Jason Berg
Analyst · CL King & Associates. Please go ahead
Thanks, Joe. Yesterday we reported second quarter earnings of $9.01 per share as compared to $9.36 per share for the same period in fiscal 2016. Through all of my comments, my period-over-period comparisons are going to be for the second quarter of '17 versus the second quarter of fiscal '16, unless specifically noted. Included in the results for the second quarter of fiscal 2017, was an after-tax benefit of $0.79 per share associated with our settlement of the PEI litigation. This resulted in a reduction of operating expenses of $24.6 million during the quarter. Excluding this after-tax benefit, adjusted earnings were approximately $8.22 per share for the second quarter of this year. To tie a knot on this issue, in October, we settled our outstanding litigation with PODS Enterprises that dated back to mid-2012. In the previous two fiscal years we had accrued approximately $66 million of expenses associated with what we believe would be a probable ultimate outcome of that case. We were able to reach a settlement with them and that included a cash payment of $41.4 million. Operating earnings at our moving and storage segment decreased $4 million to $293 million. Equipment rental revenues we increased them 2% or about $13 million during the quarter. We continue to increase our transactions while revenue per transaction was down nominally as Joe mentioned. It is this continued growth in transactions that leads us to believe we’ve opportunities to further improve revenue beyond the current pace. The number of trucks in the rental fleet continues to be higher than at the same period. term. U-Move revenue growth for the month of October was slightly ahead of our six-month trend. Storage revenues were up little over $10 million or about 16%. Revenue growth is coming from occupancy gains at existing locations, new facilities being added to the system as well as the general improvement in rates. Over the last 12 months we’ve added approximately 3.5 million net rentable square feet to the system, about 540,000 of that came online during the second quarter of this year. Our spending on real estate related CapEx for the first six months was $252 million. That’s down about $24 million from last year at this time, but the majority of that decrease coming from reduced acquisitions of existing storage facilities. Our all in quoted occupancy statistics, we finished the quarter at 79% occupancy, down about 5%. Looking at square feet occupied on average, we experienced a 2.4 million square-foot increase in how much -- how many square feet were occupied during the quarter. Of the 3.5 million square feet of new storage that I just mentioned, about half of that came from our own development, the other half from acquisitions and the average occupancy of that new square footage was about 19%. Excluding that new square footage, we would've reported occupancy just under 90%. Operating expenses at the moving and storage segment decreased little over $8 million for the quarter. If you exclude the effect of the reversal, the PEI litigation accrual, operating expenses otherwise increased $16.5 million. We saw increases in personnel, repair, and maintenance, property taxes, and we still are seeing the effect of our accounting for the expensing of smaller capital items. During the second quarter this last item accounted for about a $4 million increase in our operating expenses. Capital expenditures on new rental trucks for the six months was $665 million as compared to $426 million last year. While proceeds in the sale of our retired rental equipment were $308 million, that’s down from $376 million for the first six months of last year. Our rental equipment depreciation expense, I'm looking at this before the -- before taking into account gains, for the quarter was up $17,400,000, primarily due to additional equipment in the rental fleet. Gains on the disposal of property, plant and equipment primary the sales of our trucks decreased $23.2 million. We increased our pace of truck sales from the first quarter, but we're still below last year's amount. The decrease in gains for the quarter was primarily a result of higher average cost of equipment being sold, along with a decrease in the average sales price per unit. Our consolidated earnings from operations including all of our segments were $307 million, which is down $4 million from last year. Cash and credit availability to moving and storage segment was $971 million at September 30. Our notes, loans, and capital leases payable were approximately $3 billion. During the second quarter, we completed the financing of 23 storage properties, resulting in $94.5 million of proceeds. We continue to maintain a pool of unencumbered real estate assets that could be leveraged in the future. And finally on October 5 of this year we declared a $1 per share cash dividend which was paid on November 3 of this year. With that, I’d like to hand the call back to Joe.