Bradley Soultz
Analyst · Oppenheimer
Thank you, Matt, and welcome, everyone, to the Williams Scotsman Second Quarter 2018 Earnings Conference Call.
Turning to Slide 3. I'll provide a brief overview of the company given that we have several new investors joining us today. As the specialty rental service market leader, our mission is to provide innovative modular space and portable storage solutions. We focus on providing these solutions ready to work so that our customers can forget about the space and focus on what they do best; that's working the project, being productive and meeting their goals.
We currently provide these solutions to more than 35,000 customers with a fleet of approximately 100,000 units representing over 45 million square foot of temporary space across the United States, Canada and Mexico. When we deliver an immediately functional space solution, productivity is all our customer sees. This value proposition is unique in the industry, our customers are embracing it and it's driving our growth.
Turning to Slide 4. Our strategy has simply been to accelerate the doubling of the company without overpaying or overleveraging. We're pleased to confirm that in the second quarter of 2018, our adjusted EBITDA of $41.9 million is up 45.5% versus the same period prior year and up 18% over the prior quarter. We believe the sequential quarter-over-quarter increase is a reasonable reflection of our strong organic growth beginning to be supplemented by the early synergies associated with integrating the prior 2 acquisitions. Our second quarter 2018 adjusted EBITDA margin improved 30%. That represents an improvement of 380 basis points over the same period the prior year. This strategy is working and it's evident in our strong results.
Now as a bit of historical context, our U.S. Modular segment, which is the cash engine of the business has been delivering double-digit EBITDA growth since 2015 driven primarily by the introduction of a ready-to-work value proposition and the relentless focus on optimizing rates and capital allocation. During the 2015 to 2017 period, we were able to maintain our business but we're not able to effectively pursue growth via M&A given the relative high leverage of our former parent company. From a recent history, following the arrow from left to right, in late November of last year, we recapitalized and returned the company to the public markets through a business combination with SPAC, which is Special Purpose Acquisition Corporation.
In December of 2017, we announced and closed our first acquisition of a company named Acton which was a fast-growing regional competitor. Acton had been producing a run-rate of EBITDA of approximately $26 million at the time of acquisition which in contrast was equal to about 20% of our full-year 2017 EBITDA. The next month, in January of 2018, we announced closed and fully integrated, a smaller independent competitor named Tyson. March 2018 we issued full year 2018 adjusted EBITDA guidance of $165 million to $175 million. This range represents a 33% to 41% increase over our 2017 results as well as confirm that our fourth quarter 2017 adjusted EBITDA was up over 19% year-over-year largely due to the aforementioned organic growth in our U.S. segment and the stabilization of our other segment which occurred in the second half of 2017.
The following quarter our Q1 EBITDA was up 32.5% year-over-year driven by that continuation of organic growth further accelerated by the 2 acquisitions. I would note that during this quarter, Acton ran as a standalone business including all duplicative costs while we refined our integration plans. In the first week of April, the Acton business was [ cut over under ] operating platform. This was approximately 3 months past close. At that point, 80% of the duplicative branches were idled and all subsequent business was conducted on our operating platform. At this same time, we began to offer the ready-to-work value proposition and apply our rate and capital optimization tools to the new acquired portfolio. That integration required no changes to our IT platform or organizational structure.
Then in June we were added to the Russell Index, in late June we announced the transformational acquisition of ModSpace. Upon subsequent integration which we'll detail later, this acquisition would result in a near-doubling of our revenues to over $1 billion per year and the doubling of our adjusted EBITDA versus our 2018 guidance including the related cost synergies. In July and early August we both received the necessary regulatory clearances and secured the requisite permanent financing for that acquisition. Based upon this progress, we're expecting to close the transaction now in mid-August. Needless to say in the 9 months since our return to the public markets, we've been busy advancing our strategy. I'm extremely proud of the teams accomplishments in this short time.
Turning to Slide 5. I'd like to share a few additional highlights from our Q2 results. As a reminder, our Q2 adjusted EBITDA of $42 million is up over 45% versus the same period prior year while our second quarter adjusted EBITDA margins improved 30% which is up 380 basis points over prior year. First, we delivered our third consecutive quarter of approximately 10% year-over-year rate increases. That's the rates for our modular rental units in our U.S. segment. This is particularly pleasing as the last 2 quarters include the acquired Acton and Tyson fleet which had not been growing as quickly. This was primarily due to the fact that they had not previously offered a comparable ready-to-work value proposition. We're very excited to now be extending this offering to a greater number of customers, many of which are new to us. Second, we continue to experience robust demand. Our U.S. segment, which provides the majority of our adjusted gross profit, improved utilization 170 basis points and increased the number of units on rent by 1.6% on a pro forma basis year-over-year.
On an as reported basis, the volumes were up 37% given this organic growth further accelerated by the Acton and Tyson acquisitions. Third, we've made substantial progress with Acton integration which progressed according to, and often ahead of, our expectations. As previously noted, Acton was producing a run rate of $26 million of adjusted EBITDA and we were well advanced in the realizing of another $11 million of cost synergies. We have now consolidated production in over 90% of the duplicative branches, we've substantially completed the consolidation of our back offices and are now offering new customers ready-to-work solutions.
The improvements associated with the ready-to-work and the application of rate optimization tools will be incremental to the $11 million of cost synergies. We expect to realize these additional benefits over the next 3 to 4 years. Finally, while delivering all of this we announced the transformational acquisition of ModSpace. The integration planning is well underway, we secured permanent financing to replace the bridges which were put in place at the time of the announcement. This included a very successful equity offering and debt financing on attractive terms. We now expect to close this transaction in mid-August and we appreciate the confidence from those that have invested in our company including the new, many new ones, that are joining us today. I believe we've established a proven record of continued delivery of organic growth along with swift and effective integration of acquisitions. We'll follow the same approach with respect to the integration of ModSpace.
Turning to Slide 6. I'll provide a brief update as to the profile of our business. Starting in the bottom left quadrant, we served approximately 35,000 customers with the largest 50 representing only 13% of our total revenue. We serve these customers for average lease durations of nearly 3 years. Moving clockwise to the top left quadrant, these customers represent a diverse group of end markets across North America. While this pie chart represents the U.S. and Canada consolidated revenue by end market, our real success is driven by our ability to leverage our unique scale in order to serve the more than 100 MSA's in which we have dedicated fleet, VAPs, sales and operations. In each of these MSA's one would find a [ slight ] varying mix of the same end markets.
Moving clockwise to the right. We are a pure play leasing business. 95% of our adjusted gross profit, which excludes depreciation is derived from recurring monthly lease revenues with the ready-to-work or VAPs being the fastest growing portion thereof. Finally dropping to the bottom right, the U.S. drives 89% of our revenues.
Turning to Slide 7. Our revenues for the 12 month ending June 30, 2018 were over $560 million on a pro forma basis. This is inclusive of Acton and Tyson but obviously would exclude ModSpace. We operate an unparallel branch network across North America, we're everywhere we need to be and we're serving our customers with a diverse fleet which has a gross book value of approximately $1.5 billion.
I'd note that there are 3 key attributes that differentiate Williams Scotsman from our peers. The first is ready-to-work. We've repositioned the business strategically with its unique value proposition through the expansion of our offering of value-added products and services or VAPs. Our customers value it, it's driving our growth with highly accretive returns.
The second is our differentiated and scalable operating platform. Over the past several years we've invested in our people, processes and technology and have created a highly scalable and differentiated operating platform capable of asserting market leadership. The operating platform includes sophisticated price management and capital allocation characteristics. And third, the attractive unit economics, which provide a high degree of visibility into our future performance, given the long life assets which live typically 20 plus years coupled with the average lease durations of nearly 3 years.
Shifting to Slide 8, reflecting on our end markets. Market demand remains positive as we continue to see strength across the majority of the diverse end markets we serve based upon robust industrial spending, non-res construction, improving [ E&P ] capital spending and expanding non-form payrolls.
Looking forward, the American Rental Association forecasts a 5% annual revenue growth through 2019. The AIA consensus forecast is also in the 4% to 5% range. ABI, which is a leading indicator for non-res construction activity has consistently remained positive for the last 2 years. Non-res construction starts on a square foot basis, remain below long-term averages and 30% below the highest levels. Finally U.S. infrastructure, while we can't predict the timing of any substantial U.S. infrastructure spending bills, once approved and implemented, we do expect it would further underpin and strengthen many of our end markets. And Canadian, GDP and improved oil prices are both supportive of our business in our other North America segment.
I'll remind folks that while we continue to expect underlying demand for our temporary space to remain solid, aside from acquisitions the fastest growing part of our business is the expansion of our ready-to-work value proposition. This proposition provides a turnkey [ space ] solution for our customers affording them the ability to focus on immediately getting on with their work with a project. We expect the demand for this value proposition will continue to increase over the next several years as we both expand and increase the penetration of the offering and extend it to new customers of acquired businesses.
Turning to Slide 9. I'll provide a bit of additional context with respect to the substantial progress we made with Acton. As previously mentioned, Acton was producing a run rate of $26 million of EBITDA in the fourth quarter of 2017. We operated them as a standalone entity including the associated duplicative cost structure for one quarter post close while we finalize integration plans.
Prior to that acquisition we had identified $11 million, which is about 40% of the acquired EBITDA run rate in addressable cost synergies. We began to realize these in the second quarter post close and expect to realize at least 80% of these cost synergies in our run rate in the fourth quarter following close. About half of the cost synergies are related to personnel with the balance split between branch consolidation and non-personnel related SG&A; we are well on track to achieve these cost synergies.
In addition to the cost synergies, we expect to realize an incremental $25 million a year of revenue associated with extending our ready-to-work value proposition to the new Acton customers. This simply assumes they're supplied at the same levels we've been delivering over the last 12 months to existing Williams Scotsman customers. We expect about 80% of this revenue to fall through to EBITDA and that the benefits will be realized over the next 3 to 5 years as the 12,000 units on rent within the acquired fleet return from their long leases and are redeployed and ready to work.
We're using the same proven playbook and advisers to support the potential integration of ModSpace.
And finally before turning it over to Tim, I'd ask you to turn your attention to Slide 11. While M&A has been the catalyst for the acceleration in our growth, the organic [ engine ] continues to perform well as evidenced in our 2Q results. The U.S. segment, modular rates, units on rent and utilization are up year-over-year on a pro forma basis. And as noted before, I'm most pleased with the fact that the second quarter of 2018 represents the third consecutive quarter in which U.S. rates are up 10%.
With that, I'll hand it over to Tim who will provide additional context.