Hertz Global Holdings, Inc.
Q1 2018 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 8 May 2018

[Operator:]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Hertz Global Holdings First Quarter 2018 Earnings Call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. I would like to remind you that today's call is being recorded by the company. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Leslie Hunziker. Please go ahead.

[Leslie M. Hunziker:]

Good morning, everyone. By now you should all have our press release and associated financial information. We've also provided slides to accompany our conference call that can be accessed on our website. I want to remind you that certain statements made on this call contain forward-looking information within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of performance and by their nature are subject to inherent uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially. Any forward-looking information relayed on this call speaks only as of this date, and the company undertakes no obligation to update that information to reflect changed circumstances. Additional information concerning these statements is contained in our earnings press release and in the Risk Factors and Forward-looking Statement section of our 2017 Form 10-K and our first quarter 2018 Form-10-Q. Copies of these filings are available from the SEC and on the Hertz website. Today, we'll use certain non-GAAP financial measures, all of which are reconciled with GAAP numbers in our press release and related Form 8-K, which are posted on our website. We believe that our profitability and performance is better demonstrated using these non-GAAP metrics. Our call today focuses on Hertz Global Holdings, Inc., the publicly traded company. Results for Hertz Corporation are materially the same as Hertz Global Holdings. On the call this morning, we have Kathy Marinello, Hertz's CEO; and Tom Kennedy, our Chief Financial Officer. Now, I'll turn the call over to Kathy.

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

Thank you, Leslie, and good morning, everyone. We ended 2018 a much stronger company than one year ago, with positive underlying revenue momentum. Our investments and initiatives in the U.S. operational turnaround are gaining traction. In each of the last three quarters, worldwide revenue has increased year-over-year. In the U.S. in the fourth quarter, we reversed the declining trend and continued that progress into the recent first quarter where we increased revenue by 5% versus a year ago. Add a 430 basis point increase in utilization to the top line growth, and you've got a strong improvement in revenue per unit, a measure of how effectively we're managing our assets. The favorable RPU reflects disciplined fleet capacity, more robust demand for our brands, and better base rental rates. These positive trends are a testimony that we're on the right track with our strategies to enhance fleet, service, brands and technologies. The early progress is motivating for our employees and being recognized by our customers. Clearly, this is only a start. There are significant opportunities that we're pursuing through well-placed investments, stronger execution, better processes, and a fortified leadership team. As you know, this is an end-to-end revitalization plan in the U.S. Our priority was getting our product right. By midyear last year, we had right-sized the fleet, rebalanced the car-class mix, and upgraded trim as appropriate. The efforts of an experienced team in fleet procurement, fleet operations, and fleet remarketing ensured we were positioning ourselves to optimally address rising fleet costs and more effectively shape consumers' impressions of our product line. Nearly 80% of our operating fleet is made up of model year 2017 and 2018 vehicles that include the most popular makes, models and car-class mixes based on consumer preferences. In revenue management, the team is collaborating closely with fleet operations and leveraging smarter systems to continue to drive top line growth. Our new revenue platform, combined with the new fleet allocation system, is giving us greater capabilities to forecast demand, deploy fleet and better accuracy, capture (04

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

Thank you, Kathy. Good morning, everyone. As Kathy mentioned, we continue to make progress on our initiatives to improve the operating performance of our U.S. RAC segment. Evidence of this is reflected in growth in the top line unit revenues, increased transaction days, improved vehicle utilization, and reduced unit vehicle depreciation expense. As a result, we saw a significant improvement in our consolidated adjusted corporate EBITDA versus the prior year, our second consecutive quarter of improved results versus the comparable prior-year quarter. While we still have much work ahead of us, we will continue to be in a period of elevated investments, which I'll address in a moment. We're pleased with the progress we're making on the top and bottom lines. Given this overview, I will now turn to more specific updates on our U.S. and International RAC segments and an update on our first quarter financing activities and balance sheet and liquidity position. Our focus continues to be on delivering profitable, sustainable growth. To that end, in the U.S. RAC segment in the first quarter, total and unit revenues, as measured by RPU, both increased by 5% versus first quarter 2017. The 5% growth in total revenues in the first quarter was a result of a 6% increase in transaction days, slightly offset by a 1% decline in total RPD. The 6% transaction day growth was largely a result of the growth of nearly all categories of our off-airport business, as well as modest growth in the airport volumes despite a 3% decline in our core vehicle fleet. The improved airport volume reversed the quiet (10

[Operator:]

Your first question comes from the line of Chris Woronka from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

[Chris J. Woronka:]

Hey, good morning, everyone. Wanted to ask about your corporate or commercial account strategy in the first quarter and kind of what your – if you're seeing any improvement in corporate volumes and maybe what your strategy is on the market share and pricing front there. Thanks.

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

What we're seeing is, is what I mentioned earlier, which is, as we've improved the quality of our cars, the service and with the support of a really strong commercial team, we're winning back more corporate share over the last several months. And basically, we've gotten really great feedback around the Ultimate Choice rollout combined with better cars and better service from our employees. And our corporate sales teams have been leveraging all the work we did around that throughout last year. And we continue to – that we have really motivated, pumped up employees that are responding as much as our customers are responding to the better fleet and the investments we're making. Our employees are really pumped up about it. And then, we backed it with branding and marketing and a lot of solid work from our marketing team, and it's showing results. It's a business, I believe, is very important for the strength of the Hertz brand as well as carries over into the retail space.

[Chris J. Woronka:]

Okay, great. I appreciate that. And I just wanted to ask on the incremental spend. I think you mentioned $40 million this year incremental over last year. And I think last year might have been, if I remember maybe $110 million (23

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

Yeah. I think one of the things I've found over the years is what somewhat manages investment spending is just the ability of your management team and your organization to handle an incredible amount of change. And so, I think we are getting to a point of leveling off on how much our teams can handle and implement given we've done a pretty phenomenal job this first quarter in growing the U.S. as well as the overall company in addition to doing a ton of work on technology in our operations. And so, I do think we'll probably stay at about the same level of spending next year. I don't see a significant drop off given the bulk of what we're launching in our technology will be launched next year.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of James Albertine from Consumer Edge. Please go ahead.

[James J. Albertine:]

Great. Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. I wanted to talk a little bit about on the ride, sort of, hailing side as we look further out. It implies that you're going to be managing residuals of vehicles that are quite a bit older than your corporate average today. So I just wanted to understand how you're thinking about that and how we should sort of think about the risk associated with managing those residuals for your customers and participants in that program.

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

Well, what we have found so far, if you look at the used car market and you think about residual value curves, if you add any new car dealership or used car dealership, the sweet spot for cars is around 70,000 miles or $8,000, $9,000 in the sales price. And we find – if you go out to any dealership, those cars generally fly off the lot. And so what we've found is, we're managing double-digit returns on this business in how we bend the curve and we valued it, these rents we're seeing (25

[James J. Albertine:]

Understood. Appreciate that, and best of luck next question.

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Millman from Millman Research. Please go ahead.

[Michael Millman:]

Thank you. Following up on the first question on the corporate. For corporate airport, can you tell us what you're seeing in pricing, and be little more specific on volume? And I have one on technology.

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

I think what we see from a pricing perspective is always companies are shooting for productivity phase (26

[Michael Millman:]

Volume, it's volume.

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

Volume is up. So, we are winning – as I mentioned earlier, we are winning more of our share and growing from a – when it's a dual account, we're winning back a lot of customers, and we're seeing our share increase where we have – where the companies have a dual relationship.

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

Yeah, we believe the Hertz brand is the preferred brand by the commercial traveler. With the investments we've made in fleet, the choice – the service delivery model last year and now putting service quality in the field as well with additional resources, our NPS scores and the feedback we're getting is very favorable for our (27

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

And that I do think just the value that is being perceived is somewhat offsetting what could be a much more significant decline in price.

[Michael Millman:]

Okay. And on to your technology, assuming that you are complete – I guess, you never complete, what would we be seeing in this year? And to what – how long do you think it'll take before you have your systems where you want them and the impact you'd expect at that point?

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

Prior to my joining, in the initial, I would say, half of my first year here, the bulk of the work was finishing down thrifty conversions and offloading our legacy systems to one of our valued partners. And over the last – the second half of the year, a lot of work was spent on building requirements and starting to move into the developing and coding phase with our partners. And this year, we'll be doing a bulk of that work as well, continuing on building forward the coding and the development. Then you see next year, as the bulk of the launch of the systems, that will make a big impact, and that's really with our ramp in our fleet systems. We're pretty close to – closer on our reservation systems, but where the real value comes in when we can see the full process right down to where we rent and the (29

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

And, Michael, to add some additional, as we said previously, our OpEx on IT spending has been running in the range of $400 million a year, and it's been basically an albatross around the company. It's been a tax (31

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

Yeah. We have a team that's really focused on saying, we're not going to let the technology and the tools and the work that's being done and maybe the lack thereof (31

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Dan Levy from Barclays. Please go ahead.

[Dan Levy:]

Hi. Good morning, and thank you for taking the question. First, just wanted to ask about your ride-hailing business, I can appreciate the comments you gave on the impact of ride-hailing and ancillary on price. But could just you quantify for us the impact in the quarter of ride-hailing on your U.S. transaction days, utilization and per unit fleet cost? I imagine that it was a boost to utilization, volume and certainly a tailwind to the fleet cost side, trying to get a sense on those.

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

Yeah. Roughly our total revenue ex TNC and U.S. RAC segment would have increased 3% as opposed to 5%. Our RPU would have relatively been about the same. And our transaction day growth would have been about 3% excluding TNC as well.

[Dan Levy:]

And the per unit fleet costs, how much...

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

Per unit fleet cost, it's a marginal benefit because it represents only about 4.8% of our fleet. It is a lower deep (33

[Dan Levy:]

Okay. So we're not talking about something like – you're depreciating these cars at $150 per month versus (34

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

No, they will be significantly lower than we are, but they are lower than the average...

[Dan Levy:]

Okay.

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

...than they are for (34

[Dan Levy:]

Understood. And then my follow-up is, I want to continue in the same thread of questions that are being asked on the corporate side, but a little differently. I appreciate that a lot of the EBITDA recovery that you've talked to for the coming years ahead, at least on the price side, will be more a function of mix than, say, pure industry pricing. Is that mix purely just changing your corporate business, or is there a leisure component? And then on the corporate side, as you've won this new business, what's typically the turnaround time before we start to see that reflected in the RPD, is that a matter of there's a lag behind that? Just trying to get a sense of the timing on when those benefits start to become more visible if you're winning share today.

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

I'd say – it's a lot of question, and let me see if I can break it down.

[Dan Levy:]

Sorry for the long question.

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

No, no. But that's okay. As far as I think what you're trying to get to is price. Right? And how are we going to manage overall price, which obviously impacts RPU as well as how do we manage the type of business we take which impacts RPD. And I see you know, (36

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Hamzah Mazari from Macquarie. Please go ahead. Mario Cortellacci - Macquarie Capital (USA), Inc. Hi, good morning. This is Mario Cortellacci filling in for Hamzah. Could you walk us through how you think about the impact of higher interest rates for your business both qualitatively as well as quantitatively?

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

Yeah. So, from a vehicle standpoint, U.S. RAC, as I mentioned in my script, approximately 75% or two – I'm sorry, two-thirds of our vehicle that is fixed, we've been moving towards that in anticipation of rising rates as I mentioned in my remarks as well. We now expect the impact on rate for the full year to be approximately $45 million on vehicle interest expense for U.S. RAC. Recall on the last call we indicated it was roughly going to be $35 million to $40 million, so that's a slight increase given where forward curve's gone and some of the refinancings that we anticipate. So that's roughly the impact on U.S. RAC. On International RAC vehicle interest expense, we indicated we expect about a $9 million increase year-over-year on vehicle interest expense that primarily made up the refinancing we already did on the eurobond in the first quarter that's about a $4.8 million of the $9 million impact, that refinancing this year, and the balance is just there's going to be some increase, but it's not as susceptible to increases in Europe as we are in the U.S. On the non-vehicle side, 75% of our debt is fixed. So we don't expect to have any significant changes, roughly the same amount we expect and non-vehicle interest expense year-over-year to be approximately $280 million, which was compared to last year's $278 million. So, not a lot of change in the non-vehicle side. Mario Cortellacci - Macquarie Capital (USA), Inc. Thank you. And could you update us on any behavioral changes you may be seeing in the marketplace among competitors this cycle that could be different versus past cycles with regard to size of the fleets there or following or (39

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

Yeah. I mean, we don't – we've kind of focused on what Hertz controls and we've been very careful about – as you've probably noticed by our numbers (40

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Justine Fisher from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

[Justine Fisher:]

Good morning. Sorry, good morning. The first question that I have is on the OpEx and SG&A as a percent of sales. So when you guys say that that's going to be elevated for the next couple of years, does that mean that as a percent of revenues we should expect those percentages to be relatively flat year-over-year for 2018 and 2019, so in the first and fourth quarters, like low-70s and then other quarters, high-60s?

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

Yeah. Justine, thanks. Thanks for your question. Yeah. We had a slide in the deck as well because the seasonality is pretty important. And so we said, as you've probably noticed, we're up a little over 100 basis points in the first quarter around 71-ish-percent. For the overall year, we've been running 66%, 67%, that's elevated to where the company ultimately, we believe, we can get to and where our public comp is. So, we said this is primarily a reflection of our elevated investment spending. So we expect 2018 to be around where the 2017 levels were, if not slightly higher, and hence would expect 2019 to be somewhat consistent with that depending upon the rate of revenue growth. Obviously, as the revenue growth accelerates, that might moderate to some degree, but if you assume kind of neutral revenue, we expect the percentage of sales seasonally to be consistent with 2017, if not slightly elevated in 2018, and 2019 should be similar.

[Justine Fisher:]

Okay.

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

Yeah. I would also add to it. What makes it particularly tough is right now we're doing all of the work on requirements as well as a lot of the work on how does – with our continuous improvement efforts, how to get our process out of the sites to the most efficient and productive process. And as we're just doing all that work, we have yet to reap the benefits of it, and we're doing the technology investment on top of it, and we're growing, and growth tends to be expensive. So, I think as we get through a lot of the development work around better process out of the sites, as well as a lot of the development work around technology we start implementing these systems, we will start to reap the benefits of it and not have the impact that we have, so ultimately based on what we're doing, we should have better-than-industry average percentages out into – once we start hitting our stride in 2020 and as we start going through 2019 and see some of the benefits.

[Justine Fisher:]

Okay, thanks. And then my follow-up question is regarding the D&A, on the U.S. vehicle D&A. You mentioned that one of the drivers of it being lower was being – was some opportunistic sales during the quarter. And if ride-hailing had a negligible impact on that D&A number because it's still a small percent of the fleet, I was wondering if you could tell us, and maybe it's hard to do this, but if there was a percent of the change or a dollar amount impact of those opportunistic sales, is that you guys just saying, look, we've got these cars on hand, turned out that the sales prices have been pretty good, so I guess we might as well sell them, is that what that was?

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

One of the things we are developing and are doing better at all that time around with some of our analytic capabilities that we're adding is figuring out when the best – doing a better job of figuring out the best time to sell cars. We were holding cars in some cases probably longer than we should have if we had in place the tools that we now have in place and so we have seen the benefit, Tom. I think it was about 4% --

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

$4 million.

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

I'm sorry, $4 million.

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

So, Justine, the dollar value of this opportunistic sales was about $4 million in the quarter, that's why I mentioned its kind of marginal benefit.

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

And I do think it's something we're going to continue to move on, where we do a better job at understanding the best time to sell those cars and take less of a hit on depreciation and actually get some gains as well, so more to come on that.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Trent Porter from Guggenheim. Please go ahead.

[Trent Porter:]

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking the question. My first question, you mostly took care of, I just want to make sure that I understood the – on the vehicle interest, the increase from your previous $35 million to $40 million headwind to the $45 million, I think you said it was the forward curve and something else and I was hoping that you can clarify. But then what would it cost to swap or otherwise hedge the remaining 35% of vehicle debt that is floating rate? And then I had one more, if I get the time.

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

Yeah. So, from a vehicle interest expense, what I indicated is that we had estimated the impact for the year would be $35 million to $40 million at the last call in February. We've updated that slightly to approximately $45 million given the forward curve and just our estimates of what we might do with additional refinancing. So we are focused on terming out some of this data and getting a better balance of fixed and floating. We benefited the last couple of years by having a greater percentage of floating. But now we're working towards terming that out. So that's why we're in the two-thirds to one-third. We haven't looked at a swap per se, so because we do like to have flexibility of some variable funding and variable rate. But nonetheless, we're, obviously, opportunistic and we'll look at that. Well, we haven't recently looked at the cost of swapping. So I don't have the answer to that question.

[Trent Porter:]

Oh, okay. All right. Thank you. And then just, I guess, actually I had two more, the next one is, there was a recent article in one of the trade magazines warning that residual values – I mean, this is notwithstanding the strength in the quarter but residual values could take another hit from heightened manufacturer incentives to offset rising interest rates. And I'm not sure how real that is. But I wonder you've made so much progress, offsetting residual values, shifting to alternative disposition channels, negotiating new vehicle buys. So if this becomes a problem or a challenge later to this year or next year, do you still have a toolbox to offset the headwind? Is it – how much room, for example, is there to shift from say direct to dealer to retail and how material of an impact would that be? And then maybe I'll knock out the next one. The next one is a simple one, something you've said in the last call, the fleet investment component of your incremental spending this year stepping down from $130 million to $100 million, but then you said that there's likely to be an ongoing expense. And I wonder once you've completed your rightsizing and upgrading the fleet and everything you've got it, what drives the ongoing investment and how much are we talking about?

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

Let me – I'll address the first part of it and then I'll pass the second part, last parts to Tom. What – I think how to answer your question is if we get into an issue around residual values declining, very honestly I'm not seeing any real factors to make me believe that's imminent. I spent 10 years on the GM board, before that I spent five years managing 1.5 million cars. And so I've got more years than I care to admit on tracking residual values. And I actually look pretty closely at what the OEMs are doing from a sales perspective, what production looks like, inventories, building, and I haven't seen irrational behavior. In fact, I've seen the opposite. I've seen the OEMs becoming more disciplined, more rationalized in what they're doing. I'm not seeing upticks in what they're putting out into the rental market. So, I think, there is the belief that, if they're going to get price for cars, they have to manage all of those things more effectively and they're doing a much better job at it. So when I look at that and then I look at what Manheim is talking about right now and then I look at what we're able to get an opportunistic sales and what we are from a depreciation and residual values what our retail operations are seeing, I'm not seeing imminent risk. However, that being said, one of the best ways you manage through that is maximizing the asset value that you have. So managing price. If the cost go up, making sure that we have those valuable assets out there we get price for. But also as importantly, I think we're off to being the seventh largest seller of used cars through retail operations. And continuing to open up lots there at a very disciplined pace in markets that we're seeing demand, moving more of our shares through those retail lots and through dealer direct and away from the auctions. And then the final piece is managing that curve of residual values through what we're doing with ride-sharing and getting more for those assets during the life where we're minimizing the impact of how much of a loss you take upfront and carrying those through a point that we're not incurring great cost around maintenance and expenses around it and selling them really at their peak value. So the best way to manage through a downturn in residual values is with the great offers. And finally, we have a really great team on negotiating what we pay for those cars and we absolutely – if we see a decline in residuals, we negotiate at the time and the new cars that we're purchasing going forward. And the final thing is making sure we're buying the right cars with the right type of trim in them, so we get maximum value when we go to sell them. So long answer, but there's a lot that we do to make that happen. We understand creating the right long-term value in this company does also involve and maybe most importantly maximizing the value of those assets, which is how we buy and sell those cars. And now maybe if you want to talk about the second...

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

Sure. So the investment spending we've been making in fleet is relative to the 2016 baseline. So as we said previously, we invested approximately $130 million in calendar 2017 of which $20 million to $25 milliion of that was kind of one-time related to the fleet rotation we went through last year with the rest reflective of increased mix, so investing in better quality fleet of full-size and SUVs and better trim. And so that's kind of versus 2016, the baseline. Of the $100 million kind of ongoing, what we expect is that as we continue to (51

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

And the good news is we are starting to get price for that better fleet and win more of our fair share of business back as a result. And so as we roll out and manage our revenue management and our finance forecasting, and continue to learn and get better at that, we are offsetting – part of that I think was just we didn't have the right fleet that we ended up losing business in the past couple of years, because we didn't have the type of fleet that people wanted. Now what we're seeing is we're winning back more price, we're able to sell the cars for more and we're able to buy the cars at a lower price and continually driving down that incremental cost.

[Operator:]

Your next question comes from the line of Brian Sponheimer from Gabelli. Please go ahead.

[Brian C. Sponheimer:]

Hi. Good morning, everyone.

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

Hi, Brian.

[Brian C. Sponheimer:]

Just one question kind of looking down the road, Kathy. When you're making these IT investments, I'm curious your thoughts on – just how much of what you're doing is not only setting up your core rental business to operate in a much more efficient fashion and to drive revenue, but also set up next-gen mobility solutions around fleet management and service.

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

I love that question, Brian. We are – probably one of the things I'm most excited about is how – what we're doing does set us up to be the best fleet management company in the world. And my background, a few years ago, four or five years was managing the largest corporate fleet. And back – and during that time, we developed a lot of logistics and telematics capability to manage the corporate fleets that we did business with. We have a corporate fleet business, Donlen, in fact the gentleman who runs it ran my Australian division when I was at that fleet management company, and he's done a great job with his team to build out great connected car telematics capabilities, and we do have, right now, multiple tests and pilots around some of those capabilities, and we're pretty excited about the results we're seeing. As we put in our new capabilities within the work that we're doing, it's, obviously, reservations and rentals on what we call two really business lines that we're going after and then that's around our retail rental operations, but then there's another focus that does impact that, which is our fleet management, fleet accounting, and treasury capability. So the work we're doing with Deloitte and Infor and IBM around that integrates telematics capabilities as well as all the financing that goes along with managing the fleet and car placements, all sorts of great asset management capability, so it's really taking a step back and saying, if we become the best fleet management company in the world and our capabilities around fleet management accounting, treasury and financing around that, that's probably our best asset as mobility, autonomy and some of these other gig economy things coming into place. So we're very much focused on making sure that we have technology that enables not just a rental business, but then is already translating and transferring into great fleet management for a large delivery in gig and corporate fleets around the world. And the good news is it is global. The work we are doing is in tandem with our European, even South American operations. So we're taking a pretty aggressive approach along with what we're doing to support the rental operations.

[Brian C. Sponheimer:]

Outstanding. Well, thank you very much and good luck.

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude your conference for today. Thank you for your participation and for using AT&T Executive Teleconference. You may now disconnect.