Jason Berg
Analyst · Zacks. Please go ahead
Thanks, Joe. Yesterday, we reported first quarter earnings of $17.60 a share. That's compared to $4.47 a share for the same period in fiscal 2021. I'll start off with our equipment rental revenue. We experienced an increase of 58% or approximately $381 million for the first quarter versus the same period last year. To put this into perspective a bit, the first quarter of last year was the hardest hit month for – from COVID-19 for our equipment rental business. We had a quarterly decline in revenue of 13% or $94 million. But excluding that and calculated an average growth rate from the first quarter of the year before fiscal 2020, we still had an 18% increase or a $287 million improvement. During the first quarter of this year, we saw increases in one way in in-town revenue and transactions. Average miles per transaction increased and rates remained in a good place. Compared to the same period last year, we increased the number of retail locations and independent dealers. As a reminder, it was July of 2020 that we started to see our equipment rental revenues rebound from COVID and they started to increase. July of 2020, we added an 11% increase in revenue. But even with that relatively strong comparable figure from last year, we are still seeing continued growth in unit revenues for July of this year. Capital expenditures on new rental equipment were $310 million this quarter. That's up from $123 million in the first quarter of last year. There is still uncertainty surrounding the delivery schedules for receiving equipment for manufacturers. Our initial projection for gross equipment purchases this fiscal year before sales was $1.2 billion. It's likely that some portion of that is going to be pushed into our next fiscal year. Proceeds from the sales of retired rental equipment increased by $102 million to a total of $176 million so far this year. Sales volume for the rest of this year is also going to be dependent on the availability of new trucks to put into the fleet. For the equipment that we are electing to sell, there has been a strong market so far this year. The first quarter continued to be a good period for filling storage units. Looking at our occupied unit count at the end of June, we had an increase of 98,000 occupied units compared to the same time last year, and that continued to improve into July. Storage revenues were up $28 million, which is about a 26% increase for the quarter. And our all-in blended occupancy rate experienced an increase of 12% to an 80% average for the entire quarter. Most of our storage competitors that report publicly share some type of stabilized occupancy figure. Our version of that for facilities that have been at 80% occupancy for at least two years, that represents a little over 45% of our locations. Those locations had an average occupancy of 96.7% versus 92.4% the year before. Now this represents facilities that have been at 80% for two years, but we have a large group of facilities that have opened up in between the last couple of years. We are seeing that those properties also are reaching 80%. In fact, nearly 80% of our locations ended June with 80% occupancy or better. For the first quarter of fiscal 2022, we have invested $184 million in real estate acquisitions along with self-storage and U-Box warehouse development as compared to $103 million last year. Our goal is to increase the pace of this investment. We currently have just under 6.8 million new square feet in development across approximately 140 projects, and our acquisition pipeline is now beginning to accelerate. We have approximately $250 million of deals in escrow that may or may not close. In the moving and storage segment, revenue growth continues to outpace expense growth, resulting in margin improvements. For both the GAAP operating margin, total cost to total revenue, as well as the EBITDA margin, we posted improvements compared to the first quarters of either fiscal 2021 or fiscal 2020. Operating expenses in the quarter increased by $122 million compared to last year. If you compare those cost to the year before, we're up $79 million. In the press release and in our filing, we highlighted a $34 million increase in fleet repair and maintenance compared to last year. Fleet activity was at a low point last year at this time. If you compare those costs against the first quarter of the year before, we're showing about a $6 million increase in repair costs. Due to this dislocation of business last year from COVID, you're going to see reported increases in maintenance and repair costs during this year. Other categories that experienced large increases during the quarter were personnel, shipping costs associated with U-Box moves, liability costs and payment processing costs associated with the large increase in revenue. After three consecutive quarters of declines in equipment depreciation, we saw that number increase this quarter and is likely going to continue in that direction as we take delivery of new equipment. Before I hand the call back to the operator, I'd also like – we'd also like to thank or congratulate our life insurance team over at Oxford for their recent upgrade they received from A.M. Best to an A rating. It's been a long-term goal there, and they finally achieved it. So with that, I'd like to hand the call back to our operator, Gary, to begin the question-and-answer portion of the call.