Earnings Labs

United Rentals, Inc. (URI)

Q3 2010 Earnings Call· Wed, Oct 20, 2010

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the United Rentals Third Quarter Earnings Investor Conference Call. Please be advised this call is being recorded. Before we begin, note that the company’s press release, comments by presenters and responses to your questions contain forward-looking statements. The company’s business and operations are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond its control, and consequently, actual results may differ materially from those projected. A summary of these uncertainties is included in the Safe Harbor statement contained in the release. For a more complete description of these and other possible risks, please refer to the company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2009, as well as to subsequent filings with the SEC. You can access these filings on the company’s website at www.ur.com. Please note that United Rentals has no obligation and makes no commitment to update or publicly release any revisions to forward-looking statements in order to reflect new information or subsequent events, circumstances or changes in expectations. You should also note that today’s call will include references to free cash flow, adjusted EPS, EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA, each of which is a non-GAAP term. Speaking today for United Rentals is Michael Kneeland, Chief Executive Officer; and William Plummer, Chief Financial Officer. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Kneeland. Mr. Kneeland, you may begin.

Michael Kneeland

Management

Thanks operator and good morning everyone and welcome. On the call as the operator stated is Bill Plummer, our Chief Financial Officer and other members of our senior management team. I’m going to start this morning by summarizing the quarter for you particularly those metrics that relate to our strategy. I want to focus our discussion on the tie end between our strategy, our actions and our results. And I’ll also talk to you about the operating environment and where we see the recovery going next. And then Bill later in the call will discuss – will cover all these in detail, all the results in detail and then after that, we’ll take all of your questions. And so we’ll start with the numbers. As you saw from our press release, we had a strong third quarter. We got some help from the environment in terms of demand, but for the most part we generally got a performance from the inside out by paying close attention to our strategy. As I shared with you in the past, that strategy is to transform the company for long-term profitability by defining on rentals according to our core business of rental, achieving customer service leadership in our industry, continuously improving our cost structure in fleet management, and leveraging our size by pivoting our customer base towards large construction in industrial accounts that we service to a single point of contract. And we’re being very disciplined about how we target these accounts while at the same time, pursuing more profitable rentals from our customer base at large. So as a result, we had positive net income of $23 million, and an EPS of $0.33 per share. When you compare that with the third quarter of last year, when we had a net income and…

William Plummer

Management

Thanks Mike and good morning to everyone. As has become our tradition, I’ll give some more detail on the quarter, revenues, our cost performance, little bit on the fleet, liquidity, update our outlook for 2010 and then touch on as Mike said, touch on 2011. On the revenue front, it was a good quarter almost any way you slice it, rental revenue in particular was up 6% year-over-year. That’s the first year-over-year increase we’ve had in a quarter since the first quarter of 2008. So it’s been a long time coming. Within that Mike mentioned the time utilization increase that we saw 71.3% time for the quarter, that’s up 7.1 percentage points year-over-year and I think its legitimate to say that we didn’t get it by shrinking the size of the fleet. Overall the size of the fleet averaged slightly smaller this year compared to last year. The time really came out of stronger demand. OEC on rent was up 11% year-over-year. Rates were working against us, so I think that makes that 6% revenue increase in rental revenue even more impressive, as Mike said rates were down 1.4% year-over-year. Although, they were up two percentage points sequentially for the quarter. And when you look within the quarter, in fact if you look over the last couple of quarters, on a sequential basis rates, have been sequentially positive for six consecutive months starting in April, they’ve been up every month on a sequential basis. Now Mike highlighted some of the internals going on within rate for example, daily and weekly rates are clearly outperforming our monthly rates overall. And then when you look at equipment type, earthmoving and other general rentals categories are clearly outperforming aerial and forklifts. But overall, the trend is established in the right direction. And we…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions). Our first question comes from the line of Henry Kirn from UBS. Your question please. Henry Kirn – UBS: Hi good morning guys.

Michael Kneeland

Management

Hi Henry.

William Plummer

Management

Henry. Henry Kirn – UBS: Could you dive a little deeper into the increase you saw in time utilization this quarter. Is there any way to attribute the improvement between the secular shift to rental, the underlying demand improvements in what you’re doing on the fleet management and mix side? And maybe any other bucket I’m missing?

William Plummer

Management

I’ll take a first stab at Henry. It’s really hard to decompose it into those kind of buckets. I do think that it’s fair to say that the seasonal pattern was stronger this year. And so that certainly helped. We are – we’ve argued earlier in the year that this year’s seasonal pattern seemed to be stronger than where it’s been over the last several years, certainly stronger than last year. And so if you think about 7.1 percentage points of year-over-year time utilization improvement, I’d hate to put a number on how much of that is just seasonal, excuse me that year-over-year will have a seasonal component. I’d hate to put a number on how much of that is broken out into the other buckets. That said, we’ve got nice growth in our key account relationships year-over-year in the quarter. So clearly a portion of it is just growing those key account relationships. Mike, I’ll let you put a number on how much of it might be to shift to secular, secular shift to rental versus owning. But I’d say that that’s a smaller component of that year-over-year change. It’s just really hard to put numbers on it.

Michael Kneeland

Management

Yes Henry, its Mike. It is very difficult, I mean what we can say is that when you look at a year-over-year basis, last year it’s safe to say that we really didn’t see any kind of seasonal uptick at all, it was very lackluster I think because of where the economy was and the lack of any kind of visibility and the uncertainty in the financial markets. Seasonality has returned. The one thing I can tell you is that we look at and it’s on a year-over-year basis, our new accounts are up. So that means people are looking at ways to rent. They’re up about 15% year-to-date on a year-over-year basis. So but as Bill mentioned it’s very difficult to quantify the numbers specifically. Henry Kirn – UBS: That’s helpful. And as a follow-up, given your increased focus on sharing a fleet, how high do you think you could get time utilization over the course of the cycle when demand picks up?

William Plummer

Management

So Henry, we’ve talked about over the course of the year getting time up into the high 70s. As we sit here I think 67% over the course of the entire year would be a very high level of time utilization for this company. Could we do better than that? Yes, we probably could. But as we’re seeing right now operating at these levels of time utilization involves some operational challenges based on how we run the business historically. And so we’re going to have to figure out better ways, new ways and different ways of operating in order to be able to sustain these kinds of time utilization levels at reasonable costs. We’re going through that right now, we’re learning those processes but we as an executive team are convinced that we can operate in the high 60s. I think we put 67% as the target in our sort of normalized EBITDA analysis last quarter and I think that’s a good indication of where we think we can drive it to on a sustainable basis. Henry Kirn – UBS: And one final one if I could. How should we think about the cadence of the repricing by customer type, across your book of business?

William Plummer

Management

I’m sorry, ask that question again.

Michael Kneeland

Management

We’re checking up. Henry Kirn – UBS: Sorry, how should we think about the cadence of repricing by customer type across your book of business. Does industrial take longer to get repriced than the contractor fleet, etcetera?

Michael Kneeland

Management

Yes, Henry its Mike. The way in which we setup our contracts are, there is a kind of a range in which we work within. It is the range would be from the global perspective not to exceed pricing. So you have a bandwidth in which you can work within the current markets. In other areas, we have the regional differences because of cost structures and where they’re located. I think each one is priced accordingly. Typically, these are one year to three year in duration. So we do have flexibility within the contract itself. Henry Kirn – UBS: That’s helpful. Thanks a lot. Nice quarter.

Michael Kneeland

Management

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Manish Somaiya from Citi. Your question please.

Michael Kneeland

Management

Hi Manish. Manish Somaiya – Citi: Hi Mike, congratulations and good morning to everyone. Couple of quick questions, Bill on CapEx. When you said significantly higher CapEx, I’m not asking for the amount, but I’m just asking for is it going to be more concentrated in earthmoving or aerials?

William Plummer

Management

Yes, we haven’t definitively laid out that level of detail in the CapEx spend for 2011, but I do think it’s fair to say that I would be shocked if we don’t end up spending sort of relative to the breakdown of our fleet, the mix of our fleet today. I’d be shocked if we didn’t spend more than the current earthmoving share of our fleet on earthmoving, less than the current share of aerial on aerial, more than the current share on trench and other general rental categories on those categories. And probably not dramatically different on forklifts. So I know that’s high level and just directional but we want to continue that trend, right? We want to continue to focus on reshaping the fleet away from aerial toward earthmoving and then supporting the growth that we’re seeing in general rental categories especially driven by industrial relationships as well growth in Trench and Power and HVAC. So that’s where our spend is going to end up. Manish Somaiya – Citi: Okay, thank you. Michael, two questions for you on AMECO JV. Do you have a revenue or EBITDA or industrial penetration type targets that we should benchmark against?

Michael Kneeland

Management

It’s too early, I the both – AMECO and ourselves have gotten together and we’re putting a plan together. As Bill mentioned we’re going through our planning. They are as well. As things start to develop, we will be open to share those with you. It’s too early to tell at this time, Manish. Manish Somaiya – Citi: Okay. And then just on the bigger picture, the industry obviously with the ABI Index indicates at least hopefully initial step in the recovery process. The question really is on how impactful will the regionals be in the future? Is that a model that can exist, is it sustainable or do you think that they might just need to consolidate?

Michael Kneeland

Management

It’s a great question. It’s one I often get and its somewhat complicated to answer it back, but let me give you a try. I think yes there is always going to be an area for regionals. I do think that regionals have been severely punished and pressured in this downturn. The question is accessibility to the capital markets and whether they can, like anyone else be able to sustain the capital structure and maintain their growth and their profitability to exist. So I do think that they will continue, there will be pockets, but I do think that they will always be pressured. It’s kind of one of those things where you’re not small enough, and you’re not big enough on the same coin. I will tell you that historically there has been a lot of growth for regionals. And I do believe that there will be further consolidation in our industry. Our industry is still immature and it’s still very fragmented. So it wouldn’t surprise to me to see a continuation of consolidation. Manish Somaiya – Citi: Okay. And then just lastly for Bill. Bill, you mentioned the gross margin on the used equipment, you said that the mix helped with the higher margins but compared to some of the peers in the industry, your margins have been running quite strong and I guess the one question I have is I just want to make sure that the book basis of used equipment sold, was it ever impaired?

William Plummer

Management

There might – in the current quarter there might have been some, I can’t remember whether we had any impairment impacts only what we sold in the current quarter. Chris is shaking his head, no. Yes, I’m just trying to remember the timing of when we sold the Mexico assets which we may have impaired previously but that was in second quarter of was it third quarter? But regardless even if it was third quarter, it would be a small portion of overall, the overall sales. So there is nothing unusual going on in the book basis of what we’re selling even in the third quarter or fourth across the entirety of this year. It answers your question. Manish Somaiya – Citi: Yes, I just wanted to make sure. Thank you again and best of luck.

William Plummer

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Seth Weber from RBC Capital Markets. Seth Weber – RBC Capital Markets: Hey good morning guys. Going back to the CapEx discussion, I mean is that number that you’re kind of thinking about, is that designed to bring the age of the fleet down, I mean you’ve talked about in the past you know kind of a maintenance CapEx level. Should we think about plus or minus that maintenance levels, what you’re thinking?

William Plummer

Management

Seth, it’s not specifically – the thought process is not specifically that we need to bring the age of the fleet down. Our view is that we can operate very comfortably at or above where we think we’ll end the year on fleet age. So that’s not the driving consideration for our thoughts about how much CapEx to spend next year. It’s a factor but it’s not the driving factor. We’re really more focused on what do we need to spend to support the relationships that we’ve deemed strategically to be the most important. And then how do we remix the fleet and then how do we make sure that we’re addressing the replacement of the units across our portfolio that we think could interfere with the customer’s rental experience. Those are the prime thoughts that will lead us to a CapEx number. It’s just become very so far to our planning process that that number is going to be significantly higher than it is this year. I don’t know that I can say much more than that at this point, I wish I could. Seth Weber – RBC Capital Markets: Let me ask you in different way, and do you expect the age of the fleet to come down next year?

William Plummer

Management

Haven’t definitely decided. What I can promise you is that we will make sure that wherever the age of the fleet goes next year that it’s not getting in the way of our ability to generate revenue. If we operated next year in the low 50s, I don’t think that would be a problem. Obviously that’s higher in fleet age than where we are today and so that would suggest that we could spend less than sort of the level that we’ve talked about needing to keep the age constant. Seth Weber – RBC Capital Markets: Okay.

William Plummer

Management

I wish there was more definitive answer that we can give you right now but we’re still thinking a lot of these issues through.

Michael Kneeland

Management

And Seth we’re going through our plan process, this is Michael, going through our plan process. But the way in which we look at the world is based on demand and returns and our customers, those are going to be some of the driving forces that we’ll be looking at very closely as Bill mentioned, I think we’ve proven, the industry will prove that time utilization can go back up and age is not the deciding factor on that, it’s how well you maintain it. It to us it’s about discipline and demand in where we’re going to put our money to get our returns.

William Plummer

Management

And just don’t lose track of the fact that we did say free cash flow positive next year. So that’s a constrain, and a constrain quite honestly that we’ll flex based on how active the market is next year. If we get better rate performance then sort of we’re thinking about right now. If we get that better volume demand than we’re thinking about right now, than we may flex the amount of spend up. If we don’t get it, we may flex the amount of spend down. That’s why it’s so important for us to get through this planning process to have a better sense from our regions of where we think we’re going to end up on the cash from upside and then we’ll nail a CapEx number coming out of that. Seth Weber – RBC Capital Markets: Right, and do you think that used equipment sales will be about flat next year?

William Plummer

Management

I think they’ll go up as well. Again don’t have a definitive view of how much they’ll go up but if we’re going to spend more we’re going to make sure that we’re taking out as part of that greater spend, taking out the units that needs to be taken out and we won’t be shy about doing that. So I’d say used sales will go up next year. Will it go up proportionately? Yet to be decided. Seth Weber – RBC Capital Markets: Okay. And then just a follow-up question on the fourth quarter pricing commentary. Is that – so you’re talking about pricing up year-over-year, can you give us what that would equate to on a sequential basis?

Michael Kneeland

Management

Sequential basis I think it’s like 0.75%.

William Plummer

Management

So I think for the quarter if we got sort of what we’re thinking about for the quarter, it’d be a little less than that. It’ll be sequentially the quarter would be flat to up just a little bit. Seth Weber – RBC Capital Markets: Flat, so from 3Q to 4Q flat up a little bit?

William Plummer

Management

Exactly.

William Plummer

Management

Which the seasonal pattern of our industry is we get into November and things start coming off rents. So that tends to put a little bit of downward pressure on pricing late in the year and early in the year for the winter months as well. So that’s not a shock that we might be around flat in the fourth quarter maybe up just a touch. Seth Weber – RBC Capital Markets: Right, so that was the spirit of my question was how much of – how good is your visibility there, I mean is that being driven by longer-term contracts that you’ve singed recently that you can definitely say that you have that in the bag or do you think that the markets just getting better?

William Plummer

Management

We certainly have some longer-term relationships that we’ve signed this year that gives us some more visibility. I would say though its mainly just reasoning from where we’re standing right now in terms of the amount of equipment that’s on rent. We’re at a high level of OEC on rent and on time utilization of our fleet as you can tell. Fourth quarter has started out with good momentum coming in from the third quarter. So we’re starting from a pretty high level of overall demand and we think that that will it’ll fall off seasonally but it will fall off less severely than it has over the last couple of years and the momentum on rates has been positive enough so that the seasonal impact will be as negative as maybe it is usually. So that’s the reasoning that we apply to say that we could get flat year-over-year and flattish kind of sequentially. Seth Weber – RBC Capital Markets: Was pricing up in September year-over-year?

William Plummer

Management

We haven’t addressed that explicitly, I guess in the past we’ve given the month year-over-year. So yes, in for penny, in for a pound. September was not up year-over-year for the month, it was down.

Michael Kneeland

Management

Zero point five.

William Plummer

Management

Yes, 0.5%.

Michael Kneeland

Management

Zero point five. Yes, 0.5. Seth Weber – RBC Capital Markets: Okay, great. Thanks very much guys.

Michael Kneeland

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Scott Schneeberger from Oppenheimer. Your question please. Scott Schneeberger – Oppenheimer: Thanks. Good morning guys. Just following up on that last question. Bill, you’ve breached in the past, could you give us a little color on the months by months pricing sequentially through the third quarter please?

William Plummer

Management

Mike, you want to do it?

Michael Kneeland

Management

Yes, I’ll do it. In the month of July, it was down negative 2.3, August was down to negative 1.4 and as I just mentioned September was down 0.5. Those are year-over-year numbers.

William Plummer

Management

Those are year-over-years by month and I guess I would only add that the down in July reflected what was a very strong comparison month last year. The July comp was through the roof last year. And so I think that was the key driver for that down to change for that month. We’ve reestablished the trend that we expected here in August and especially in September and what we’re seeing so far in November gives us confidence in the statement we’ve made about rates.

William Plummer

Management

And if I want to give you the sequential its 0.8 for July, 0.7 for August and 1.4 for September. Scott Schneeberger – Oppenheimer: Great, thanks a lot guys. And then on just could you speak to pricing overall out in the industry. What are you seeing from the national players, the regional players, the level of discipline. Where is it now that we’re into the fourth quarter to the extent you can comment on that? Thanks.

Michael Kneeland

Management

Well I think that that everyone is being good stewards of the industry and doing their best to get rates up. That’s a general comment I’m getting across all of my regions and my branches as I go on visits. Is there pockets? Yes, there is always going to be pockets. Is there going to be one where we see competitive pricing. I think the area that we see the most competitive pricing is in aerial. In aerial, the aerial players are scattered across North America and you can take that from small to medium. But I think overall the industry is waking up and responding to need to improve on prices. And by the way the industry overall is healing as I mentioned before its going out into the second quarter, used prices improving continue. We are seeing time utilization improve and my sense is that will be across the industry as a whole and as a result of that pricing will follow. Scott Schneeberger – Oppenheimer: Thanks. One more if I could, Bill probably more targeted towards you, with positive momentum on SG&A relative to your guidance and obviously with the strong revenue on cost of service a little bit with the variable in the different direction. For us building out our models in ‘011 and into the out years, where should we anticipate grabbing the majority of the leverage of those two line items and just a little bit more on how you’re thinking about that? Thanks.

William Plummer

Management

So I’m sorry, you’re strictly focused on the selling and G&A components of SG&A. Is that your question? Scott Schneeberger – Oppenheimer: No, no cost of services, yes cost of rental versus SG&A and yes with a little bit of itemization of sales versus G&A if you could.

William Plummer

Management

Yes, so again I’ll plead the planning process to a some extent but I would – if you’d ask me that question a couple of months ago I might have had a slightly different answer on the cost of rent components that I have today, given the momentum we’re seeing on volume demand and the variable cost drivers there, I’m probably less optimistic about a dramatic reduction in cost of rent next year. I know that we’ve got some initiatives that will help us address some of the fixed cost components I just think that the variable cost components could be a pretty strong headwind if the kind of volume demand that we’re seeing continues into next year. So that one’s is a harder one to say that we’ll have absolute dollar saves year-over-year next year, or how much those dollar saves might be. SG&A I think I’m more optimistic that while we should have selling cost increase next year that there is some other initiatives on the G&A cost components that we could use to offset those. I’m not ready to put a number on the page just yet. I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to target further SG&A reductions next year. But I’d want to get through my planning process before I can say that with any conviction. Scott Schneeberger – Oppenheimer: Sure enough and thanks for that color.

William Plummer

Management

Yes.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of David Wells from Thompson Research Group. Your question please. David Wells – Thompson Research Group: Hi everyone.

Michael Kneeland

Management

Hi, how are you? David Wells – Thompson Research Group: Doing well. I guess first off, I appreciate these colors regarding the difference between the daily and the monthly rates. Just to get a sense of the elasticity. Are you finding that when you have a monthly rate that comes off, if a customer is renewing, are you being able to push that pricing up or you finding some push back from customers as you to try to move the right needle?

Michael Kneeland

Management

Yes, this is Mike. The way in which we measure that would be sequence one which would be first sequence as they come out. And to your point we’re seeing the monthly rates improve as they come off rent and they go back out on rent. And that’s on a global site of all of our assets collectively. So it’s a fair comment.

William Plummer

Management

So maybe if I can say exactly what you said, in maybe a few different words, sequence one is the first billing cycle of a new rental. So that gives you an indication of the new rate that’s being established with that new rental. When you just look at those transactions the monthly rate is up as Mike said. When you look at the monthly revenue components that are from the mix of new transactions plus outstanding transactions that billed on a monthly cycle, the monthly rate is not as attractive. David Wells – Thompson Research Group: That’s helpful though. And then just looking at the location count in the quarter, continuing to find locations to close as you look at the store count going into next year, what are your thoughts on that and is there room for additional cost takeout just from a consolidation of locations?

Michael Kneeland

Management

This is Michael. As we’ve said that we’re always looking at our optimizing our footprint and we will continue to look at where we can optimize overall. As we said before we continued to look at this and make sure that and the idea is that not lose any market share or to capture the revenue once we leave, a lot of these are consolidations. And some would take longer to sink them through than others. But we’re going to continue to just process. Going back to even what one of the other comments on cost overall. This is a dedicated team that’s focused on cost reductions. We’re not going to let off just because we’ve got a good quarters behind us. We’re going to continue to focus on trying to drive efficiencies. So it is still an area that we were focused on. I would also point out that we also had some cold starts as well in our branch count and we’re focusing on growing the areas of profitable growth. So we’re going to do both going forward. David Wells – Thompson Research Group: That’s helpful as well. And then I guess an additional question regarding that the cost savings that you’ve seen just looking at I guess second quarter to third quarter, you saw almost 350 basis point of adjusted EBITDA margin improvement. Is there anything from like a onetime perspective that would have been a benefit in the quarter or is that just more a function of the cost takeout being leveraged as you get additional rental rate, excuse me additional rental revenues through the door.

William Plummer

Management

There is nothing that would have been a significant onetime benefit, no individual action, I might add that I called out the $6 million year-over-year change in bad debt, so on a year-over-year basis that hurts us sequentially it’s probably not a dramatic change in bad debt. So I’m not thinking of anything on a second quarter to third quarter comparison basis that was unique or significant in that improvement in margin. David Wells – Thompson Research Group: Great, thank you so much.

William Plummer

Management

Okay.

Michael Kneeland

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Philip Volpicelli from Deutsche Bank. Your question please. Philip Volpicelli – Deutsche Bank: Good afternoon.

William Plummer

Management

Hi. Philip Volpicelli – Deutsche Bank: So the first question is the bond offering that you guys have in the market today, would you consider upsizing that to also take out your 7% notes or do you prefer to have two sub tranches in your cash structure?

William Plummer

Management

Phil, its Bill. We’ll continue to evaluate the strategy as we see how the demand develops. The notion going in was as we said 500 to take out the 7 ¾. If its blow out demand, we’ll give full consideration to upsizing and acting on the sevens. That would be sort of a logical thought process if we had more money. So go out and tell your folks to buy and we’ll see if we can face that question. Philip Volpicelli – Deutsche Bank: It sounds good. And then on the one and seven-eighths, I saw you had $93 million put-back to you. The $22 million that remained outstanding. Are they still putable to you or did that expired?

William Plummer

Management

It was one time put at this time, there is another put in three years that they have available to them. Philip Volpicelli – Deutsche Bank: Okay, last question and probably more philosophical. Clearly some of the regional players out there are I guess in more difficulty that you guys are at this point in the cycle. What is the thought process in terms of do you prefer greenfield starts or do you prefer to make a larger acquisition?

Michael Kneeland

Management

This is Mike. The reality with this is as I mentioned we have five cold starts that we put out there. So we’re not afraid to do both, but to be clear it has to be strategic, it has to fit with our strategic vision of where we want to take this company that we’ve articulated to everybody. But we’d always be interested in looking and seeing if they do fit strategically, but we’ll take it as it goes. Philip Volpicelli – Deutsche Bank: Okay so there is nothing – you’re not actively looking out there at acquisitions. Its more – if something comes along you’ll take a look at it?

Michael Kneeland

Management

Yes, we’re always, we’re always scouring to see what opportunities exist out there. We’re not going to be sitting idle. It’s a matter of making sure that if we can find something we’re interested in it. And that’s what my team does and we’ll continue to focus. Philip Volpicelli – Deutsche Bank: Great, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Emily Shanks from Barclays Capital. Your question please.

Michael Kneeland

Management

Hi Emily. Emily Shanks – Barclays Capital: Hi how are you guys?

Michael Kneeland

Management

Good. Emily Shanks – Barclays Capital: Just two quick ones for you, the first one is more housekeeping. On the AR securitization if I have it right, it actually matures I think a year from today. When will you start looking at renewing that? Is that within the year or just much closer to the actual maturity?

William Plummer

Management

Yes, Emily we will look at it on an ongoing basis. We haven’t set a definitive time in which we want to renew it. And I guess I’m a little bit relaxed about it just because those facilities have been so readily available even through the turmoil last year, they were readily available. Our lenders were coming in saying hey we want more money basically. So we’ll look at it on an ongoing basis and I think we’ll pull the trigger as we line up set of banks and a set of conditions that we think look favorable. So stay tuned. Emily Shanks – Barclays Capital: Okay, great. And then my last and final one is just more of a bigger picture one, clearly before the consumer driven recession you guys had forged leveraged down quite nicely. What is your larger picture view on what the appropriate leverage target is for URI and I know obviously you will have growth in there, but how are you thinking about leverage over the next couple of years?

William Plummer

Management

Yes, so I think what we’ve talked about internally and I’ve probably have said it externally as well is that, there is two ways to approach that, one is to flip the question around and say how do I feel about the level of leverage that I’m at today or that I got to last year in the most severe downturn that we’ve seen a long time. And the answer was we felt comfortable with the level of depth that we carried even in the depths of last year. And so you can kind of back into what debt-to-EBITDA ration in that environment was and infer that we would be comfortable there. Let’s say that we got up to something in the 4.5 to 5 times that the EBITDA range at the depths of last year on a trailing 12 basis. That probably defines the upper side of that leverage measure that we’d look at. I’d peg a number I’d just 4.5 if we had a choice of actively managing it on high side. On the low side, we’ve thought about the philosophy of the capitalization of this company quite a lot actually over the last year and a half. And we feel comfortable operating at levels of leverage that imply being a high-yield issuer. At the low end of the range 3.5 times debt-to-EBITDA is something that we think is probably a good place to look for the minimum of leverage. You go much beyond that and you start to lose some of the cost of capital benefits that we see from being a highly levered company. So that’s the range that I talk about generally, 3.5 to 4.5. And I’d say we’ll operate that way unless there is something really extreme one way or the other. Emily Shanks – Barclays Capital: And just as a follow-up, I really appreciate that color Bill, as you look at, I mean you’re obviously throwing up some pretty nice cash this year and as you indicated you’re expecting free cash flow positive next year, your leverage could naturally work down below that 3.5 times if you think about that priority for free cash. What are you targeting?

William Plummer

Management

Well on the surface, we’ll certainly continue to drive down debt until we get to the low end of that range. We’re not going to be religions about 3.5, I mean if sort of the natural momentum of our business making the decisions, the operating decisions that we want to make takes us to slightly lower number than that, okay fine, we can do that for a while. So I don’t know that we would go out of our way at the point we reached 3.5 to say oh my goodness, now I’ve got to do something differently. But at the same time we do think that we’ve got operating objectives and some of those we might address more aggressively if we are getting towards the lower end of the range. For example, spending a little bit more on rental CapEx if it makes sense from an investment perspective. So we’ll balance all of those things as we go forward but it’d be a high class problem to have to figure out how to manage or leverage ratio that’s too low. Emily Shanks – Barclays Capital: Okay, thank you.

William Plummer

Management

Okay.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This does conclude the question and answer session in today’s program. I’d like to turn the program back to Mr. Kneeland for any further remarks.

Michael Kneeland

Management

Thank you operator. And I want to thank everybody for joining us today. Please feel free to join us any time or call us up here in Greenwich. And if you would like to go see one of our facilities, please get a hold of Fred Bratman. And if you go to our website you can download the investor presentation which has updates from last night. And also I’d like to point out that we also have a new page out there on our call center which explains how this service is growing and the importance this as a competitive advantage. So with that, that concludes today’s call. Thank you very much and looking forward our next earnings call. Goodbye.

Operator

Operator

Thank you ladies and gentlemen for your participation in today’s conference call. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Good day.