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Hertz Global Holdings, Inc. (HTZ)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Mon, Nov 9, 2015

$5.70

+1.88%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Good morning and welcome to the Hertz Global Holdings' Third Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to your host, Leslie Hunziker. Please go ahead.

Leslie M. Hunziker - Head-Investor Relations

Management

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 third quarter press release issued this morning and in the Risk Factors and Forward-Looking Statements section of our 2014 Form 10-K and the September 30, 2015 10-Q. Copies of these filings are available from the SEC, the Hertz website or the company's Investor Relations department. Today, we'll use certain non-GAAP financial measures, all of which are reconciled with GAAP numbers in our press release, which is 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, the publicly-traded company. Results for the Hertz Corporation differ only slightly, as explained in our press release. With regard to the IR calendar, as you know, we'll be hosting our Investor Day next week in New York on November 17. We're looking forward to meeting with all of you there. After that, we go right to the Barclays Global Auto Conference on the 18th, followed by the MKM Entertainment, Leisure and Internet Conference on November 19. Both are also being held in New York. And then in December, we're scheduled to…

Operator

Operator

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

Chris J. Woronka - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Hey. Good morning, guys, wanted to ask a little bit about the pricing environment you described in the back half of the quarter, did that come about fairly suddenly and can you maybe give us a little bit of color on whether that lasted into October or whether you've you seen some change there? Thanks. John P. Tague - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, I don't know how much color we can give you that's accurately going to predict the outcome for the rest of the year. I think the biggest affirmation we can give you is we did reiterate our guidance of $1.45 billion to $1.55 billion. So, I suppose that gives you some indication as to where we think we're headed from a margin perspective. Between now and the end of the year, it's largely going to play out as to what occurs over the holidays. And I think that remains to be seen. So, as I said, we're not concerned on a margin level, but there was a deterioration in published pricing.

Chris J. Woronka - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Okay, got it. And then, could you maybe talk a little bit about the partnership you announced with Lyft, and how that came about, and what some of the things you think – how that helps? John P. Tague - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, I think it's way too early to ascertain what might evolve from this and what might not. We're committed to continuing to conduct pilots and experiments, and evaluate the way in which we can participate in the theoretical reduction of car ownership within the U.S., and this is one of those pilots. I would expect there'll be many more over the next few years. We do believe, as some have taken the perspective, that there are ways in which we can reposition and change the way we go to market that give us as much potential from the conceptual decrease of car ownership in the U.S. as the risk that may be presented by it. So this is just one of those efforts.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Rich Kwas from Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Richard Kwas - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Hi. Good morning, everyone. John P. Tague - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hi, Rich.

Richard Kwas - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

How you doing? John, on depreciation, so taking it down here, obviously, there is things have come in better than expected, but as you're starting to plan for the 2016 fleet, you've taken the capacity growth down. How should we think about depreciation as we think about 2016? I realize you're going to give guidance next week, but is this the right level to think about it? Lots of puts and takes preliminarily as you start to think about the next 12 months? John P. Tague - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, I think it can be dangerous to look at one item in isolation, without looking at the whole context. So I'd go to your point and say, look, next week, we're going to deliver a preliminary guidance for 2016, and incorporate what our view is for fleet dep there. We'll also provide you with discrete guidance around this line item next week as well. I would point out, as Tom indicated, that the improved results we're seeing are certainly supported by a strong residual market, but we are improving our execution and our analytics around this core capability each and every quarter. We've got a strong ambition ahead of us, which we'll lay out next week, as to what we can do from a managed outcome perspective around this particularly important line item. So, we don't feel like we're in a circumstance where simply we're going to float up or down with the market. Tom, you want to add anything to that or...? Tom Kennedy - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Executive Vice President: No. And I think, Rich, as you've probably heard from others in the industry, the model year buy 2016 is coming to a close. There was some supply challenges, I think, for…

Richard Kwas - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. And then, just two quick follow ups, on the reduction in non-fleet CapEx, what really drove that relative to your initial outlook? And then, in terms of seasonality with cash flow, how do we square that with what you do on the buyback front? How much do we take that into account as we think about your willingness to repurchase shares? Thanks. John P. Tague - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Let me start with the back-end, and then turn that over to Tom. Look, we're committed both to reducing our leverage ratio over time and hitting our targets, as well as fulfilling the buyback as quickly as we responsibly can. And we believe through operating cash flow and asset sales that we can do both of those things for a very balanced outcome that satisfies where we want to end up from a credit perspective as well as where we want to end up in terms of returning cash to shareholders. But Tom? Tom Kennedy - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Executive Vice President: Yeah. And, Rich, on the non-fleet CapEx side, we've seen more favorability on corporate, our corporate spend. I think we've put in some pretty aggressive processes here that require very strong business cases on discretionary capital spending that, frankly, were not as robust as one would like to see. I think that's helped us manage our capital spending on the corporate side. In U.S. RAC, we've cut CapEx a little bit, but that's more of a timing issue as we get our plans in place on our full potential, and we'll be doing some investments on some of our facilities and our service delivery in U.S. RAC going forward. And we'll be able to give you some color on what non-fleet CapEx would be for 2016 next week as well.

Operator

Operator

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

Michael Millman - Millman Research Associates

Analyst

Thank you. Just, I guess, two questions, you talk about some changes and improvements that you're maybe making in your pricing reservation systems and give us some timing on that, and impact on that, both on price and fleet? And secondly, regarding airport share, could you talk about what that had been, say, a few years ago and what it is currently and what your goal may be and how you expect to achieve that goal? Thank you. John P. Tague - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Hi, Mike. Well, first, around the systems and the execution capabilities within revenue management, we're still on an improvement curve, I would say, within the current context and we have a number of initiatives in that regard. Next week, we'll talk to you about significant revenue improvement that we believe is available, but only that is within our reach and control. I don't think it's appropriate for us to build the business around some presumption that there is going to be a general uplift on revenue in the future. I believe that's going to occur, but I can't tell you when and how much and when it becomes sustainable. So what we'll be talking to you about next week is a very substantial improvement in our margin objectives over the next three to five years, which is based, in part, on the revenue that's within our reach and control, which is the execution improvements we'll talk about within revenue management systems and also ability to increase penetration and effectiveness of how we go to market with ancillaries and products for our customers. So, I don't think we're a victim to the revenue environment. We have a lot we can do to improve it. We'll demonstrate that. And we'll certainly benefit if there's a general industry uplift going forward. As it relates to the airport share, we've lost about three points over the last few years. That began quite some time ago, frankly, and then was exacerbated particularly in the third and the fourth quarters of 2014. Look, this reset we've gone through, both as a result of our own issues as well as a result of the aggressive capacity growth of a primary competitor, it's sort of a necessary reset that we had to go through. The company fully intends to grow when it is responsible to do so. And we believe that the leverage we'll get from that growth on the bottom line will be much higher having gone through this process in terms of a capacity store footprint and cost reset. We do intend to position the company to profitably and responsibly maintain its share on airport and generally within the industry, but we're not going to force that as an outcome for next quarter. But clearly, over time, we are going to build a business model that can responsibly compete for share. And we're not going to dividend profitable market share to our competitors.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Kevin Milota from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Kevin M. Milota - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Hey, good morning, everyone. I had a question on the weakness of commercial demand that you called out in your prepared remarks. Wondering if you'd dig into the customer type and industries that you saw particular weakness in, if you'd (34:21) give us some detail on that front. And then secondly, if you believe that ride-sharing has had an impact on some of the shorter duration commercial rentals that you've seen in the quarter. Thank you. John P. Tague - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, I think as you know, we've certainly seen some share loss in the corporate contracting business, which, as I said, we're not going to dividend profitable share to anybody in the future. But we've seen some share loss there. I think we saw some behavior that went beyond that during the quarter, as you probably heard about in certain hotel sector or airline sector, be it around volume or yield, there seemed to be a softening of commercial demand. I think it's too soon to tell whether that's something that sticks with us for a quarter or two or is a trend. As you know, within our business model, we tend to be less impacted by softening corporate demand than other travel sectors, given the high leisure component. As it relates to ride-sharing, we'll talk a little bit about that next week. I think if you look at the highest concentration of ride-sharing markets, New York, San Francisco, and LA, in New York, you'd see an impact or at least what appears to be an impact. I think it would be hard in Los Angeles and San Francisco, given the overall industry trends, to draw a conclusion that there has been much of an impact, although obviously growth would have been higher for the industry without it. So, look, I think the impact continues to be less than the logical worriers might expect. And as we go further and further in this, I think it's best to look at the data, as opposed to our hypotheticals.

Kevin M. Milota - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Anj Singh from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Anjaneya K. Singh - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. First of all, I was hoping you could help us parse out the fleet size reduction in U.S. RAC year-over-year, both in magnitude and timing. How much of this is attributable to, say, pure rightsizing? How much is due to better efficiency from integrated and better functioning systems? And how much of this is perhaps just the weaker commercial demand that you're seeing? John P. Tague - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, as we continue to reiterate, we're going to manage for margin. And I think if you look at we had our last call, I think in about mid-August, and we saw a couple things occur, as we talked about, a weakening published environment as well as a weakening commercial environment. We also saw a stronger residual environment around sales than we expected. So, we could've obviously managed unit (37:03) a bit lower and possibly gotten a higher RPD. We could've managed fleet a little bit higher, and gotten a higher top line. But we felt driving to this record level of utilization and taking advantage of a fleet disposition was appropriate. As a consequence, I would say we expected to be down in fleet year-over-year, but we were probably about one point to 1.5 points further down than we might have anticipated earlier in the quarter. I wouldn't read anything into that, other than we're going to dynamically manage within certain guard rails, obviously, around our basic customer proposition, our cost structure. But we're going to manage around those on a dynamic basis. I wouldn't read anything into that. We have not…

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of John Healy from Northcoast Research. Please go ahead.

John Healy - Northcoast Research Partners LLC

Analyst

Hi. Thank you. John and Tom, I wanted to ask a bigger picture question. If you look at the progress you've made over the last 10, 11 months, if you think about fleet, if you think about revenue management and pricing, and if you think about just general airport operations, of those three buckets, where do you think the most progress has been made? And where do you think the most potential lies ahead for you guys in 2016 and 2017? And then secondly, you've made a comment, John, about kind of looking at some of the non-core assets and evaluating those and trying to maybe accelerate your capital returns. Is that review complete, and maybe any color you can give us regarding maybe what the list of non-core assets looks like? John P. Tague - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, I think we've made progress across the agenda. I think clearly, the revenue outcomes are less than we had hoped to achieve at this point in time. I think we probably underappreciated the level of deterioration in the fourth quarter last year, and that, frankly, we probably anticipated sort of a bottoming (40:57) before that was likely to occur. So, it's sort of uninspiring to tell you I think we've made progress in our revenue execution, because I think it could have been and was on a trajectory to continuing to be worse. And that has been arrested and we've stabilized, but I do think the team has made good progress in that context. And they'll lay out for you a very achievable aspiration around a number of factors for revenue next week. I think the fleet has been extraordinarily well executed by both Tom's team and the operations team. This was a staggering fleet transformation for…

John Healy - Northcoast Research Partners LLC

Analyst

Great. Thank you so much.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Brian Johnson from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Brian Arthur Johnson - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Yes, good morning, John and team. John P. Tague - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Good morning.

Brian Arthur Johnson - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

You've included a slide on Revenue per Available Car Day, which I assume is more of a slide, (44:01) but a means by which you're going to run the organization. Three questions around that. One, can you give us just some of your thinking on strategically why you think this is a better metric than standalone pricing? Secondly, I know we're going to get details next week, but just given the big jump up in utilization you got and given that's the driver along with pricing of this, how much more is left? And then third, a single-minded focus on this would lead potentially to under-coverage of the fixed cost base. So, maybe comment on what percent of the DOE you think is actually fixed, and then how you're going to manage that trade-off. John P. Tague - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: So, look, I think on the revenue side, RACD is really the equivalent of RPU, which is a pretty common metric within the industry, and I think a very good metric within the industry. The incremental benefit we get by going to an RACD or an ACD level, available car day, is that we're able to manage the – and affect the utilization of that asset on a more discrete basis. As an example, we can discretely manage what are we spending in transportation in terms of car days, what are we spending into licensing and into service, how many days are being invested in the disposition channels, those types of things. And you'll see what that's created in the organization is, we now have people who own each portion of that car day spend and they own an optimization of that particular investment in car days. So I think it will contribute to significantly improved…

Brian Arthur Johnson - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. John P. Tague - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: And this is simply an acknowledgement that if you were to focus on RPD, we could most certainly increase it and, in doing so, decrease margin. And correspondingly, if we're focused on U, (47:38) we could do the same thing, so the best view is to put them together, from our perspective.

Brian Arthur Johnson - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Adam Jonas from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Adam Michael Jonas - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Hi. Thanks, everybody. First, I just wanted to kind of clarify an earlier comment, John. I think you said you will not guide on revenue next week or just not give the factors behind the revenue? I just wanted to clarify. John P. Tague - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: We will guide on the EBITDA outcome that we expect, the fleet dep that we expect and our non-fleet CapEx. We will not guide on revenue next week. Adam Michael Jonas - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Okay. So you'll guide on EBITDA, but not revenue. Okay. John P. Tague - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sure. Adam Michael Jonas - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: All right. And then, just as a follow up, on deferred taxes and fleet growth, I understand car rental companies, they pay virtually no U.S. cash taxes due to the kind of accounting conventions like like-kind exchange. And my understanding was that's sort of dependent on having a stable or growing fleet size, where the timing of the tax shield from the depreciation expense on the acquired fleet is more offsetting amount of vehicles circulating back out of the fleet. Is that understanding correct? And, if not, what fleet conditions would need to be in place to see an atrophic development of the tax shield and a rise in your cash taxes? I ask this question only because seeing the fleet decline, that's great in terms of utilization and the way you define that and the discipline, but I am a little concerned about that whole like-kind exchange tax shield timing. Kind of calm my nerves on that. Thanks. John P. Tague - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, I would start by saying that, look, this is a fleet reset. It's not a long-term strategy. So, we expect growth in the future, but I'll ask Tom to answer the technical... Tom Kennedy - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Executive Vice President: Yeah. And, Adam, your general description is correct. So, having fleet growth and/or fleet replacing fleet, obviously, replace the basis in your fleet and allows you to continue to have that shelter deferral, I should say, of cash taxes. Again, to John's point, this is not a long-term strategy for the company to continue to shrink. This is a reset, resetting a lot of the different parameters in this transition year. And that is not an expectation that we have as a company to shrink over the long period of time. You also would probably note from our disclosure that our current NOL is quite significant. So, there is no view that we're going to pay taxes (50:09) the next couple of years. So that's not a risk that we have.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Afua Ahwoi from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Afua A. Ahwoi - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Thank you. Two questions from me, first, on the cost, and I think it was asked earlier, but I wanted to ask it a little differently. As you think about the guidance for 2015 that you maintained, despite a revenue slowdown, do we think of it more as a cost pull-forward, you find opportunities that you might have done next year that you pulled forward or are you finding more opportunities versus what you had maybe publicly conveyed to us earlier? And then the second question, just I know your outlook for revenue is pretty modest. And I was curious, given you showed utilization improvement and Avis actually also showed utilization improvement, what do you think is driving the weakness in sort of published pricing on the airport, if everyone is sort of rightsized and tight? What's happening in the broader industry's a little weak on pricing? Thank you. John P. Tague - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, I think sometimes things need to get worse in order to get better. So, we'll see whether that occurs or not. Look, on the pricing side, I tend to take a longer-term perspective here. I think the industry has been a little bit inordinately focused and those that follow the industry at times have as well. I mean, if we had a good pricing for a quarter, then the conversation would turn to, well, it's only one quarter. Is it sustainable? So, I think we're focused on what we can do in terms of the revenue improvement that's within our control. We do believe that over time, it's only logical that you're going to see structural…

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Yilma Abebe from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Yilma Abebe - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning. My first question is, can you remind us what the leverage target is for the corporation pro forma for the HERC spin? I remember it being 2.5 to 3.5 times. Can you confirm that, please? Tom Kennedy - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Executive Vice President: Yes, that's correct. As we've previously articulated, that the target leverage ratio for the RAC business is 2.5 times to 3.5 times. We've also said that our objective through the course of 2015 in our transition year and by year-end 2016, to be equal to or better than the high end of that range by year-end 2016 at 3.5 times. And we've also previously articulated for the HERC business, that the target leverage ratio was 3.5 times to four times, depending on market conditions at the time of the spin.

Yilma Abebe - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay, great. Thank you. And then my second question is you have some high coupon callable bonds on your balance sheet. What's the thought process there, please? Tom Kennedy - Chief Financial Officer & Senior Executive Vice President: Yeah, we are going to look at, obviously, there is the economics of the market, depending on market conditions and timing of having our pro forma financials available, because that is a requirement to refinance that debt. We need to have the pro forma for the spin available before any offering, so obviously as we move closer towards our filings of our Form-10, those financials will be available. And depending on market conditions, obviously, and the economics that they dictate, we will look at potentially refinancing some of those high coupon debt instruments.

Yilma Abebe - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Thank you. That's all I had.

Operator

Operator

And at this time, there are no further questions. John P. Tague - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thanks, everybody. And we look forward to seeing many, if not all, of you next week.

Operator

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.