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GATX Corporation (GATX)

Q1 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Apr 23, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and welcome to the GATX First Quarter Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Ms. Jennifer Van Aken, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Jennifer van Aken - Director-Investor Relations

Management

Thank you, Angela, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us for the first quarter 2015 conference call. With me today are Brian Kenney, President and CEO of GATX Corporation; Bob Lyons, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and Tom Ellman, Executive Vice President and President of Rail North America. As a reminder, any forward-looking statement made on this call represents our best judgment as to what may occur in the future. We have based these forward-looking statements on information currently available and disclaim any intention or obligation to update or revise these statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. The company's actual results will depend on a number of competitive and economic factors, some of which may be outside the control of the company. For more information, refer to our 2014 Form 10-K for a discussion of these factors. You can find this report as well as other information about the company on our website, www.gatx.com. Before I get into the numbers, I'd like to remind everyone that our annual shareholders meeting will be held tomorrow. It will be in downtown Chicago at the Northern Trust building, which is at the corner of Lasalle and Monroe. The meeting begins at 9:00 A.M. Central Time. Slides from Brian Kenney's presentation will be posted to our website, www.gatx.com. I'll now give a brief overview of the results provided in our press release earlier this morning, and after that, we'll take questions. Today we reported 2015 first quarter net income of $62.2 million or $1.39 per diluted share. This compares to 2014 first quarter net income of $42.1 million or $0.90 per diluted share. These results are reflective of Rail North America's strong fleet performance. Utilization, excluding the boxcar fleet, was 99.3% at the end of the quarter. The renewal rate…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And we'll take our first question from Justin Long with Stephens, Incorporated.

Justin Long - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst

Thanks and good morning, guys. First question, I was wondering if you could talk about the sequential change you saw in lease rates during the quarter with any commentary by car type, if possible? Mainly I'm just curious if it's still a stable lease rate environment as you described last quarter or if you've seen any softening given the weaker than expected volumes that the rails have put up along with several guide downs from that group? Thomas A. Ellman - President-Rail North America & Executive Vice President: Hi. This is Tom Ellman, and I'll take that question. Overall, I'd say what we've seen in lease rates is very much in line with our expectations at the start of the year. One of the things that we talked about was that with the long run-up in the flammable liquids market that we expected over time to see some softening in those rates, and sequentially, compared to last quarter, we have seen that. But those rates are very much still at historically high levels just lower than they were in the fourth quarter. More broadly, across the tank car market you've seen some quarter-over-quarter decline in rates maybe on the order of 5%, and that again was in line with expectations because of the strong effect that the flammable liquids demand and strength in the backlog provided the tank car market overall. So we've seen that, but as you saw from the LPI, the rates still are quite strong and quite high from a historical level perspective. The only other one to comment on individually would be the coal market where the combination of increasing velocity and decreasing demand has caused rate decline in that area.

Justin Long - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. That's very helpful. But outside of tank and coal, would you say other lease rates or lease rates on other car types have remained fairly stable on a sequential basis? Thomas A. Ellman - President-Rail North America & Executive Vice President: I think that's a fair statement; both fairly stable and in line with expectations.

Justin Long - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. Great. Also, wanted to ask about remarketing income; obviously, it was a big number here in the first quarter. I know it's a very tough line item to predict, but could you go over your expectations for 2015? Any change on the total amount of remarketing income you expect? And I know it's early on 2016, but just looking at your fleet today, do you have any initial expectation on how remarketing income could trend next year as well? Robert C. Lyons - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Justin, its Bob Lyons. Commenting on 2016 is a bit of a tough one at this point as you know because remarketing income can move around quarter-to-quarter so let me cover 2015 first. As we said, coming into the year we expected full year remarketing in 2015 to be around the same level as what we had in 2014, which was total net gain on dispositions of about $87 million. So yes, we had a very big first quarter, but as we said in the earnings call back in January, we were already in the market at that point in time with a couple of different packages, so we expected remarketing income. There was a possibility that it would be relatively high in the first and second quarter of the year, during the first half of the year, and we've seen that. The full year expectation hasn't changed. We should still be in the same range, at a very high range, with a lot of secondary market demand currently for our assets. 2016, I can give you a better assessment on that as the year progresses, but given the strength in the capital markets and the demand for the assets that we have, we would expect another solid year in 2016, too.

Justin Long - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst

Okay, great. That's helpful. And last question, I just wanted to ask about capital deployment. Obviously, you've locked in long-term committed cash flow. Could you speak to the opportunities you're seeing today? I know GE has recently discussed its divestiture of some of its assets. Could that create an opportunity? Are you seeing some things in the international market, whether it's Europe or somewhere else? And if not, is there a possibility that you could increase the amount of the share buyback that you're executing on today? Brian A. Kenney - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yes, it's Brian, Justin. The answer is yes to all the above, but we're not going to comment on any specific opportunities, like the GE opportunity. So we know what the public knows there, and that's that GE Capital is for sale. GE Rail is part of GE Capital, so we assume that's for sale, too, and GATX is always interested in any of these properties that come for sale, but we basically know what the public knows there. As far as Europe, we've been focused on that for a while, and there's been a couple of smaller properties that have come up for sale and changed hands. I expect more of that. It's a very tough market, both from an economic perspective and from the perspective of rules getting more complex. It's a more fragmented market, and it may be tougher for some of these entrepreneurs and smaller fleets to hang in there, so yes, we'd expect some activity there in the coming years. And we're focused on all of that, as well as share repurchase and continuing the 96 year dividend. Robert C. Lyons - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Justin, I'll just add to that, too. We were active in the stock repurchase, as Jennifer mentioned in the intro and would expect, as we said coming into the year, we anticipated we'd use the balance of the repurchase that was available to us, which was $125 million. And to the extent we work through that, then obviously that would entail a discussion with the board and a board-level decision on what we do going forward. But as you know, we've returned a lot of capital to shareholders over the years, both through dividends and share repurchase. So they're all alternatives for us.

Justin Long - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst

Makes sense. I'll leave it at that. Thanks so much for the time.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Matt Brooklier with Longbow Research.

Matt S. Brooklier - Longbow Research LLC

Analyst · Longbow Research.

Hey. Thanks and good morning. So I just had a quick question as we get closer to flammable service regulations. I'm curious to hear if there's been any change in the market as we get closer to that date and specifically, curious to hear your thoughts on if there has been an increased rate of redeployments of cars in flammable service that have potentially been shifted to other commodities? Brian A. Kenney - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yes. I'll start with the market commentary. The most obvious thing you've seen is on the new car side, people taking a little bit of a pause in the order activity to see what the final regulations are before pulling the trigger on any order activity. As far as redeployment, one of the – for us one of the hallmarks of that fleet is that we have really gone long on term. So we have quite a bit of term associated with the car types in the flammable liquids service, so the number of potential remarketing activity is fairly low. Where possible, again, one of the things that we really try to focus on is redeployment into a wide variety of commodities and to be as diverse as possible, so we certainly have continued to do that with the upcoming regulations. More broadly in the market, I think most of that activity in that car type continues to be concentrated in crude oil and ethanol.

Matt S. Brooklier - Longbow Research LLC

Analyst · Longbow Research.

Okay. And then maybe if you could just touch on – I think it's pretty clear that there's been a little bit of a pause in terms of demand for crude cars. It's kind of twofold, it's regulations and then obviously with this correction in crude price. But maybe if you could provide us a little bit of commentary in terms of demand for non-crude and I guess non-ethanol cars as well. How does kind of your outlook – what's the outlook on non-flammable service cars at this point? Brian A. Kenney - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yes. Again, I would say that's very much consistent with the outlook that we had at the beginning of the year. As you know, we have two long-term supply agreements and what we've talked about repeatedly is that we can place the majority – the vast majority of the activity from those two agreements into non-crude oil and ethanol service and that hasn't changed. We continue to believe that as we go into the rest of the year here, and so no change in that area.

Matt S. Brooklier - Longbow Research LLC

Analyst · Longbow Research.

Okay. I appreciate the color.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Art Hatfield with Raymond James. Derek S. Rabe - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Yes. Good morning, everybody. This is Derek Rabe on for Art. Just wanted to look at the – so the industry orders that were released yesterday showed that the mid and large cube covered hoppers is kind of where the strength was coming from in the quarter. We saw the small cubes come off drastically and then the tank, obviously, it's a slow market right now, given that regulations are forthcoming. But, what do you think is behind the strength in that mid and large cube covered hoppers beyond just maybe potentially some grain orders? And then broadly speaking, from your portfolio, I was wondering if you could just comment on what you're seeing from your customers across specific car types, if any outside of tank are showing particular strength or weakness? Brian A. Kenney - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yes. So as far as the commodities that mid-cube and large cubed covered hoppers would carry, the mid cubes' biggest single commodity is grain. Larger, there's two different areas that you could see activity, one would be DDG which is an ethanol byproduct and the other is the plastic pellet market. Lower energy prices has created increased demand in the plastic pellet area so that's an area of strength to your earlier question. Beyond that across the market in the non-energy car types I would say that demand is fairly consistent with what it has been over the past couple of quarters. Derek S. Rabe - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Okay. Thanks. And as I look at your renewal term it did come off about eight months sequentially, I was just wondering what specifically was the…

Operator

Operator

And, we'll take our next question from Steve Barger with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Ken H. Newman - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Hey. Good morning. This is Ken Newman on for Steve. You gave some pretty good commentary on lease rates by car type. I was just curious. Given what's happening with mix and term, should we think that monthly average rate per utilized car has peaked? Just wanted to get your thoughts on that. Thomas A. Ellman - President-Rail North America & Executive Vice President: So for the fleet as a whole – these are again historically high levels both in tank and for the fleet as a whole and I think it's fair to say that we're at the top of the market right now. Brian A. Kenney - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: As we came into the year, Ken, we talked about again bringing it back to somewhat of an LPI conversation but we indicated that across a very broad large of car types we were at record lease rates or near record and didn't really see those going up from there that's for sure. And with some of the volatility in the marketplace a little bit of pare back from those levels was expected.

Ken H. Newman - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Got it. And you had pretty impressive margins this quarter; I'm just curious in this environment what else can be done to drive margins higher especially for North American Rail? Brian A. Kenney - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well in terms of – we're going to continue to see very strong rate performance, I would say, broadly, across the fleet as we renew, again, this year a good portion of cars that are coming off older rates so we'll see nice pickup there and that will manifest itself again still an extremely strong and positive LPI for the course of the year. Robert C. Lyons - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Another thing that helps with margins is the strong renewal rate. When the cars renew with the same customer and don't require a shopping event that's positive on margin and we were at 85% renewal success this quarter.

Ken H. Newman - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Thanks. I'll jump back in line.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Steve O'Hara with Sidoti & Co. Stephen M. O'Hara - Sidoti & Company, LLC: Hi. Good morning.

Jennifer van Aken - Director-Investor Relations

Management

Good morning, Steve. Stephen M. O'Hara - Sidoti & Company, LLC: I was just wondering in terms of the – I know you guys had gone through a bit of a maintenance bubble for the last few years. Maybe it's continuing outside of new regulations. Can you just kind of refresh us on where you stand on that and what you see for maybe potentially 2016 in terms of maintenance expense, obviously outside of anything from new tank car regulations? Thank you. Brian A. Kenney - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yes. What's driving maintenance expense is the addition of the boxcar fleet; remember that happened at the beginning of the second quarter, so that's what's the main driver of increased maintenance expense is. As far as the compliance bubble, we've been talking about that for a few years. We're really on the downside of that bubble. It increased from 2012 to 2013 from if I remember right about 3,300 cars to 4,000 cars. It went to 5,000 last year. This is in terms of that tank qualification number which really drives compliance cost in our fleet. That's down significantly in 2015. We had to pay less than 4,000 and scheduled again in 2016 would be less than that, so we're on the downside of that bubble. All that is scheduled, and it depends on what you actually do with your fleet in terms of buying and selling, and perhaps the new regulations could have an impact on that as well. But, as we look at projected scheduled compliance, we're on our way down this year and next year. Robert C. Lyons - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: And Steve, to quantify the point Brian made on boxcars that was $61 million last year maintenance expense. For…

Operator

Operator

And we will take our next question from Mike Baudendistel with Stifel. Mike J. Baudendistel - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Thank you. Just looking at the data that came out yesterday on railcars, large number of deliveries, about 20,000. Can you talk about the degree to which you compete with those new car deliveries directly? And you view that as the increased capacity from those deliveries as being the biggest risk to lease rates going forward? Or is it more freight volumes or something else? Brian A. Kenney - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yes. So all of those things figure in so at the highest level a statistic you absolutely want to take a look at is the total railcar loadings because that shows how much demand there is in the market. And we've seen some recent downward trending there. On a more immediate basis, the availability of cars is more important as far as what you're going to be able to do from a rate and term perspective. And I don't know if you've heard a question or two ago, we talked about the new car backlogs remain very long, but with pockets of availability and as those pockets increase, that's where you might see more competition. Mike J. Baudendistel - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Got it. That makes sense. And also wanted to ask you, I guess with the flammable liquids tank car safety standards coming out pretty shortly. Assuming it's the option two that the mid-range option is what comes to fruition, do you think the industry is most likely to address that with new car builds or retrofits of existing equipment based on any visibility you have on price? Brian A. Kenney - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yes. So the RSI, the Railway Supply Institute put out a statistic a while ago that their best guess was that 28% of the existing cars would be retired which would mean 72% something would happen to them. We have commented that GATX is probably less likely than that to work on the retrofit side more likely than that to work on the replaced set. Mike J. Baudendistel - Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.: Great. Those are my questions. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Kristine Kubacki with Avondale Partners.

Kristine Kubacki - Avondale Partners LLC

Analyst · Avondale Partners.

Good morning. My question is on ASC. You talked a little bit about the slower start to the selling season, no surprise there. But I guess much did it impact the quarter more than you were expecting and do you think you can catch up on that? Is there demand for it as we go through the year? Robert C. Lyons - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Kristine, most of the quarterly activity – first quarter activity at ASC normally is January activity to begin with, as they're wrapping up the season. So, in terms of a late start in the end of March, it's not that significant an issue. But, if operating conditions remain challenging, it will be going forward. We'll see how that plays out in terms of overall customer demand. Last year we were able to make up a substantial portion of that late in the year.

Kristine Kubacki - Avondale Partners LLC

Analyst · Avondale Partners.

Okay. That's helpful. And then a little bit of follow-on to the last question about how the rules come out on the tank car side. I guess beyond kind of what you're looking at in terms of the rule, I guess what happens – are you concerned at all as we start to get this retrofit or if we do retire or we need to find homes for these other cars that are now currently in crude or ethanol service? Can these be repurposed into other areas? Or is that likely to lead to further pressure or will they just simply exit the market? Brian A. Kenney - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yes. The answer about repurposing is a qualified yes. So of the 360,000 or so tank cars in North America, about 100,000 of which are of the size that carries crude and ethanol and other flammable liquids. The ability to repurpose within products that are of similar densities, you can do fairly easily with a pretty limited modification to the car. But crude and ethanol make up a very, very large percent of the total commodities transported in that car type. So your ability to do that is somewhat limited by demand. If you want to move into other tank car types, the other 260,000, that's very challenging because the nature of the commodity would not be conducive to that car type.

Kristine Kubacki - Avondale Partners LLC

Analyst · Avondale Partners.

Okay. So it wouldn't really necessarily affect the lease rates on those particular car types if we just have these other car types roaming around at that point? Brian A. Kenney - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yes.

Kristine Kubacki - Avondale Partners LLC

Analyst · Avondale Partners.

Okay. And, this is a bit more theoretical question and I'm probably going to re-ask the same question from before. But I guess we kind of know a little bit about what the tank car design is going to be and you guys have limited exposure to crude, but can you help us maybe think about, I guess the OEMs have been pretty public about that they think there's going to be a frenzy – an immediate frenzy once the rules are released that there's going to be a big order frenzy, but it sounds like you guys are taking a little bit more approach – that retrofit would be more your avenue. I guess help us understand, do you see that there will be a big frenzy of tank car orders out there, like what would be – what would my car need to be in service to be that I would go out there and decide to go replace, fully outright, replace my car? Brian A. Kenney - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, first of all let me correct your statement about the retrofit. We're very unlikely to retrofit cars at GATX, and there's a few hurdles for us versus other people in the industry that make a retrofit more difficult. And the first one is we didn't participate, as you just said, as heavily as others in the crude oil boom in recent years or the ethanol boom in the mid-2000s. So on average, our fleet of those 30,000 gallon tank cars is older and we have less remaining car life to recapture those retrofit costs. The second reason is we think that retrofit cost that's put forth in the DOT notice of proposed rulemaking is way understated, I think they were at 26,000 to 32,000. We could easily see that being double and we think the cost of recovering that cost from customers over time are probably relatively low. So we're much more in the we'll scrap them than retrofit them mode. But then I'll let Tom handle the market. Thomas A. Ellman - President-Rail North America & Executive Vice President: Yes. So the thing on the market is absent regulation, and this came up earlier on the call, the relative demand for flammable liquids and the relative supply – with the significant ramp-up in production that has gone from an average tank car year being something like 10,000 cars to 35,000 cars, we've been talking for quite some time about an eventual oversupply in that market. And we think absent regulation that the market was getting pretty close to having enough cars to transport crude methanol, so what might happen with – very briefly with a change in regulation is difficult to say. But over the long term it's hard to see that the market needs materially more of that car type.

Kristine Kubacki - Avondale Partners LLC

Analyst · Avondale Partners.

Okay. Fair enough. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Justin Bergner with Gabelli & Company. Justin L. Bergner - Gabelli & Company: Hi. Good morning, everyone.

Jennifer van Aken - Director-Investor Relations

Management

Morning, Justin. Justin L. Bergner - Gabelli & Company: My first question just relates to the Rolls-Royce joint venture. With the appointment of a new CEO come July, does that change sort of the potential options or framework for that joint venture going forward in your eyes? Robert C. Lyons - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Justin, at this point we wouldn't anticipate any change to the joint venture. We've been in that joint venture for 15 years and have gone through any number of different management changes at Rolls-Royce and it's remained a very critical part of business overall and one that they see as a very strong growth opportunity. So sitting here today, no. Justin L. Bergner - Gabelli & Company: Okay. Thank you. My second question is a clarification question. When you were talking about sequential tank car rates at the beginning of the call and you were talking about, I believe a down 5% figure sequentially, was that meant to be referring to non-flammable tank cars or was it that number was down 5%, all the decline was driven by the flammable class? Brian A. Kenney - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yes. So overall, the 5% number is good across the tank car fleet. The flammable liquids decline actually happened – began to happen earlier, so we've been seeing flammable liquids decrease for multiple quarters. So, the distinction we were trying to draw is everything else in this most recent quarter, flammable liquids for a longer period of time. Justin L. Bergner - Gabelli & Company: Got it. And so, the 5% decline might be – the 5% sequential decline might be felt relatively equally this quarter across flammable/non-flammable or would it be greater than non-flammable? Brian A. Kenney - Chairman, President…

Operator

Operator

And it appears that there are no other questions at this time. Ms. Van Aken, I'd like to turn the conference back to you for any additional or closing remarks.

Jennifer van Aken - Director-Investor Relations

Management

Okay. Thanks, Angela. I'd just like to thank everyone for their participation on the call this morning. Please contact me with any follow-up questions. Thanks.