Earnings Labs

Red Rock Resorts, Inc. (RRR)

Q4 2007 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 21, 2008

$52.68

-6.04%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to the RSC Holdings fourth quarter earnings conference call. All parties are now in a listen only mode. We will be facilitating a question and answer session towards the end of this call. The slides that accompany this earnings call are located at www.rscrentals.com. My name is Denise and I’ll be your conference coordinator today. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. The webcast and the fourth quarter earnings slide presentation including any non-GAAP reconciliation tables that are warranted can be accessed on the RSC Holdings website at www.rscrentals.com under the “About Us” tab. A replay will also be available shortly after the conclusion of the call and posted on the RSC website. Before the presentation begins, RSC would like to alert you that some of the comments such as the company’s outlook and responses to your questions may include forward-looking statements that are based on certain assumptions and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties and actual future results may vary materially. In addition, the factors underlying the company’s outlook are dynamic and subject to change and therefore this outlook and all the other information mentioned today speaks only as of today and RSC does not intend to update this information to reflect future events or circumstances. RSC encourages you to read the risks and uncertainties discussed in the company’s prospectus filed with the SEC on May 23, 2007. Speaking today for the company are Erik Olsson, President and Chief Executive Officer, and David Mathieson, Chief Financial Officer. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Erik Olsson. Please go ahead.

Erik Olsson

President

Thank you, Denise. Good afternoon and welcome everyone to RSC’s fourth quarter and full year 2007 earnings call. With me today is our new CFO, David Mathieson, who joined the company on the 2nd of January and we are very pleased to have someone of David’s caliber to join our team. I am also pleased to share this report with you today as we have continued to perform very well during the fourth quarter thus capping off another very strong year for RSC. Executing on our strategy and leveraging our robust and industry unique business model have allowed us to continue to grow our company in a profitable way in a competitive environment. I will go over some highlights of the quarter starting with what we’re seeing in the marketplace and then focus on the main factors that drive our industry leading performance and enable us to continue to deliver strong financial results. David will then talk in more detail about our financials. I will also talk about our outlook for the year and we will end with a Q&A. We have put together a number of slides to accompany our comments which you can find on our website. Turning now to slide number 3 with highlights of the fourth quarter. First of all we continued to see strong demand from our core end markets which are non-residential construction making up about 65% of our revenues and the industrial market which makes up over 30% of our revenues. The most recent US census data on known residential construction spending showed 18% year-over-year growth with significant increases in almost all the 16 different segments being tracked such as office, power, commercial, healthcare, and educational construction. Most, if not all of these segments making up non-residential construction have different cyclicalities from each…

David Mathieson

CFO

Thanks, Erik and good afternoon, everyone. I would like to spend the next few minutes going over some additional detail on our fourth quarter financial statements. On slide 11 you can see performance metrics. This is the way we look at the numbers at RSC. Here we show the results for the quarter and the total year with a variance column that shows the percent variance to the prior year. I will comment on the fourth quarter first then the total year. In the fourth quarter we had strong rental revenue growth of 10.8% with 8.1% coming from same stores and 3% from [inaudible] offset somewhat by other items. Included in these numbers is a positive [inaudible] of 0.5% which we are pleased about given the increasingly competitive environment. Total revenues increased 7.6% in the quarter which was less than the rental revenue growth as we continue to right size our merchandise business. These equipment sales were less than last year due to the condition and young age of our fleet with continued high utilization. Margins on equipment rental improved 120 basis points for the fourth quarter as we leveraged our infrastructure with a 10.8% organic growth in rental revenue. Merchandise margins continue to improve as we focus on higher margin, more relevant products for our customers. Margins on used equipment sales also improved due to the quality of our used fleet and a good market environment for used fleet sales. As a result of these moving parts, gross profit as a percent of sales total revenue is up to 38.5% up 160 basis points from the prior year. For the year we had strong organic growth of 12.7% driving margins on rental equipment up 100 basis points. You can see that margins on merchandise is up 120 basis points…

Erik Olsson

President

Thank you, David. Before we go to Q&A I want to give you our outlook for 2008 shown on slide number 17. For 2008 independent research firms are projecting that RSC’s major end market will increase at the low single digit rate consistent with proven performance the company believes the continued execution of its strategy and business model in combination with its strong market position in diversified end markets will continue to drive above average industry growth for RSC. In 2007 we had rental revenue growth of 12.7% for the year with 10.8% in the fourth quarter. Our guidance for 2008 anticipates a gradual slow down in rental revenue growth to 4% o 7% for the whole year. Our guidance does not consider rental rate declines in 2009 although we do see a tougher environment. We anticipate total revenues in the range between $1.8 and $1.85 billion. Diluted earnings per share for $1.44 to $1.56 and adjusted EBITDA from $835 million to $860 million. We anticipate net capital expenditures to be in a range from $200 million to $250 million. We also anticipate positive free cash flow to be between $100 million and $150 million for the year. This includes the negative impact of reducing our accounts payable by around $175 million reflecting the timing of capital expenditures and the favorable returns we have with suppliers which means that our run rate free cash flow is significantly higher than our outlook range indicates. In connection with the expected generation of free cash flow in 2008 we are evaluating a variety of options including paying down debt, talking acquisitions, and the repurchasing of common stock or debt securities. Our credit agreement limits our capacity to repurchase common stock or debt securities to $50 million this year. Note also that our EPS guidance does not reflect any of this but rather the most conservative use of free cash flow which is to pay down the lowest cost debt. Lastly I would like to add that in the event of a major shift in business conditions, we will take advantage of RSC’s flexible business model and short planning cycle and we are confident in our ability to continue to operate at the high level of profitability and efficiency as evidenced by the examples we have given you previously in Florida and for dirt equipment. I would also like to point out that in such a scenario we would be generating even more free cash flow than in our outlook as we would pare back our cap expanding further and take advantage of our young and well-maintained fleet. With that I would like to turn the call over to Denise for instructions on the Q&A.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from the line of Michael Schneider from Robert W. Baird. Please proceed, sir.

Michael Schneider

Analyst · Robert W. Baird. Please proceed, sir

Good afternoon, I wonder if you could first address the growth rates I guess between the non-res portion of your business and industrial. You said that industrial was above average. Can you give us a sense of what the discrepancy is and maybe what the trend lines were during the quarter and certainly as we’ve gone through January and February as well?

Erik Olsson

President

As we said, we’re growing the industrial business faster than the non-res and it’s growing at the rate of almost 50% or so higher than the non-res segment and we have continued as we said through out all of 2007 really and in the fourth quarter to continue to see strong growth there and while we don’t comment specifically on what we are seeing here in the first quarter, I think in our guidance we said we’re coming off the fourth quarter of the 11% or 12% growth and we expect the year to be 4% to 7%. We have a gradual slowdown over the year so it’s sort of included in that rate, the guidance is that we continue to see good growth here at the beginning of the year.

Michael Schneider

Analyst · Robert W. Baird. Please proceed, sir

Okay and within industrial, it sounds like it’s growing double digits strongly, and this may not be possible, but to what extent is that being driven just by new sites versus actual same site growth within some of your industrial accounts?

Erik Olsson

President

It’s driven by both, Mike. We are signing up a lot of new accounts as well as the accounts that we have are so very active as indicated by capacity and other... We’re getting growth from both sides of the specter.

Michael Schneider

Analyst · Robert W. Baird. Please proceed, sir

The reason I ask is you look into 2008 now. I presume your industrial forecast is probably still above average versus non-res?

Erik Olsson

President

Yes, we hope to continue to grow this business faster, yes.

Michael Schneider

Analyst · Robert W. Baird. Please proceed, sir

And how much of that business is visible to you today based on the site installations you’ve got within the industrial business? I’m just trying to gain an understanding as to how secure at least the industrial portion of your business and growth is in 2008 regardless of what non-res does.

Erik Olsson

President

It’s like any business you have, Mike. A portion of it is very visible. We know what most of our existing accounts have in plans for 2008 but then of course there is an unknown factor in how successful we will be in signing up new accounts. Unfortunately I can’t be more specific than that.

Michael Schneider

Analyst · Robert W. Baird. Please proceed, sir

Okay and then just focusing in on rates specifically, the fact that it was better on a sequential basis or higher on a sequential basis, were you surprised by that and I guess maybe give us some insight as to how that’s possible in a decelerating market?

Erik Olsson

President

I wouldn’t say that we were surprised, I think we were pleased to see that we continue to manage rates very, very tightly and very controlled. The reason we see that is very simple. We deliver a very high value to our customers and our customers value what we are providing so to speak so we can continue to charge our rates or even increase rates as we did in Q4. So it does really have to do with the service we provide and the value we provide to our customers as well as that we manage our fleet very, very tightly, of course very utilization very high and that supports also upwards rate pressure.

Michael Schneider

Analyst · Robert W. Baird. Please proceed, sir

You mentioned, Erik, that you don’t anticipate negative price in 2008, at least in your forecast. To manage that you must be aggressively managing utilization rates. Can you give us some forecast of what you expect or some insight as to what you expect on used equipment sales then as you go into 2008? Is it that you’ll be accelerating that to manage the utilization rate? Erik Olsson No, in fact I think that the combination of our CapEx guidance which is down significantly from 2007 and in fact I think we will see marginally less use than I have seen in 2008 and in 2007 but largely by the lower CapEx we will balance our fleet. That’s very high utilization levels.

Michael Schneider

Analyst · Robert W. Baird. Please proceed, sir

So you would expect the average age then to trend higher in 2008?

Erik Olsson

President

Yes, we expect to age our fleet a couple of months in ’08.

Michael Schneider

Analyst · Robert W. Baird. Please proceed, sir

Okay, thank you again and congratulations on a great year.

Operator

Operator

From Morgan Stanley, your next question comes from Christina Woo. Please proceed.

Christina Woo

Analyst

Hi, I was hoping you could give us a bit of color on what your branch growth prospects are for 2008, both in new branches where you may end up opening the new branches and also branch closures?

Erik Olsson

President

David Mathieson - Our plans for 2009 calls for opening of 20 to 25 new branches and we are actually looking to open them again all across the US market even in some of these areas that are softer at the moment.

Christina Woo

Analyst

Okay, and what about closures?

Erik Olsson

President

We have no closures planned at the moment which is not to say that there won’t be any but at this point there is nothing planned.

Christina Woo

Analyst

Okay, you had made some comments about your SG&A spending levels which were a bit higher than I was anticipating and you explained some of that in terms of being a public company, taking on some added cots. What sort of levels of SG&A as a percent of revenue do you anticipate seeing for ’08 and beyond? Should we be looking at the fourth quarter as an example or looking a the full year of ’07 and wouldn’t we consider modeling that SG&A cost? ‘ David Mathieson - You know we haven’t normalized yet in terms of... We’re still looking for, we’re still spending money on Sarbanes Oxley, that’s a big initiative that we’re undergoing this year, so I wouldn’t say that we’re normalized yet. I believe at the end of, possibly close to that, at the end of 2008, but I wouldn’t like to give you what the normal level of SG&A level for this business is because we’re not there yet.

Christina Woo

Analyst

Okay, and you’re expecting some decent revenue growth both in the core equipment rentals business and overall, yet your earnings growth is flat, and I was hoping you could help us reconcile this guidance.

David Mathieson

CFO

You know, we’re still investing, our SG&A is going up.

Christina Woo

Analyst

Right, but you were also saying that a lot of the salespeople become profitable after 3 to 6 months, new stores tend to turn profitable in a couple of quarters, so is it really just the timing of the investments that they were happening at the tail end of ’07 and into ’08 and should we expect continued additions to the sales force?

David Mathieson

CFO

Yes, I know that our [warm stocks] are back end loading to third and fourth quarter, the majority of them.

Christina Woo

Analyst

Okay, so third and fourth quarters of ’07?

David Mathieson

CFO

And we continue to add sales people.

Christina Woo

Analyst

Okay, and you’re expecting to continue that sales force ramp up through ’08?

Erik Olsson

President

Yes, we do, Christina, and the [warm start] issues, the majority of our warm starts in 2008 is in the second half and that has some, a little bit of diluted effect on the earnings for the year, but we’re expecting to grow our EBITDA on an absolute level from an already high level so as we said there’s no price declines in our guidance but there’s not much on increase either.

Christina Woo

Analyst

Okay, great, thanks.

Operator

Operator

Lionel Jolivot from Bank of America is on the line with your next question.

Lionel Jolivot

Analyst · America is on the line with your next question

Thank you. Can you go back to the free cash flow guidance once again? I mean it seems that you should generate a little bit more free cash flow and I think in your prepared remarks you talked about a reduction in [inaudible] and I’m not exactly clear with what you had in mind there.

Erik Olsson

President

It’s a reduction in trade payables as we’re going to reduce them by $175 million in 2008 reflective largely of fleet purchases that we did in 2007 so there’s sort of a lag effect or a timing effect from that in our free cash flow. So if you would look at 2008 as a run year or as a run rate for a year like 2008 the free cash is some $175 million higher or say a range of $275 million to $325 million.

Lionel Jolivot

Analyst · America is on the line with your next question

But your payables already came down quite a bit in the fourth quarter and it seems you [inaudible] December 31st your accounts payable balance was only $264 million so you’re kind of implying that a year from now your payables will only be $90 million or even a little bit less?

David Mathieson

CFO

Yes, that’s correct, what we are implying.

Lionel Jolivot

Analyst · America is on the line with your next question

Okay, second thing, you’re talking about potential uses of your cash [inaudible] stock as well, when you think about paying down debt, how do you think about it? I mean, your bonds trading [inaudible] apart as they are in the very low 80s at this point. Have you considered buying back bonds in the open market at this point?

David Mathieson

CFO

We are looking at that. We are evaluating our options there. We haven’t made a decision yet but we wanted to make investors aware that we’re evaluation the options that we do have.

Lionel Jolivot

Analyst · America is on the line with your next question

Okay, that’s perfect, and then last thing, going back to the rates, the rental rates, can you just spend a minute on the different markets and what you’re seeing across the US? I mean it seems that even in Florida you’re doing okay now on the rental front. Can you touch briefly on some of the markets in California and the northeast at this point?

Erik Olsson

President

We don’t want to be too specific for competitive reasons but where we see price increases and price decreases, there are many markets where we still get good rate increases and there are some where we have more pressure and I think you hit on the ones where we see most of the pressure at the moment. Certainly Florida there are price pressures and in California and to some extent I think we see some in the northeast also more from a competitive pressure than the market softness that we see in the other two markets I mentioned.

Lionel Jolivot

Analyst · America is on the line with your next question

Okay, perfect, thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Scott Schneeberger of Oppenheimer & Co.

Scott Schneeberger

Analyst · Scott Schneeberger of Oppenheimer & Co

Hey, good afternoon. I guess just kind of going back to the question on what you might use with the free cash generated this year. The press release cites $50 million is what your credit agreements limit you to do for either a share repurchase or debt reduction, is there any thought of trying to change those covenants or might there be some kind of acquisition plan this year as you’re going to generate more cash than that $50 million allows?

Erik Olsson

President

We are looking at smaller [inaudible] type acquisitions so that may certainly be the case that that happens during the year but we have no plans at the moment to try to change our covenants.

Scott Schneeberger

Analyst · Scott Schneeberger of Oppenheimer & Co

Okay, thanks. I guess shifting now to utilization, obviously very strong. Erik, did you say that the down equipment was now 8.2% which is a new low? Did I get that number right?

Erik Olsson

President

Yes.

Scott Schneeberger

Analyst · Scott Schneeberger of Oppenheimer & Co

Okay. Any thoughts on how you’ll manage that over the course of this next year or should the fleet aging a couple months shouldn’t have much impact, should it? Do you think you’ll be able to maintain these levels going forward?

Erik Olsson

President

Definitely. We don’t think it’ll have an impact on that number at all.

Scott Schneeberger

Analyst · Scott Schneeberger of Oppenheimer & Co

What do you think you can take that to potentially if obviously it’s an area that you’re going to continue to improve?

Erik Olsson

President

I don’t want to put the specific target out there but we have regions that are operating at 7% or so, so I see no reason why not the whole company could not go down to those levels.

Scott Schneeberger

Analyst · Scott Schneeberger of Oppenheimer & Co

Okay thanks, and just kind of, can we briefly touch on your merchandise business continuing to contract that and work it for margins? Are we going to see expansion in that on the top line going forward or are we still in a kind of shrink and work margin mode?

David Mathieson

CFO

I think 2008 will be a year where we stop [cleaning] the business. We like where we are with 40% gross margins so the first thing to do is stop [cleaning] that business and then we’ll take it from there.

Erik Olsson

President

And you know what we call merchandise or sales [inventory] is not only merchandise or supply type of equipment, it’s also new equipment, large equipment, and which is actually represents the majority of the decline that we’ve seen. We think we’ve reduced all that now and we have a healthy business here and we’d like to grow it.

Scott Schneeberger

Analyst · Scott Schneeberger of Oppenheimer & Co

Okay, thanks very much.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Art Weiss. Please go ahead.

Art Weiss

Analyst

Good afternoon. You talked about the rental revenue growth of 4% - 7% declining or being higher at the beginning of the year, I’m guessing it’s going to be lower at the end of the year. Does that imply, would it be fair to assume, that so far what you’ve seen in 2008 is continuation of the growth that you’ve seen in 2007?

Erik Olsson

President

Yes.

Art Weiss

Analyst

Okay, and you’re also assuming pricing, sounds like increases slightly throughout the year and if you expect there to be additional pricing pressure late in the year, would it also be fair to assume that pricing has been steady to improving early in the year so far?

Art Weiss

Analyst

You know, we don’t time the pricing pressure so I think we’re operating in a very competitive market at the moment which is very tough and we intend to try to manage rates as best as we can over the year. Our intention is as I said to maintain our rates in positive territory for the year.

Art Weiss

Analyst

Okay and can you talk a little bit about how your national accounts impact pricing? Do national accounts specifically have fixed pricing or do those vary the same way pricing might vary for anybody that comes on your lot to rent a piece of equipment?

Erik Olsson

President

We don’t have much national account business action. We haven’t focused on so much. The ones that we have, some of them have fixed price, some of them have more loose pricing agreements.

Art Weiss

Analyst

Okay and last question, I just want to clarify what you said about Florida in your presentation. Did I hear you right that utilization in Florida was 72% which is the same as the fourth quarter of ’06?

David Mathieson

CFO

That’s correct.

Art Weiss

Analyst

Okay. Great, thanks.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your next question comes from the line of Chris Doherty from Oppenheimer.

Chris Doherty

Analyst · Chris Doherty from Oppenheimer

I was just wondering if you could discuss the industrial business a little bit more in terms of just the dynamics. Does that business tend to have longer lease terms than the construction equipment just due to the nature of it in terms of maintenance versus building?

Erik Olsson

President

The rental periods are not longer per se but the relationships are typically longer with many of these industrial accounts. We have our own branch or site inside the industrial company’s premises and thus we capture 100% of their rental needs and many of these relationships are also contractual where we have 2 or 3 year agreements in place, so for these reasons it’s much more stable and predictable business.

David Mathieson

CFO

And it’s not as seasonable.

Erik Olsson

President

No.

Chris Doherty

Analyst · Chris Doherty from Oppenheimer

So you would actually have equipment sitting on site there. Can that equipment be used for other business or is it dedicated to that specific company?

Erik Olsson

President

It’s dedicated to that specific company in those cases but as I said, it’s much more predictable and we’re on these on sites at utilization level significantly higher than the company average actually.

Chris Doherty

Analyst · Chris Doherty from Oppenheimer

All right, that’s it. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

That’s all the time we have for questions. I will now turn the call back over to Mr. Olsson for closing remarks.

Erik Olsson

President

So I would like to thank you for joining us today on our fourth quarter and full year 2007 earnings call. We have put another very strong quarter behind us with rental revenue growth of 10.8% including an impressive same-store growth of 8.1% and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 46.4%. The business environment was strong in the fourth quarter and we have grown our company over and above the underlying markets while producing exceptional results. The same can be said for our full year results, an impressive 12.7% rental revenue growth with an 11.1% same-store growth and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 46.6% up from 43.9% in 2006. As you heard, we expect 2008 to be another year of solid growth in revenues, profit, and market share as well as significant free cash flow generation. We believe that delivering industry leading results and continuing our strategy of growing profitably with superior cost and capital efficiency are the best ways to create shareholder value over the long term. We look forward to reporting back to you next quarter with our business results. We do appreciate your interest and support so thank you very much and have a great evening. Denise, that concludes the call.

Operator

Operator

Thank you for our participation in today’s conference. This concludes the presentation. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.