Earnings Labs

U-Haul Holding Company (UHAL)

Q1 2010 Earnings Call· Sat, Aug 8, 2009

$52.36

-0.42%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Lisa, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the AMERCO first quarter fiscal 2010 investor call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. (Operator instructions). Thank you. Ms. Jennifer Flachman, you may begin your conference.

Jennifer Flachman

Management

Good morning and thank you for joining us today, and welcome to the AMERCO first quarter fiscal 2010 investor call. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that certain of the statements during this call regarding general revenues, income and general growth of our business constitute forward-looking statements contemplated under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and certain factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. For a brief discussion of the risks and uncertainties that may affect AMERCO's business and future operating results, please refer to Form 10-Q for quarter ended June 30, 2009, which is on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Participating in the call today will be Joe Shoen, Chairman of AMERCO, and I'll now turn the call over to Joe.

Joe Shoen

Management

Hello. This is Joe Shoen. I'm speaking to you from Phoenix, Arizona. I have Jason Berg here on the conference call with me. Gary Horton and Rocky Wardrip are joining us via telephone from Reno. You've all seen the numbers. We finished another rough quarter. U-Haul revenues were down year over year, and expense reductions were less than revenue declines. So that's kind of the bad news. We put a tremendous amount of effort in again this quarter. I would have liked to see a better top line. But at the same time, I'm fairly confident that we positively impacted the top line. In other words, so, our business isn't varying quite with demand. We're making progress, although it's not reflected in profitability. Overall, what I see in the marketplace is a very tough business climate where the customer demands outstanding value before they will part with their money. And U-Haul products are ordinarily a value proposition and ordinarily, that should work in our favor. And I think it is. We continue to roll out initiatives designed at giving the customer greater value without increasing our cost, and we will continue to do so for the balance of the year. Fleet utilization was down very marginally, like a percent or something like that in the last quarter, and that indicates the fleet's a few thousand trucks larger than we are presently supporting. In the fourth quarter of '09, we took steps to adjust the size of the fleet, but that process takes about a year to work itself through. In other words, we slowed down the rate of new fleet and continue to take fleet out the bottom, what happens is the fleet comes down in size. And so we'll trim a few thousand trucks out of the fleet, and…

Jason Berg

Management

Thanks, Joe. Good morning. Yesterday, we reported first quarter earnings of $1.01 per share compared with $1.37 per share for the same period in fiscal 2009. Even though revenues for the quarter decreased $17 million or 4%, a portion of the decline was a result of fewer truck transactions, which decreased just under 1% compared to the same period last year. Additionally, foreign currency exchange rates between the United States and Canada were responsible for approximately 1% of the year-over-year decrease. Based upon the rates through this week, we will see this trend continue into the second quarter. Revenues for our storage program were down $547,000 for the first quarter of fiscal 2010 compared with the same period last year. Our occupancy rates are down nearly 5% for the quarter to 76%. Our average number of rooms occupied has decreased 1.25% compared with the first quarter of last year. Additionally, our average number of rooms available to rent in the portfolio has increased 5% over the same period. Our total rooms to occupied are down for the quarter, compared to last year at this time, we have seen an improving trend in our net move-in activity. Operating expenses for the quarter decreased $3.2 million with the majority of that in the Moving and Storage segment. Areas where we have realized significant cost savings include personnel, telephone directory advertising, and shipping and freight. These reduction efforts are continuing. Depreciation expense as reported has decreased $5.7 million for the first quarter of fiscal 2010 compared with the same period last year. Included in this change is a little over $3 million of improvement related to the disposal of our equipment. The reaming decrease and depreciation is related to the box truck fleet. This trend should continue through the remainder of fiscal 2010…

Joe Shoen

Management

We'll go ahead and go to the moderator and take some questions.

Operator

Operator

(Operator instructions). Your first question or comment is from the line of Jim Barrett with CL King & Associates. Jim Barrett - CL King & Associates: Good morning, everyone. Joe, could you talk a bit about pricing and competition? As you know, your number one competitor reported Tuesday night and indicated that pricing was flattish to down slightly, that one-way moves had improved their mix. What is your view of the world on those two metrics?

Joe Shoen

Management

And just between you and me, who is this? Jim Barrett - CL King & Associates: Oh, okay. We were talking Avis Budget.

Joe Shoen

Management

Okay. Avis Budget. Okay, great. Okay. Jim Barrett - CL King & Associates: I know you don't have much competition, but that was who I was referring to.

Joe Shoen

Management

Well, we have lots of competition, and as I think we consider our biggest competition to be owned and borrowed, in other words, and not Avis or Budget or the rest of those people. Well, from what I see, budget specifically is pricing in a way that won't be sustainable. For them to come to that conclusion they may have to go through a whole equipment cycle, which for them is three or four years; I don't know how long they consider their equipment cycle. In other words, they need to go sell the trucks and replace them and see whether they made any money or not. Our equipment cycle is closer to an eight year to ten-year cycle. But when I see them, I've seen them repetitively pricing below the cost of the rental. Now, in a lot of markets, I can still price in a manner that allows us to recover our full cost and some margin, but not in every case. And from its anecdotal evidence if somebody said, well Company X was $200 cheaper, that's why we took them. Okay, well great. The pricing system you see with our competitors its not -- do your own monitor. Take the total price the one way move; divide them into the miles that would give you a $1 per mile or cents per mile. Multiply times 100,000, which is about where they're going to flip that truck, and see if you want to run that truck for that much money and have to sell it at the end of the cycle and buy a new one. So that's the equation. It's not real complicated math. We're not going to price below cost. If we do it, it's an extreme rarity where either we made a mistake, or we…

Joe Shoen

Management

First of all, I don't know that they are growing them, okay? Jim Barrett - CL King & Associates: Well, their mix has shifted to one-way.

Joe Shoen

Management

Yes, it could be that they lost more in-towns. So, I would surely like to know that information. I'm kind of curious about that myself. But, I don't see that happening in droves, but anecdotally, I've got customer interviews, which we're doing all the time. I rented the truck that was $200 less; that's why I rented the truck. Okay, got it. Did they tell you how much gas it burned? No. Well, our trucks get better fuel economy. Oh, Jesus, nobody told me. You see? So, I go back and hit my guys up, hey, if you're not going to pitch it, then we're going to have to give away the rate. And of course that's where we all get paid. So it's a very near and dear thing to the people working here is getting the rate for the rental. And so I've can kind of get people's attention because I can translate it very directly into their paycheck as okay, great, we can drop the rate on all this, you see, but I'm going to have to do something in the personnel end of it which is near and dear to everybody, which they don't want me to go there. So they can kind of get the idea. Now executing that and executing it tens of thousands of times every week, it's a tall order, but that's what the customer wants today. I'm sure, I don't know your neighborhood, but I'll bet there are restaurants you have to get in line to go to. Okay, yes. Your consumers spending is off. Okay. So, well that's the same thing in our business. I've got stores; we've got lines out the door. Okay? Well, let's serve the customers faster, let's process them better. Whatever it's worth, we had our…

Operator

Operator

Your next question is from Mr. Ian Gilson of Zacks Investments.

Ian Gilson - Zacks Investments

Analyst

You had mentioned that basically, you will be reducing fleet size presumably by both mechanisms of continuing to sell trucks, maybe increasing the sales rate, and also in cutting back on purchases on your trucks. What would that do to your maintenance expense?

Joe Shoen

Management

Well, I don't have a figure at the top of my head. And If Gary or Rocky or Jason has them, pipe up. But basically what I'm targeting is us dropping somewhere around 5,000 trucks. It gets a little complicated because I never exactly understand how the calculation is done, but we published in the financial deals. But we published 101,000 most recently and some change, and I would expect to see that number come down. And if we bring the right trucks out on the bottom, Ian, it has a disproportionate effect on maintenance, of course, positively. In other words, if you bring the right trucks out, you're bringing out the barking dogs or the expensive trucks, and so it should have a disproportionate effect. So, let's say I brought out 5%, or 5,000 trucks, I would expect to see greater than 5% reduction in maintenance. But because it goes in progressively through the year for a 12 month period, that reduction in maintenance may be a reduction of 3% or something because it's a tapering line. The first month it wasn't a heck of a lot; 12 months, it's quite a little bit. So towards the end of the year, the effect should be greater. Jason or Rocky, either one of you want to pipe in on that?

Ian Gilson - Zacks Investments

Analyst

I know that to a certain extent, your expenses are based on an estimate of the future revenue, and basically is a leader on revenue. But for the last four quarters, we have seen a somewhat higher level of operating expense ratios. And you've said you've been cutting costs, but are we looking at a new dynamic on the cost structure here?

Joe Shoen

Management

I'll say I don't think so. I'll take the blame for it. I have continued to believe right along that, I was going to bend the revenue line. And we've not bent the revenue line, and so I won't say I've surrendered that position, but as far as what we're doing on cost, I've surrendered that position. So, at this point, the costs are coming down, Ian. No, I don't think so. But it'll take six months by the time you do everything. You're cutting costs, but stuff lingers. It'll probably take six months for it to get back in line. That would be a guess. At the same time, we have spent some money in, as you know, we're fairly aggressive on depreciation on trucks. That's going to bear fruit for us, because if you aggressively depreciate them, well then in third year and the fourth year and fifth year, you have a little, I won't say it's a cushion, but you're in a better position. And we're going to have some tucks in that cycle over the next 12 months. We've done a whole bunch of portable computers at the point of sale, much like what you may see at a car rental check-in where the person's carrying a little computer around with them. We've lost a lot of money into that, and that stuff gets depreciated pretty quickly. I don't know exactly how it's booked, but it is pretty quick. And then we have spent or will spend between $10 million and $15 million on an entire new phone system for the whole network. Jason, do you have a number at this time that you're forecasting, or not?

Jason Berg

Management

Right now, we're getting pretty close to the $10 million.

Joe Shoen

Management

And it'll go a little bit higher. What those numbers will be. But that, Ian, and again I presume Jason will be pretty aggressive on writing that stuff down and not delay that hitting the income statement. But that's going to yield a benefit to us certainly over a 36 month period, and maybe quicker than that. But the original forecast where we'd make our money back in 18 months, and those are always a little bit happy, but we're going to make our money back pretty quick on it and have improved customer service. But, as you go through a transition like this, we end up paying for two phone systems at every location for at least one month of the year, and at some places, two months by the time you see it. So, what happens is, we're going to do something like 14/12th of our telephone expense rather than a lower amount, but then it's going to start reversing itself. We're about two thirds rolled out now, so we're just about over the really nasty part of it, and by Christmas, we'll be totally over it. We'll start to see some gains from that or some cost savings from that in the last quarter of the year. I don't think we're in a different cost dynamic. The fundamentals of the truck and trailer haven't changed. The storage room hasn't changed. Operating margins in the storage room business are totally dependent on occupancy. When you're at 75% occupancy, your margins stink. When you're at 85% occupancy, you look like a genius. So that's occupancy driven. And everybody suffered a little bit on occupancy, but I overemphasize the truck rental. And I've brought people back, and we've seen some changes in the most recent four to six weeks, but look like we're going to start steadily gaining rooms. So if we do that, we'll see the margins of that open back up to what they traditionally were. So, I don't think there's a fundamental change, but there's going to be a lag on it. And I don't want to sugar coat it, but I don't think there's going to be a problem.

Ian Gilson - Zacks Investments

Analyst

Final question. Looking at the expense ratios, I noticed that commissions, although the difference is small, but commissions as a percent of rentals declined slightly. Has the Company owned store ratio to should we call them client ratios changed? Are you getting a bigger share of the market? What are the dynamics there?

Jason Berg

Management

Ian, this is Jason, and you hit it right on the head. We are seeing a small increase in the percentage of business being transacted at Company locations versus dealer location.

Ian Gilson - Zacks Investment Research

Analyst

Is there any reason for that, or the dealers getting discouraged?

Joe Shoen

Management

I don't think the dealers are getting discouraged. Ian, this is Joe. It's much easier to manage utilization at larger inventory points. And as our field has been under increased pressure to produce, they do a little bit of consolidation of inventory. Now, the tradeoff is you're going to lose convenience, you see, and then you'll ultimately lose revenue. But there's been a little bit of consolidation there. But you're talking like a percentage point, is my recollection. It's not a fundamental shift. We're not deemphasizing the dealer organization, and we're not intentionally preferring them, but there's some unintentional preferring that goes on as I bring the hammer down harder on people just because it's easier, we just do better turnaround, et cetera, at a big company facility than we do at a dealer. If maintenance needs to occur, it'll happen faster at a company store; less down time on the equipment. So as I pressure people harder and harder, they kind of revert to that behavior.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Gary Lenhoff of Ironworks. Gary Lenhoff – Ironworks: Thank you. Jason, can you tell us what the net gains number impact on depreciation was for the quarter?

Jason Berg

Management

Sure. We had a $1.3 million loss for the quarter. Gary Lenhoff – Ironworks: Joe, it sounds like pricing was down. The pricing impact in the quarter was 2% or 3%. As you go into the back to school season and through July and into the first week of August, care to speculate or share what about what you're seeing in pricing so far?

Joe Shoen

Management

The opportunity there is, this gets to a whole heck of a bunch of pricing, and I worked on it yesterday, so you're hitting a real good point which is the opportunity is to get a percent or something because these people are pretty need driven. And we serve a lot of these markets more aggressively than some other alternatives, so there ought to be some modest amount of price flexibility on the part of the customer. So the answer is, I have high hopes, but I'm not forecasting a revenue gain on it. But I have high hopes. As some of you know, 24 months ago, we rolled out a new pricing system. And our pricing system, one of the flexibilities it had in it was to maybe get a tiny increase off of a particular college market, and not show that in the whole rest of the pricing system, but be able to be very, very selective on some price increases and therefore get them. So, I was reviewing with my team yesterday, do they feel that they've learned enough about the system to utilize it, and they felt we missed some opportunities for pricing in July, but they thought that they were better comprehended and better positioned for August. Now, these submarkets may be 50 rentals or less total magnitude of the market. So, you're getting extremely specific, Gary. But my team thought they were going to do better than they did in July. So it's like anything else; it's a process. But it's not like you get $50, or these are like you're getting $11 or $12 increments, but they add up with the volume, so they become a lot of money. And that's been our intent. That was the reason we spent all the time developing the system was so we could try to capitalize better on these things and be more flexible. We're going to see the school, as you probably know, now breaks all through August. It used to be kind of a Labor Day phenomena. It'll be breaking as soon as the 10th of August. So, we're going to see these peaks all through the month and try to view them as a pricing opportunity. Now, when demand outstrips supply, we ought to get a couple of bucks. It just makes sense. So, we're attempting to do that, and we'll see how well we do it. Gary Lenhoff – Ironworks: And Jason, can you tell me what you expect net CapEx to be for the balance of fiscal 2010?

Joe Shoen

Management

It'll take him just a minute, but he does have an idea here. Gary or Rocky, do you have a number at the top of your head?

Gary Horton

Analyst

This is Gary Horton speaking, and we do have some things that we're actually what I would say committed to buy. On a committed basis, we have somewhere around $29 million worth of trucks, and the rest, we have a lot of discretionary. So, when you look at it, you'd probably got another $5 million to $7 million on telephones, probably $5 million on real estate, and U-Box and Car Share, again, it's probably another $10 million there.

Jason Berg

Management

Gary, this is Jason. On the annual basis, our plan, before any sales of equipment, would be closer to $150 million to $200 million. Probably closer to $200 million gross, and then a little over $100 million to $120 million of sales. And we did do a large portion of the acquisitions in the first quarter, so then it slows down a bit over the second half of the year. Gary Lenhoff – Ironworks: So, the plan was $50 million to $80 million net.

Jason Berg

Management

Probably closer to $100 million net. Gary Lenhoff – Ironworks: $100 million net?

Jason Berg

Management

Yes.

Joe Shoen

Management

Yes. Gary Lenhoff – Ironworks: And Joe, let me ask the question, you've been asked, or you've certainly touched on in answering previous questions, but I'm taking a little bit different perspective on it. It seems like those that you are competing with don't really have much return on invested capital discipline, at least in your view. And at one point, it looked like six or nine months ago they may be put out of business, or at least hindered from doing, making some of the reckless pricing decisions that they've made because capital was not going to be made available to them to continue to behave in that fashion. Now, here we are not even one year from the, coming to the edge of financial disaster, and the markets and investors are offering them up capital again to seemingly engage in the same kind of behavior. That's a philosophical statement. My practical question is, going forward, what are your thoughts on the return on capital that you can generate from your business in this environment? What is the earnings power of the U-Haul model, not next quarter, but over the next three to seven years? How do you guys think about this philosophically, assuming that as you've touched upon, these guys may be around through at least another equipment cycle which will be a handful of years?

Joe Shoen

Management

First of all, I don't think they got truck financing. Again, I don't know. I don't have a very good pipeline with those people at all. They got car financing. And I don't know their lenders, but I'll bet their lenders know what they're financing, because our lenders are fairly specific. I don't think they got truck financing. And they've been dropping fleet, from the numbers I see, and not having to face up to adding fleet or replacing fleet. So that's a classic economics of transportation trap. Maybe they're going to get rescued by some serendipitous thing, but it won't be the automakers bailing them out. Or a lot of these things that have happened in the past that just kind of rained only on the rental business don't appear like they're going to happen in the future, so they're going to have to go on a full cost model. So, it will get there at a point. To answer your real main question, I'm going to ask maybe either Gary or Jason to jump in on it. You're looking for a return on invested capital number? Gary Lenhoff – Ironworks: Yes. What do you think your business can generate in terms of returns on the capital that you have to invest in the business to maintain it? Or it's the same question measured differently. What's the earnings power on a cash flow basis or an earnings per share basis? However you measure it and measure your own management's ability to run the business, what's the earnings power you think you've got here given the environment?

Jason Berg

Management

Gary, this is Jason. Let's put in perspective over the last four years, and most of my analysis is focused on a GAAP balance sheet. Looking at our return in relation to GAAP equity over, say, track it on a trailing 12 month by quarter, over the last four years, we've been anywhere from a high of 16% dipped down to where we're at today. So, the answer is that we're probably somewhere in the middle of there, north of 12%. In the middle of all of that, we've instituted some things that have affected the GAAP income statement a little bit that have watered down our reported earnings. I don't have a number to give you on a cash flow per share right now. But just to put it in perspective of kind of historical return on GAAP equity, we performed over 12%. So that's reasonable.

Joe Shoen

Management

Yes. I would kind of echo that. I don't ask myself that exact question with very much regularity, I have to think a little bit. But listening to how Jason's gone through it, that would be closer. And right now, we're not missing the hoop totally, but the fact of the matter is as total revenue came down, total expenses didn't come down as fast. We did a great job on total revenue, but not a good enough job. So, we've got ourselves a little trough to dig out of, and I'll be the main guilty party, I continued to believe we could pull the revenue out and continue to let people function under that assumption, which stopped sometime around March of this year, that program ceased. So, the expenses will come around. And some of these expenses take as long as 12 months to really come around, but almost every expense takes at least a quarter by the time you bleed through whatever it is. In the Storage business, we should be able to outperform a lot of people purely because in that business, what's happening there, I believe is as the market becomes reasonably well populated with product, that there's no room to pay third parties high margins to provide a payment processing, Internet hosting, the Yellow Pages, insurance, and a host of other things, which is kind of our gain; working all the costs out of that deal. We'll do as good or better than the industry at a given occupancy. Right now, our occupancy is, a five-year low or something like that, Jason. Something like that. But we're gaining rooms back, and I see no reason why we won't continue to gain rooms back if we'll keep our focus on that. So I like our margins…

Operator

Operator

(Operator instructions) Your next question comes from the line of Jim Barrett with CL King & Associates. Jim Barrett - CL King & Associates: Could you talk about the investment portfolios at the insurance subs and how comfortable you are with the quality of the securities, debt, equities and other types of assets they own?

Joe Shoen

Management

Absolutely. I am super comfortable. Jason can describe it better financial terms.

Jason Berg

Management

On both of the portfolios, we have had at the end of last year, it was noted on our last conference call there was actually a question about the unrealized loss position at the two insurance companies. At that time, we said that it has improved in their first quarter. We do have a look at their second quarter which ends June 30th and it improved yet again whereas we are rapidly approaching almost an unrealized gain position on those portfolios. So there has been significant improvement in the market value of both of the portfolios. As far as impairment charges, we have had minimal impairment charges in the second quarter. Oxford had held a secure GM bond but we took $100,000 or $200,000 charge on that bond. It was very small exposure. So it has been very limited exposure as far as impairments go. On both of those portfolios, we have been over the last several months targeting bonds in the five year to 10 year range as far as where we are putting money to work at. We have been keeping some conservative cash balances at both insurance companies. So as comfortable as we can feel with them, that's where we're at with them. They've both done a pretty good job there. Jim Barrett - CL King & Associates: Thank you, Jason. It appears as if you are expanding UCar Share concept. What's your level of enthusiasm for the longer-term potential of that?

Joe Shoen

Management

The press succeeds the reality. This is the one thing that there's such an appetite in the press that they'll take one car and make it sound like a giant fleet. So it's nice to have good press. What you really see with this, Jim, is we're slowly mastering the technology of dispatching without a person present. That has potential significant ramifications for our business. Now there are a lot of issues. You could adversely select customers. If it is not a safe rental, there is no amount of cost you can cut out of it to make this a good deal. If we can learn customer selection, who you accept, who you decline, how you qualify the customer and learn to dispatch them without a physical person present. I have people on my staff that would lacks eloquently about the positive effect that could have on margins. I will say that I'm at least going to be in a position to be defensive on margins and so I'm guardedly optimistic about it. So what we are doing is in a marketplace that is relatively small. We are learning the technology; we are learning how to do it from Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine, which there are all these little just quirks in it. It all carries over to the truck rental operation, although in to different degrees because a car rental is a simpler transaction by far than a truck rental in most cases. We are learning and that it is going to be very positive. Jason, do you have a number what total investment is right now? It is south of $5 million and anything else has gone right through the income statement. In other words, we got some IT. We are running that through the income statement.…

Joe Shoen

Management

The reception to it is unbelievable. Now whether anybody is ever going to make any money out of it that's a whole another question. I've seen no evidence that anybody is presently making money. As far as people liking the concept. Meanwhile, we are making money doing truck sharing but not getting the PR that should be related to that, if that makes sense? Jim Barrett - CL King & Associates: It does.

Joe Shoen

Management

We are learning how to represent ourselves to organized political society as a company that is trying to deal with the overall problem. We have generated so much statistical information that is very persuasive to people in the cities and states that we must deal with of our positive effect on the overall environment. That might seem silly but if you recall we have over 14,000 dealers, and they are in every silly community in North America. If you tell them you want to put a truck rental place on Main Street or by the mall, they all go, oh God, no. But, if you told them you wanted to put a car sharing place at the mall, they'd all say, well when can you put it in? If we can reposition ourselves as truck sharers rather than truck renters, we stand to be able to penetrate markets that we can't get into presently. It is the truth if you went to one of my successful locations, they totally think they are in the business of sharing trucks and they would totally tell you something like, well Jim, when are you going to come back? You'd say, well I'll be back around 1:00. Well, Jim, can I put you down for 1:00, and then I'll help another family at 1:30? That's car sharing talk; that's not car rental talk. It's not truck rental talk either; its' truck sharing but we have lacked the vocabulary. It's kind of where we really come from and we stand to learn a heck of a lot for a very modest amount of money and very modest amount of risk exposure. If we learn it and we're able to apply it, it will be near to our benefit.

Operator

Operator

Your final question comes from Ross Haberman of Haberman Funds.

Ross Haberman - Haberman Funds

Analyst

Jim Barrett asked the question and I didn't hear a good answer. When you are going to begin to see more firmer pricing on the Moving side? Do you have any speculation there or firming of pricing there?

Joe Shoen

Management

I wouldn't expect to see it before Christmas, so that's a negative answer to you. This is always the $64,000 question, Ross. I really don't have a crystal ball. I go and look, tell my guys, forget about telling me what pricing is overall. Tell me what pricing is in 10 micro markets and why aren't you getting the optimum price in all of those? Because there will be several where you could improve your pricing. So this is a constant shifting. We have arguably 8,500 points we dispatch and receive from and five different sizes of trucks. So there's a huge map thing that is behind this. I can't quote the exact number. We have something like 85 million prices in our systems at all times. So some of these are things that there's only one event every six months or a year. I don't know, Albany, New York to some place in Alaska. It may be once every four years the rental even takes place. On that rental, if we don't get good money, we are dumb. We are the only fools out there in that marketplace and we ought to get our full cost and a decent margin. Now let's go back and say okay, how about Albany to Washington, DC. Well Albany to Washington, DC is a very much driven by the political connections and that's a very busy little corridor. All alternate forms of transportation of your goods are available in that marketplace from trains, buses, up through and including Penske and Budget. So in that market, it's always going to be harder to get a price increase. So we can and are starting to do a better job in and I gave you a rare extreme case there, Albany to Anchorage. There's a whole bunch of these things. We don't get adequately paid in my judgment for the convenience we provide to some one-way movers. That's a positive way to say it. And if we will carefully sift through it, we can get a little premium, not 7% or 10% but we can get a little premium. When you get that, it adds up or it multiplies out and becomes a significant amount of money at the end of the year. We're in every one of those bergs. Are you from the New York City area?

Ross Haberman - Haberman Funds

Analyst

Yes.

Joe Shoen

Management

We probably got 60 locations on Long Island. Now some of them are very, very competitive but as you get further out there, they're very, very not competitive. And if we're pricing the same way from the tip of the island as we are where it borders up with New York City, well we're idiots. From time to time, I find us being idiots. So we work very, very hard on trying to plate our strengths and we should definitely get a better overall pricing and a better overall gross margin from our more remote locations. The customer is very much understands that and is happy to pay for it. But then we got to execute it. So it's our opportunity to manage in corridors like Albany to Washington, DC.

Ross Haberman - Haberman Funds

Analyst

Rocky said you had 56% occupancy in the storage facilities. Was that correct?

Jason Berg

Management

It's 75%.

Ross Haberman - Haberman Funds

Analyst

75%. And what kind of trends are you seeing there recently? There was 75% going down to 70% or 75% going up to 80%, from your best guess?

Jason Berg

Management

I'm sorry, it was 76%

Ross Haberman -Haberman Funds

Analyst

What kind of trends are you seeing there?

Jason Berg

Management

That's been trending down 5% at least over the last year at that magnitude. The rate of actual rooms occupied has been trending down around 1%. So we've been having a decrease in actual occupied rooms of about 1% or a little bit over 1%. We have been adding new rooms on top of it, that's how we get to that 5% occupancy decrease. So one of the statistics that we look at is how many people did we net move in or move out during the period? So normally we have a whole bunch of people moving out, whole bunch of people moving in. So in this quarter just a round numbers we were up. We moved in maybe net 5,200 or 5,300, whereas last year in the first quarter, we moved in 5,000. So the trend is that we did a little bit better but we started off down a little bit. So that's why the occupancy number looks down. But there's a positive trend in the number of people that were moving back in. So hopefully we can slow the decrease down. With slowing down how many new rooms that we're adding to the portfolio, that will also help the occupancy rate. I don't know if that necessarily helps the business but looking at that one specific measurement, it will help the measurement.

Ross Haberman - Haberman Funds

Analyst

Are you having to discount much or give teaser rates or give free months or so in order to keep the occupancy at least at the levels they are?

Joe Shoen

Management

We are not real well known for giving away rooms to keep you in. I have a whole mantra about increase the level of service. If a customer pushes back, particularly existing customer on the rate, what they're really telling you is that the hallway's not clean, the garbage can is not empty, and the bathroom isn't up to their standards. They're not actually telling you that you need to lower your rate. We have a centralized rate-making group who has a vast data of what rates are at different places. Your fear in the self storage always is that a fool buys the property next to you, builds a storage place and decides to price at half your rate and now you have to meet him. I'm sure you can find instances of that but that's not the general rule. Most people get ate up pretty fast. So our promotion, our standard promotion is a one month free with a truck rental, 30-day free promotion. We've run that consistently for at least 10 years. Public Storage, on the other hand, uses a $1 move in special, which they've run for at least 10 years. Now, you can get to other operators who will be pay two months, get the third month free type. We don't do a lot of that kind of stuff. Our experience is it kind of gets out of hand. That's not to say that a given manager won't match a given rate if you lean on him. We pretty much discourage it. We see all the transactions on a real-time basis, and we compare every rate to what is very rate that's charged to what we had listed as the rate. We don't get a lot of variance. It's our intent not to. Our intent…

Operator

Operator

This concludes the question-and-answer session. Mr. Shoen, do you have any closing remarks?

Joe Shoen

Management

I want to thank everybody for their support. Obviously, without your support, we wouldn't be out there in the marketplace. I look forward to talking to you again. I'm very comfortable with the fundamentals of the business and very comfortable with the overall impact of the economy but I'm very uncomfortable with our near-term results. So thank you again and we look forward to talking in a month.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude your conference for today. You may disconnect your lines.