Earnings Labs

WillScot Holdings Corporation (WSC)

Q1 2022 Earnings Call· Sat, Apr 30, 2022

$22.90

+0.50%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to the First Quarter 2022 WillScot Mobile Mini Earnings Conference Call. My name is Vanessa, and I will be your operator for today. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Nick Girardi, Senior Director of Treasury and Investor Relations. Nick, you may begin.

Nick Girardi

Management

Good morning and welcome to the WillScot Mobile Mini First Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. Participants on today's call include Brad Soultz, Chief Executive Officer; and Tim Boswell, President and Chief Financial Officer. Today's presentation material may be found on the Investor Relations section of the WillScot Mobile Mini website. Slide two contains our Safe Harbor statement. We will be making forward-looking statements during the presentation and our Q&A session. Our business and operations are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. As a result, our actual results may differ materially from today's comments. For a more complete description of the factors that could cause actual results to differ and other possible risks, please refer to the Safe Harbor statement in our presentation and our filings with the SEC. With that, I'll turn the call over to Brad Soultz.

Bradley Soultz

Management

Thanks Nick. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I'm Brad Soultz, CEO of WillScot Mobile Mini. This quarter is an excellent example of how growth compounds across our platform. We recently laid out a portfolio of largely idiosyncratic growth levers, which collectively represent about $1 billion of top line growth. Starting on Page 13, I'll talk through how each of these growth levers contributed to our strong performance in Q1, in which we delivered $509 million in revenue and $192 million of adjusted EBITDA, both up 20% and 17%, respectively, year-over-year. Starting with the largest growth lever at the top, value-added products and services, or VAPS, represents approximately $0.5 billion of the $1 billion top line growth potential. We continue to deliver ever more value to our customers with our differentiated and compelling offering as we take care of a supply chain node that's an inconvenience for our customers. In North America Modular, we achieved average VAPS rate per month of $407, up 21% year-over-year, on all units delivered over the last 12 months. When we went public in late 2017, we set what most felt an ambitious target of $400 million of VAPS per unit per month. We eclipsed that milestone this quarter. If we simply hold these already achieved penetration levels for three years, while the on-rent fleet rolls from its average 3-year lease durations, we'll realize $160 million of annual top line growth or approximately one third of the $0.5 billion VAPS-related potential. We're incrementally introducing new offerings that will help even more of our customers be ready to work day one. We are leveraging our proven processes and tools to optimize rates. We are continuously enhancing our training and market collateral to improve the performance of the lower quartile of our sales reps…

Timothy Boswell

Management

Thank you, Brad, and to everyone on the call. Good morning. Good afternoon. Page 20 reflects a high-level summary of the quarter. We're very excited about the outstanding commercial performance in all of our businesses and the implications for our guidance. Our team is exceeding our own high expectations. We're investing accordingly to support demand across all product lines, end markets and geographies, as Brad mentioned. But I think the implications for our trajectory into 2023 and 2024 are quite compelling, irrespective of recession concerns, of which we're perfectly cognizant and to which we can easily adjust. But we simply don't see any areas of concern in our leading indicators. On the contrary, we operate a highly predictable and slow-churning portfolio, with powerful idiosyncratic growth drivers. And both the lagging results on this page and the leading indicators in Q1, tell us that we need to prepare to scale up and scale up meaningfully. Page 21 breaks out revenue and EBITDA performance by segment for the quarter. Our commercial KPI performance drove a 20% increase year-over-year in total revenues to $509 million and a 17% increase year-over-year in adjusted EBITDA to $192 million. Through our normal quarterly reforecasting process, we're getting a very good feel for how inflationary impacts in both our revenue streams and cost structure are rolling through the portfolio. And this is one of the key factors causing us to increase our guidance meaningfully, which I'll come back to. Overall gross profit margin expanded year-over-year by 227 basis points, which is the first indicator that our pricing is already outpacing cost pressures. Delivery and installation margins, in particular, expanded 270 basis points across our portfolio. These margins are interesting because transportation is the portion of our business where both our spot price increases and our cost increases…

Bradley Soultz

Management

Thanks, Tim. I'd like to express appreciation to both our team for their contributions and our customers for their trust as we continue generating undeniable and accelerated commercial momentum and financial returns. 2022 is off to a great start, and I speak for the entire team when I say we're excited to continue to deliver on our commitments to all stakeholders. I wish all of you listening today continued safety and good health. This concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, would you please open the line for questions.

Operator

Operator

. And we have our first question from Manav Patnaik with Barclays.

Manav Patnaik

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning. I just wanted to hopefully have you elaborate on -- in the press release, you talked about the order backlog. And I just wanted to help understand how sticky that order backlog is in the event things do start slowing down, so just trying to appreciate the resiliency there in that comment. And also, I think you mentioned national account conversations, just curious what you're hearing there.

Bradley Soultz

Management

Yes. Manav, this is Brad. It's quite sticky. Those are firm orders aligned with projects that are well into initiation stages, so no risk. We're not seeing any deviation in the behavior of the orders once they're booked. And as I mentioned, it's the strongest we've seen, certainly looking back 10 years, even on an attempted pro forma basis.

Timothy Boswell

Management

And Manav, this is Tim. It's a run rate business, right? So what we're seeing today is if you just take North America Modular, for example, continued sequential unit on rent gains into April, a very significant order backlog. And as Brad said in his comments, that gives us a very high degree of confidence that volume continues to build sequentially into Q3. Which means along with the pricing trends and value-added product trends, that leasing run rate is going to continue to compound meaningfully over those periods. And that order backlog, you can think of it as looking about one quarter ahead in terms of the hard orders that are in the pipeline, and it tends to replenish through the course of the subsequent quarter. So it doesn't go out 12 months necessarily for the most part, but it's highly reliable for the upcoming 90 days. And that's why we have the zero based a 90-day capital planning cycle that we redo every forecast period.

Manav Patnaik

Analyst

Okay. Got it. That's helpful. And Tim, maybe just on the M&A front. I mean these tuck-ins that you've been doing, I mean, the pace is quite impressive and you said it should continue. So just wondering, is it the new kind of insights from your technology systems? Or can this pace really continue for multi years?

Timothy Boswell

Management

I believe it can, right. I think we'll continue this cadence through the remainder of the year, is my expectation. We're tracking a universe of potential targets that would support a multiyear consolidation strategy of this nature. The nature of M&A as it is difficult to predict the timing and the probability of certain transactions, but the volume that we're tracking today certainly supports this cadence through the end of 2022.

Manav Patnaik

Analyst

All right. Thank you guys.

Operator

Operator

We have our next question from Scott Schneeberger with Oppenheimer.

Scott Schneeberger

Analyst · Oppenheimer.

Thanks very much. Good morning. I want to think about North American Portable Storage container segment and just the strong acceleration in pricing. Could you speak to the kind of the components of that? Is this a lot of the inflationary-based pricing improvement? Or is this a little bit of VAPS penetration rate increase? And kind of -- what I'm looking for is where is that going to go to? Are we going to continue to see this accelerate? Or are you kind of pushing the limits here? Thanks.

Bradley Soultz

Management

There's no VAPS penetration effectively in that. And you've seen that build, Scott, well ahead over the last several quarters before we've really experienced this current inflationary environment. I would think of that more as sustaining that position on a go-forward basis. And as we mentioned, over the course of 2023, we should start to see some benefits from VAPS. We'll continue to deploy the processes and eventually some of the tools we have on the Modular side to continue to optimize lease rates as well. So those have been building well ahead of the inflationary environment. It just kind of backstops, if you will, the progress and gives us potential further upside.

Timothy Boswell

Management

Scott, this is Tim. I'd just add, there are numerous reasons to be, I think, enthusiastic here, VAPS is an obvious one. We talked a little bit last quarter about product positioning within the Storage portfolio. As you know, under our Mobile Mini brand, we've got a truly differentiated Tri-Cam product, specialty product, that doesn't exist anywhere else in the North American market. Through acquisition and some of our organic purchases, we are building out a larger kind of standard container fleet with which we can compete very effectively given our customer service and logistics capabilities, but we also have a significant opportunity to realize a premium then in the segment of the market that truly values all the other highly differentiated Mobile Mini capabilities. So that is a new thought process for the business here, and it's working extremely well. And then as you look into 2023, once we consolidate our CRM systems, we've talked about the application of pricing technology and further customer segmentation in Storage, that's not happening yet. And underlying all of that, you do have the underlying inflation of container assets themselves and the cost basis by which new supply is going to come into the market is going to further support pricing increases over the medium and, frankly, the long term.

Scott Schneeberger

Analyst · Oppenheimer.

Excellent. Thanks. I appreciate the color from both of you. Tim, for my follow-up, it's kind of a two part it's on the expense side. You did a nice job in the prepared remarks discussing kind of on logistics how you're covering inflationary pressures. And you all have alluded to a lot of optimization, internal optimization in logistics. Could you give us a progress report on how that's going? And then the second part of this is just an update on Mobile Mini synergies. Don't talk about that much anymore, but I know that's a powerful driver of margin this year. So if you could just talk about how that's progressing. Thank you.

Timothy Boswell

Management

Yes, on the logistics side, I'd say the area where we're seeing the most immediate traction right now is on the revenue side of that equation, actually. On the Modular side of our business, we have gone through a pretty thoughtful exercise over the last six months or so to standardize a lot of our delivery and setup activities across the network, so that we can more consistently predict the margin that's going to come out of those services as well as the pricing that we're charging. We've implemented fuel surcharges across really all of our divisions, and that's contributing to the margin expansion that we're seeing in that area. And yes, we do also have more operational-oriented initiatives underway, some technology-based route optimization and things of that nature, that I think will be supportive in future periods, but not a cause of the underlying strength that you're seeing in the margin right now. That's more revenue and pricing process driven, I would say. In terms of Mobile Mini synergies, this is an interesting one, because we're obviously adding SG&A at the moment. And we've just added SG&A in Q4 and Q1. And I think about this as a redeployment of some of the duplicative redundancies that were obvious when WillScot and Mobile Mini came together. We're redeploying those resources into places like sales. And then it's new functional capabilities that, frankly, neither company had before. I do think there is a significant opportunity in installation if this business were to go into a more contractionary GDP environment to realize substantial efficiencies based on the platform that we have today. But this is really more about positioning the portfolio for growth to support a top line expectation that's well in excess of what we would have contemplated two years ago.

Scott Schneeberger

Analyst · Oppenheimer.

Thanks. And just to clarify that. So are we not really going to speak in terms of Mini cost synergies anymore because a lot of the benefit is being redeployed into top line initiatives and a strong demand environment? And most importantly, underlying, you've talked about this potential of 200 basis points of margin expansion. So just curious how we're thinking about that going forward and how we should approach it?

Timothy Boswell

Management

Scott, it's going to be difficult to dissect prospectively. What I can say with confidence is SG&A is not going to grow sequentially from where it is today. And that means that the base that we have in place at the moment is highly scalable going into the remainder of the year and into 2023. There is absolutely an opportunity to continue realizing efficiencies from our back office functions, in particular, as we get onto a single CRM. But it is going to be difficult to dissect, okay; this cost reduction is related to the Mobile Mini merger per se. We're over two years out from when those were all formulated.

Bradley Soultz

Management

Well, given the pace of tuck-ins, it's almost nonsensical.

Timothy Boswell

Management

Right.

Scott Schneeberger

Analyst · Oppenheimer.

Got it. Great. Thanks that helpful guys. Makes sense. Appreciate. I’ll turn it over.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We have our next question from Kevin McVeigh with Credit Suisse.

Kevin McVeigh

Analyst · Credit Suisse.

Great, thanks so much. And congrats. You folks are not seeing any slowdown. We keep getting the question if things slow. Tim or Brad, it might be helpful just -- you've brought so much more flexibility in the cost structure, the capital structure of the business, maybe talk about it relative to kind of the taper tantrum and then COVID a little bit, because it's a fundamentally different company. So maybe just higher level, some of the puts and takes, whether it's capital structure. Just because, clearly, you're much better positioned to the extent there is any macro air pockets, if you would. But maybe just talk to that for a minute, if you would.

Timothy Boswell

Management

Hey Kevin, this is Tim. I'll start, and I'm sure Brad can talk at length on this on this topic. Most important thing to say initially is we don't see any concerns in the leading indicators. We do watch all the same headlines everybody else does, so we'll be prepared if and when there is an air pocket, as you suggest. The number one thing we can do in this business to prepare for an economic contraction is to continue to drive our leasing revenue run rate. And it is going to compound powerfully through the remainder of this year, such that the run rate we carry into any contraction is going to be substantially higher than it was two, three years ago. And that means that the cash generation in the business going into a period, where, to your point, we can take costs both out of the variable cost structure. Some of the SG&A that I was just referencing can easily be paired back where necessary. And then also the capital spending in the business is highly discretionary. Such that if and when we see a period like that, the countercyclical free cash generation in this business will be profound and give us an awful lot of capital allocation flexibility. And just to help kind of give you order of magnitude, an idea of how to understand the acceleration of the lease revenue run rate, if we look at contracts in Modular delivered in the last 12 months inclusive of pricing and VAPS, we're tracking over 30% above the average rental rate in the portfolio, right? So all we have to do is hold that level of performance that we've achieved in the last 12 months. And mind you, spot rates continue to accelerate. And you've got 10% plus pricing and value-added products insulation in the portfolio already today that you would carry into any macroeconomic contraction. So just like you saw in COVID, that's exactly the dynamic that allowed us to grow lease revenue year-over-year every quarter through 2020, despite a 20% contraction in our delivery volumes in Q2 and Q3. These are very powerful top line tailwinds, and that's the best thing we can do to position this business for a contraction.

Kevin McVeigh

Analyst · Credit Suisse.

That's super, super helpful. And then it sounds like you had really good progress on the transportation margin, 300 basis points. Is there any way to frame what the headwind was? Was it -- if not for fuel and kind of labor, what was that 200 basis points, maybe clearly powered through it. But any sense to kind of frame what labor and fuel was from, I guess, across the organization in the quarter from a headwind perspective?

Timothy Boswell

Management

Yes. I can give you that. Now I'll tell you what our cost per move was and it was up about 14% year-over-year in Q1, and that's across the entire business. And that's going to be a blend of our fuel costs as well as drivers and trucks and third-party trucking that we use. But on a blended basis, if you take all those costs, divided by the number of movements that we were making, trucking was up about 14% year-over-year. And obviously, our pricing was up over 20% to more than compensate for that.

Kevin McVeigh

Analyst · Credit Suisse.

Thanks so much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Stanley Elliott with Stifel.

Stanley Elliott

Analyst

Hey good morning everyone. Thank you all for taking the question. Pardon me. With the demand backdrop that you're seeing in the inflationary environment for new units, I mean, do you think we could get into a situation where utilization rates are running higher than they've normally run historically, so maybe low 70s on the Modular maybe mid-70s on Storage?

Bradley Soultz

Management

This is Brad. We're high 60s now on Modular. We know we can run this fleet as tight as 82%, so no concerns with respect to utilization being a constraint on the Modular side. And as you mentioned, it's all net-net quite supportive of continued rate progress. The Storage fleet obviously runs about 10% tighter than that. We are still landing containers. We have about 8,000 containers we're dropping into the fleet, in addition to all the very attractive M&A purchases, if you will.

Timothy Boswell

Management

Stanley, this is Tim. This is a critical point because our utilization level in Modular is actually a huge advantage now heading into the next several periods. Because we have all of the idle capacity that we need in order to grow that business organically, and we control the supply chain around direct labor and materials. If you're trying to source a Modular unit new today into our market, you're going to be paying 40-plus percent more than you would have paid just two years ago. Container prices, if you're sourcing them today, have roughly doubled versus where we were in 2017 and 2018, for example. So any new supply coming into this market is going to be at a much higher basis and going to require higher pricing than, frankly, we probably see today. So I think this business and this portfolio is extremely well positioned, both to grow volumes more competitively than anybody else in the market and also to drive incrementally higher ROIC as the pricing that we're seeing today flows through the portfolio.

Stanley Elliott

Analyst

Yes. No, it certainly sets up well from all of those standpoints. And kind of piggybacking off of that, when you all kind of retrofit or refurbish a unit, have you thought any more about pushing up into some of the higher price or like A level versus B versus C, in an attempt to capture even more rate than what you would historically just because the units available for rent are fairly tight amongst your peers?

Bradley Soultz

Management

Yes. I would note on the Modular side, the new fleet we're acquiring is almost exclusively this premium product like you'd see on the cover of our investor deck, we refer to as our Flex product. It's very suitable particularly in dense environments. You can stack it up to three stories high, network them together and create tens of thousands of square foots of Ready to Work solutions for our customers. Those are at a pretty significant premium even to the rates I quoted on a per dollar per square foot basis, but still very attractive and compelling versus commercial real estate alternatives.

Stanley Elliott

Analyst

Perfect guys. Thanks so much. Congratulations and best of luck.

Bradley Soultz

Management

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

We have our next question from Steven Ramsey with Thompson Research Group.

Steven Ramsey

Analyst · Thompson Research Group.

Good morning. I wanted to start with the run rate free cash flow hitting $500 million in the next few months even with the higher CapEx levels, and then an incremental $150 million to reach the three to five year target. This now seems just more and more conservative with such robust demand and an infrastructure bill laid on top of that and then the acquisition. So I guess, do you view this as fairly conservative at this point? Or if not, why?

Timothy Boswell

Management

Steven, this is Tim. Our -- the way we operate is we put together plans that we believe we can execute. We quantify those plans and we give you the best sense of the targets that we think we're going to hit. I think the only question here is timing rather than whether or not the ranges that we put out there are achievable. So that's probably the bigger variable here to consider.

Steven Ramsey

Analyst · Thompson Research Group.

Okay. Helpful. And then thinking about kind of the change in guidance just a couple of months away, where a quarter ago, you were seeing the high end of revenue and the midpoint of the EBITDA range. It appears this dynamic is now not in play, yet the midpoint of the new guidance implies margins that are about 100 bps below maybe the old guidance. How much of that is SG&A? How much of that is new acquisitions having lower margins or any other inputs to consider there?

Timothy Boswell

Management

Well, the change in the guidance from late February, I guess, when we last spoke, was a combination of us knowing at the time that the leading indicators for demand were very strong. In our normal seasonal patterns, the Q2 delivery period is really the critical seasonal build in our Modular business. So that's why we typically wait for this point in the year to really formulate our views for the remainder of the year. And that's -- we had a sense for it back in February, we've got a very clear sense for that sitting here today, hence, the increase in the revenue range. I think back to our discussion in November, and my thought at the time was maybe 300 basis points of margin expansion at the midpoint of our guidance. We think that's more like 200 basis points today. I'd say that's almost entirely SG&A driven based on some of the build as we went into Q1. And certainly, the acquisition component will normalize over the course of this year and get back to kind of profitability levels that are consistent with the rest of our portfolio. But I think that's really the bigger change relative to where we were in November.

Steven Ramsey

Analyst · Thompson Research Group.

Okay, helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We have our next question from Faiza Alwy.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Yes. Hi, good morning. I just -- I wanted to zoom out a little bit and just follow up on the $1 billion of adjusted EBITDA that you've talked about in three to five years. I mean it looks like you're going to get at least close to the $900 million this year. And I guess I'm curious like how do you think about the business as you reach that $1 billion of EBITDA, because it sounds like you're going to get there a lot earlier than three to five years?

Bradley Soultz

Management

Yes. And we did characterize the $1 billion, even back in November, it's not an if it's when. It's a milestone that we actually felt we could achieve within three years. And then the framework of kind of the seven other longer-term targets that we set out, we continue to track well towards.

Timothy Boswell

Management

And Faiza, the implications of that are really in the areas of capital accumulation and deployment, which was a key theme of our discussion back in November. So to the extent we accelerate the growth of the business and achieve that cash generation target sooner, the capital available for redeployment then grows as well. And the business just compounds faster in that scenario, whether you're looking at free cash flow per share, whatever other earnings metric you deem appropriate. So that's really the fundamental implication. We've already deployed $1 billion, when you consider a leverage-neutral philosophy and balance sheet in the last 12 months, and those numbers will grow as the business grows.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Great. Thank you so much.

Operator

Operator

We have our next question from Phil Ng with Jefferies.

Philip Ng

Analyst · Jefferies.

Hey guys, congrats on a really strong quarter. I guess for a question for you, Tim, you raised the top line guide, and certainly it makes sense just given the momentum you're seeing in AMR growth. But embedded in that, what are you assuming on units on rent shaking out for Modular and Storage? And just given the momentum you're seeing in this business heading into 2023, is there a good way to think about it more on a medium-term basis? I've always kind of thought of it as a low single-digit volume grower. But certainly, the momentum you're seeing in Storage is quite impressive and you've seen that inflection in Modular as well.

Timothy Boswell

Management

Yes, we've seen the inflection in Modular. I think that low single-digit rate is still a good place to be just given the 3-year lease duration in the portfolio, and we're very pleased to see the inflection in Q1 and the momentum going into Q2. So I'm still comfortable at that level. As Brad mentioned, we intend to add approximately 8,000 units organically this year in the Storage business. So you can do the percentage growth math, assuming all of that is deployed at average utilization levels. And then the tuck-in and cadence, I think, will continue, probably a bit more weighted towards the Storage side of the business, although we see opportunities across all asset classes. And if you consider our CapEx investment, even at the midpoint of the ranges that we've given you, it's still basically in line with rental fleet depreciation and PP&E depreciation just as a proxy. So we're not really expanding the fleet organically. So some of that inorganic tuck-in activity is in lieu of introducing fleet organically into our markets.

Philip Ng

Analyst · Jefferies.

Okay. That's helpful. And then, Tim, a question for you again. On the free cash flow side, certainly some puts and takes. EBITDA looks good. CapEx a little higher. But how should we think about free cash flow this year? I think in the past, you talked about a free cash flow margin probably get to like four 30 of free cash flow. Is that, one, still a good way to think about it this year? And can you remind us how much firepower you have this year for buybacks and M&A? Certainly, it seems like you got good runway on the M&A side.

Timothy Boswell

Management

Yes. It's a good question. So I mean our view of run rate free cash flow in the second half of the year hasn't really changed. Now if we execute the plan that we're talking about today, we'd enter 2023 with a much higher revenue run rate than we expected maybe six months ago, that will have higher EBITDA generation this year, higher CapEx generation this year, such that second half free cash flow is not materially changed based on this forecast. So we're still -- and that would actually imply a lower free cash flow margin in the second half of the year, but it's a heavier growth scenario. That's kind of the beauty of how this business works. You can hit targets like that, both in growth cycles like we're in right now. And frankly, we could blow that target away in a contractionary cycle, where you're pulling back on CapEx. That's easy to do. We're not going to do that as long as we've got organic growth opportunities in the business. And I would just direct you back to Page 24 on the investor deck. It shows you how we've allocated our capital over the course of the last year. I will say, given we're at the top end of our leverage target, there is no need to continue paying down an ABL at LIBOR plus 2.25% or 2.125% at the moment. So that gives us, frankly, a lot of flexibility for both M&A and repurchases.

Philip Ng

Analyst · Jefferies.

Thanks a lot. I appreciate it.

Operator

Operator

We have our next question from Andy Wittmann with Baird.

Andrew Wittmann

Analyst · Baird.

Hey great. Thanks. Essentially all my questions have been asked and answered, but I thought, Tim, I would give you an opportunity to talk about interest expense in a rising rate environment. What are you thinking for that line for guidance this year? Just help us understand how your ABL is adjusting to this? Because it looks like besides that, everything else is fixed.

Timothy Boswell

Management

Yes, that's correct. Our ABL is priced currently at LIBOR plus 2.125%. We typically manage around a 1-month LIBOR, which is north of 50 basis points now and likely to increase. We do have a swap of about $400 million for a portion of the ABL balance that's actually at 3%. So that is going to unwind here in the next couple of months, such that we're going to get an immediate interest savings on that portion of the ABL drawn balance. However, that does mean that more of the ABL balance will be floating. So that is something we're actively working on and thinking about. But the immediate implication is we're going to get a little bit of an interest -- cash interest reduction. How we structure the ABL and the debt balance for a longer-term rising rate environment is something else that we're working on. But in terms of cash interest expectations at current leverage levels for the year, I think we're around about $115 million.

Andrew Wittmann

Analyst · Baird.

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We have our next question from Courtney Yakavonis with Morgan Stanley.

Courtney Yakavonis

Analyst · Morgan Stanley.

Hi, good morning guys. So I just wanted to go back again to the conversation about the CapEx increase. Obviously, you increased the sales and EBITDA guidance because of the stronger environment, but it seemed like the CapEx increase was pretty one for one for the increase in EBITDA growth. So should we be expecting, if you do continue to have a stronger environment, see additional upside to EBITDA? Should we be expecting more of that to be flowing down into CapEx? Or was that just kind of a coincidence this quarter? And then I also just wanted to fully understand, Tim, I think you mentioned earlier that the CapEx was primarily replacement CapEx, not growth CapEx. But it is going to be spent on that Flex product. So just trying to understand how -- what the impact of that CapEx increase can be on the fleet? Because I think that Flex product commands a much higher rate than the legacy product.

Timothy Boswell

Management

It's an astute observation, Courtney, because the CapEx that we're deploying today is more capital efficient than that which was deployed 5, 10 years ago, which tends to drive the depreciation in the business. So when I draw a parallel between the two, I'm saying that we're replacing our net book value effectively on an organic basis. Those investments, whether it's Flex or value-added products or targeted refurbishments across our network, they are very capital-efficient investment. So a portion of that is going to drive growth and a portion of that is replacement. I can't give you a precise breakdown. The other thing I would just remind you of in the CapEx number itself, there is an inflation component there. If you think about traditional building materials and direct labor that are used in the refurbishment of Modular asset, I mentioned that container prices have roughly doubled since 2017 to 2018 periods, so there's an inflation component there that's above, frankly, that we would have talked about in November. I think those are the types of inputs, however, that can stabilize and in some cases, come down with building materials. So I don't see that as necessarily a permanent change in the overall capital requirements of the business.

Courtney Yakavonis

Analyst · Morgan Stanley.

Okay. Got you. And then, Brad, you alluded to the plans to pilot the Storage fabs in May, and your customers sound very excited about it from your initial discussions. I think you guys rolled out the GLO product end of last year. So can you just help us, any early reads just based on the rollout of that product or how quickly you'd expect the uptake of the Storage fabs product?

Bradley Soultz

Management

Yes, the -- so first of all, back to the ground level office rollout. So you're right, we began rolling that out late last year. Just a few pilot branches, if you will. As I mentioned in my prepared commentary, we now have about 80% of the ground level office volume capable of being supplied with the kind of Ready to Work furniture solution we've got on the Modular side. The uptake there is tracking along with our expectations. And frankly, the uptake is a bit faster than we saw in the same transition several years back on the Modular side. We're super excited, as I mentioned, with respect to the Storage container side of the VAPS opportunity. We're not expecting much in terms of contribution this year. But think of kind of two phases. In May, we'll roll out kind of a basic bundled offering, if you will, lights, basic shelving, ramps to get in, et cetera, locking systems. And then we'll follow that with the kind of the premium proprietary racking system and offering that I mentioned actually in the prior call in 2023.

Courtney Yakavonis

Analyst · Morgan Stanley.

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Brent Thielman with D.A. Davidson.

Brent Thielman

Analyst

Hey, thank you. Most of my questions have been asked as well. I guess just a couple. One, your fleet sales both new and used were down pretty considerably this quarter from last year, and I recognize that's a strategic focus. But is there anything more to it, I guess, in this first quarter, whether its association with certain markets or customers you're deemphasizing, anything like that?

Timothy Boswell

Management

No, Brent. Sales by their nature can be a bit lumpy period to period. To your point, it's not a core focus commercially for us. And given the utilization levels that we're running at in Storage and in the U.K., we have effectively said don't sell anything, for example, just given how well that business is performing. Same thing in Tank & Pump. We're running at 77% OEC utilization as of this morning, which is record levels. Business is performing great. And on the Modular side, we're obviously heading into a period of unit on rent build, where we're much less likely to want to sell an idle viable Modular building. So I'd expect it to remain at fairly depressed levels for the foreseeable future.

Brent Thielman

Analyst

Perfect. Thanks, Tim. And then just a follow-up. In the U.K., trying to reconcile the different trends or I guess KPIs you're seeing in Modular versus Storage, I guess, specifically units on rent. Is it -- can you say anything at all about the economy? Is it just a nuance specific to your business?

Timothy Boswell

Management

That's a good observation because there's been a unit on rent mix shift in favor of containers and a little bit of runoff in the ground level office Modular fleet there. There was some COVID-related demand on the Modular side of the business that began tapering in Q4 of last year. We've actually seen that start to rebuild a bit here to start 2022, albeit in other end markets. That was really the only notable change in the U.K. business was a little bit of COVID-related runoff in the Modular unit on rent. Offset, frankly -- more than offset by core demand in the container side of the business. And frankly, both assets are performing quite well as we enter 2022.

Brent Thielman

Analyst

Okay. Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We have now reached the end of today's call. I will now turn the call back over to Nick.

Nick Girardi

Management

Thank you, Vanessa. Thank you all for your interest in WillScot Mobile Mini. If you have additional questions after today's call, please contact me. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's conference. You may now disconnect.