Hertz Global Holdings, Inc.
Q4 2016 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 28 Feb 2017

[Operator:]

Welcome to the Hertz Global Holdings' Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2016 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 call over to our host, Leslie Hunziker. Please go ahead.

[Leslie Tolan 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 the information to reflect changed circumstances. Additional information concerning these statements is contained in our earnings press release issued last night and in the risk factors and forward-looking statements section of our third quarter 2016 Form 10-Q. Copies of this filing 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, Incorporated, a publicly-traded company. Results for the 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 CFO. Now, I'll turn the call over to Kathy.

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

Thank you, Leslie and good morning everyone. Before we begin, let me say that I'm privileged to have been chosen to lead Hertz. Not many have given the opportunity to come to a multinational company with an iconic brand and a rich history of industry leadership to help shape its future, it's an honor. Having done my due diligence, I'm aware that there are self inflicted issues here and I'm already working to address those. But there's nothing I see that we can't overcome, especially when you consider the foundational strength of the company. Since joining Hertz just two months ago, I've had the opportunity to meet many of our employees both in the field and in our headquarters whom I found to be positive, engaged and very proud to work for Hertz. In my initial meetings with corporate customers, it was clear that the Hertz brand carries a lot of equity still today. And having been on the General Motors' board for nine years since 2007, I know that Hertz's business partners respect and admire this company. Great people, great brands and great relationships across the supply chain on extremely valuable starting point from which to grow. When I first arrived, validating my understanding of the key drivers of this business was most important. Now working to prioritize the initiative that supports those drivers is right on focus and it's critical. It's probably not a surprise that the domestic operations will get the lion's share of my attention in the near term. The international business and Donlen have been successful and staying focused and competitive, while the U.S. Rental Car operations has had to regroup. Stateside, we're going to be taking a back-to-basics approach to generate revenue growth. And while you're probably thinking you heard this before that's because it's a core strategy in any turnaround situation and it's always easier said than done. But I believe with my automotive and operating experience and leadership skills, we can get it done here. With that in mind, I've already streamlined my reporting structure to facilitate more direct interaction with managers, fast-track decision making and quickly adjust direction if necessary. We now have a cross-functional team in place in U.S. made up of fleet, operations, pricing, sales and marketing leaders that will report directly to me. Bringing these functions together to effectively execute is paramount and ensures we're all working on the same agreed upon objectives and that we hold ourselves and our teams accountable. We're focused principally on four areas for growth

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

Thank you, Kathy, and good morning, everyone. Let me start with a snapshot of our full year 2016 consolidated financial performance. Total currency-adjusted revenue declined 2% last year, primarily due to a 5% weaker pricing in Worldwide Rental Car, partially offset by 2% stronger volumes. Clearly, we struggled with U.S. pricing most of the year, due to a variety of factors including unfavorable customer fleet mixes and the adverse effect of lower fuel prices on ancillary revenue. However, we did see a year-over-year RPD improvement in the U.S. in each sequential quarter. Global cost initiatives yielded $350 million of savings in 2016. Unfortunately, this was not enough to offset the lower Worldwide Rental Car revenue and a 9% increase in Worldwide Rental Car multi-depreciation per unit vehicle cost. The significantly higher cost to program vehicles and declining residual values, especially in the second half of the year, put pressure on vehicle costs. I will talk about some of the actions we are taking to address those unfavorable trends in just a minute. For the full year, we generated $553 million of adjusted corporate EBITDA and $258 million of free cash flow. I would point out that in 2016, the company recorded $340 million of non-cash impairments on a pre-tax basis compared to $70 million in 2015. This primarily resulted from fourth quarter impairments of $172 million on goodwill related to our European vehicle rental operations and $120 million related to the Dollar Thrifty tradename. Also, you may recall that there were some unique events in 2016 that impacted earnings, including a large reserve for insurance cost, primarily related to adverse case development and claims experience in the UK. In addition, we experienced unusually high levels of vehicle recall activity that affected volume and costs, and the terror attacks in Europe have stifled peak season inbound business, which is one of our highest RPD categories. Of course, there can be unique events in any year. These are just some of the unexpected headwinds we experienced in 2016. Despite the disappointing financial performance in 2016, we began investing in the business and made progress on several fronts. Last February, we piloted our first Hertz Ultimate Choice program in Austin, Texas, empowering customers to choose the exact car they want while offering flexibility in options. As Kathy mentioned, we began the broader rollout in October and expect to have 30 airports operational by midyear. We launched our technology transformation initiative with the outsourcing of the legacy operating systems earlier in the year and the introduction of our first updated platform CRM at the end of the year. In addition, we deployed the first of two new revenue management modules in December, which will give us better segmentation of rates and a faster response time to market rate fluctuations. That lays the foundation for the deployment of the second module this quarter, which will give us more accurate demand forecasting with which to better plan fleet. From a product standpoint, we began the process of enhancing our fleet mix in 2016, rebalancing the car-class weighting of the fleet to allow us to be more competitive. We expect our compact mix to be more in line with historical levels in the second quarter. In terms of transactions, in June, we completed the spin-off of our former equipment rental business, which included a successful restructuring of our balance sheet in non-vehicle debt. And in December, we entered into an agreement to sell our operations in Brazil to Localiza, South America's largest rental car company. We expect the transaction will close sometime next quarter. The transaction includes a strategic partnership agreement, involving co-branding in Brazil in key international gateways, customer referrals outsides of Brazil and the exchange of technology and information. From a balance sheet perspective, we strengthened our maturity profile by extending the weighted average life for our vehicle debt from 1.8 years to 2.3 years and our non-vehicle debt from 3.4 years to 5 years. In fact, we have only $8 million of non-vehicle debt maturing this year and $266 million in 2018. Now, let me provide some details on the fourth quarter's impact on the year. Total worldwide revenue was essentially flat year-over-year at $2 billion, adjusted for currency. Worldwide Rental Car revenue declined 1% compared to 2015 fourth quarter on a constant-currency basis, driven by a 1% increase in volume and a 2% decline in pricing. All Other Operations, which represents 8% of the total company revenue and primarily is made up of Donlen leasing business, generated a 4% increase in revenue in the recent quarter. Despite our continued improvement in driving lower consolidated unit cost, a 16% (15

[Operator:]

The first question will come from the line of Chris Agnew with MKM Partners. Please go ahead.

[Christopher Agnew:]

Thanks very much. Good morning. First question is, the large difference between your U.S. RPD, I guess, for most of 2016 and let's say industry pricing. And that gap substantially closed in the fourth quarter. Can you run us through some of the different elements that drove the elimination of that gap? I know there is different mix headwinds including fuel, did that become a tailwind rather than a headwind in the fourth quarter? Thank you.

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

Good morning, Chris. Yeah, I think the gap as you noticed in the public comp has been narrowing. We have been seeing improvements in our fleet mix, as I mentioned. We're about 2.5 points less in compacts in 4Q versus 4Q 2015. That's an impact. We have obviously been investing in our own systems. We didn't really get the new module Phase I done until the end of the year, but as we've mentioned throughout the year that the knowledge base and the experience of the team has been improving. We have been doing system modifications on the latency of our response time in our systems. And obviously, we've been focused on improving the quality of the revenue and trying to drive appropriate pricing relative to the demand in the market. So, we are obviously where we need to be from a pricing performance standpoint. I think ultimately, the investments that Kathy is prioritizing, going through the drive preference, ultimately will lead to improved pricing for our company. But we're not pleased with the results. But we're pleased that we continue to make progress sequentially each quarter and we still have a lot of work to do to continue to improve that performance.

[Christopher Agnew:]

Thank you. And then my follow-up, the Ultimate Choice, can you share what you observed in Austin from your trial, what the impact was on like corporate share of travel or your ability to yield in that market? Thanks.

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

I mean, I think, what we were testing for was customer reaction to the Ultimate Choice product. It is empowering the customer to select, have them select the car they want and to have the flexibility of the car in the aisle and have the flexibility of how they want to interact with us, either going to counter or going directly and selecting their car. It's really a preference item, it does improve utilization, we saw positive customer feedback from NPS. We saw improved utilization on the task which we expected. We obviously – I think it's going to take time to convert the share we walked on certain accounts, so that we'd have to get it more rolled out from our locations. So, one location does not make a difference. So, that's why we're aggressively expanding it through the course of this year and then aggressively start expanding in October. So, we'll have 30 by mid-year and all major airport locations by year-end. I think once we get enough presence of that product nationally and start marketing, I think our customers will start to – word-of-mouth is already starting to get around, but we'll obviously start to promote it and drive it further. So it is a preferred way I think for our customers to interact with us and it does provide operational benefits from our operating team and will ultimately drive cost savings of service delivery as well.

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

I'd also add that one of the side benefits we're finding out is, its' helping us as we're trying to continue to upgrade our mix and the quality of our cars. As the customers go and pick themselves, we're also finding the cars that they like the best and the cars that are remaining, we realize, maybe don't get any more of those. So I think it's also helping us upgrade our fleet with the type of cars that our customers demands and prefer.

[Christopher Agnew:]

Excellent. Thank you.

[Operator:]

The question comes from the line of Chris Woronka with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

[Chris J. Woronka:]

Hey. Good morning, everyone. I understand you guys are still in the process of kind of upgrading the fleet, but can you make any comment maybe about the overall size that you might end with compared to 2016 in the U.S., and then also, I think 94% risk in the fourth quarter, is there any plans to meaningfully change that?

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

So, I mean, as we look at the fleet, we're not giving forward guidance on capacity. We obviously want to fleet relative to what we think our expected demand is. The market grows generally GDP, our objective is the fleet is somewhat less than that. But in the near term, we're going to be accelerating the inbound of cars that our customers prefer. And if there is a near term utilization impact, we will take the utilization impact with the benefit of getting the right cars in our customers' hands. So, that's how we're looking at it near term. But on the longer term our objective is, obviously, we think the market will continue to grow GDP and our expectations of the fleet is somewhat consistent with that, particularly as we get our demand more predictable and more consistent. From a mix standpoint, I'm sorry, what's the second part of your question, Chris?

[Chris J. Woronka:]

Yeah. Just about the...

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

The risk percentage.

[Chris J. Woronka:]

Yes.

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

So, as we've talked about in prior calls, obviously, the pricing of the program units by the OEMs have been – it's been very difficult to justify a large program acquisition since 2015. The percentage increases have been pretty substantial and I think we've talked about on previous calls, you'd have to assume a double-digit percent decline in residuals to be indifferent (30

[Chris J. Woronka:]

Great. Thanks. And just as a follow-up, maybe a comment or two about your off airport strategy this year in terms of some of the larger single commercial accounts that might be coming up?

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

Yeah. I think our off airport strategies continue to – I think we've made great progress in 2016. We did some more reorganization and realignment. We have a very senior experienced person who manages the off airport. We've seen improvement in volume and in rate off airport. We don't have any plan to rationalize or change our off airport network. We have obviously some important renewals coming up and I think we have great relationships. We've done great partnerships with some of those other parties and those renewals we expect to come out favorably. So we have no plans to change our off airport strategy other than continuing to improve, which we're going to do both off airport and on airport, both the product quality and service.

[Chris J. Woronka:]

Okay. Very good. Thanks, Tom.

[Operator:]

The next question will come from the line of Brian Sponheimer with Gabelli. Please go ahead.

[Brian C. Sponheimer:]

Hi, good morning, and congratulations, Kathy.

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

Thank you.

[Brian C. Sponheimer:]

Just at 30,000 feet, when you took the job and you think about your flexibility and levers that you have, you make a lot of money at larger airports and less at some of the smaller locations. How should we think about you looking at the portfolio from an own location versus franchise point of view? And I guess, we'll start there.

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

Again, I'm still evaluating given it's under 60 days. So you'll have to forgive me for not having a solid opinion on it. But actually for the next two days we have our franchise operators in and on board and then I'll be spending two days with them understanding their business better. My initial reaction is, I wouldn't really change the current strategy and wouldn't go aggressive on franchising more operations nor would I move away from where we're at, at this point. So as a strategy, there is time to (33

[Brian C. Sponheimer:]

Okay. Very fair. And then just on the balance sheet. I appreciate the time that you and Tom took to kind of walk us through where you are right now. But what's your comfort level as far as leverage and would a rights offering potentially alleviate any concerns that you may have?

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

We obviously feel comfortable with the balance sheet, where our liquidity is. We're obviously on elevated leverage levels, given the decline in earnings in 2016. We have an objective that we have not wavered from, which is to be at 3.5 times or less at a year-end metric level on a net corporate EBITDA – leverage to corporate EBITDA level. So we're going to continue to work towards that goal. We don't have any intention or plans or we believe need to do any other offerings from a liquidity standpoint, given our liquidity position. And despite I think what will be a very aggressive investment profile in 2017, we still believe that our liquidity is appropriate during the course of the year to support our investment needs. So there is no plans or intent or need from our vantage point to do any additional rights offerings or anything to shore up the balance sheet. But we do acknowledge that we're at a elevated leverage levels and we're going to be working to bring that down.

[Brian C. Sponheimer:]

Fair, but you have levers. Okay, thank you very much, and best of luck.

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Next we will go to the line of Dan Levy with Barclays. Please go ahead.

[Dan M. Levy:]

Hi, good morning. Thank you. Kathy, in your prepared remarks, you talked to sort of going back to basics on different areas, fleet servicing, et cetera. I know it's still very early days in your tenure, but could you just give us maybe what you would view as a mark-to-market? Do you see any low-hanging fruits that stand out quite clear in terms of work to be done? Are staffing levels okay throughout the organization?

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

Again, it's under 60 days. So I've spent a lot of time on the areas that I think we could make a very quick impact, and that's specifically around service and fleet as well as technology. Technology probably a little longer runway on that, but also looking at our customers from a – our corporate customers as well as our other channels, focusing in on doing better segmentation and applying some of the revenue management systems, we've brought it to bear that we worked on last year and being implemented. As far as staffing levels, the way we're going to work through and grow is not through a cost-cutting strategy. My approach is basically the right process without errors is generally and always the lowest-cost process, so as versus taking a broad brush and cutting staffing and expenses by percentages, we're going to go at it by improving our process, eliminating errors, getting the right fleet, being customer backed, and that will drive out a lot of cost in and of itself. We always have to look at all the different roles and as our customers' needs change and how we go about business change, we're going to have to adapt to it. And as we add in process and new things, we're going to have to take out some things. But that's going to be a continuous process and not a one-hit wonder.

[Dan M. Levy:]

Yeah. Got it. And then just a quick question back in 2015, and this is a question for Tom or Kathy, you guys issued a whole set of financial targets, and actually looks like even in 2016 you ended up hitting your cost-out target of $350 million. I assume that the targets that were put out there in 2015 are no longer outstanding, but I was just wondering if you could confirm whether or not that's the case.

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

Yeah. I think with any time you have a transition and a new CEO coming in onboard, there's going to be a reevaluation of the trajectory of the margin expansion and the prioritization of the investment, and the duration of times it takes to get this company go in the right direction. So I think it's safe to assume that the targets we initially established are not appropriate at this point in time, but that doesn't nonetheless (37

[Dan M. Levy:]

Okay. Thank you very much.

[Operator:]

The next question will come from the line of Anj Singh with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Anjaneya K. Singh - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. First one for Kathy, I guess, could you speak into a little bit more detail on where you are with the investments that you're talking about? I know Tom spoke to aggressive investments for next year. So would it be safe to say that in fleet service and technology, these investments are being accelerated beyond what the prior leadership had earmarked? And if so, I'd appreciate any details on perhaps where you're seeing the biggest need versus prior allocations?

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

In looking at how we're going to grow this company and get back to driving the preference that we've had a heritage on to our brands. It is about investing in service and customer back as well as in the training and tools that our employees need, and things like mobility and digitization. So in those areas, I would say, I probably am bringing new focus. And as I bring in new focus into the business more around investing back into the things we need to do to deliver great service including the fleet mix, there's going to be other things that probably were in the plan that we're not going to do. I'm a great believer and you have to focus on the significant few things that are going to have a big impact. And in that regard, I'm limited I think more by people resources than I am financial resources. There is so much any organization can get done at any given time. And so I think making sure that we're all aligned towards the initiatives that I've discussed is going to be really critical, and that's really going to be my job on ensuring that what we do winds up to delivering against those initiatives and get it done this year. And so that I think you can assume that there are certain things that maybe were in the plan from prior leadership that won't be in there going forward. Anjaneya K. Singh - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC Understood. That's helpful. And then one for Tom, Tom, could you speak into more detail as to where you are in the rebalancing process of your car class reweighting and investments in higher trim levels? I think for the class weighting, you talked about being done by Q2 ahead of the Q3 peak. But I guess a little bit more detail on the higher trim levels. Is that happening concurrently with your car class rebalancing? And how long do you expect this may be a factor in your fleet costs? Is it one or two quarters before your fleet costs increases begin to converge with, say, market averages or do you expect it to weigh on fleet cost for longer than that? Thank you.

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

Yeah. We started a process, as you guys also may recall on the call, that we acknowledged in the mid-year after we got some market intelligence that we were over-weight in compacts relative to our upgrade needs and customer expectations in our model year 2017 buy was reflective of that objective to rebalance. In the fourth quarter alone our compact mix was down over 2.5 points as a percentage of the fleet from the prior year. So we had made early progress through the fourth quarter and we continue to make that progress her in the first quarter as a lot of the model year 2017 deliveries are occurring in the first four months of the year and we are rotating out of the compacts. And as I indicated, we ended up fleet at the year-end a little higher than we expected because we opportunistically bought some more premium full-sized vehicles to enhance the premium quality that we want to have in certain of our customer segments. So, Anj, I would say said that our expectation is that while we're negotiating fleet cost reductions on a like-for-like basis on the risk fleet for model year 2017 versus 2016, which is a benefit in calendar 2017. We are and we have said that we'll opportunistically change the mix of compact and full size as well as on some cases marginally on trim and on premium cars. The trim aspect is probably later, maybe the model year 2018, because a lot of the model year 2017 has been acquired or committed. There is some uncommitted components to it, so we'll probably have an opportunity there. But we expect the compacts to be down, for example, in the 17% to 18% range in the second quarter versus 20% it was in 2016 as an example. So there will be some increase in fleet cost that will be experienced in the first half of the year. There might be some moderate increases on trim. And then we'll have to determine, I think the key driver here isn't necessarily investment in fleet, which I think is on a large line at $1.60 billion (42

[Operator:]

Next we'll go to the line of Michael Millman with Millman Research. Please go ahead.

[Michael Millman:]

Thank you. So over the last couple of years, generally Hertz has been blamed for not going along with price increases. A lot of that I think sounds like you think are related to all the things you talked about regarding back to basics. But I was wondering, if beyond that there was a concern about share. Certainly we know currently that the company is losing geography and airports, and I'm not sure how important that may be, but nonetheless, can you talk about what you think about price increases relative to share and where do you stand on looking at share as some others as well?

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

I think if I refer back to what we've discussed, the best way to increase share and grow is to deliver the cars our customers want, when they want and where they want it, don't make them wait for it. And have them put it out there that show they care and deliver that kind of service. So as we clearly want to grow and growth generally drives share improvement. And I think going forward, the improvements we're making on our fleet, the rollout of Choice, the investments we're making in service and our employees as well as in our technology will continue to improve our growth and hopefully will continue to show some share improvement. We have seen some strengthening in our share at this point, but again there's a long row to hoe, as they say in the Midwest, there's more work to get done. And we do think we'll see steady improvement throughout the year as we do improve our service in the cars that we deliver to our customers.

[Michael Millman:]

Sorry, I guess, trying to be more specific. Often share is a result of pricing. So real question is how aggressive are you going to be on pricing and will you tend to go along with the industry pricing to a much greater extent than at least you're given credit for?

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

Well, I guess, I'm not a great believer in talking about price for a multitude of reasons. But we intend on winning share and growing because of the great employees we have that we deliver the right cars and because of our great brand. And I think as we focus on the things we control that don't have anything to do with price, we're going to achieve the kind of share growth that I think a great company and a great brand like Hertz will continue to command.

[Michael Millman:]

And on a different topic. What are your plans for Donlen? The leasing business, as you know much better than we do, has generally been a very good business. And as Donlen just kind of lies there and never gets discussed. Maybe you can discuss your plan?

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

Well, I can talk about Donlen. In fact, the gentleman who runs Donlen worked for me in my five years of running the GE fleet business, running our Australian business. And I ran, at one point, the world's largest fleet management company. So there is a special place in my heart for that business. Basically my experience in the work I did there ended up getting me on the General Motors' board as well. And the nine years of great insights and experience in the automotive industry I've got from that has just been invaluable. So I do have what I'll say right now is the U.S. operations is where I really need to get focused on. But it doesn't mean that I don't have a special place in my heart for Donlen and that business. And I think with a lot of the opportunities out there that involves ride sharing and autonomous driving, being able to manage a large fleet set of vehicles is going to be a great asset to have in this company. And I also think there is probably certain things that I'm aware of that I had developed when I was back in the fleet business around telematics and car locations that I think we could carry over as our business that would make us a good deal of difference on how we manage our cars and how we know where our cars are. So I think I would hold that thought. There will be more to come around Donlen.

[Operator:]

And next we'll go to the line of James Albertine with Consumer Edge. Please go ahead.

[Derek J. Glynn:]

Yeah, hi this is Derek Glynn on for Jamie Albertine. Thanks for taking my question. Just curious what initiatives you have in mind to further improve the alternative sales channel mix? What are the opportunities there and any targets we can look to for 2017?

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

Yeah. The alternative certain channels, as you saw in the fourth quarter, we were up significantly on a volume sales standpoint both in the retail and dealer direct. We think our opportunity is continuing to drive more throughput through our retail channels or retail outlets we have. We can opportunistically add additional retail outlets. We don't think we're at a saturation point as far as locations, but we're looking at that as a potential opportunity as well as improving the throughput of the existing locations we have. Our dealer direct, I think we can more actively manage the dealer direct channel with more personnel and a more standardized process, how we engage with the dealers, and how we partner with them. So I think there's an opportunity as it relates to improving both the volume as well as the margin on the Dealer Direct channel. So we believe that our remarketing channel and Dealer Direct and retail do provide us some insight not only in current trends on the residual market and on our retail sales, but also give us I think somewhat of an advantage on net proceeds we receive, including ancillary sales on those products through those and particularly on the retail channel as it relates to wholesale.

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

I'll add in there that I've already met with a very large dealer network around what are the types of opportunities that we could work together that will benefit both our businesses, as well as I bought more cars from dealers than anybody else in the United States at one point. So, I have a fairly deep dealer experience and network of connections, and I do think this is a somewhat, we have made progress there. But I think there's a lot more goodness to be had and working more strategies with our dealers.

[Derek J. Glynn:]

Okay. Thank you. And then, just as a follow-up. To the extent you can, in terms of pricing trends in the fourth quarter, were there any regions, any costs (50

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

Yeah. I mean, I think it's consistent with what one might expect. We'd experienced a milder winter. I think that has had an effect on demand to sun destinations such as Florida which was weaker and there has been more competitive pricing in Florida market for example. So I think that's an example where one would say, hey, the weather patterns can change every year, and unfortunately, this year from a demand standpoint that has had an impact on demand for sun, and there has been more pressure on pricing in that market.

[Derek J. Glynn:]

Okay. Thank you very much.

[Operator:]

The next question will come from the line of John Healy with Northcoast Research. Please go ahead.

[John Healy:]

Thank you. Tom, I was hoping if you could give us a little bit more color on the fleet cost potential for 2017? When I heard your comments earlier investing into a richer mix of fleet, whether it's more a larger size vehicles or SUVs or minivans, what have you, is that the trim level discussion that happened earlier. But how much of an actual increase in the fleet cost does that present itself to for 2017? And is there a way you can help us think about kind of what the right pace is for the fleet cost of the company today before we get into residual value as assumptions for 2017 or 2018 cap cost (52

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

Again, you'll have to forgive me for being here less than 60 days, but I've been pretty deeply involved with managing the fleet mix to where we need to get it to. And at this point, if you're asking us if there's a big bang out there that you should be thinking about, that's not what we're seeing right now. But I think Tom talked about the more concerns is, if the market slows for the OEMs, what will happen to fleet prices. As tens of thousands of vehicles come off of lease, what will happen to – what we're selling our cars for. So I think we're watching all of those things very closely, but I have reviewed how we go about buying and selling cars, and there's been a lot of goodness created over the last several months that would be more effective in all of those areas, and I hope my experience working with a large OEM over the last nine years will help me understand. I won't get any price breaks. That's for sure, but hopefully it'll help me understand what they're looking to do and bring to the table what we're looking to do and how they sell cars to us, to be more effective in our buying.

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

Yeah. So, we have not changed our overall assumption of a 3% decline in residuals to-date for the residual decline for 2017. So, John, as Kathy mentioned, that's a larger factor. We opportunistically invest in fleet, as we said, both in the mix and premium full size. But I think the major driver is what happens with the market and how that might change particularly as we go into the seasonal peak here. In near term as I said, we are going to be aggressively selling cars as well as bring in new cars to rebalance the fleet here before the summer peak, which may have some near term implications on utilization and near term implications on shortening some hold periods and it'd have a higher fleet cost in the near term. But the overall market I think is the one we all need to monitor very closely in that 3% decline residuals. If that changes, we need to monitor that. And I think everybody knows the Manheim information was down 4 percentage points in November-December and down 3 percentage points to January, so it's going to be important to monitor what happens on that index really in February and then March and April respectively.

[John Healy:]

Got you. And then one follow-up question on the technology initiative, since Dollar Thrifty closed in 2013, I want to say, you guys have been talking about a lot of different technology initiatives and different things that needed to happen. As you look at kind of maybe the lack of success you've had with technology at the company level, do you guys feel like that maybe you should be outsourcing a lot of this technology or do you expect the spend to be kind of internally driven going forward?

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

I'll speak to it, just what I have learned to-date. There was an outsourcing of our legacy system, so that we could focus on developing and implementing systems that will really transform our customer experience. So clearly, yes, we will continue to look at using partners. We're already using both Inforce (55

[Operator:]

And next, we'll go to the line of Hamzah Mazari with Macquarie Capital. Please go ahead. Hamzah Mazari - Macquarie Capital (USA), Inc. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. The first question is just for Tom. Tom, do you see any impact from loan to value changes given what happens to residuals or what's been happening in terms of your asset-backed debt, and any impact to the P&L as you look forward from that or has that not really happened?

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

Sorry. The question didn't quite come in clearly, did you ask about asset-backed securities? Hamzah Mazari - Macquarie Capital (USA), Inc. Yeah, yeah. So the question is given the used car market and drop in residuals that you're seeing, are you seeing any impact to loan to value changes in your asset-backed debt or vehicle debt yet?

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

So, as you know, we're marking to market all the time on the asset-backed securities as far as the value of the fleet in the ABS, and then enhancing the liquidity requirements for the ABS. In a declining residual market, you are seeing a mark-to-market pretty consistently month-to-month and that's month-to-month. And then, we are obviously improving or enhancing liquidity to ensure that the net disposal equals the ultimate book value that you depreciate those cars at for ABS purposes. So we're monitoring that and that has had an impact overall from the financing perspective, but that's not inconsistent with what one would expect in this kind of market. Hamzah Mazari - Macquarie Capital (USA), Inc. Great. And just a follow-up question, you talked a lot about technology initiatives around the fleet management and revenue management system with some of the new modules coming into place. I'm just curious. How much of a learning curve or lag is there before you see benefits from some of these modules? Specifically, you guys had a headquarter move two years ago. You had to rehire revenue management staff. Are they sort of ready for this transition? And then, sort of any benefits or what's the lag before you see any benefits from some of these IT initiatives, specifically around the fleet and revenue management? Thank you.

[Kathryn V. Marinello:]

Well, we are working on the requirements around the fleet management system. So that's something that's going to be coming into play at the end of this year, early 2018. On the revenue management system and what we're doing there, it will take time. We're running a, my guess is about, three months, but we're moving slowly. We're testing different markets. I guess, what we're trying to do is, watch and learn. Not spend two years on developing new system, launching it and then finding out that it may not be doing quite what we want. So rather chopping up what we do into smaller chunks, launching it, testing it, revising it and then rolling it out. So those things, I think, you said it appropriately, are going to take time to have an impact. But generally speaking, if you do the work, the results come and the team here is doing the work. Hamzah Mazari - Macquarie Capital (USA), Inc. Great. Thanks so much.

[Operator:]

And we have a question from the line of Justine Fisher with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

[Justine Fisher:]

Good morning. My first question is on residuals again, excuse me. I'm wondering if you can help us think about the seasonality or other factors that might affect the trajectory of your depreciation per unit per vehicle in the U.S. this year. And the reason I ask is that, if we look at the $321 from the fourth quarter and we say, all right, residuals are going to go down 3%, let's say that Hertz can offset that by selling through alternative channels and taking some of the other steps that the company has said that it might be able to take to offset the market decline in residuals. So we drag that $321 out flat for the year. That obviously has a serious implication on year-over-year EBITDA, and so can you talk to us about seasonality or other things that might allow that depreciation per unit per vehicle to come down in 1Q, 2Q, 3Q or 4Q versus the 4Q 2016 base that you set?

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

Yeah, happy to Justine. So I wouldn't consider $321 at the starting point from which to build off of your 2017 outlook, because in the fourth quarter, you have a catch-up, for example, the $30 million adjustment we had reduced (1

[Justine Fisher:]

Okay. That was very helpful. Thanks. And then the second question is just on refinancing. For the ABS maturities that you guys highlighted in your presentation, I'm assuming that you'd be able to just refinance those over the normal course of business and then on the 2018 bond deal, I know that it's only a $250 million deal, but I was wondering if the company has any initial thoughts about how you might go and refinance that; if the unsecured market is going to offer you a high single-digit coupon, would you consider something like a second lien, a revolver draw, how do you guys think about your other options for that bond deal?

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

So from the near-term perspective on ABS, yes, we expect as those ABS (1

[Justine Fisher:]

Do you guys have second lien capacity to refinance?

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

Yeah. We do have capacity, we could refinance that, but again, I think we'll look at potentially doing a pay down of that as opposed to refinancing it; again, it's depending upon the liquidity profile that we have and the cash flow of the business, which we expect to continue to improve as we are investing in the business and the top line starts to improve, so we'll see how that goes, but I think we'll have to see how the year progresses and we'll be opportunistic is what our decision is.

[Operator:]

And our last question comes from the line of Sean Wondrack with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

[Sean M. Wondrack:]

Hi, there and thank you for taking my question. Just peeling away at one remark I heard a couple of times in the call. And please, clarify if I'm incorrect. Did you say 3.5 times of net leverage is the target by year-end 2017?

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

What we said is, we have not wavered from our ultimate objective to be 3.5 times or less net corporate leverage level at a year-end target level, not year-end 2017, but as a year-end metric. So it's going to take time to get there. We don't anticipate to be there clearly by the end of 2017. But we are not wavering from our long-term objective to be at a year-end leverage level target of 3.5 times or less over time. That's measured at a year-end metric level.

[Sean M. Wondrack:]

Okay. Okay. Thank you, that's very helpful. Would you say that you'll expect leverage decline on a year-over-year basis from these levels?

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

That would imply providing some forwarded guidance. And right now, we're not in a position to provide that forwarded guidance.

[Sean M. Wondrack:]

Okay.

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

Again over time, our objective is to continue to reduce leverage. We do believe we're at elevated levels today, obviously. And our objective is over time to reduce that leverage and our credit agreements obviously call for that. So it's consistent with our credit agreements, is to continue to drive down the leverage level to get to our ultimate long-term target of being at 3.5 times or less at a year-end metric level.

[Sean M. Wondrack:]

Fair enough. And then, as you look at the spring season. How has the spring season been shaping up here in the U.S. in terms of maybe generically in terms of volume and pricing if you don't want to be too specific?

[Thomas C. Kennedy:]

Well, as I said in my prepared remarks, we expect pricing to be down year-over-year in the first quarter. We do have a potentially contributing factor to that effect of the Easter holiday moving from kind of end of March to end of April, third week of April factor, that has an effect. But overall, we expect pricing to be down and profitability to be lower in the first quarter versus prior year in the first quarter. It's too soon to tell how the Easter holiday is building, because it's a very small percentage of the bookings on the books right now; for the month of April, we'll have to just monitor how that is progressing, how the market progresses as we get closer to that period of time.

[Sean M. Wondrack:]

Thank you for my questions.

[Leslie Tolan Hunziker:]

All right. Well, thank you all for joining us today and have a great day.

[Operator:]

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