Anthony Colucci
Analyst · B. Riley
Thanks, Ryan. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for your attention today and for your continued interest in Alta Equipment Group as we continue on our growth path and embark on our third quarter as a public company.
Before I start, I want to first thank all of my colleagues and their families as their commitment, sacrifice and tenacity propelled the business in Q2 through an unprecedented environment. More than anything, I'm humbled by the support you gave one another, truly embodying our one team principle.
Secondly, I would also like to thank all of Alta's customers, especially those that were significantly impacted by COVID. We thank you for your continued business, and look forward to supporting our partnership with you as we continue to navigate these uncertain business conditions together.
Lastly, I want to welcome our new team members at PeakLogix in Virginia, Hilo Equipment in New York City, and soon to be new team members at Martin Implement in Chicago to the Alta family. I look forward to earning your trust and embracing you into Alta's culture.
My remarks today will focus on 3 areas: one, present the impact COVID had on Alta's revenue and earnings performance in Q2 and compare them to the shocks we were experiencing when we last reported earnings. I'll be focused on top line impacts by department, and our cost mitigation efforts helped to offset those top line pullbacks. Focus area 2: review Q2's financial performance more holistically, having certain notable organic year-over-year metrics, capital expenditures and liquidity flows for the quarter and our leverage and liquidity position at the end of Q2. I'll conclude that commentary with a quick touch on pro forma trailing 12-month financial metrics. Lastly, I want to spend a few minutes discussing the PeakLogix and Hilo transactions from a valuation and strategic perspective. So let's jump in.
For the first portion of my prepared remarks, I'd like to present the impact COVID had on Alta in Q2 from a revenue and cost perspective. It should be noted there are some slides in our presentation, which was released prior to our call today, that presents the impact of COVID in greater detail than what I will get into verbally here today. I'd encourage everyone on today's call to review our presentation and the COVID slides specifically, which are on our Investor Relations website.
For those familiar with my remarks on our Q1 call in May, I mentioned an acronym, MMR or measure, mitigate and recovery, which reflected our management approach to framing COVID's impact from a financial perspective. First, the measured portion of that acronym.
Recall that we have been focused on a daily basis on demand for labor hours of our skilled technicians. This is a metric that provides real-time data and business levels in our various geographies and business segments.
In the middle of March, starting with the automotive shutdown in Southeast Michigan, we incurred what effectively was an abrupt 30% reduction in demand for labor hours across our service operation. As we mentioned on the Q1 call, we believe at the time that we have seen the floor on this metric in mid-April. Thankfully, that belief held true through the end of Q2 as large forces of the economy began to reopen in mid-May.
Currently, labor hours have returned to approximately 95% to 100% of pre-COVID levels. This reversion to the mean bodes well for the most profitable segments of our business and allows us to reunite with our furloughed skilled labor force. Important to note, we held labor efficiency and therefore, gross margin percentage in our service departments constant throughout Q2, which is a testament to our manager's ability to match supply of labor with demand on a real-time basis.
Now for the second M in the acronym, mitigation. As I mentioned on our Q1 call, our seasoned management team reacted quickly to COVID from a cost mitigation perspective. And we highlighted the dealership model's ability to flex in a downside scenario. We believe our Q2 performance demonstrates that flexibility.
Specifically, and as an example of the flex in our capital structure -- cost structure in a downmarket, organic revenue in our parts and service departments was down $8.5 million in Q2 2020 versus Q1 2020 and down $5.2 million in gross profit Q2 versus Q1. That $5.2 million loss in gross profit in Q2 was met with an offsetting $6 million reduction in G&A costs for the quarter as cost mitigation efforts in the form of employee furloughs, fringe benefit cuts, executive comp reductions and natural reductions in variable costs in the dealership model took hold.
In fact, despite our industrial segment being the hardest hit by the COVID pandemic, we managed a profitable quarter, achieving $3.6 million of net income within that segment. While our dealership model showed its ability to mitigate the organic revenue declines COVID brought us in Q2, mitigation in our rental business, consistent with the rental industry in general, was more challenging. Our utilization metrics declined to a trough in mid-April and slowly recovered as economies and construction contractors reopened for business in the middle of May.
While the sequential decline in rental utilization in the second quarter was the ultimate driver of us losing ground on our trailing 12 adjusted pro forma EBITDA figure, which reduced to $92 million, it is important to point out that our rental business represents only half of our EBITDA and highlights the diversity of our cash flow streams versus the publicly traded rental competition. We are also cognizant that the uncertainty in the macroeconomic climate is likely to push customers away from committing long term to their fleets and purchasing equipment outright and towards a more flexible rental option. We will be prepared for either.
Now for the last part of the acronym, recovery. As revenues and operating metrics began to recover, we slowly waned ourselves off of cost mitigation measures with the executive comp reductions and nonessential travel and marketing measures remaining in place. We believe we fully entered the recovery phase in the beginning of June as confidence amongst our major customers and suppliers begin to stabilize. While we are seeing clear signs of recovery from COVID's initial punch, uncertainty is still in the air. And we are prepared to reinstate some of these cost measures that helped us navigate the storm in Q2 if the recovery stalls.
So what does all this mean in terms of impact on Q2 performance? Let's dig into the results as we move to the second area of my comments for this afternoon.
In our Q1 investor deck and on our previous earnings call, I presented both an unmitigated and fully mitigated scenario or best and worst case, if you will, based on an illustrative run rate month. In the worst-case scenario where revenue impacts were most acute and absent any cost mitigation efforts, EBITDA margins were 4.1%. In the best case scenario, where revenue impacts were most acute and costs on the loss revenue were assumed to be 100% variable, EBITDA margins were 11.2% and $19.9 million of adjusted EBITDA for the quarter and $192 million of revenue or 10.4% EBITDA margins, I'm happy to report we finished Q2 much closer to the best case than the worst. We were able to accomplish this on the backs of the aforementioned revenue recoveries in May and June versus April's trough and our cost mitigation efforts throughout the quarter.
Speaking organically for a moment, as on an inorganic basis, many of our year-over-year metrics are still up considerably, given all of the M&A activity. Revenue-wise, organic Q2 2020 revenue was off just 3% from Q2 2019, a relative win given the COVID business environment. And I want to drill into that 3% number for just a moment, and this shows the dexterity of the dealer model.
Even in the draconian situation our parts and service organization was presented with from COVID, parts and sales -- parts and service sales were down less than 10% quarter-over-quarter on an organic basis. However, if you break this down further, our construction segment parts and service sales actually experienced a net increase by nearly 9% organically in Q2 2020 versus Q2 2019, showing the power of a larger field population and increased technician headcount versus last year. Also in equipment sales, we actually saw a 13% year-over-year organic growth in new and used equipment in our construction segment in Q2.
To round out the revenue streams, rental, not surprisingly and in line with our expectation in May, was down 14% year-over-year on an organic basis. All in all, we reported total revenue of $192 million for Q2, which included a full quarter for both Flagler and Liftech.
Turning to gross margin percentage, and I'll focus on sequential quarter-over-quarter performance versus Q1 2020. We saw a slight increase in gross margin percentage in Q2 on equipment sales versus Q1. Our gross profit margin in parts was down slightly, coming in at 31% for the quarter. And the gross margin in service was 61.3% compared to 62.3% in Q1 2020, another relative win given the tough landscape and the volatility within the quarter inside the service department.
Let's move on to the balance sheet and our capital profile at the end of Q2. Two key factors to focus on here, leverage and liquidity. First, leverage. We are up a few tenths to 3.3x on total leverage versus Q1 2020.
There were 2 primary drivers for this increase in leverage in Q2: One, COVID's negative impact on our pro forma trailing 12-month EBITDA was approximately $1.3 million; and two, the aforementioned increase in our rental fleet. I want to specifically make mention of the rental fleet investment for a moment. First, it's important to remember that rental fleet CapEx precedes utilization and EBITDA, which timing-wise is a net negative on the company's leverage profile. Said differently, we need to invest in order to capture the rental market. We believe this was a good investment, especially since the majority of the investment was related to our new Florida market.
Second, recall our rent-to-sell model, where we are selling lightly used 2- to 3-year-old heavy equipment out of our fleet to drive field population, which, in turn, drive parts and service revenue over the long term. I mentioned this because a large portion of this investment into the rental fleet was into our rent-to-sell product categories, which we know will ultimately yield parts and service revenues in the future.
Finally and importantly, we are seeing roughly 60% physical utilization on our heavy equipment fleet, meaning this investment is already driving incremental EBITDA for the enterprise. However, until that EBITDA fully impacts the trailing 12 metric, leverage will be temporarily inflated, all things equal.
Lastly here, a quick note on enterprise value. Using the June 30 leverage and the pre-earnings market cap, enterprise value 5.9x our pro forma EBITDA of approximately $92 million.
Focusing on liquidity. Recall that we left Q1 post-IPO with roughly $150 million in cash and revolver liquidity. During Q2, we were able to service the cash cost of our debt without any subsidies or deferrals from major lenders, acquire PeakLogix using existing revolver liquidity and fund growth CapEx in our rental fleet, specifically in Florida as we invest in what we believe to be an exciting growth market for the company.
Importantly, we were able to accomplish all 3 of these items while holding liquidity at approximately $150 million in Q2. Effectively, we were able to use organic cash flows to fund these 3 important items without impacting the company's liquidity position.
All told, we believe the company's ability to hold liquidity, given the top line impacts of COVID while making strategic investments for the future is a testament to our business model and how we thoughtfully positioned our capital structure. A quick item of note. As we move through Q3, we fully expect our liquidity position to be modestly impacted by the Hilo and Martin transactions and it's updated appraisal results will reset our borrowing base in Q3.
So having discuss the details of Q2 at this point, I'd like to turn your attention to some of our enterprise-wide pro forma trailing 12-month numbers, which are inclusive of the acquisitions of NITCO, Flagler, Liftech and now PeakLogix and Hilo Equipment. As a reminder, our acquisition of Hilo in New York City is technically a Q3 deal as it closed on July 1. Thus Hilo's numbers are not presented in our SEC filings or our Q2 investor deck.
Nonetheless, including Hilo, Alta now has pro forma trailing 12 revenue of approximately $905 million and approximately $95 million in adjusted pro forma annual EBITDA. When we include the recently announced Martin acquisition, which we expect to close in Q3, we believe the business will approach $950 million in revenue and $100 million of pro forma EBITDA over the short term, assuming a stable macro business climate.
Finally, for the last piece of my prepared remarks, I'd like to discuss briefly the PeakLogix, Hilo and Martin acquisitions from both a financial and strategic perspectives. First, on a combined weighted average basis, excluding synergies, we paid roughly 4.5x EBITDA, consistent with the valuation range we have historically purchased that and with what Ryan and I mentioned on our IPO roadshow. While we have yet to disclose the financial details surrounding the Martin deal, investors can expect another accretive transaction.
Second, and assuming Martin closes, we would have purchased roughly $9 million in trailing 12 EBITDA in the first 8 months as a public filer, again consistent with our messaging and expectations pre-IPO.
Lastly, each of these deals present an opportunity for synergies, albeit each in their own individual way. Hilo, a great example of Alta continued to expand into a dense population center within the Hyster-Yale network; PeakLogix, an investment into the e-commerce and logistics macro tailwind as well as adding a new product and service category that's leverageable across our entire enterprise; Martin implement represents the opportunity to work with new OEMs and add new product categories in Illinois, while simultaneously adding important branch infrastructure. In total, we believe all 3 of these deals to be right down the fairway for Alta M&A-wise as we expand both vertically and horizontally with our customers and suppliers. And importantly, these investments give our management team the opportunity to drive synergies throughout the organization.
In closing, coming out of the challenges that Q2 presented, we are more than -- more comfortable than ever in our business model and our strategy. And we believe our Q2 results justify our confidence. We look forward to continuing to execute on our growth path in the coming quarters.
Thank you, everyone, for your attention. I hope you are all well and healthy. And at this point, I will open the call back up to the operator for Q&A.