind of natural barriers to entry in my opinion to be highly successful and not the least of which is the expertise that our sales engineers have on test equipment that they’ve grown over the decades.

Now that you guys have built up some scale in the portable storage business, can you maybe just give us a little bit more color on the strategy there? Maybe are you focusing more on short-term rentals versus long-term rentals? Any specific end markets that you're targeting, and any commentary that you might have on the pricing front? It looks like one of your competitors is doing a pretty good job of pushing prices up.

Well, I think pricing, ever since we've entered the industry in 2008 has been very stable and really never eroded and it is stayed very healthy. With respect to rental terms, yes, longer rental terms projects, we target those just like our competitors do and obviously having longer contiguous rental stream unless churn of the product is a good guy from a profitability standpoint. As for new markets, we plan on entering three new markets in 2014. I won’t, for competitive purposes mention what those markets are, but we are very excited about the opportunity. We’re pretty selective. We do our homework. And of course in 2013 we entered the greater New Jersey market, leveraging the Adler name for our portable storage business and so we’re pleased with the progress they’ve made thus far. So we’re starting to get a larger international footprint. It will be larger by the end of 2014 and we love the business and love the metrics of it and the asset class.

Our next question is from line of David Gold with Sidoti & Company. Please go ahead. David Gold - Sidoti & Company: Just a couple of follow-ups for you. First, I’m not sure if you called it out, or if you can, but similar to the sense you gave us over the $0.17 for 2013, can you give a sense for what's embedded in the guidance by way of, let’s call it, repair and maintenance costs or costs for the mobile modular units that you are prepping?

David, let me try and address and I would say with the guidance we’ve given for that category of expanse, we think it will be at or slightly above what we experienced in 2013. So I would think an increase of perhaps 5% is possible. As Dennis said earlier, it’s all really going to depend, particularly the middle and second half of the year whether we continue on the current pace of spending, but that’s how we’re thinking about it, up slightly over what we spent in 2013. David Gold - Sidoti & Company: Got you. And so, forgive me, I know you hit on this a little bit, but so then, if that’s the case also -- I guess presumably better than your guidance is for that to really anniversary as we get to the second half or really start to anniversary anyway. Is that --

That’s right. That’s correct. David Gold - Sidoti & Company: And then, one of the things that you haven’t yet -- you haven't spoken much on. So maybe you could talk a little bit, is a couple of comments in the release about being opportunistic and willing to do things meaningful in size. I wanted to see if we can get more of a sense of -- more color on that, by way of potential capital plans for the year?

Yes, let me address the capital plans, first of all. And just to go back to looking at last year, we spent $133 million on rental equipment and particularly given where utilization is on the TRF equipment pool and also at Adler, I think as we look at 2014 as a whole, I would expect that the rental equipment CapEx will be slightly below what we spent in 2013 and so it may well be 5% below, it could be a little bit more than 5% below, depending on the how the plays out. But we have a lot of equipment available and so that will be our focus. And I’ll just mention PP&E for us, land purchases and owning some of our own branch facilities is generally how we operate as we build out the business and PP&E last year was a total of $12 million. We do have some likely activities we’ll do this year around land and buildings and development of land that we could spend twice that in 2014. So that gives you a feel just for the current business organic activities, what’s in our thinking and in our plans. David Gold - Sidoti & Company: And then, just part two, speaking to what we might be thinking by way of opportunistic spending?

David, let me share this with you. What I will say is we have a very active corporate development group here and Keith and I are both a part of that and some other officers and we also have some people that spend a 100% of their time on it, and we are continually looking at all different types of rental businesses, primarily business-to-business rental businesses and they vary broadly. We have no shortage of people that bring potential opportunities to us, either in a whole new rental rate or in a business that we’re already in for acquisition and to be able to roll in and have synergies and create something and more profitable. But we’re very active in our view. As you know historically we’re very selective and we like to get it right and know that we can really hit a home run. So that’s our mode of operating but we’re very, very rigorous in the amount of material that we review and how deep we go to understand these businesses before we make a step and of course we often have historically, we don’t speak to anything until we’ve actually executed any particular scenario. David Gold - Sidoti & Company : But I guess all that's to say that eyes are wide open right now?

That’s fair to say, absolutely.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question is from the line of Michael Caputo with Cramer Rosenthal, please go ahead.

Can you just remind us the dynamics on the sales side of the business? Is there a divestiture of some environmental business in there or is that just -- I know you had a big year on the sales side in 2012. Did that roll over into 2013 and that's why it is going to be down in 2014?

Yes, there are two things I would point out on sales. The first is you’re completely right with the environmental test equipment business. We exited that in November of 2012 and that resulted in sale of $3.7 million. So that made the numbers in 2012 a little higher. The other thing was in 2012 and it also straddled into 2013, within our Enviroplex business we characterized it as sort of a nonstandard project. It was new for us. That contributed about $6 million to $7 million in late 2012 and then there was another $6 million in the first quarter of 2013 related to that business. So as we look going forward with Enviroplex, I would exclude that from the run rate in the Enviroplex business. So to put it simple terms as we enter 2014 there is $6 million of Enviroplex revenue that was in '13 that we wouldn’t expect to repeat. It’s related to that special project and we’re not pursuing projects like that as we go forward. So that’s to the first comment. Those two items definitely mean that as we build our plan for 2014 our starting point is a lower volume of sales. The other thing is would say is the sales part of the business in terms of sales of used rental equipment, it’s one of those harder to estimate items. We generally start the year trying to be conservative on that front, and timing wise they can happen in any particular quarter. It’s a harder piece of the business to forecast. We don’t like to bet the plan on it at the start of the year.

Thank you, and that does conclude the question and answer session. At this time I’d now like to turn the call back over to management for closing remarks.

Thank you operator, well thank you all for joining us today and your continued support and we look forward to chatting with everyone on our Q1 call in early May. Thank you so much.