Avis Budget Group, Inc.
Q4 2014 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 19 Feb 2015

[Operator:]

Good morning and welcome to the Avis Budget Group Fourth Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, for opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the meeting over to Mr. Neal Goldner, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

[Neal H. Goldner:]

Thank you, Stephanie. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. On the call with me are Ron Nelson, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and David Wyshner, our Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we discuss our fourth quarter result, I would like to remind everyone that the company will be discussing forward-looking information that involves risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking information. Important risks, assumptions, and other factors that could cause future results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements are specified in the company's earnings release and other periodic filings with the SEC, which are available on the Investor Relations' section of our website at avisbudgetgroup.com. We have provided slides to accompany this morning's conference call, which can be accessed on our website as well. Our comments will also focus on our results, excluding certain items and other non-GAAP financial measures that are reconciled to our GAAP numbers in our press release and in the earnings call presentation of our website. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Avis Budget Group's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Ron Nelson.

[Ronald L. Nelson:]

Thanks, Neal and good morning. Well, 2014 was nothing short of an outstanding year for our company. We delivered on financial performance, executed on strategic initiatives, and allocated capital in a reasonable and return-enhancing way. And along the way, we laid the foundation for continued growth throughout the cycle and reported the highest adjusted EBITDA and earnings per share in our company's history. Here are some of the more notable elements of that performance. We increased volume and pricing in North America for the second consecutive year. We continued to strengthen our international presence, led by another year of substantial growth for Budget in Europe. We grew our Payless brand significantly, adding more than 60 new locations in North America, more than doubling its revenue, and increasing its pricing substantially. We expanded Zipcar's presence to additional campuses, cities and countries, and started making Zipcars available for one-way transactions. We elevated our investment in the people and technology that power our business, spending more on talent and systems development than we have ever spent in the past. We expanded our global footprint by acquiring our Budget licensees in Southern California, Las Vegas, Edmonton and Portugal. And finally, we returned cash to our shareholders, repurchasing $300 million of stock over the course of the year, with $90 million in the fourth quarter alone at an average price of $53 a share. And despite what could best be described as an uneven tone in the market, we finished the year on a positive note, reporting record fourth quarter results with every segment showing year-over-year growth in adjusted EBITDA. Clearly, we achieved much in 2014 and entered 2015 stronger than ever. It's worth a minute, however, to discuss some of the trends we saw in the fourth quarter, how they're shaping up as we roll through the first, and then talk about what they mean for 2015. The best place to start is North America. The fourth quarter marked the fourth consecutive quarter of positive volume and pricing in our largest region. Pricing was up over 1% in constant currency, even after a 30 basis point mix effect from the growth of Payless. We again achieved price increases across all of our brands, both on- and off-airport and in both leisure and commercial rentals. Despite these gains, pricing was a little more difficult to come by, as fleets in the non-holiday period seemed a little out of sync with demand, more than likely due to the September-October volatility in the used car market and the effect of recalls being cycled back into the use fleets. On the sales side, we continue to be true to our commitment to improve pricing in the commercial market. During the quarter, we extended 330 commercial contracts with approximately 75% renewed at either flat or increased rates, some 25% better than that same stat in 2013. But given the seasonal nature of our business, the more moderate pricing gains we achieved in the fourth quarter needs to be looked at in the context of the full year. For the full year, we grew revenue per day by almost 2.5 points in constant currency, reflecting several factors. First, we initiated 15 across-the-board price increases in 2014 with Budget and Avis always participating. Some of these price increases met with better success than others. All of them probably cost us some volume, but we delivered on our commitment to take action to strengthen our realized pricing. Second, we continued our strategic push to accelerate growth on our most profitable sales channels, customer segments, and car classes. These efforts, particularly the 6% increase in the number of non-core vehicles in our fleet, all had a positive effect on pricing. And third, we deployed the first phase of our demand fleet pricing yield management tool in more than 100 markets over the course of 2014. As we've noted before, the real benefit from this first phase of DFP is our improved ability to change prices multiple times a day across all car classes, literally making millions of pricing changes daily based on the algorithms that we've developed. This tool has had a disproportionally positive effect on Budget pricing, utilization, and volume, as you would expect, given its lesser reliance on contracted business. All of these efforts contributed to our pricing gains, whether the market followed us or not, and we expect that they will continue to contribute going forward. We also saw strong volume in North America in the fourth quarter, augmented by the growth of our Payless brand and our Budget licensee acquisitions. Overall, we saw our rental volume increase 6% in North America with commercial activity up 5% and leisure volume up 7%. The Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday periods were particularly robust and we continue to see the benefits of our initiatives to grow faster in areas of the business we consider most attractive. To be more specific, International inbound revenue, our single most profitable customer (6

[David B. Wyshner:]

Thanks, Ron, and good morning everyone. Today I'd like to discuss our full year and fourth quarter results, our fleet, our new global effectiveness initiative, our balance sheet and cash flow, and our outlook. My comments will focus on our results excluding certain items, which are reconciled to our GAAP numbers in our press release and in the earnings call presentation on our website. As Ron said, 2014 was a record year for our company with full-year revenue increasing 7% to $8.5 billion and adjusted EBITDA growing 14% to $876 million. Our margins expanded by 60 basis points to 10.3% and our earnings per share were $2.96, a year-over-year increase of 35%. For the fourth quarter, revenue increased 2% to a record $1.9 billion, primarily due to higher rental volumes and increased pricing in North America. Adjusted EBITDA grew 13% to $129 million with every segment reporting a year-over-year improvement. For those analysts who compare company margins and valuations based on adjusted EBITDA before deferred financing fees and stock-based compensation, our 2014 adjusted EBITDA would be $51 million higher or $927 million. Revenue in our North America segment grew 7% to $1.2 billion. Volume increased 6% in the quarter, while pricing was up 1% and up almost 1.5 percentage points excluding Payless and currency effects. Ancillary revenue per day grew 5%, driven by higher damage waiver and insurance product penetration, as well as our in-car SiriusXM satellite radio offering. For the fourth consecutive quarter, we saw positive volume and pricing in both our leisure and commercial segments. Leisure revenue increased 8% in the quarter with volume up 7% and pricing up 1 percentage point. Commercial revenue grew 6%, including a 5% increase in volume and about 0.5 percentage point increase in pricing. North America adjusted EBITDA rose 9% year-over-year, primarily due to increased pricing and higher volume, partially offset by 4% higher per-unit fleet costs. Revenue in our International segment declined 7% in the fourth quarter, but was unchanged in constant currency. Rental demand was soft in many countries, reflecting macroeconomic conditions. Our International volume declined slightly, pricing was down 3% in constant currency, and ancillary revenue per day increased 13%. International adjusted EBITDA grew 17% year-over-year to $56 million in Q4, and margins improved 210 basis points due to reduced vehicle insurance costs, continued productivity improvements, and utilization increases across Europe. In our Truck Rental segment, volume increased 3% and revenue was unchanged despite a 10% reduction in our fleet. Adjusted EBITDA increased $5 million in the fourth quarter driven by lower maintenance and damage costs for our refreshed truck fleet. As we've been discussing for several quarters, the restructuring of our Truck Rental segment was designed to produce a more profitable, albeit smaller, business. And the earnings growth in the fourth quarter is a perfect example of that. Finally, our corporate and other expenses increased $5 million year-over-year primarily due to mark-to-market requirements related to a portion of our stock-based compensation grants. I'd like to take a few moments to talk about North America fleet costs. In the fourth quarter, per-unit fleet costs increased approximately 4% to $317 per month. For the full year, North America fleet costs were $313 per unit per month, an increase of approximately 5% from 2013 levels. There are a number of dynamics likely to affect our fleet cost in 2015. For starters, we are expecting the higher supply of off-lease vehicles and relatively strong new car sales to put incremental pressure on residual values. On the other side, we expect used car financing will continue to be available to consumers at attractive rates, which will lend support to new and used car values. We expect the level of vehicle recalls to subside a bit in 2015, although we anticipate that recall volumes will be higher than historical norms for the foreseeable future. We therefore predict that used car values measured as a percentage of purchase price will decline approximately 2 points to 75% this year. And as a result for 2015, we expect per-unit fleet cost to increase 2% to 5% to $320 to $330 per month. In addition, we have reduced the percentage of risk vehicles in our fleet from 65% in 2014 to approximately 50% this year, which has the effect of reducing our exposure to unexpected movements in residual values. We expect to realize incremental benefits from our fleet management system to optimize the timing, the in-fleeting and de-fleeting of our vehicles. We'll take advantage of the seasonality of the used car market and variability in residual value performance by make, model and region. We will continue to cascade cars from Avis and Budget to our Payless brand as well as acquire low mileage, used cars for Payless whenever possible. And finally, we increased our use of alternative disposition channels to more than 25% of our risk vehicles in 2014 and we expect non-auction channels to represent an even higher percentage of our risk car sales in 2015. Before moving on to the balance sheet and outlook, I want to take a minute to talk about a global effectiveness initiative we launched last year. We call it Transformation 2015 or T15 (27

[Operator:]

Thank you. Our first question comes from Mr. John Healy from Northcoast Research. You may ask your question at this time.

[John M. Healy:]

Good morning, guys. I wanted to ask kind of a little bit of a clarification question. The guidance on North America volumes of 5% to 7%, coming off a strong year you've had this year. I was hoping you could give us some perspective in terms of what assumptions have gone into that 5% to 7% growth target? And maybe the contribution that Southern California or the growth in Payless locations and things along those lines are having to that number?

[David B. Wyshner:]

Sure, John. Good morning. We are seeing enplanements and airline capacity increasing in the 2% to 3%, 2% to 4% range based on some of the capacity runs that are out there. We're expecting Southern California to contribute a little over a point of incremental growth and that's part of our expectation. And we are expecting to continue to have outsized growth in the Payless brand. So, those are really some of the things that are driving growth. That's a little bit above what we would see for enplanements and airline capacity.

[John M. Healy:]

Great. And then I wanted to ask, Ron, your comments that the competitors have been behaving a little bit better in 2015 than you saw in 2014 in terms of following on pricing. Can you maybe talk to that a little bit more in maybe a little bit more detail?

[Ronald L. Nelson:]

Sure. We've put in, I think, four price increases, John, since the first of the year. Two of them were met with what I would call unprecedented adoption rates in the $70s and $80s, and two of them had to be rolled back. That's a far better batting average than we had on price increases throughout all of 2014. So, I think that all the signals from our competitors are that they're moving to raise prices. They have the same cost pressures that we do. Certainly they have the FX headwinds and they have fleet costs probably in greater abundance than we do. So, I do think that you can draw some encouragement from what's happened in the first few weeks in terms of pricing. And as we look past Presidents' Weekend, pricing has been improving in all the brands quite honestly across both leisure and particularly in leisure and in commercial. And so, I think that's a good trend. And one that's certainly better than we saw last year.

[John M. Healy:]

Great. Thank you, guys.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Chris Woronka from Deutsche Bank. You may ask your question at this time.

[Chris J. Woronka:]

Hey, good morning, guys. I wanted to ask you a little bit about the International segment and kind of your – I guess your longer-term strategy and goals there. And you've talked about expanding Zipcar and then potentially making some other acquisitions. How do we add that up or square that with – I think you've also talked about some cost initiatives and some realignments, so just maybe if you could give us a high level overview of your longer-term goals internationally? Thanks.

[Ronald L. Nelson:]

Well, I mean, first of all, you got to start from the standpoint that we do believe that the economies in Europe will turn around, and that this is a viable market. It is a far less consolidated market than the U.S., as we've talked before. It's still somewhere – 35% of the European market is independent. There's probably far greater acquisition opportunities in Europe than there are remaining in North America. And I think you can go country-by-country and there are different reasons why each country is doing better or worse than another. But taken in aggregate, none of them are doing particularly well, and they all seem to be suffering from some economic malaise. Now hopefully what's going on with the ECB will provide some incremental stimulus to the economy and drive incremental demand. We're not counting on it. But look, I think, we remain enthusiastic about the long-term viability of that market and our ability to grow that business. And certainly all the things that we control on the cost side, we're doing everything we can to optimize those costs. I think the initiatives that David's talking about are really aimed at running the business as a global enterprise as opposed to a regional enterprise. I think we talked about it at the investor meeting last year. We've got five call centers across the world. We've got three different shared services center. We probably have four or five different financial reporting centers. And all of those things are really ripe for consolidation and integration into a single global infrastructure. And so, I think as we – these things take time and obviously it starts with making sure that your processes and your IT systems are consistent across the globe. But by the way, we do everything the same way, almost, in every part of the world, so that isn't such an enormous hurdle. But I do think that these things will contribute a fair amount of operating expense savings over the course of the next three to four years as we consolidate them. Other than improving the margins of all of our business, I don't think they have anything to do with revenue or opportunity in the international markets. Probably more than you wanted to hear. It's an important topic for us.

[Chris J. Woronka:]

Yeah. No, it's great color, Ron. Thanks. And just a quick follow up, as it pertains to the U.S., do you think that as we go through the year, does there need to be an improvement in utilization rates for pricing to improve or do you think it's more about the competitor actions and other things? I mean could we really see meaningful pricing growth with utilization flat or only slightly better?

[Ronald L. Nelson:]

Yeah, I think utilization improvement is a fall out. It's a consequence of what needs to happen. I mean, what really needs to happen is that fleets need to get in sync with demand. And once fleets get in sync with demand, then I think pricing becomes within the control of what the competitors want to do with pricing. I think when you think back over the past year, we had one very large competitor that was in financial disarray. They were admittedly over fleeted and we had recalls that played havoc with fleet levels. And even in that environment, the industry, and in particular us, got some fairly attractive pricing gains. And I think all those things – I think people are going to get their arms around recalls. I think our competitor is obviously on its way to solving their financial issues and solving their fleet issues. And it is, for me, what gives me confidence that the business and industry fundamentals are still really good. And if we can achieve the kind of performance and things that we did in the last 18 months in an environment that was as I described, then I feel pretty good about the next 12 months to 24 months.

[Chris J. Woronka:]

Okay. Very good. Thanks, Ron.

[Operator:]

Our next question comes from Mr. Brian Johnson from Barclays. You may ask your question.

[Brian Arthur Johnson:]

Good morning. And just following up on that, about a year ago you presented us with an earnings bridge at your Investor Day, getting to $1 billion of EBITDA in 2015. You're now guiding $900 million to $1 billion. Could you walk us through what's changed since then and maybe quantify some of the buckets? There's a bucket on volume growth, on cost synergies, around fleet costs, and then offset by fleet costs and inflation? You have the FX headwind. That's $40 million, but M&A for $35 million tailwind, so I'm wondering about the rest of the wok (46

[David B. Wyshner:]

Sure, Brian. Good morning. Clearly, some of the things you mentioned are the drivers here. It starts with the $40 million impact year-over-year related to foreign currency, which also impacted us last year as well. So the impact on 2015 versus where we were a year ago, it's actually a little greater than $40 million. I think fleet costs have been a little bit more of a challenge than we expected at that point in time. The international macro environment, both in Europe and Australia, has really not improved at all and I think, and in fact, maybe a little bit weaker in Australia and as a result that's been a negative. And then as we talked about in our opening comments today, we have included in our 2015 forecast, investments for the longer term health of our business and our brands, whether it's some brand marketing, some – the extension of Zipcar or the investment in connected car technology. Those are – those were there to some extent a year ago. I think the amount that we are planning to invest this year is a bit greater. And so, when you put that litany of items together, we're only partially offset from the increased EBITDA from the acquisitions that we've completed. That's really what's driving us to have $1 billion at the high-end of our forecast for this year.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Our next question comes from Mr. Chris Agnew from MKM Partners. You may ask your question.

[Christopher James Wallace Agnew:]

Thanks very much. Good morning. I wanted to touch on International inbounds and just get a sense, what are the assumptions you've built with respect to International inbound and into 2015? Can you give us, what's the mix of International inbound between business and leisure? Thank you.

[David B. Wyshner:]

Sure, Chris. Good morning. The assumptions with International inbound are that overall, it should probably be a wash, but it will impact different areas differently. eurozone to eurozone, we don't really see an impact other than with respect to the UK, since so many of the countries are euro-denominated. Switzerland is clearly going to be a tough environment. And our guess is that transatlantic volume will shift more toward East to West than it will be from – sorry, from West to East, it will be more volume from North America into Europe than from Europe into North America, given how exchange rates have moved. But as I said, given our global presence, I think this is going to be primarily a wash. And with respect to the second part of your question, I don't have the specific numbers as to how International inbound breaks down between commercial and leisure, but I'd expect it to be maybe a little bit heavier on the commercial side than our overall business, call it 60

[Operator:]

Thank you. Our next question comes from Anjaneya Singh from Credit Suisse. Your question is up at this time. Anjaneya K. Singh - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker) Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I was wondering if you can delve into fleet capacity a little bit after the weaker pricing at Q4 due to these issues. I'm wondering how you view the fleet capacity in the industry year-to-date and for 2015 how that might impact your 2% pricing assumption, particularly as one of your competitors continues to dispose of a lot of fleet through the first half of 2015?

[Ronald L. Nelson:]

Yeah. I'm not sure capacity is the right word that I would use. I mean, I think if you look back over Q4, the area where I think pricing suffered was really in the shoulder periods between the holiday period, the holiday, Thanksgiving and Christmas. And I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that everybody was cycling recalls back into their fleet. And if you were heavily risk-oriented, you were probably hanging on to more cars so that you weren't selling them into a softer used car market in Q4 and selling them and hanging on to them to sell them in the first quarter. I think some of that carried over into January. January pricing looked a lot like December pricing and I think that – January pricing is always kind of soft and fleets are always a little bit out of sync with demand. But as we've seen things tighten up, going past the Presidents Weekend and into March, pricing seems to come back. The other thing that I think we've noticed is that the manufacturers were not selling a lot of cars in Q4. And so they're starting to sell cars going into the program cars that we put back to them or others put back to them. They're starting to sell those in the first quarter. That's actually a little encouraging because as more and more volume comes into the market, we're actually seeing a relative stability in the used car market despite increased volume. So these things are inherently unpredictable. But I am feeling like, even though one of our competitors probably does have some more cars to get rid of and the manufacturers have some cars to sell, it looks as though the market is going to be able to absorb those without any impact on where the pricing water level is currently. And I would hope that probably by the – I mean, certainly by the summer that everybody's got their fleet levels in sync with demand, and that has a positive impact on pricing. Anjaneya K. Singh - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker) Okay. I appreciate the color there. And, I guess, on a similar topic, if you could discuss fleet utilization a little bit, what were the factors driving it higher in International? Was it primarily attributable to your yield management system or would you call out some other factors? How sustainable is that trajectory for 2015? And what is baked into your guidance for fleet utilization by region for 2015?

[Ronald L. Nelson:]

Yeah. No, I think the fleet utilization gains that we got in International are simply about getting arms around fleet management in what was a fairly disparate set of fleet management systems and fleet management processes. The utilization gains had a lot to do with just simply managing the fleet better and getting our arms around how people buy fleet and how people sell fleet and how they move it through the whole supply chain. And in particular, there was a real effort put on shortening the amount of downtime for out-of-service cars when they required maintenance. And that actually helped utilization fairly significantly. So I see the utilization gains continuing to improve in Europe. I think you're talking in percentage points, certainly single-digits. I mean, utilization is really hard to move once you get to a steady state. I mean, if utilization is up by a point or two, that's a fairly significant number. But the utilization gains in Europe were real. I think they will continue over the course of the next couple of years and that'll provide some real benefits.

[Operator:]

Our final question comes from Afua Ahwoi from Goldman Sachs. You may ask your question.

[Afua A. Ahwoi:]

Thank you. Good morning. Two questions for me, first on the impact of Payless, I know you provided the impact on volume. Could you remind us what it is on pricing? I know in the past you've given the impact of Payless as 2% on your constant price in number. And then maybe if you can just discuss a little bit the impetus behind deciding to lower your fleet cost guidance to 2% to 5% from 3% to 6%, when you last gave an update. I understand the Manheim is much better, it's been stronger over the last couple of months. But how confident are you that those levels hold and it doesn't get worse? Thank you.

[David B. Wyshner:]

Sure. Good morning, Afua. With respect to Payless, the impact we've anniversaried the acquisition of Payless. So the only thing that's driving Payless to impact our percentage growth in pricing is its faster growth or the mix effect. And that should be somewhere in the maybe 0.5 point drag on pricing growth this year, or maybe a little bit less. And I do want to make sure we're very clear that it's a mix effect. The results we've had for Payless itself have had some very significant pricing increases year-over-year, but the rapid growth of Payless is creating a mix effect that's likely to be in the 0.25 point to 0.5 point range. In terms of the one point change in our fleet cost guidance for North America, I think part of it's due to foreign exchange and the impact that Canadian dollar has there. And part of it is definitely due to the fact that the used car market residual values had been stronger over the last two, three months than we'd expected. The first month and a half of this year has been better than we initially expected and we've been pleased by the strength of the used car market. It's nothing huge in the scheme of things, but I'd call it within the range of what we would've expected but toward the better end of that range, which is helpful. And as Ron just mentioned, I think we're hopeful that that will continue to extend going forward as well. We're taking advantage of it and we're continuing to use our optimization tools to maximize the values we're getting out of cars and even doing some things in terms of which regions we're selling vehicles in that we haven't done in the past to take advantages of differences by region that have appeared over the last few months. So I think it's a combination of foreign exchange, a healthy used car market compared to our expectations, and actions that we are taking allowed us to take a point out of our guidance there.

[Operator:]

Thank you. For closing remarks, the call is being turned back to Mr. Ronald Nelson. Please go ahead, sir.

[Ronald L. Nelson:]

Thanks. So before we close, let me reiterate what I think are the key points from today's call. 2014 was a record year, driven by strong volume and pricing in North America. Our four pillar strategy has been the driver of our success and will continue to be the foundation for our future growth. 2015 will be another record year, despite currency and macroeconomic headwinds, and we will continue to return cash to shareholders through share repurchases. With a full investor calendar this quarter starting with the JPMorgan Investor Conference next week, we hope to see many of you during our trips. And with that, I want to thank you for your time and your interest in our company.

[Operator:]

This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect at this time. Again, this does conclude today's conference call. You may disconnect at this time. Thank you.