Sunbelt Rentals Holdings, Inc. Q4 FY2025 Earnings Call

Hello, and welcome to the Ashtead Group plc Full Year and Q4 Results Analyst Call. I will shortly be handing you over to Brendan Horgan and Alex Pease, who will take you through today's presentation. There will be an opportunity for Q&A later in the call. For now, over to Brendan Horgan and Alex Pease at Ashtead Group plc.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, all, and welcome to the Ashtead Group full year results presentation. I'm joined as usual this morning by Alex Pease and Will Shaw. But in addition, we have Kevin Powers with us, who joined in May to lead our Investor Relations for Sunbelt Rentals when the primary listing moves to the U.S. early next year. Kevin now, as you would expect, is working very closely with Will and the team, and most of all, we're happy to have him on board. Turning to Slide 3. I'll begin this morning as I always do, by addressing our Sunbelt team members listening in or perhaps more significantly on the recorded call later in the morning U.S. time. Referencing Slide 3 to specifically recognize their leadership and the health and safety of our people, our customers and the members of the communities that we serve. Your commitment and efforts resulted in a fiscal year with a total recordable incident rate of 0.65 and a lost time rate of 0.1. Both of these metrics represent record performance in frequency and severity. This is all achieved through the team's collective and ongoing progress of our Engage for Life program, which is central to the Sunbelt culture. Part of this progression and importantly, keeping our guards up against complacency, was the holding of our 13th annual safety week, throughout which every single branch, every day, the week of May 12, held engaging sessions with all of our team members introducing and reinforcing practices and habits of a world-class safety organization. So to the team, thank you. Thank you for your efforts to date and your ongoing commitment to Engage for Life. Turning now to the highlights for the year on Slide 4. We delivered strong performance in the year with group and North America rental revenues up 4%, which was consistent with the guidance that we gave in December. These rental revenues and strong fall-through delivered group EBITDA growth of 3% to $5 billion, PBT of $2.1 billion and earnings per share of $3.70. These are record rental revenues and EBITDA for the year with group EBITDA also progressing from a margin standpoint to 47%. From a capital allocation standpoint, and in accordance with our Sunbelt 4.0 priorities, we invested $2.4 billion in CapEx. This fueled existing location fleet needs and greenfield openings. Despite this level of investment, we delivered near record free cash flow of $1.8 billion. This fueled for us record returns to shareholders of $886 million or in dividends paid in the year of $544 million and share buybacks of $342 million. Our current $1.5 billion buyback program which, as you know, was initiated just in December, we fully intend to complete the balance in the current year. This year's results were achieved as we executed our plans, to gain from the clear and ongoing structural momentum in our business and our industry and our ever strong positioning within it, such as gaining share among large strategic customers across many construction and nonconstruction market segments, including the exciting mega projects arena, which continues to expand in this era of deglobalization, technology-related construction and infrastructure. This also came from the rapid growth of our newly opened 3.0 locations, and the everyday winning of new customers, gaining market share through new customers who seek solutions through a broad range of general and specialist products and services. I'll give some added color on these points in just a moment. This was a year of execution and investment. In the ongoing improvement in our business, while capturing the available growth from the current market conditions and positioning us for even more growth and success in the future. This leads me nicely into an update on our 4.0 progress in the year, and we'll begin that on Slide 6. We launched Sunbelt 4.0 at our Powerhouse event in April '24. And since then, our team has been laser-focused on advancing each of the 5 actionable components, which you know as customer, growth, performance, sustainability and investment. Over the next few slides, I'll highlight some of the successes we have delivered in the first year and the plans to progress to deliver even more, starting with customer and growth on Slide 7. Our customer obsession journey is well underway. During the year, we introduced enhanced training programs touching every one of our team members and recently launched a new customer obsession metric, to provide real-time customer feedback to our team members. Illustrating our customer obsession and growth are the 42,000 new customers added in the year, on top of the 118,000 new customers added during 3.0. In total, these market share gains, these customers generated $1.9 billion of rental revenue growth in the year. Contributing to these market share gains and ongoing growth is our ability to leverage our expanded network of locations and density to further advance the cross-selling prowess between our general tool and specialty businesses. We successfully added 61 locations throughout North America in the year with a nice mix of general tool and specialty businesses. These are helping to drive growth and advance our clustered market strategy by delivering added convenience, depth and breadth of product and solutions. Importantly, growth in the year continued to be supported by rate progression as we are able to demonstrate to our customers the value of our extensive range of products, services and value-add solutions. Moving to performance on Slide 8. Our performance action component is designed to leverage our platform, optimize our processes and energize our technology, all with the output of improved customer experience and operational efficiencies, contributing to margin improvement over the course of Sunbelt 4.0. There were 3 main areas of focus you'll remember that were embedded in this actionable component. First, leveraging our SG&A through extracting the value from the investments we made during 3.0. In the year, we delivered efficiencies allowing us to reduce G&A costs while still delivering expansion and growth. Second is the growth and maturation of the 401 locations. These locations, which were opened or added during the 3 years of Sunbelt 3.0. These locations have grown to over $1.9 billion in revenue, which is 19% higher than last year and $900 million in EBITDA, while also progressing margin by 280 basis points in the year. These locations are on average only 33 months young. So I think we can agree there's ample runway for growth incumbent in these 401 new locations. There's a detailed scorecard I'll think you want to check out of this new cohort in appendix Slide 43. Thirdly, operational excellence, which is built to leverage our scale and leading technology platforms across our network of locations and clustered markets among the areas of opportunity are logistics and repair and maintenance activities, which is worthy of a little bit more detail on Slide 9. The logistics associated with delivering rental assets to our customers and executing field service and repair as a part of our operations, a large part of our operations and, therefore, a large cost base in which we currently spend roughly $1 billion a year. Operationally, we've been moving to a market-based logistics model or internally we refer to them MLOs, where our drivers, trucks and dispatchers serve all locations in the cluster rather than being allocated to individual locations as was historically the case. By the end of the year, we had embedded MLO operations in 16 of our clustered markets and have seen immediate improvement in metrics in these clusters. For example, in the 4 MLOs that were in place for the full year, our days to pick up, which is the time it takes for us to pick up equipment after the customer's call, was reduced by over 25% and the spend on third-party haulers was reduced by 40%. We continue to advance our MLO expansion with a playbook to reach in excess of 30 of our top 50 markets by the end of fiscal year '26. This transition to MLOs has been supported by our full launch of VDOS 4.0, our proprietary Vehicle Dispatch Optimization System, which has been reimagined and repowered to improve availability, utilization, efficiency and user and customer experience resulted in improved order capture through a clear path to say yes to our customers. Every single branch and MLO are now using this new system and beginning to realize its sturdy benefits. Finally, touching on sustainability and investment on Slide 10. On the environmental front, we're on track to meet our 2034 target to reduce our Scope 1 and Scope 2 carbon intensity by 50% with a number of ongoing initiatives around our transportation fleet and how we source electricity for our locations. And on investment, we allocated capital dynamically throughout the year to maintain our fleet, fuel growth categories and greenfield openings and bolt-on acquisitions and have executed returns to shareholders through increased dividends and share buybacks. So in summary, 4.0 is off to a strong start with further exciting progress expected in this new fiscal year. So with that, I'll hand it over to Alex to cover the financials in more detail, but also give our guidance for the new year. Alex?

Thanks, Brendan, and good morning, everyone. So before I get into the numbers, I thought it would be helpful to give you a brief update on the relisting project. As you know, we received strong support from our shareholders at last week's EGM with over 96% voting in favor of the resolutions. We're making good progress on the U.S. GAAP conversion and our Sarbanes Oxley compliance, which means we're still on track to implement the move of the primary listing to the New York Stock Exchange in Q1 of calendar year 2026. We're also beginning to make plans for an investor event in New York shortly thereafter, which we'll be providing more details on as we progress through this year. Turning now to the full year results themselves on Slide 13. Firstly, as you may have noticed this morning, we've reassessed the basis of our segmental closures. The group operates under 2 primary geographic regions, reflecting its North American activities and assets and its U.K. activities and assets. The North American business is further split operationally as general tool and specialty reflecting the nature of its products and services and the management structure of the group. As such, the group has identified as reportable operating segments as the North America general tools, North America Specialty and the U.K. which we believe reflects better the basis on which we review the performance of the business internally and aligns with the basis of our strategic growth plan, Sunbelt 4.0. Prior year comparative information has been restated to reflect these updated segments. To help you navigate your way through this change, we've included the full year results under the old segmentation on Slide 31 in the appendix. Group rental revenue increased 4%. Total revenue was down 1%, reflecting the planned lower level of used equipment sales. Our growth was delivered with strong margins, an adjusted EBITDA margin of 47% and an operating profit margin of 25%. As expected, the lower level of used equipment sales resulted in lower gains on sale of $81 million compared with $223 million a year ago, which affects the absolute level of EBITDA and operating profit. After an interest expense of $559 million, adjusted pretax profit was 5% lower than last year at $2.1 billion. The higher interest expense reflects principally higher average debt levels. As explained at Q3 and in the press release, we are adjusting out nonrecurring costs associated with the move of the group's primary list into the U.S. These amounted to $15.4 million for the year. We will continue to track these as we move through the new fiscal year. Adjusted earnings per share were $3.70. On Slide 14, we've shown the group performance adjusting out the impact of the sales of used equipment, which were significantly lower in fiscal year '25 versus fiscal year '24. As you can see, that total revenue, excluding this impact, would have been 3% higher and operating profit would have been up 2%. Now turning to the businesses. Slide 15 shows the performance for North American general tools. Rental revenue for the year grew by 1% to $5.9 billion. This has been driven by a combination of volume and rate improvements, demonstrating the power of our diversified business model as well as our disciplined execution. As Brendan will discuss later, strength in mega projects have mitigated ongoing moderating conditions in the local commercial construction market. The 5% fall-through in total revenue reflects the lower level of used equipment sales than last year, which I referred to earlier. As Brendan has already explained, we have been laser-focused on the performance action component of Sunbelt 4.0, and the team is making strong progress, driving value from our significant investments in logistics, telematics, maintenance execution, and we're already seeing the results. The team is also demonstrating strong cost control discipline with operating costs around 5% below prior year. These actions resulted in an EBITDA margin of 54%. After the impact of lower gains on disposals and the higher depreciation charge, operating profit was $2.1 billion compared to $2.4 billion last year. Operating margins were 33% and ROI was 20%. Now turning to North American Specialty on Slide 16. Rental revenue was 8% higher than a year ago at $3.3 billion. As with GT, this has been driven by a combination of volume and rate improvement. Rental revenue growth in the fourth quarter was impacted by the inclusion of both film and TV and oil and gas, which were both down significantly in the quarter. We took similar actions taken to control costs in specialty, and this has contributed to an EBITDA margin of 48% compared to 44% last year. After the impact of the higher depreciation charge on a larger fleet, operating profit was approximately $1.1 billion at a 33% margin and ROI was 30%, clearly illustrating the higher returns achievable in the specialty business. As specialty becomes a larger part of the overall business portfolio, it should help to drive up overall group returns in the future. Turning now to the U.K. on Slide 17, and please note that all of these numbers are now in U.S. dollars. U.K. rental revenue was 5% higher than a year ago at $778 million. In line with the 4.0 strategy, the focus in the U.K. remains on delivering operational efficiency and long-term sustainable returns in the business. While we continue to make progress on rental rates, these need to progress further. As a result, the U.K. business delivered an EBITDA margin of 26% and generated an operating profit of $69 million at an 8% margin and ROI was 7%. Across all 3 segments, our results have shown the resilience of our business model and our disciplined execution despite challenging market conditions. Slide 18 sets out the group's cash flows for the year. This emphasizes the strong cash generation capability of the business across a wide range of market conditions. We maintain a strong focus on working capital management, which has resulted in cash flow from operations of $5 billion in the 12 months, which is a 99% conversion of EBITDA. As many are aware, two of the key attributes of our business model is both the resilience across a range of market conditions, which I mentioned previously, and the agility with which we can control capital spending, reallocating capital dynamically to maximize value. In this environment where certain segments of our markets are more moderate, and we have some latent capacity, we spent $2.7 billion compared with the $4.4 billion last year. We adjusted our priorities to principally fund fleet replacement and some pockets of growth. This strategy generated near record free cash flow for the year of $1.8 billion despite some of the transitory softness we've discussed. This ended up significantly higher than our guidance of around $1.4 billion, principally because of the timing of fleet landing at the end of the year where payment will be made in fiscal year 2026. While we've reduced our capital expenditure, this has not been at the expense of the future. We've executed on our fleet disposal plan as intended. We have isolated areas of the business with lower demand and dynamically reallocated our spending to growth markets, such as power and HVAC and specialty businesses more broadly as well as the mega projects arena where demand is higher. We're also using our improved logistics and telematics systems to proactively reposition our existing fleet to higher growth markets. One example of this is utilizing latent capacity in our network to fund more than 60% of the OEC required in our greenfield locations. This is how we can continue to grow even when our absolute spending in capital dollars is lower. Turning now to Slide 19 and our guidance for revenue, capital expenditure and free cash flow for fiscal year 2026. We expect group rental revenue growth to be between flat and plus 4%, reflecting the ongoing dynamics in some of our end markets. Gross capital expenditure is planned to be in the range of $1.8 billion to $2.2 billion, and I will give a little bit more detail on this in just a moment. Finally, based on this guidance, we expect free cash flow to be between $2.0 billion and $2.3 billion, which again reflects the timing and payment of fleet landings around fiscal year-end. On Slide 20, I've broken down that CapEx guidance. You'll see that we're planning rental fleet CapEx as follows: for North America between $1.3 billion and $1.6 billion and for the U.K. between $110 million and $130 million. For North American general tool in the U.K., these are largely replacement requirements, while in North America specialty, we're still funding pockets of growth. In all cases, there is a focus on improving time utilization and taking advantage of the latent capacity in the fleet that we already own. It's also worth noting that lead times with our key suppliers are relatively short at the moment. So there's considerable flexibility in these plans as market conditions improve. And so with that, I'll hand the call back over to Brendan.

Thanks, Alex. I'll now move on to some operational detail, beginning with North America on Slide 22. The North American business delivered good rental-only revenue growth in the year of 4%. Specialty performed strongly with growth of 11% with general tool up 1%. As Alex mentioned, the fourth quarter growth figure for specialty reflects the fact that the North American Specialty segment for reporting purposes now includes oil and gas and film and TV, which were previously reported in the U.S. general tool and is part of Canada, respectively. So I'll say that again, oil and gas would have been part of the GT reporting previously, and film and TV, of course, would have just been captured in Canada as that was reported. Excluding this, North American Specialty grew 8% in Q4 and 12% for the full year. As expected, we continue to realize moderating local nonres construction market activity through the fourth quarter, and this is offset in part by the ongoing strength of the mega project landscape and the broader nonconstruction markets, both of which I'll further detail shortly. Importantly, run rates continue to progress year-on-year as utilization levels are improving across the industry, we anticipate continued discipline in our business as we deliver added value to our customers. This is ongoing evidence of the progressing structural change in the business and leveraging our internal pricing tools and disciplined rate approach. Moving on to Slide 23. We'll cover the activities and outlook for the construction end market. Consistent with our usual reporting of construction activity and forecast, the slide lays out the latest Dodge figures starts momentum and put in place. Outlook for construction group continues to be underpinned by mega projects and infrastructure work, which remains strong and in some cases, are gaining even further momentum. This is a portion of the market where we enjoy outsized share and continue to be positioned extraordinarily well as more of these very large projects begin and enter planning. Our cross-functional sellers and solutions experts are highly engaged with these contractors, our customers, and in many cases, the owner or developer themselves, bringing our broad range of solutions and capabilities to bear on these not only large but highly complex projects. At the same time, as I already mentioned, local commercial construction space continues to moderate compared to what were really high recent years as this prolonged environment of uncertainty has weighed on local and regional developers. This predominantly impacts some of the small, mid and regional size contractors. Nonetheless, the SME contractor landscape is a powerful and important part of our customer base. Although we're seeing some positive trends in local planning, it will take some time for this segment to see a meaningful uptick. However, it will rebound. And as I've said before, when it does, I think it will be quite strong. When this inevitability happens, we're in a position of strength to benefit with our customer relationships, cross-selling opportunities, coverage of products, services and markets and capacity. All part of our long-held clustered market strategy. Let's move on and talk a bit more about mega projects on Slide 24. This is, of course, a slide you should now be pretty familiar with. It delineates mega project starts in counts and value, looking at the last 3 years have gone by as well as the next 3 years. This is broken down in our fiscal years for context. What should you draw from this update, particularly when compared to equivalent measures from our prior updates is, one, some have been pushed a bit right. It should come as no surprise, showing projects of this scale and sophistication, takes some time to get started. However, this should not be confused with projects being canceled. And two, the funnel keeps growing as the mega project landscape continues to expand and strengthen. This mega project era, is being driven by deglobalization, technology advancement and the related construction that comes from that manufacturing and production modernization and infrastructure. For these reasons and ongoing momentum, we believe this is a feature of our end markets, which will be present at a significant scale for years to come. We continue to experience a very strong win rate in this arena and are highly engaged in project planning and solutions with associated customers and project owners. Turning now to Slide 25, which, of course, puts in scale our nonconstruction end market. Over half of our business is outside of commercial construction. As we have detailed over the years and probably best showcased most clearly during our Anytown Exhibit as part of last year's event in Atlanta, these markets are both large and expansive. So many of our product categories have remarkably universal applications, which presents a vast opportunity to advance rental penetration ever more broadly across our end markets, whether it's the planned or the unplanned, there are abundant activities throughout these nonconstruction markets where our products and services deliver the requisite solutions. We made great progress across these segments over the years, and we'll continue to do so throughout 4.0. So these are big end markets with big opportunities to continue the expansion of our TAM. Moving to capital allocation on Slide 26. Alex or I have covered most of these capital allocation elements throughout this morning's presentation. However, I'll highlight again our launching of our buyback program in December of up to $1.5 billion over 18 months. This program takes into account our latest CapEx plans and demonstrates the optionality and confidence, which comes from the fundamental strength and our cash-generative growth model. As I said in the highlights, we expect to complete this buyback in full in the current year while maintaining leverage within our target range of 1x to 2x. There's also a robust bolt-on M&A landscape, which we've so often exercised. Our business development team continues to work on our pipeline to find opportunities that align with our strategy, which will surely result in future additions. All this is consistent with our long-held policy, and we will continue to allocate capital on this basis throughout 4.0. Turning to the summary slide on 27. And to conclude, we've had a year of strong performance, delivering record rental revenues and EBITDA through capturing the available growth in these market conditions. The results again demonstrate that through-the-cycle cash generation, which is so powerful at our current scale, and current margin, with which we deploy through our capital allocation priorities to maximize our benefits in the structural growth business. We have dynamic flexibility and optionality to invest in segments, organic expansion, M&A, market opportunities and, of course, returns to shareholders as we've covered through today's update. Our business is growing and our business is improving, positioning us for even more success over the years to come. We look forward to a strong fiscal '26 as we continue to grow and advance our business to benefit all of our stakeholders. And with that, operator, we'd be happy to open the line for Q&A.

First, we have a question from Lush Mahendrarajah from JPMorgan. We have dynamic flexibility and optionality to invest in segments, organic expansion, M&A, market opportunities and, of course, returns to shareholders as we've covered through today's update. Our business is growing and our business is improving, positioning us for even more success over the years to come. We look forward to a strong fiscal '26 as we continue to grow and advance our business to benefit all of our stakeholders. And with that, operator, we'd be happy to open the line for Q&A.

I've got 3, I think, if that's okay. The first is just on sort of exit rates and current trading. It would be good to get some color on May trading and what you're seeing there. Looking at that chart on Slide 22, it shows fleet on rent pulling away from the '23, '24 lines. Just an update on what you're seeing there? So that's the first question. The second is just on the rental revenue guidance. How are you thinking about the building blocks of that in terms of local, mega projects, rates, time utilization, and the phasing of that recovery through the year? What gets you to the upper end? And then the last is just on your comments around at the start of the presentation on market share and some of the accounts you've been winning in the last year or the last 4 years. When you look at those account wins, I presume they're mostly local, but it would be good to get some color there. How is that working? The backdrop is tough; you're pushing rates and still taking market share. Can you talk about some of the dynamics and how you've been so successful in continuing to drive market share?

Sure. Thanks, Lush. I'm going to do 1 and 3, and Alex will take 2. So simply put in terms of exit rate, May was plus 2% in North America on a billings per day basis. And you mentioned that graph on Slide 22, which you're right, shows that separation in terms of fleet on rent. We're certainly not here calling some change to that low gold nonres market. But nonetheless, we're pleased with that progress. We'd like to post a couple more quarters of that as we move forward. But anyway, 2% on a billings per day basis. I'm glad you asked this question about market share. And I'm actually going to refer to a few slides here. The first one would be Slide 7. In Slide 7, we demonstrate the real progress that we continue to make in terms of adding new customers. And let's be clear. These are B2B accounts. These are businesses that before having an account with us did one of two things: mostly they rented from someone else, and secondly, perhaps they owned equipment rather than rented equipment. Nonetheless, we added 42,000 new customers that generated over $400 million in revenue in the current fiscal year. And there are 118,000 customers that we added over the course of just 3 years; those added $1.4 billion, so for a combined $1.9 billion. When you think about the context to lean into your question a bit as to whether these are mostly local: yes, of course they are local. What happens is we went through a period as a business and as an industry when you had not a whole lot of supply and a very strong end market and the sales force at large was shuffling to say yes and finding availability. When things get a bit tighter, you turn more stones, and that's exactly what this illustrates in terms of the sales force finding more customers—these are wins and winning market share. And of course, when you look at Slide 8, which shows these new locations, these are 401 locations that are only 33 months on average. There's that appendix slide, Slide 43, worth checking out. These businesses grew 19% in total revenue with 24% in rental revenue in the year. There's only one answer as to where that revenue is coming from, and that's ongoing gains. Finally, if you refer to Slide 4 we have chronicled our deciles in the business. The statement is this: we are winning market share at the top, the middle and the smaller end. We are proportionately higher SME compared with some competitors, but it's a core part of the market we like. For example, the top decile: what were 22 customers that made up 10% of our revenue previously are now larger customers. Instead of a median of $20 million, it's $28 million today. The second decile used to be 99 customers; today it's 75—not because we're losing customers but because those customers are getting larger. Those customers went from doing $7 million a year to doing $10 million a year. This demonstrates our ongoing growth and market share in mega projects, while also leaning in to win locally by opening more locations. That's 1 and 3, Lush, and as I said, Alex will do two.

Yes. Let me just give you a little bit of color on the rental revenue guidance. So in the prepared remarks, we referenced flat to plus 4%, so midpoint of 2%. So again, a fairly modest amount of growth driven really predominantly by the specialty business. If you want to weigh specialty versus general tool, you'd find specialty probably in the mid-single-digit range and GT still positive, probably in the lower end of the single-digit range. The U.K. probably looks a little more flattish year-over-year. If you think about bridging that to total revenue, remember, we'll probably have lower sales of used equipment—so that's probably about a $40 million headwind year-over-year. That gives you a pretty good estimate on what total revenue looks like. One last point: seasonality. In the first half of last year, we had about $100 million of hurricane revenue. So it's reasonable to expect the year to be more back half weighted than front half. Also, we're yet to call a sequential strengthening of the nonresidential local construction market, which would also lead to a more back half-weighted year. On what would lead you to the lower versus higher end of the range: at the higher end you'd anticipate an accelerated strengthening of nonresidential construction and increased utilization of our existing fleet. To dimensionalize that, a 2% increase in utilization represents about $350 million of incremental revenue. So if we're utilizing latent capacity to drive growth, that would be positive, and continued rate progression would also help. If you don't see either of those two things materialize, that would likely lead you toward the lower end of the range. Hopefully that gives you some additional color.

And next, we have a question from Katie Fleischer from KeyBanc Capital Markets.

You mentioned some of the cost controls that were put in place this quarter that you executed well on and were able to drive some margin improvement. Can you talk about the opportunity to build upon those and how we should think about the opportunities to strengthen margins going forward?

Sure. I'll hit the first part of the question, and then Brendan will talk at more length around margin progression. So yes, we took some action last year around getting our cost structure more in line. During Sunbelt 3.0, there were significant investments, particularly on the technology stack that required us to add resources for development. As we got through the back end of 3.0, we evaluated whether those investments needed to continue at the same pace or whether we could take some fixed cost structure out, and we did remove some fixed cost. That being said, a lot of the margin progression comes from leveraging the investments made during 3.0—things like MLOs, optimization of repair and maintenance activity. That's where you see leverage come through, and I'll let Brendan talk in more detail about that.

I think Alex has hit it. I'll double down by saying this was part of the plan as we entered Sunbelt 4.0. We clearly outlined the three steps. Some of the G&A activity Alex mentioned is what you expect to go through a build period and then a run period. The overarching theme is this: from an SG&A standpoint, we have in place the SG&A level to build on top of as our expectations and ambitions around Sunbelt 4.0, as we continue to grow the business. We doubled the size of specialty over 3.0 and put in infrastructure to do that. Now that's in place and we move forward. The efficiencies I mentioned in the prepared remarks include delivery cost recovery; in those markets we reduced outside hauler spend by 40% in the four MLOs. I appreciate that's a small segment, but it matters. Operationally, of the roughly $1 billion delivery denominator in North America, about $250 million is wages for our skilled drivers and there's almost a matching spend on third-party haulers. We know there are embedded efficiencies, but you have to marry technology with operations to extract them, and that's what we're seeing. This is not an overnight thing—this is margin progression over the course of 4.0. It's a good start in year one in a moderated growth environment. We're confident about progression through 4.0.

One final point: the progression of the locations we added. Remember, we added 401 locations over 3.0. Year 1 EBITDA margin for those locations is around 32%. When we exited 2025, that margin was closer to 49%. So as we scale and mature those greenfield locations, we expect margins to move more in line with broader group margins. There's probably 200 to 300 basis points more upside as we scale those and we'll continue to invest to the tune of north of 60 locations this year. Continued progression of greenfield businesses is another area to drive significant margin potential.

Okay. Great. Just another quick follow-up. You mentioned that as specialty becomes a larger part of the business we can expect stronger performance. How do you think about the long-term split between general rent and specialty? And will your M&A strategy reflect a greater emphasis on specialty?

Yes. If you look at the 401 locations we discussed, that cohort was biased to specialty. From an M&A standpoint, we actively look in the specialty landscape and it's a robust market. Over the last four years we've more than doubled specialty while growing general tool; specialty is now a bit over 30% of total business and we would expect that to continue to migrate higher over time. How fast it moves depends on end-market dynamics—if local nonres returns strongly, GT will grow as well. But designed properly, specialty captures a very broad TAM and will likely grow as a share of the group. Over time you could see it move closer to the 50% mark, but that will take time and depend on the broader market.

And from Morgan Stanley, we now have Annelies Vermeulen with our next question.

Brendan, Alex, I have 3 as well, please. First, coming back to market share gains—you've talked a lot about the 42,000 new customers you added in the year. Do you think you also took share with existing customers in terms of share of wallet relative to other rental players? And as part of that, did you benefit from any disruption at some competitors in recent months? If so, can that market share progression continue at the same pace? Secondly, on locations, Alex mentioned north of 60 locations this year—how do you think about the mix between greenfields and bolt-ons? Could we see more bolt-on activity if valuations normalize given the free cash flow you expect to generate? Lastly, on potential tax relief in the proposed bill, if bonus depreciation rules were enacted, that would benefit free cash flow—anything else we should consider if that bill goes ahead in terms of what it could mean for your numbers?

Annelies, short answer on market share is yes—we are gaining share with existing customers as well as winning many new accounts. We're winning across deciles: top, middle and small customers. I won't comment on competitor disruption specifically, but industry consolidation over time is positive for the sector. On the 60 locations, the number Alex cited are greenfields—we plan similar greenfield adds this year. Bolt-on M&A activity would be incremental to that. Our bolt-on pipeline is robust; we completed five acquisitions last fiscal year and remain disciplined on valuation. We've held to our valuation metrics and many potential targets haven't transacted at acceptable prices. We're comfortable waiting for the right opportunities. In the meantime we'll continue organic growth and greenfield rollouts. On the relocation of capital and deployment: while we look to acquire attractive businesses where valuations make sense, we don't take a short-term view—acquisitions are long-term decisions and we will act when the fit and pricing meet our criteria.

I'll take the bonus depreciation question and give some color on tax more broadly. In terms of GAAP tax and statutory tax, we typically anticipate around a 25%–26% statutory rate. Our cash tax rate, because of significant depreciation, is around 34%. If the big bill reinstated 100% bonus depreciation, that would be worth around 10 percentage points, taking cash tax from roughly 34% to about 24%—around a $200 million cash impact. That is a fairly material upside. In setting guidance we assumed the current tax regime, so any reinstatement of 100% bonus depreciation would be upside to our guidance.

Annelies, on the broader economic impact of bonus depreciation: aside from the immediate fiscal effects, it would also incentivize capital investment in manufacturing and production, which could drive construction and related activity. That could be positive for skilled trades and demand for our services, but of course details depend on the legislative process and its final form.

Just coming back to the market share gains briefly: the pace of adding new customers—how much of that do you think has been driven by the launch of 4.0 and do you think that pace can continue over the coming year and years ahead?

Yes. The 42,000 customers are accounts we've opened and transacted with. There's also a pipeline of accounts opened that haven't yet rented—some will convert quickly. Over the last four years we've added 140,000 new accounts, and the 42,000 in the first year of 4.0 is consistent with that trend. The cost of acquiring these accounts this year—absent bolt-on acquisitions—has been attractive. We have confidence in continued market share gains and in the broad opportunity set: the market is large and there is still significant room to expand rental penetration across many categories. So yes, we expect customer additions to remain a meaningful growth avenue.

And we now move on to a question from Will Kirkness from Bernstein.

I have a couple of clarification questions. First, looking at rental revenue growth in the fourth quarter, general tools was plus 1% from minus 1% in Q3. With the reallocations that have happened, could you give us a comparable number as you did with specialty? Second, on utilization: you gave the uplift of a couple of percentage points equals about $350 million in revenue. Is that roughly how far away you feel you are from a 'good' utilization level, or is there more to go? Third, on the accounting side, there looks to have been a reallocation in central costs and also to U.K. profitability—can you explain that?

Let me start and then Brendan will follow up. On the Q4 rental revenue reallocations, the reclassification shouldn't materially affect your comparability. Film and TV have always been part of the specialty business operationally; the difference is how we reported it historically. Oil and gas historically sat in general tool for internal reporting. So there isn't a reallocation issue in terms of comparability across the years. On the reallocation of support costs, that predominantly affects North American reporting where a lot of central costs are held in the support office. The U.K. business largely has its own support costs, so U.K. profitability isn't materially affected. We tried to allocate costs to reflect contributions to each reporting segment but this would not have affected U.K. margin materially. And Will, what was your second question on utilization?

On utilization: we feel we're reaching an inflection point year-on-year. There's some latent capacity that we can exercise, which gives us flexibility and optionality. That latent capacity lets us improve utilization and realize revenue without immediately stepping up fleet investment. Across the industry we've seen a better balance of supply and demand which supports rates. Regarding the Q4 general tool figure, the inclusion of oil and gas and film and TV has been reflected across the quarters shown; Canada had pockets of strength and drag from residential in Ontario in particular. Broadly, the U.S. and Canada don't show large differences in the trend—you're seeing the minus 1% to plus 1% type moves across territories.

We're now moving to a question from Arnaud Lehmann from Bank of America.

Firstly, a clarification on Q4 rental revenue: published is plus 1% and then on a billing day basis plus 3%—is this just a working day effect or anything else? Secondly, on your fiscal '26 CapEx guidance—is it all replacement at this stage or is there any growth included? At the midpoint of about $2 billion, is any growth CapEx included? Third, more broadly, with less growth and less CapEx but more free cash flow generation for '26, what's your mindset? Are you disappointed by slower growth or happy about more free cash flow? If growth comes back, will you ramp CapEx quickly even if that would reduce free cash flow?

I'll start with the last point. You run the business to the market conditions. At our current scale and margin, the optionality and flexibility of this business is powerful. We generated near-record free cash flow with significant CapEx invested in the year. For context, in fiscal 2021 we generated $1.823 billion free cash flow with much lower CapEx in an unusual COVID year; this year we generated $1.79 billion while investing about $2.5 billion. That highlights the strength of our cash generation. We're comfortable executing the $1.5 billion buyback in full while maintaining leverage in our 1x to 2x target range. We're not disappointed—it's a function of end market activity. If demand increases, whether from mega projects or specialty growth like power, HVAC, or other segments, we will ramp CapEx quickly. Lead times are short for many core products—60 to 120 days—so we can respond. Regarding your first question on billing days, yes, the discrepancy is just a working day effect. On fiscal '26 CapEx, it's a tale of two worlds: GT is largely replacement; specialty includes replacement and pockets of growth. Also remember growth can be funded by redeploying existing fleet—growth disguises replacement. So our plans include replacement and targeted growth where it makes sense.

And from Redburn Atlantic, we now have Neil Tyler with our next question.

Two questions, please. First, on capital allocation and M&A: you mentioned price has been a sticking point for acquisitions. If prices were to come down, would you be prepared to bring acquired assets and branches into the business even if demand hadn't improved much? And would you mirror that with a reduction in your own CapEx to drive up utilization? Second, have your conversations with customers altered at all since the events of early April and the uncertainty they created? How have those conversations changed in terms of planning and outlook?

On M&A, yes, if valuations normalize to our criteria, we would be prepared to acquire businesses even if short-term demand were modest—acquisitions are long-term decisions for us, not a six-month trade. Many targets are undercapitalized; we often bring capital, scale, and growth to those businesses. We evaluate each deal on location, proximity to our network, specialty lines, culture, reputation and valuation. On potentially reducing our organic CapEx in such a scenario, it depends on the deal—generally our acquisitions bring assets and growth, and we wouldn't make a decision purely to manipulate utilization in the short term. Regarding customer conversations: with larger customers and owners in the mega project space, conversations haven't materially changed—pipelines remain strong in data centers, semiconductors, LNG and other areas. We continue to see expanding pipelines. For local customers, some scraping for work persists and local nonres is a bit softer; we monitor that closely. Overall, larger project customers remain engaged and project pipelines continue to be strong.

And from Barclays, we now have James Rose with our next question.

Two questions, please. First, on general tool margins versus specialty margins: the EBITDA gap is about 6 points at the moment (54% to 48%). Is that a sensible long-term gap, or is there more upside in general tool versus specialty? Second, specialty ROI is 30%—is that a sustainable level throughout 4.0?

Fundamentally, specialty is less capital intensive and therefore tends to have a lower EBITDA margin but a higher operating margin and higher ROI because the capital base is smaller. General tool may show higher EBITDA margin but more depreciation and capital intensity, so ROI can be lower. Specialty assets often have longer useful lives—generators, load banks, chillers—so capital intensity and book values behave differently and support higher ROI. Maintaining specialty ROI in the current environment is feasible; you'll see puts and takes year-to-year because some specialty verticals are lumpier. For example, this year we saw strong growth in power and HVAC, climate control and industrial tool, while scaffolding declined. But the structural runway for specialty remains attractive and supports higher returns over time.

And we're moving on to a question from Allen Wells from Jefferies.

A few for me, please. First, remind us roughly what portion of your North American business is exposed to mega projects today and how that's trended year-on-year. Second, on specialty: Q4 growth would be 8% without reclassification which compares to 9% earlier—there's a slight slowdown and it runs below your largest peer who's closer to 15%. Can you color where the slowdown or relative underperformance is—end market related or vertical exposure? Third, any comments on rates—how are you thinking about rate progression into FY '26 given mixed commentary from others on rate discipline?

At a high level, roughly half our business is nonconstruction and half is construction. In recent years, about 30% of construction starts would meet our definition of mega projects ($400 million and above). That doesn't translate to 30% of put-in-place spend yet because of timing and ramp; we enjoy outsized share in that segment and expect it to grow as projects begin and enter planning. In terms of specialty slowdown, it's important to recognize specialty is diverse and can be lumpy across verticals. This year we had strong performances in power and HVAC (+20%), climate (+10%), industrial tool (+15%), trench (+13%), ground protection (+11%), temporary fencing (+150%), and temporary walls (+60%). At the same time scaffolding was down 17–18%—these variances reflect project timings and specific vertical cycles. Specialty's broad TAM and diversity are strengths. On rates, we expect continued progression. We're a business services company, not a commodity. Our asset quality is high, breadth of product and service is wide, and our national scale and customer service allow us to capture value. Local competitors can't match our breadth or national delivery and service capability, so we expect to continue to see rate progression supported by discipline in fleet capacity and healthy balance sheets across the industry.

To add on rates, we continue to see rate progression and expect it to continue due to structural industry discipline, our asset quality, broad product portfolio, customer service, logistics capability and scale to support national accounts. Those factors allow us to capture value beyond pure equipment pricing.

And our final question for today comes from Carl Raynsford from Berenberg.

Three clarifications, please. First, on your growth guidance of 0% to 4%—can you give color on how the U.S., Canada and U.K. fit into that? Second, on used equipment sales: are you able to give any guidance around used equipment sales versus the 2025 number of $470 million based on current visibility? Third, I see cost down around 6% or 7% in North America general tool but roughly flat to slightly down in the U.K. Is there any structural issue in the U.K. around the ability to drive efficiencies like you had in the U.S.?

On the 0% to 4% guidance, directionally we've said specialty is likely to be mid-single-digit growth, GT lower single-digit, and the U.K. more flattish. We view the U.S. and Canada together as North America; Canada has some specific exposures—film and TV softness and more heavy exposure to residential construction (Ontario in particular) which has been softer—so the U.S. should be a bit stronger than Canada and will be overweighted in the 0% to 4% growth range. On used equipment sales, could you repeat your question—did you mean guidance versus the $470 million level?

On used equipment sales and proceeds: we planned proceeds around $475 million. We saw residual values come down over the course of the year and that flattened in recent months; if history is a guide, that tends to normalize. We'll update as we go through the quarters. On the U.K., Phil and the team are focused on driving operational efficiency and sustainable returns. The U.K. has improved materially in service and operations; the focus now is achieving acceptable returns and sustaining them. Part of that plan includes reviewing and reconfiguring the cost base, including G&A. The U.K. is cash generative and we have a clear plan to improve returns over time.

And that concludes today's Q&A session. I'd like to hand the call back to the management team for any additional or closing remarks.

Yes. Thank you, everyone, for taking the time this morning and allowing us to go through our growth in the year, the real resilience that we have in this business, illustrating our advancement in all our Sunbelt 4.0 actionable components and, of course, the cash. So thank you for your time, and we look forward to speaking with you at Q1.

This now concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.