Earnings Call Transcript - CTOS Q1 2022

Operator, Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the Custom Truck One Source First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Brian Perman, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you, Brian. You may begin.

Brian Perman, Vice President of Investor Relations

Thank you, and good afternoon. Before we begin, we would like to remind you that management's commentary and responses to questions on today's call may include forward-looking statements, which by their nature are uncertain and outside of the company's control. Although these forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs, actual results may differ materially. For a discussion of some of the factors that could cause actual results to differ, please refer to the Risk Factors section of the company's filings with the SEC. Additionally, please note that you can find reconciliations of the historical non-GAAP financial measures discussed during the call in the press release issued today. The press release we issued this afternoon and the presentation for today's call are posted on the Investor Relations section of our website. We'll be filing our first quarter 2022 10-Q with the SEC this evening. Today's discussion of our results of operations for Custom Truck One Source Inc. or Custom Truck is presented on a historical basis as of or for the three months ended March 31, 2022 and prior periods. While our reported results can only include Custom Truck One Source LP for the period since the April 1, 2021 merger date, we've presented and will be discussing today pro forma combined results as if Nesco and Custom Truck had operated together for all periods. We believe such combined information is useful to compare how the combined company has performed over time. Joining me today are Fred Ross, CEO; Ryan McMonagle, President and COO; Brad Meader, CFO; and Todd Barrett, Chief Accounting Officer. I will now turn the call over to Fred.

Fred Ross, CEO

Thanks, Brian, and welcome everyone to today's call. As we move into the second year as a combined company, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of our employees, customers, and suppliers who support our business and help us navigate the challenges our industry has faced over the last two years. With our integration largely complete, we have shifted our efforts towards the optimization of our operations to fully realize the benefits of enhanced scale in our one-stop shop business model. Our primary goals are to provide unparalleled service to our customers, grow our market share, and deliver value creation to our shareholders. We successfully delivered sequential revenue and gross profit gains in Q1 despite typical seasonality and the continuing industry headwinds around the supply chain. This strong Q1 2022 result highlights the incredible performance by our team. On a pro forma basis compared to the prior year's quarter, adjusted EBITDA Q1 was up 26% despite lower revenues, while Q1 revenue was down $28 million versus Q1 of 2021. It was still up more than $10 million compared to that of Q4. The year-over-year decline reflects the impacts of continued supply chain issues, particularly on new equipment sales. Our ERS business continues to perform very well with utilization at 82.5% for the quarter, up from 78.2% for Q1 of 2021. The modest sequential decrease in utilization from Q4 2021 reflects our typical seasonality. Our TES business continues to see very strong demand with backlog growing to a record of $586 million, up by 42% during the quarter and by 283% since the end of 2020. Strong demand for both rental and new sales provides us the opportunity to focus on improving profitability and margin expansion. Finally, we're making good progress towards reducing our pro forma net leverage, ending the quarter at 3.8 times, down almost a full turn from 4.6 times at the time of the merger. Our strong first quarter results are a continuation of the positive momentum we created through 2021 and have provided a very solid foundation for us to build on for the rest of the year. They reflect the realization of the benefits of our one-stop shop business model and our focus on end markets that consistently exhibit strong underlying fundamentals and are less susceptible to cyclicality. While our outlook for the rest of the year is tempered by the continued impact of global supply chain issues and inflation, we are confident that we will navigate these to the best extent possible. During the remainder of 2022, we expect to see continued strong revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and margin growth across our business segments. Looking ahead, I cannot be more excited about the favorable prospects for Custom Truck. With that, I will turn it over to Ryan.

Ryan McMonagle, President and COO

Thanks, Fred and good afternoon, everyone. First, I want to echo Fred's comments regarding the tremendous efforts of our employees who helped us deliver these strong financial results. Despite the economic challenges everyone is facing right now, demand remains robust in each of our strategically selected four primary end markets: transmission and distribution or T&D, telecom, rail, and infrastructure. These markets offer long-term growth opportunities well in excess of GDP and should for the foreseeable future. We see this reflected in the growing backlogs of utility and telecom contractors, which are our largest customer base. The infrastructure build bolsters and extends the demand cycle and further strengthens our overall business fundamentals. Pricing across our end markets is trending positively, reflecting strong demand and the implementation of our tiered rental pricing strategy. We're driving margin expansion in our largest segments. The on-rent yield for the quarter held steady versus Q4 at 39.1%, up from 37% at the time of the merger. Continued industry supply chain issues present the only significant limitation to our ability to meet customer demand. Over recent quarters, we have experienced intermittent issues receiving adequate supply of the major inputs for our trucks, namely chassis, attachments, and bodies. This certainly impacted our ability to deliver products to our customers and grow the rental fleet at our desired pace during Q1. However, production in Q1 ramped significantly versus Q4, and March represented our highest month of truck and equipment production ever, resulting in whole goods inventory increasing by $41 million versus Q4. We expect average monthly production during the second quarter to equal the improved production levels we saw in March. We saw an increase in inventory deliveries from our vendors of more than 20% during Q1 compared to Q1 last year, and we anticipate our inventory inflows to continue to increase in Q2 and for the remainder of 2022. We're optimistic that the supply chain challenges we've been discussing over the past several quarters will improve further in the second half of this year. Based on these trends, we anticipate adding more growth CapEx to the rental fleet in Q2 than we did in Q1, and we expect that TES will experience quarter-over-quarter growth in Q2 as well. Inflation continues to impact our industry. We are seeing wage inflation consistent with the rest of the market, as well as higher costs for some of our production inputs. We are passing through certain input cost increases to our customers and implementing reasonable price increases where possible. From an integration perspective, we recently achieved the important milestone of bringing our Kansas City location and all of the Nesco service locations onto a single ERP system. With this integration largely complete, we are now focused on optimizing the system. Today and moving forward, our efforts are less directed towards synergies and cost savings than they are on optimizing our production and how we deliver service to our customers. Our goals of producing continued strong revenue, gross margin, and adjusted EBITDA growth, and increasing shareholder value have become part of who we are and how we run our business. As we look ahead to the rest of the year, we believe that favorable end-market tailwinds, robust customer demand, and solid execution by our team all position us to achieve these goals. While supply chain challenges and inflation remain obstacles as the year progresses, we look to fully take advantage of the multiple opportunities emerging. We know our employees are the key to delivering financial results and unmatched customer service, as demonstrated in the first quarter, and I'd like to extend a sincere thank you to them. I will now turn it over to Brad.

Brad Meader, CFO

Thanks, Ryan, and good afternoon, everyone. We announced two weeks ago that I will be leaving Custom Truck at the end of the month; and Todd Barrett, our current Chief Accounting Officer, will assume the role of interim CFO effective this Friday. Todd has been a critical part of the team during his three years with the company, and I know Todd will do an excellent job in his new role. I'm going to have Todd walk through the Q1 financial performance in more detail. But first, I want to thank everyone at Custom Truck for granting me this privilege of working for such an incredible company for the last seven years. The people are remarkable, the business model is attractive, and our end markets couldn't be in a better spot. Those three elements will serve as the cornerstone for shareholder value creation over the next several years. I'd like to now turn the call over to Todd.

Todd Barrett, Chief Accounting Officer

Thanks, Brad. As Fred and Ryan have indicated, Q1 was another strong quarter. Total revenue of $366 million was down 7% compared to pro forma Q1 2021 as a result of supply chain-driven drops in new equipment sales. Total revenue in Q1 increased by 3% sequentially compared to Q4. Adjusted EBITDA was $91 million, a 26% improvement compared to pro forma Q1 2021, and down only 4% versus last quarter. This sequential drop was primarily the result of higher SG&A costs in Q1 compared to Q4, as well as a shift in revenue mix. Net loss for the quarter was $3.3 million, a $12 million improvement from pro forma Q1 2021, and an improvement from $3.7 million net loss in Q4. Gross profit, excluding rental depreciation, was $129 million, representing an adjusted gross profit margin for the quarter of 35.3%, up from 29.1% for pro forma Q1 2021, and 35.1% for Q4. The sequential quarterly gross margin improvement was primarily driven by our strategic focus on pricing across all our revenue segments. SG&A was $54 million for Q1 or 14.6% of revenues, up from 12.3% in Q4, with the increase driven by timing. Q1 SG&A expenses, excluding share-based payments, were approximately 10% higher than our expected balance of the year run rate SG&A. Now, turning to our segment results, Fred referenced our continued strong utilization within our ERS segment for the quarter, which was 82.5%, up from 78.2% for Q1 2021, and down slightly from 83.7% for Q4 2021. The lower sequential utilization in the quarter combined with limitations on adding to our rental fleet due to supply chain challenges drove a $33 million decrease in average OEC on rent compared to the previous quarter. On-rent yield was 39.1% for the quarter, which was flat to Q4 and up from 37.8% for Q1 2021. We did see improvement at the end of Q1, with the annualized on-rent yield increasing to 39.6% in March. Our team is doing an excellent job executing on our pricing strategy. Our OEC ended Q1 at $1.36 billion flat compared to Q4 2021. Consistent with Ryan's earlier comments based on current production activity and the supply chain improvements we have experienced year-to-date, we expect OEC to increase for the balance of 2022. For Q1, ERS rental revenue was $106 million, a modest decrease versus Q4. As previously mentioned, ERS equipment sales for the quarter increased $24 million compared to Q4 to $59 million. ERS gross profit, excluding depreciation, was $97 million, up almost $9 million versus Q4. Overall, ERS continues to see the benefits of strong underlying end market fundamentals that Ryan discussed. TES performance for the first quarter remained strong but continued to be impacted by supply chain issues. Revenues of $168 million were down from $177 million in Q4. Gross profit increased modestly to $24 million in Q1, despite lower revenues, resulting in a gross profit margin of 14.2%, up from 13.2% in Q4. While revenue was down, our sales activity continues to be extremely strong, with backlog growing by 42% sequentially from Q4 to $586 million. This strength was very broad-based across our product portfolio. While supply chain issues are resulting in a temporary impediment to our being able to fully take advantage of the strong demand, we believe the growth in the TES sales backlog reflects growing demand for equipment indicative of our strong market share gains and our pricing discipline. We have been successful in countering inflationary pressures through the implementation of production efficiency initiatives put in place during 2021, in addition to passing through net cost increases to our customers. We are confident we will be able to hold or improve margins over the coming quarters, even with the record levels of inflation. Overall, we are very pleased with the performance of the TES business last quarter. Our APS business posted revenue of $34 million, a modest decline compared to Q4. While parts and service revenue grew slightly compared to Q4, rental revenue decreased to $3.6 million in Q1 or 11% of total APS revenue compared to 13% in Q4. That shift in our revenue mix, coupled with higher fulfillment and distribution costs, as well as the benefit during Q4 of a depreciation recapture stemming from certain inventory valuation step-ups, did contribute to a 6% reduction in APS segment gross margin in Q1. APS service revenue continues to be challenged by our strategic decision to allocate our APS service technicians to rental fleet service in order to sustain our strong levels of core rental fleet utilization. Despite the sequential quarterly decrease in APS gross margin, since we made the decision last year to restructure the APS business and optimize its cost structure, the APS gross margin has more than doubled from 12% in Q2 2021 to current levels. We expect gross margin to remain in the upper 20% range for the coming quarters. Through our tools and accessories division in our APS segment, we are well-positioned to capture a larger share of our customers' wallets and strengthen our position with customers and suppliers alike, and we are dedicated to providing the resources necessary to execute a strong, profitable business plan. We continue to focus on maintaining a strong liquidity position and improved leverage while at the same time investing in the rental fleet and pursuing selective growth through M&A, including our acquisition of HiRail Leasing in January. During the quarter, we increased the borrowings under our ABL by $15 million, with the outstanding balance ending at $410 million, mainly as a result of using the ABL to fund the HiRail acquisition in January. As of March 31, we had $331 million available under the ABL with the ability to upsize that facility. With LTM adjusted EBITDA of $352 million, we finished Q1 with a net leverage of 3.8 times, which is an improvement of 0.2 turns from the end of Q4 and an improvement of almost one turn since the close of the transaction. Approximately three times average remains an achievable goal of ours to attain by the end of 2022 or early 2023. However, we will continue to seek to make incremental investments and prudent acquisitions when we believe they create long-term shareholder value. With respect to the outlook for 2022 that we provided in March based on year-to-date performance, continued market strength, our current backlog, our supply chain initiatives, and our outlook for the rental fleet, we are maintaining our full-year guidance at this time. Given our focus on supply chain management, cost control, and exceptional customer service, we are confident that we will finish the year within the EBITDA guidance previously provided. In closing, I want to echo Fred's and Ryan's comments regarding our strong performance. We are now one year out from our combination with Nesco and are well down the path of executing a transformational integration, delivering double-digit adjusted EBITDA growth, expanding margins in an inflationary environment, and continuing to deliver the highest level of customer service.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our first question is from Justin Hauke with Baird. Please proceed with your question.

Justin Hauke, Analyst

Hi, good afternoon. Thank you. I guess I was just wondering on the guidance you kept the segment revenue guidance unchanged, and Iguess I'm just wondering, I mean, how much of that has to go through that way? I mean, could some of the sales revenue slip into rental? Do you have the discretion to be able to adjust your fleet to where maybe the highest incremental margin would be from it, or are you bound to sell your equipment in one backlog?

Ryan McMonagle, President and COO

Sure. Justin, good to talk to you, and thanks for getting on the call. This is Ryan. I'll start with that. But no, we have the ability to flex, and that's what we talk about. When we discuss the one-stop shop model, that's one of the things that is unique about how we operate is that we can pivot and react to demand when there's more demand on the rental side or if there's more demand on the sales side. So yes, we do have some ability to flex. At this point, we're working to finalize how we will add assets to the rental fleet for the balance of this year and what we'll sell. But in general terms, yes, we can shift products from rental to sales or vice versa.

Justin Hauke, Analyst

Okay. And then when you talk about the record production increase, is that both on the TES business and the ERS business or just one?

Ryan McMonagle, President and COO

That's correct. It's on both. So, we think about production as building the completed trucks that we can either rent or sell. So, that certainly is one thing we're very happy with this quarter, in addition to really strong financials, is seeing production ramp to its best month in March and then with clear expectations now that that will continue through Q2.

Justin Hauke, Analyst

Okay, great. Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Nicole DeBlase with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.

Nicole DeBlase, Analyst

Yeah, thanks. Good afternoon, guys.

Ryan McMonagle, President and COO

Hi, Nicole.

Nicole DeBlase, Analyst

Maybe if you could just talk a little bit about utilization. I didn't really see much of a seasonal dip in the first quarter, which doesn't surprise me. But I guess, how do we think of that in the context of the normal seasonal uptick that you tend to see in Q2? Is it more likely that utilization kind of flattens out at these higher levels throughout the rest of the year?

Fred Ross, CEO

I guess what this is Fred Ross. I think what you're going to see is it stay pretty level where it's at. Hopefully, we could get it to tick up. Probably the biggest reason why customers didn't see a drop-off is because they knew if they turned it in, they probably wouldn't get it back. So, it was pretty simple; they needed to keep it and pay for it. But I don't see much of a dip going forward; I think probably building.

Nicole DeBlase, Analyst

Got it. Okay. That's helpful. And then maybe think about getting through the supply chain issue and what happens on the other side? And maybe you could remind us what you would ideally like to spend. If you guys could have your wish list of CapEx this year and it wasn't constrained by supply chain, what would we be looking at with respect to maintenance and growth CapEx?

Ryan McMonagle, President and COO

Yes, sure. This is Ryan. I'll start with that. I think, Nicole, there's clearly more demand out there than what we're adding to the fleet right now. I think maintenance CapEx would be pretty consistent with how it's operating this year and how we see it operating for the balance of this year. It would just be increasing the growth CapEx component, but we've discussed mid to high single digits. So, you start to move towards high single digits or low double digits. I think that's where we think we could accelerate growth. And I think that's where we react a little bit to demand and how the market responds to that.

Nicole DeBlase, Analyst

Got it. And last one from me, and then I'll pass it on. Just infrastructure bill, have you guys started to see any signs of pipeline building with respect to those infrastructure dollars, or is that still something to come as we progress through the year?

Ryan McMonagle, President and COO

I think it's more something to come, with the exception of we are seeing 5G happening now, which we talked about for a long time, but it's actively happening. But I think a lot of it is just going to be a tailwind to increase our favorable runway.

Nicole DeBlase, Analyst

Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Our next question comes from Stefanos Crist with CJS Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Stefanos Crist, Analyst

Hey guys, congrats on the quarter, and thanks for taking my questions. For the sales order backlog, it's obviously up significantly. Are there any pieces of equipment in particular or maybe an end market that you're seeing the most demand?

Ryan McMonagle, President and COO

We really are seeing strong demand across all four of the end markets. So, utility is up, telecom is up, rail is up, and infrastructure is up. So, I don't have those numbers in front of me kind of by segment, but they're all up significantly, which is why backlog is up so much, Stefan.

Stefanos Crist, Analyst

Thanks. And then you talked about ramping up inventory as you did in Q1 as well as in Q2. I guess how should we think about working capital for the balance of the year?

Ryan McMonagle, President and COO

It should be fairly flat, Stefan. There might be a little bit of use of cash. But if you remember how we finance working capital, we're able to finance the majority of the inventory that we receive from our vendors with our floor plan line. So, it's really not a meaningful use of cash. You might see a little bit of uptick, but it won't be significant over the balance of the year.

Brad Meader, CFO

And Stef, this is Brad. The other thing to consider, I mean, working capital for us is really going to come in two components. The real drivers are to give your inventory piece, which Ryan mentioned, which I think there will be some investment as we expand the parts side of things, PTA, and others, but you're talking a couple of million dollars in most. I think the bigger true definition of working capital would be accounts receivable, and that's just more a function of revenue and timing because most of our sales and rental terms are providing relatively short. So, you might see an investment in dollars, but again, it's a good type. It's not really an investment in cash as is timing collection of accounts receivable.

Stefanos Crist, Analyst

Perfect. Thanks, guys.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Scott Schneeberger with Oppenheimer. Please proceed with your question.

Scott Schneeberger, Analyst

Thanks very much, guys. I came on late so apologies if I'm duplicating anything or a little off. But could you speak a little bit more to the rental pricing environment in the second quarter to-date and how you've seen it progress this year? And just the conversations with customers with regard to your inflationary costs and their reception to rate increases? Thanks.

Ryan McMonagle, President and COO

Sure. This is Ryan. I'll begin, and then Fred can share some insights on customer reactions. We introduced tier pricing a couple of quarters ago, and we mentioned it would take about 12 months to fully reflect in our financial statements. In our last call, we indicated it might take up to 15 months for the complete rollout. We are still progressing on that front, and considering the robust demand, we are able to continue with the rollout. I'll let Fred discuss the inflationary pressures and how customers have responded.

Fred Ross, CEO

The customers are really accepting it without much pushback at all. They understand when they go to the store they go to buy fuel. Everybody is facing the same thing. So, there's very little pushback; they understand our costs are going up, and that we have to cover those costs. It's not really been a problem, to be honest with you.

Scott Schneeberger, Analyst

Great, guys. Thanks. I appreciate that. And then as a follow-up, hopefully I'm not duplicating, but synergies, it's now, as you mentioned, been a year since the Nesco transaction. How are revenue and cost synergies progressing at this point, as well as just overall integration of the two businesses? Thank you.

Ryan McMonagle, President and COO

Sure. I'll begin with integration and address your question in reverse order. Integration is progressing well. Earlier, I mentioned that we now have Kansas City and all Nesco service centers on the same ERP system, marking a significant milestone for us by consolidating the majority of our operations. We have implemented most of the actions we outlined for cost synergies, initially projected at $50 million and later increased to $55 million. These actions will take the remainder of 2022 and the beginning of 2023 to fully realize. We are beginning to see some results. While we haven't provided specific numbers for revenue synergies, we are observing two categories emerging. Firstly, our equipment is now being sold by the legacy Nesco sales team, which has been positively received by both their customers and ours. Secondly, in terms of the PTA segment, the average utility equipment piece requires a kit costing between $20,000 and $40,000 with the trucks. With the operational changes we implemented on the PTA side, we are starting to see progress. When we discuss this in Q2, I believe we can provide more details, but we are already experiencing some early successes in selling these kits to customers who have traditionally purchased utility buckets and diggers from us.

Scott Schneeberger, Analyst

Great. Thanks so much, guys. I’ll pass it on.

Ryan McMonagle, President and COO

Thanks, Scott.

Operator, Operator

Our next question is from Noelle Dilts with Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Noelle Dilts, Analyst

Hi. Thank you. I was hoping you could just speak to sort of when you're looking at buying trucks and chassis and attachments, what sort of lead times are you looking at at this point? And how is that impacting or changing how you're thinking about procurement? Thanks.

Fred Ross, CEO

We, by far into the future we always have, that's our business model. And it's one of the reasons why, even though supply chain has been a pain for everybody, it's been less painful for us. We have decades-long relationships. So, we're already placing orders into 2023, and some stuff will end up actually going into 2024. So, we feel good that we're going to be able to get what we need. Again, there are always going to be challenges, but I think we're going to do better than our competition will, by and large.

Noelle Dilts, Analyst

Great. Thanks. That's it for me.

Fred Ross, CEO

Thank you everyone for your time today and your interest in Custom Truck. We look forward to speaking with you on our next quarterly earnings call. In the meantime, please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions. Thank you again. Good night.

Operator, Operator

This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.