Earlier today, GATX reported 2026 third quarter diluted earnings per share of $2.92 compared to $2.25 in the third quarter of 2025. For the first nine months of 2026, GATX delivered diluted earnings per share of $8.11 compared to $6.46 for the same period in 2025. The 2025 third quarter and year-to-date results include a net positive impact of $0.15 per doula share from tax adjustments and other items. These items are detailed in the supplemental information section of our earnings release. I'll briefly address each of our business segments. After that, we'll open the call up for questions. At Rail North America, market conditions remain positive. Leasing fundamentals benefited from a favorable supply-demand environment and strong interest in existing fleet assets. These conditions continue to support attractive renewal economics and secondary market opportunities across the fleet. The renewal success rate was strong at 86.1%, and fleet utilization increased to 98.4% at quarter end. The renewal rate change of GATX's lease price index was positive 12.4%, with an average renewal term of 52 months. We continue to successfully place new rail cars under our committed supply agreement with a diverse customer base. We've placed about 10,300 rail cars under our 2022 Trinity supply agreement. Our earliest available scheduled delivery under this agreement is in the second quarter of 2027. Demand for our rail cars in the secondary market remained exceptionally strong during the quarter. Net gains on asset dispositions in rail North America were $50.3 million In the quarter, and $167.8 million year-to-date. Additionally, we continue to realize benefits from the acquisition of Wells Fargo's rail assets. Integration efforts have progressed well, and we are leveraging GATX's scale, customer relationships, and portfolio management capabilities across the larger fleet. We also benefited from higher management fee income during the quarter, driven in part by asset sale activity within the Brookfield-owned portfolio, turning to Rail International. Performance was solid in the quarter. GATX Rail Europe's fleet utilization improved to 96.1% at quarter end, and we continued pushing up renewal lease rates for various car types. In India, we further expanded the fleet during the quarter while maintaining full utilization. Across Rail International, we continue to see attractive opportunities for investment and growth. Engine leasing delivered excellent results during the quarter. Portfolio performance remained strong, as healthy global air travel activity continued to support high utilization and attractive lease rates. At RRPF, we continue to deploy capital into attractive opportunities, with investment volume at the joint venture approaching $1 billion year to date. During the quarter, GATX repurchased approximately 442,000 shares for $78.5 million. Year to date, we've repurchased more than 732,000 shares for approximately $130 million. Finally, we now expect 2026 full-year earnings to modestly exceed the upper end of our previously announced guidance range of $9.90 to $10.30 per dealer's share. This guidance excludes any impact from just tax adjustments and other items. And that concludes our prepared remarks. I'll hand it back to the operator so we can open the line for questions.
Operator
We will now begin the question and Hi, good morning.
Thanks so much for taking my call. Wanted just to maybe start off asking about the LPI. Looks like it's softer than expected at the 12.4%. You've not yet lacked the 2Q hopper impact, and yet it's stepped down from the So, just wanted to see if that was the only driver or if there were other drivers on top of the 2Q hopper impact that won't get lapped until 2Q next year. And your full-year LPI target, I think to date's been the lower end of your previously guided high teens to low teens range for 26. So, just wanted to see your outlook on that as well, please.
Good morning, Ben. This is Paul speaking. Happy to answer that question. I think Bob will probably chime in as well. But broadly speaking, I think it's important to understand with RLPI, it's done on a trailing 12-month basis. And so one thing that's happening over the course of this year is each successive quarter is incorporating another quarter of GABX. So by the end of this year, we'll have GABX fully incorporated. I should say the former Wells Fargo fleet, which is known as GABX. But as well, I would say you have that going on, you have mix, and then you do have the continued impact of the sand cars. So really, all three of those things are impacting the LPI. I will say broadly, when we think about sequential pricing in the fleet, we are actually seeing across most of the fleet flat to slightly up sequential pricing. So certainly the pricing climate for our fleet overall is, I would say, becoming increasingly favorable, although the LPI, as you pointed out, has been lower for the reasons I just described.
Ben, it's Bob. Thank you for the question. And I just wanted to add, regarding the LPI, just doing a little back-of-the-envelope math, you know, the difference between, call it a 12% LPI and a 17% LPI in a given year, is less than $5 million in revenue on an annual basis. And that's off our revenue base of about $2.4 billion. So when you really kind of pencil out the impact of the LPI, the variance in any given year, it's the impact, you know, on our revenue line is de minimis. Now, obviously, that accumulates over time and gives you a different answer. But in the present year, in 27, for example, it's not that material. Great.
Thanks so much for that caller. My next question then is on what you've mentioned, the higher management fee in the quarter on the higher asset sale activity in the Brookfield-owned portfolio for real North America. And it looks like that's tied to North American remarketing. That's also been very strong in 3Q. So, maybe sort of a multipoint question. Are you still holding your $200 million target for real North America, remarketing for 26? And if so, should we expect kind of the positive lumpiness in 3Q to step down to a meaningful step down in 4Q? And then that should drive a lower management fee, sort of your other revenue in real North America for 4Q as well.
Yeah, Ben. So I'll try to take both parts of those questions. One, you alluded to it in your question, but just so that everyone is totally clear, GATX earns two different things related to the Wells Fargo rail transaction. First, we earn a fee, and this is what you were referring to, for managing the long-term, We earn a fee for managing the operating lease portfolio, and today we own 30. So as you noted, the first fee is what's, for the first two quarters, we earned about $2.8 million, and that increase was driven by the fact that under certain conditions, GATX earns additional fees for it. Now, of course, the decision on what to sell and when to sell, but GATX gets paid. So that's part of the increase. Related, but separately, in our own business, the secondary market continues. We do expect $100 million that we mentioned at the beginning, as we've discussed.
Wonderful. Thank you so much, Tom. My last question is looking out longer term. There's been some investor interest on a longer-term growing narrative for NatGas for data centers, where behind-the-meter-prime power generators would be driven more by NatGas turbines or reciprocating engines fueled by NatGas, given there's not enough grid to go around for all the data center build. I wanted to ask you, from your view, how much of this could be an opportunity for you? Are your tank cars suited to moving this expansion in NatGas, presumably as LNG?
Yeah, so this is Paul speaking, Ben. It's a good question. So for the most part, NatGas moves by pipeline in North America and really throughout the world. LNG tank cars are today quite rare and are extraordinarily expensive to construct. There are certainly folks talking about LNG by rail, but that's not a market in which we play today, and it's not clear under what conditions we might play. So I would say any contribution to our business from that would be speculative at this point.
I appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Anjay Tomchik with Goldman Sachs. Andrzej, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Thanks for the question, everybody. Just curious to start off on the guide for modestly exceeding the top end of the 990 to 1030 earnings range for this year. Could you help maybe frame up how you guys are thinking about what modest means and if there's any drivers that could cause you to exceed your expectations for modestly beating the top end? I know it seemed like The third quarter, from our perspective, was a pretty healthy beat versus expectations. So just trying to grasp sort of the strength versus your expectations here heading into the fourth quarter.
Yeah, thanks for the question, Andre. So I'll first kind of recap what's happened so far and then our decision to revise the guidance to modestly exceeding the top end of the range. So for the first nine months of the year, most things were generally in line with our expectations coming into the year. Despite economic and geopolitical uncertainty, the favorable supply and demand dynamics continued to drive positive results for Rail North America. And the GATX Rail Europe team continued to successfully navigate a challenging economic environment. Similarly, we had strong engine leasing results, and the RRPFJV with Rolls-Royce performed well. Really, two factors drove our decision to revise our guidance description for the third quarter. First, as talked about on the last question, the secondary market remains strong. And second, as talked about on the last question, we earned more for managing the long-term lease portfolio that Brookfield owns than we expected to. So both of those reasons are driven by factors that have some lumpiness to them. And so quantifying the exact amount that we might exceed the high end of the range is going to be dependent on the timing of future opportunities there, which is why we love it.
Yeah, Andre, it's Bob. I'd also add, too, with remarketing income, it gets a little bit more challenging to call that precisely in the fourth quarter because the buyer universe, they're approaching their year end. As we are, but they may have different capital allocations and that they can expend this year or they want to expend it in the first quarter. So, you know, we have to work with those potential buyers and at times try to recognize what their needs are and what their capital plans are. So it gets a little bit more difficult to predict in the fourth quarter.
Understood. Thanks for the color. I was curious on just the repricing runway of the acquired assets following the Wells Fargo integration. If you're able to share maybe what percent of the acquired operating fleet has now repriced to the current market levels, how much is left to price or maybe sell in the secondary markets, and how does the embedded renewal pricing delta on that?
Yeah, I'll start first, Andre, by just saying the average term in the portfolio that we purchased was very similar to our own. So, you know, we're going to renew the same amount of cars out of the joint venture that GATX would renew in a given year, 18 to 20,000 or somewhere in that range. So there's no significant lumpiness to how that portfolio will renew. We haven't disclosed or broken out, you know, the data with regards to the difference in their embedded lease rate and rollover versus ours, and quite frankly, we're managing the entire business as one. Our sales team doesn't differentiate at all between a GATX wholly-owned car and a joint venture car, because keep in mind also, over time, they'll become wholly-owned cars. That, you know, we're buying that, well, likely buy that joint venture down over time. So, you know, we're not looking at it as two discrete fleets. And certainly, that'll be even more the case going forward.
Understood. And wanted to just touch, while we're talking on Wells Fargo, the maintenance expense within North America, I think, seemed to dip down sequentially. Last year, I think it went up 2Q to 3Q. Could you just speak to how these synergies are tracking on the Wells Fargo integration and maybe any specifics on the maintenance runway as well?
Yeah, so really the story there is very consistent with what we've talked about. So in the near term, we knew that we would be in a position to party maintenance that's being provided and to challenge the providers in a way that as an owner of maintenance facilities ourselves, we can do that Wells Fargo couldn't. And we're seeing improvement in that area and continue to expect to see that going forward. So the run rate that we've seen so far this year, you would expect to...
Yeah, and I think if you took our gross maintenance expense year to date and you annualized it, you'd come up with, you know, $502 million or $503 million. And our guide for the year back in January was about $500 million. So there's some puts and takes between our legacy portfolio and the joint venture cars, but we're coming in right in line with what we expected, and we had baked into that some of those synergies already that we're realizing.
Thanks for that. And maybe just hitting a little bit on the secondary market activity within rail leasing, and it does seem like that's, you know, potentially driving the higher end of the range guidance as well, or above the higher end of the range. You know, that's been an area of strength this year and over the recent years. I'm just curious if you could share sort of the types of the profiles of buyers, whether that's institutional funds, shippers, or competing lessors that are, you know, providing liquidity there. And then I know it's probably a little early, but any indication on what we should anticipate for the pace of gains, you know, into 2027 as well? That'd be super helpful. Thank you.
Yeah, Andre, good question. And we continue to see a really wide buyer universe. The breadth and depth is quite strong. If we're putting a book out in the marketplace or one of our competing lessors is doing the same, there's a good list of 25, 30 different types of institutions. Other lessors is really the primary source. We occasionally will sell cars back to shippers. That happens at times. But it's primarily that lessor universe. And it continues to be extremely robust. One thing playing into that is, as we've talked about, is the supply dynamic in the marketplace right now. There's not a lot of new cars on order. I think the expectation for this year is quite low from a cyclical standpoint in terms of new car orders. So if you're an existing lessor with an established base of cars and you're looking to add, you're going to do it in the secondary market. And so we see ample opportunity and really, we don't see that abating anytime soon, absent some bigger macro factor. Sure.
Very helpful. And maybe just to close off for me and sort of relatedly as well, I wanted to touch on the tariffs and how that's impacting buyers' decisions as well. I think the tariffs, you know, the idea is that they could elevate the new build replacement economics and the cost of a new car. So are buyers incrementally using that to tap the secondary market as well? Is that causing them to sort of delay new car orders as well? And do you see this dynamic sort of creating a floor for asset values here?
So, Andre, this is Paul speaking. Certainly, this is Paul speaking. And just to address it, I think it's worth a little context here. So, with respect to tariffs on new rail cars right now, the only rail cars that are technically subject to tariffs are tank cars. So freight cars, which constitute the majority of the new car market, are not currently subject to any tariffs. And the tariff situation is fluid in the sense that there are Section 232 tariffs that have been imposed but not enforced, and then there are anti-dumping tariffs that are under discussion right now for tank cars. So it's a very fluid situation here right now. What I would say is obviously should tariffs be imposed, it would increase the cost of acquisition of tank cars. But GATX is actually extremely well hedged because, of course, is one of the largest owners of an installed fleet of tank cars. Effectively, any increase in the cost to replace that fleet will improve the value of our installed fleet, and that should manifest through lease rates. So, it's an evolving situation, but I think that gives you a sense of where we are right now.
Makes sense. Appreciate all the thoughts.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Brendan McCarthy with Sidoti. Brendan, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Great. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for taking my questions here. I wanted to start off on the Royal North America utilization rate up about 40 basis points sequentially. I think we talked about the Wells portfolio having utilization of under 98%, maybe in the 97% range at acquisition date. I guess, are you seeing a benefit from better placement of cars or maybe it's a remarketing activity? And I guess, do you expect that utilization rate to continue to grind up back towards that 99% level?
So this is Paul speaking, and thank you for the question. Yes, we've had success placing idle cars out of the former Wells Fargo portfolio that's in the joint venture, and really that's what's driving the improved utilization performance. And really what I would say is there aren't necessarily any specific markets within any specific car types. It's really been broad-based success with our team placing cars, and we would expect that success to continue. We'll still have the headwinds from the small cube covered hopper fleet serving the sand market. So, you know, that will continue to be something of a utilization headwind, but outside of, and I will say we've had good success even placing small cubes, but outside of the small cube market, it's been very positive and really trending, I would say, at least as well as we expected coming into this.
Got it. And on the remarketing income side, about $168 million year to date, is the expectation for any potential outperformance above that $200 million threshold? I guess you expect any outperformance to come from the legacy side of the fleet, or is the Wells side potentially going to go above that $70 million number?
Yeah, so obviously, as Bob mentioned earlier, we really try to think of this as a single portfolio, and that's how we operate the business, but just based on the numbers that you've seen year to date.
Okay, understood. And I think last, Cordy mentioned the JV expected to contribute maybe double the original $0.20 to $0.30 EPS expectation for the year. Is that still a reasonable expectation for you?
It is, and really it's driven primarily by what we talked about.
Okay, understood. And just a last question on capital allocation. It looks like shared buybacks were more outsized in the quarter. You obviously leverages remain in place, and you've continued to exercise, I think, one of the joint venture options. How can we think about the buyback activity going forward. Is it going to be, you know, perhaps a larger source of capital going forward?
Yeah, so what I'll do there is just reiterate, we've mentioned many times, first and foremost, we really seek to make economically accretive investment. Right with that of the leverage and other credit metrics, even, we regularly do that via the dividend, and at times
Yeah, Brendan, it's Bob. I just said, too, I like to think we remain very disciplined around that capital allocation concept of three things. You know, the first being the investment. That's what we believe shareholders invest in GATX for us to do is to put capital to work and assets, accretive economics, keep the balance sheet in good shape. Keep leverage in good shape, and then return access. So we revisit that concept constantly here at GATX.
Understood. I appreciate the detail. That's all for me.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Justin Bergner with Cabelli Funds. Justin, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Bob. Good morning, Tom. Good morning, Sherry. Good morning. Good morning, Paul, as well. Good morning. A couple clarification questions. You mentioned the $0.20 to $0.30 JV contribution. Is that inclusive of now the extra benefit from managing the Brookfield assets, or would that extra benefit be on top of the $0.20 to $0.30?
Yeah. Great clarification, Justin. Thank you. So all along, we've been talking about the totality of the investment activity and investment and related activity with that acquisition. So it includes the performance of the JV, the management fees earned from the JV, the incremental SG&A that we have in order to provide those services, and the fees earned from the Brookfield Holy Owned Portfolio.
Yeah, and Justin, the 20 to 30 is what we thought coming into the year. Back in July, we said it would be double that, and we're very confident in that level.
Yeah, and year-to-date, it's been in the range of 50 cents, so we're well on the way.
Oh, year-to-date, it's already at 50 cents. Okay, got it. So it was more with the doubling you spoke about in July. Okay, that's very helpful. Correct. And then just on the benefit from helping Brookfield sell their fully-owned cars, I assume that that's in that other revenue category of Rail North America, and are there any costs associated with it, or does it mostly drop through to the bottom line, that revenue? Yeah.
So there would be, but they're a little difficult to tease out. It would be part of the incremental SG&A. So if you look at what we expected coming into the year, we said SG&A would be up about Thursdays a year ago, and we said the vast majority of that would be related to the Wells Fargo Rail acquisition and related activity. So all of that together is the cost side shows up in SG&A. Everything you see in that other revenue line related to the management fee activity is just the revenue side. It's not net of anything.
And that SG&A is coming in about right where we thought it would come in. So we're managing, the team's managing that quite well.
Okay, so not too much additional cost to generate that extra revenue for managing the Brookfield sales, it seems like.
Yeah, Justin, just to be sure you understand that, the incremental SG&A we're talking about is mostly related to the operating lease JV that we have with Brookfield. Yes, there is some additional incremental SG&A related to the long-term lease portfolio, but that would be relatively small.
Okay. Thank you for that. And then, does that mean that you're now managing a slightly smaller – you're getting management fees on a slightly smaller Brookfield fully-owned fleet because you've helped sell a decent amount of cars? Nice work overall. Paul, on the maintenance side, just to clarify, the maintenance benefits that you're seeing near term from the Wells Fargo, those are more about better managing third-party maintenance, or are you actually starting to insource some of that maintenance already?
So, Justin, it's Paul speaking. We have not yet insourced any of the joint venture maintenance. As we talked about coming into the year, our shops are really full of our own work, and so there really wasn't much of an opportunity to do that. We are going to be laying the groundwork to be able to take in some of that joint venture work, and we're hoping that at some point, potentially later next year, you'll be able to see some of the benefits of that.
When we announced the transaction initially, we said it would probably be a two- to three-year period before, just because of, you know, the demand of our own fleet and our shops would likely be two to three years before we started to even move some of the joint venture cars into our maintenance network. And so we're really digging in and putting the pieces in place to begin doing that on a modest level in 2027, but the expectation is we'll step that up sequentially after next year.
Okay, great. And maybe lastly, the rail international performance seemed to improve nicely on a sequential basis. It could just be noise, but is there anything you wanted to highlight there in terms of what's going well or what's progressing as expected?
Yeah, so in general, we came into the year expecting a challenging economic environment, and indeed, we've seen that. The team has done a really good job navigating through that. As we noted in the press release year over year, one is that the fleet has grown, thanks largely to the DB cargo acquisition that we did last year. And then in addition to that-
Okay, thank you for taking all my questions.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Ben Moore with Citi. Ben, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Yes, thanks so much for bringing me back in. I wanted to touch on interest rates, as it looks like maybe that's been what's driving some negative sentiment on your shares the last few months. And yet your fundamentals remain very strong. Your favorable supply demand is much more of a meaningful driver in the short term within the year as you've shared in the past. So it seems like that's very much working. When we look at Fed Funds futures, it's showing another 50-bps of hikes, likely, through the end of 2027, so likely maybe two more hikes. Wanted to get your updated views on all of this. Are your fundamentals expected to continue to remain strong? You've got your debt size and your leasing portfolio immunized. You're using interest rate swaps to convert the floating to fixed. And then beyond the year, we should see higher interest rates kind of play out as a benefit for you in higher lease rates. So I wanted just to kind of get an overall update on your view, the picture on the interest rate headwind that's more sentiment-driven, whereas your fundamentals remain very strong.
Yeah. So, Ben, as you know, we certainly take a long-term approach to everything, and that includes the way we finance. Less than 10% of our debt is floating rate. We finance a wide variety of ways, but by far the biggest is accessing the capital markets with 10-year-plus debt. So we have long-term debt mostly, and so the short-term impacts are meaningful to us because you alluded to the fact that interest rates increasing can help more of a long-run phenomenon. It's always supply-demand dynamics that drive the lease rate market by market. But over a long enough period of time, you certainly should expect positive impact on lease rates with increasing interest rates. So at the same time, that cumulative effect could impact GATX from a funding perspective, given the long-term way we fund, you would also see that benefit showing. In the near term, both are pretty insulated. In the long term, they are correlated.
Yeah, and as we've always said, as a hard asset owner, and it's the same for any hard asset owner, somewhat of an inflation element is a good thing. And we benefit. We'll take that benefit. Sure, it raises the cost of a new car, but when you own 200,000 installed base, you get the benefit there. Far outweighs the increased costs on any incremental cars we're bringing into the fleet. I think between Tom and I and Paul, we've all been here 30 years. I don't think there's any year ever during that period where we thought too much about near-term interest rates. It's not a driver of our business.
Wonderful. Thanks so much for that caller. And then just one last one from me on the engine leasing, RRPS, JV side. It looks like last quarter, you had a very strong RRPS equity method earnings of roughly $50 million. This quarter, it stepped down to roughly $46 million. And my sense is probably that's more lumpiness than anything else. So, I wanted to get your sense on that and what to expect for 4Q in that RRP of equity method and whether your full-year segment profit for engine leasing still holds.
Yeah. So, actually, the quarter-to-quarter variance that you mentioned is pretty stable for that business. Things do tend to move because of the gain on sales. One question we normally get, we didn't this quarter, so I'll just provide it anyways, is the split between operating income and remarketing income in that business. And both for the quarter and year to date, it's about two-thirds, one-third, two-thirds on the operating side, one-third on the remarketing side. And that's really what, as far as the engine leasing segment, we do expect it to outperform beginning-of-year guidance consistent with this, but it's not being driven by the JV. It's driven primarily by the GATX engine leasing wholly-owned portfolio and a...
The other thing to call out, Ben, is that in the third quarter of 2025, there was a $10 million of pre-tax insurance proceeds.
I offered up a baseball-related phrase on the call. So I just want to finish by saying we are hitting on all cylinders. Our commercial team continues to win by hitting singles and doubles. And everyone on the team is contributing. So by my count, I just made $300. Thank you all for your time.
And I'd like to thank everyone for joining us this morning. Please feel free to reach out to me with any follow-up questions. Have a great day.
Operator
This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.
