Welcome to the Fourth Quarter 2023 WillScot Mobile Mini Earnings Conference Call. My name is Amy, and I will be your operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct the 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.

Good afternoon and good evening, and welcome to the WillScot Mobile Mini fourth quarter 2023 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. Slides 2 and 3 contain 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 statements in our presentation and our filings with the SEC. With that, I'll turn the call over to Brad Soultz.

Thanks, Nick. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm Brad Soultz, CEO of WillScot Mobile Mini. Starting on Slide 6. 2023 was a record year for our company. We built a platform to deliver consistent, predictable compounding returns, irrespective of market conditions, and the strength of that platform was abundantly clear. We are ahead of expectations financially, eclipsing $1 billion of adjusted EBITDA faster than we expected. We delivered $577 million of free cash flow, which is $3 free cash flow per share, return on invested capital of 18%, and we grew earnings per share from continuing ops by 35% to $1.69. All of these metrics are company records. These compounding returns, along with our clear line of sight to continued growth, sets us up for years of long-term value creation. In 2023, we continued to invest in our portfolio for the long-term benefit of our customers, team and shareholders. We upgraded and harmonized our CRM system, which provides a world-class IT platform upon which we can easily scale our offering and integrate acquired businesses. We continued our history of innovation, expanding our VAPS offering and establishing market leadership positions in climate-controlled storage and clearspan structures. We now offer our customers over 129 million square foot of comprehensive temporary space solutions. And as the only pure-play provider, we're excited to continue to expand and reinvent this space for years to come. As we begin 2024, our strategy is unchanged. We safely and frugally grow leasing and service revenues by driving VAPS rate and volumes underpinned by investments in best-in-class technology and our team to consistently improve the customer experience. We see immediate and significant tailwinds from VAPS rate and margins continuing into 2024. We also see continued opportunities to expand our solutions offering through programmatic tuck-in…

Thank you, Brad, and good afternoon, everyone. Page 23 shows a high-level summary of the quarter. 2023 was the strongest year in our company's history. And despite some market headwinds, we are carrying momentum into 2024, which supports another year of record financial performance. Our commercial KPIs were mixed throughout the year, with rates generally offsetting volume declines, which were in line with contraction of non-residential construction starts square footage plus the retail headwinds we've discussed in our storage segment. Nonetheless, leasing revenues grew by 5% year-over-year in Q4, with growth obviously being stronger in the Modular segment. Margins continue to be a bright spot heading into 2024 with a record 47% adjusted EBITDA margin in the quarter. We continue to see strong operating leverage on both our leasing costs and SG&A expenses which we expect to continue into 2024. And with the stronger margins and lower capital expenditures in 2023, the business is cash flowing nicely with a 24% free cash flow margin for the year in the middle of our target operating range. Strong cash flows and returns give us confidence to deploy capital in other areas. We invested $562 million in eight acquisitions through the course of the year, including our climate-controlled storage and clearspan structures platforms, which you can see pictured throughout the deck. And we’ve repurchased 18.5 million shares for $811 million during 2023, reducing our share count by 8.6% over the last 12 months. Return on invested capital of 18% continues to climb within our near-term operating range of 15% to 20%. And our leverage of 3.3 times net debt to adjusted EBITDA is comfortably inside our target range of 3.0 to 3.5 times. So overall, it was an excellent year financially and the business has never been stronger from a profitability and capital…

Thanks, Tim. Thank you to our customers for their continued business. Thank you to our team for delivering the best financial year in company history and our safest ever, and thank you to our shareholders for their trust with their capital. I look forward to another strong performance in 2024. 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 Instructions] And our first question comes from Tim Mulrooney with William Blair. Your line is open.

Brad, Tim, good afternoon. I wanted to make sure I understood the portable storage rate growth. I saw on the slides that about half of the total increase was driven by your recent cold storage acquisitions. Just to be clear, does that mean that core organic average storage rates were up about 10% year-over-year, excluding acquisitions?

Tim, for purposes of Q4, that is correct. It does conceal the fact that the seasonal storage business, which is at a significantly higher average rental rate typically, made up a lower mix of Q4 storage pricing. So if we kind of strip out the mix effect of seasonal retail storage pricing, and that seasonal retail pricing was roughly flat year-over-year in Q4 and just comprised a lower mix of our total, the core storage average rental rate would have been up about 20% year-over-year. So still very strong average rental rate performance in the core storage business diluted a bit by a lower mix of seasonal retail volume in Q4 and then inflated a bit by the addition of the cold storage platform for a full quarter in Q4.

Got it. Thank you for that clarification. That's helpful. Taking all of that into account, can you talk a little bit about what your expectation is for rate growth in portable storage this year?

Yes. I think we're going to roll into Q1 with just stripping out cold storage with core storage rental rates that continue to be up high double digits. Maybe not the full 20% that we saw in Q4 that probably starts to taper down a bit as we go through the year, but high teens is my expectation as we enter 2024 for storage, excluding the cold storage business.

Got it. Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Manav Patnaik with Barclays. Your line is open.

Hi, good evening. This is Ronan Kennedy on for Manav. Thank you for taking my question. As a follow-up to Tim's question, which covered off on the pricing aspect of storage, can you just recap for store units ex the acquisitions that were announced, recap the unit decline and what the drivers of those were for both 4Q and for full year?

Yes. Ronan, this is Tim. I'll just focus on the 4Q components. And average units on rent were down about 35,000 units versus prior year. And you can think of that as roughly half attributable to our retail clientele, some of that seasonal, some of that related to remodels or other use cases within the retail segment. And the other unit on rent component is attributable to kind of core construction, commercial and industrial clientele and is, through the course of the year, tracked with the overall market decline to non-residential square footage, which were down about 18% overall for the year. So overall, those are the two primary drivers of the storage volumes.

Got it. Thank you. And then just on the overall demand or, I guess, demand overall and more specifically by kind of your end markets. I know you had said you've seen -- gotten more cautious from a macro standpoint given what happened to non-resi starts, some continued headwinds or tailwinds in industrial, manufacturing headwinds in commercial office and warehousing. Any other segments to call out? And then if you can give us some insight into kind of your leading indicators that you typically touch on such as the quoting volumes and what you're seeing broadly from, say, quote-to-close lead time, project elongation or delays, that type of thing, for some insights on the demand picture.

Yes, it's just an interesting one. And as Brad mentioned in his prepared remarks, we started to see year-over-year quoting growth in the modular business in the mid-to high single digits as far back as our Q3 call. And what we're starting to see now year-to-date to start the year is year-over-year net order growth that actually exceeds that level, approaching double digits in our modular business, excluding the ground-level offices. So we are seeing that quote growth that we saw in Q4 converting into activations in our modular business to start the year in -- year-to-date through February. And that's giving us some reason for optimism as it relates to the demand environment that we're heading into given that we usually see a seasonal build in activations as we go from January to February, into March and April. So the signs there in the modular business are pretty encouraging and, frankly, exceed our base case assumption so far, which are centered around mid-single-digit delivery volume growth for the year. As I said in my remarks, the storage business isn't quite there yet. We're still experiencing runoff from the seasonal retail demand in Q4. And on a year-over-year basis, that seasonal contribution was still fairly pronounced if we look at Q1 2023. So I think we still have a headwind there in the storage volumes for purposes of Q1. But I think we're running a bit ahead of that in terms of our modular volumes which, again, I think we've got a balanced outlook when we take both segments into account heading into 2024.

Thank you. Appreciated.

Our next question comes from the line of Seth Weber with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Hey guys, good afternoon. I guess, Tim, I heard your comments about first quarter margin being down year-to-year. I guess my question is, do you need volumes to flip positive to inflect positively, for margin comps to be up year-over-year for the rest of the year? Or do you think margin comps could turn positive in the second quarter even without volumes turning positive?

Very much the latter, Seth. Absolutely, margins can inflect, frankly, even quicker without the activation growth. And it is the activation growth in our business when we incur maintenance expenses. As we're performing maintenance activities, those units then go on rent and build our lease revenue run rate. So we're actually incurring more of those upfront maintenance expenses in the business right now in Q1 to support the activations in the modular business that Brad was talking about. That creates a short-term pressure, especially when you look at it on a year-over-year basis. And your comparison last year was pretty light in terms of the activation and the maintenance volumes. So this is actually is a good thing and a positive indicator because you're getting stronger activation activity, you're supporting that activity with more maintenance investment. The short-term implication is that you'll get a quarter or so of margin compression, but then that compression kind of reverse itself as you progress through the year. If, for whatever reason, activation volumes were to slow, margins would bounce back even faster. So it's a positive sign that we're seeing in the business. That said, it's early, it's year-to-date, middle of February. And the true seasonal build in the business typically starts to take place in the second half of March going into April. A similar phenomenon, if you went back to our sequential progression from Q4 2021 into Q1 of 2022, we had the same exact dynamic where the business was rebounding pretty significantly coming out of the pandemic. Year-over-year activations in the first half of 2022 exceeded prior year levels. And we incurred more maintenance as a result, tighter margins as a result. But I think at the time, I described that as being kind of like a coiled spring. The margin then just pops back as lease revenues kind of stabilize through the rest of the year.

Yes. Super helpful. Thank you. And then I think I heard discussion around consolidating sales force and stuff like that. Is there any -- are you making any changes to comp structure or anything from an incentive perspective with respect to cross-selling or selling adjacencies? Or anything that we should be aware of, just how you're addressing this more consolidated sales force?

Yes, Seth, it's Brad. That's something we're really excited about, and I would characterize it as a little more evolutionary than revolutionary. We effectively operated the Mini sales team focused on storage and ground-level offices and the WillScot side by side, very complementary, very collaborative. But if you'll recall, they were running two separate CRMs up until early last year. So, the combination of the CRMs has afforded us the ability to make this shift, if you will. So every geographical end market has one P&L, covers all products, which is particularly important as we add climate control, clearspan and other products. So, we've aligned, similar as to the past, every territory, if you will. Think of it as a band of ZIP codes. We would have had two sales reps covering it, one more storage focus, one more modular. That's now one person accountable for the whole territory. Think about the territories probably got a bit smaller with a massive team behind to support inside sales activity. And then as I mentioned in my prepared comments, a pretty significant investment this year in demand acceleration creation tools as well as the whole digital platform to further accelerate that. So we're super excited. The change went very, very well in the field. Again, think of it as more evolutionary. But it does put us in a great spot to accelerate cross-sell modular and storage and add all these new great products.

Got it. Appreciate the color, guys. Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Andy Wittmann with Baird. Your line is open.

Yes. Great. Thanks for taking my question. I thought I would -- it looks like -- judging from your slides here, it looks like you reclassified the way you guys are talking about spot VAPS in the modular segment. Before it was just modular, in modular, now it's modular and modular. So Tim, I was just hoping you could shed some light on this just for comparison purposes as to how that spot VAPS metric has been trending. If you could kind of give us that number on the old basis to modular-modular basis, if you will. I see the comment here that AMR, I guess, is down 7% on the old basis. But I think that's the total AMR, not just the spot VAPS, so I thought I would ask for a clarification on that.

Yes. Through February, if you look at the VAPS delivered rate as reported, as we would have historically, you're north of $480. So as I said in my prepared remarks, we're back to kind of all-time high levels, if you were to go back and look at that delivered metric relative to how we used to report this. As I mentioned in my remarks, Andy, we are very likely moving to a single segment. So this dynamic where you've got modular product in the modular segment and modular product in storage kind of goes away. And we'll look at the modular fleet, and we'll operate the modular fleet more importantly, as a single combined asset class, and that's how we're going to market. When you include the ground-level offices, obviously, penetration has been growing very rapidly across that asset class for some time now, quite consistently. And based on some of the changes we made systematically and in the quoting process through the course of the second half of last year, we're seeing very good VAPS attachment rates, if you were to look at it through the lens of the prior reporting methodology.

Got it. Okay. That's helpful. And then I guess just a follow-up, a question that's been asked plenty of times before but I think worth asking again given that the demand environment is still dynamic and even changing a little bit per your earlier comments. I thought I'd ask just on your rate sensitivity, if you could talk about that. Has the changed demand at all affected your ability for what I'd call raw price?

No, it hasn't. I believe one of the first questions was breaking down the price performance in our core container category, excluding cold storage, and those rates were up approximately 20% year-over-year in Q4. So that's a good indication of the momentum that we are carrying into 2024. And then if I look at the spot rate spreads in our modular products, we still got a favorable spread of around 29%, so that hasn't contracted meaningfully. And our ground-level office spread is approximately 22%, so that continues to be quite indicative of a powerful tailwind across the modular products. So feeling good about the rate environment going into 2024, and we haven't changed our approach.

Great. Thanks guys.

Our next question comes from the line of Scott Schneeberger with Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Thanks very much. Good afternoon. Tim, could you address what the contribution is from climate control and clearspan in your 2024 guidance, kind of what that contribution is, and then what everything else is at the high end or the low end or midpoint or however you want to address it, kind of a bridge of what price, what volume is in the 2024 guidance? Thanks.

Okay. I don't know that I'm going to bridge every metric here, but I will say, if we look at all of our acquisitions in 2023, we invested about $262 million. There's about -- that was for about $70 million of acquired EBITDA, which implies about an 8 times blended purchase multiple. And about $35 million of that acquired EBITDA has yet to flow through our numbers. So in terms of the incremental EBITDA lift that we expect to get in 2024, $35 million of that will be coming from just the rollover of acquisitions that we've already executed. And then the remaining, call it, $65 million of EBITDA growth to get to the midpoint of our guidance, would be coming from other organic levers in the business. I mentioned 50 basis points of margin expansion at the midpoint. I mentioned volumes likely inflecting somewhere in the second half of the year, so likely flat to down on average if you look at the year as a whole. And then you can infer the pricing and value-added products are driving the rest of the growth to get us to the EBITDA midpoint for 2024.

Thanks. I appreciate that. And then for a follow-up, just there've been plenty of questions on storage and retail, but I'm going to add on to this. How are you thinking about the retail and the bounce-back? We've heard from Walmart remodeling nearly 1,000 stores globally, 650 in the U.S. It seems like there's going to be a lot of activity there. There's some very easy comps. We have your guidance, but I'm just curious how you're thinking about the retail component here as we move through 2024. Thank you.

We haven't baked in a significant rebound from that vertical in our guidance. If we look at kind of first half delivery expectations for storage, for example, very modest despite the comps that we're looking back to in 2023. We have assumed that delivery volumes then begin to grow a bit more in the second half of the year, but it would not assume a dramatic increase in remodels or seasonal activity. So we've taken a cautious view as it relates to those volumes. We're aware of the one data point that you referenced. We're also aware of some others that may not begin that store remodel activity until 2025. So we're trying to be balanced about that outlook, and the outlook isn't predicated on a strong recovery there.

Great. Thanks.

Our next question comes from the line of Faiza Alwy with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

Yes, thank you. Good evening. So Tim, I wanted to follow up on your macro comments around being incrementally cautious. So on the one hand, I'm hearing you talk about some optimism on the modular side, and then we were just talking about retail and how -- it doesn't seem like things got incrementally worse because we knew sort of the issues around remodeling getting pushed out. So I'm just curious like where -- like what's changed from a macro perspective in the last few months that's leading you to be incrementally cautious?

You're right, Faiza. There are mixed indicators out there, right? The newest data point that we have is the fourth quarter non-residential construction square footage, which was down 29% year-over-year. So that's a big drop. It was down 18% for the year, with Q4 being the softest quarter. Now those overall square footage levels are still kind of in line or above 2018 and 2019 levels. So this is still a healthy operating environment, it's just that we're coming off of a 2022 that was pretty extraordinary and set some all-time highs. And we saw that impact in our Q4 storage volumes, excluding retail. I agree with your point that the retail assumptions are not materially worse than we would have talked about in Q3, they're just rolling over a bit later just because there was some contribution from that demand in Q1 2023. So from a year-over-year perspective, that headwind will kind of ease as we get into Q2, specific to the storage segment. And then contrast that with what we're seeing with modular demand to start the year. Again, we're seeing good conversion of the quoting activity that we were seeing in Q4, and we're seeing strong year-over-year growth in net orders and activations. Now if we sustain that at mid-single-digit growth levels through the course of this year, we're going to inflect units on rent, and we're going to have a pretty compelling trajectory going into 2025. But it's just the end of February, and that normal seasonal build in our business starts to become a lot clearer as we get into the second half of March and April.

Okay. Understood. Thanks for that. And then I don't think the question around sort of modular pricing has been asked yet. I'm just curious, it feels like the rental rate, like just the growth in pricing has been decelerating through the course of the year, right? In the first half, we were up 17%. It's a little bit less in 4Q. Curious if there was a mix impact there and what that might be and then how we should think about modular pricing in '24.

Yes. As I mentioned a minute ago, one place I typically look is just the spread that we're seeing between our delivered spot rates and the average rental rates. And right now, if we exclude ground-level offices, that spread is about 29%. And if we isolate ground-level offices, that spread is about 22%. So those are very healthy spreads going into 2024. And a simple way to think about that is, if you've got a three-year average lease duration, divide that spread by three, so you can get roughly 10% annual growth just by holding the current spot rates that we're seeing in the business. So that remains a very powerful tailwind as we enter 2024, and that is our base case assumption across the modular products, inclusive of gloves.

Great. Thank you, so much.

Our next question comes from the line of Steven Ramsey with Thompson Research. Your line is open.

Hi, good afternoon. So modular activations and orders trending up to start the year. Can you clarify on storage, if you exclude the holiday runoff and if you exclude retail remodel kind of storage onto construction, industrial type job sites, is that trend pacing behind where modular is to start the year? And maybe this gets to how cross-selling is happening in this period of modular activations moving up kind of in real time.

I'll focus more on our outlook, Steve, it's just probably the better place to go. We've assumed that activations in the core storage business are relatively flat for purposes of Q1 and Q2 and then start building as we get into the second half of the year. That's mostly a function of the comps being easier as we get into the second half of the year. I wouldn't say that we've embedded assumptions specific to greater cross-selling, although I think that's definitely an opportunity. I think there's opportunity within our enterprise account portfolio, for sure, to the earlier question around store remodels as well as other non-retail related customers. But it's more a function of kind of what we see to start the year and making sure that we're taking a balanced approach with those assumptions across the portfolio given the non-res activity that we just saw in Q4.

Okay. Got you. And then on the CapEx range, thinking about the midpoint $50 million higher year-over-year, how much of that is tied to the revenue range? Basically, do you foresee having to invest to the high end of CapEx for the year to reach the high end of revenue? Thanks.

Look, CapEx is demand-driven. And just to clarify, if we did about $185 million of net CapEx in 2023, the midpoint is about $90 million higher than that or about a 50% increase. So this is a significant increase, although very much centered on where we would have pointed to in terms of our long-term kind of normalized annual CapEx requirement. If you assume there's around $180 million of maintenance CapEx spend in the business, this does imply growth investments to support modular refurbishments as well as growth investments to support primarily the climate-controlled storage platform that we introduced. I think it is -- depending on where the growth to get you to the higher end of the range comes from, it may or may not require incremental CapEx. If we got surprised to the upside in terms of storage demand, well, we've got plenty of excess capacity. Those assets don't require refurbishment, and you could capture that incremental storage demand without a meaningful increase in CapEx above this midpoint. If that demand came more from the modular side of the business, I fully expect we'd be investing incremental refurbishment dollars in order to get there. The only area in the business where we need new fleet would be across the new 2 new platforms. And that will be purely demand-driven as those assets get absorbed into the market. We can feed more inventory into the bridge network. That obviously is a very good thing and would support our run rate going into 2025. So I think we can grow with a lot less CapEx on the storage side based on how we're positioned right now and normal modular refurbishment activity. We reassess every 90 days using our zero-based capital allocation process and no change in that from my perspective.

Great. Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Philip Ng with Jefferies. Your line is open.

Encouraging to see modular activations and net orders up year-over-year. Any end markets that stand out that's driving the pickup in activity? And when we look at modular versus storage, trends obviously have diverged a bit even at the start of the year. Outside of retail, anything else that's driving some of that divergence from your perspective?

I'd say, Phil, that modular is pretty broad-based. I mean, obviously, with the decline we experienced in non-resi construction, we're winning in infrastructure, other large onshoring, reshoring, et cetera. And it is pretty broad-based geographically and by end market, so quite encouraged by that. And as Tim mentioned in his prepared remarks, we just haven't seen the storage volumes turn yet accordingly.

And Brad, the uptick has been more on some of these mega projects infrastructure that you're seeing on the modular side in terms of activity?

Maybe a bit biased to that, but it's been pretty broad-based. I mean including ground-level offices and modular, the activations over the last three months are up low single digits. And excluding ground-level offices, they're up more than that. So as Tim said, it's encouraging. It's early. So it's one that we'll watch and we're prepared to invest if that demand continues.

Okay. Tim, I guess your guidance for the full year, if I heard you correctly, I mean, at least you're seeing some green shoots on modular. So your base case for units on rent inflecting there seems more than reasonable. But what if the retail doesn't come back and kind of languishes here? And you don't see that pick up perhaps in the back half, I don't know if that's what you're baking in for storage, how meaningful is that to your ability to kind of hit the midpoint of your full year EBITDA? It still seems like you got enough levers on price mix, but any context would be helpful.

To your point, we have so many levers in this business to offset what I would characterize -- in your question, there's a relatively minor headwind, if that's what we're faced with, is a no storage retail recovery in the second half of the year. We've got pricing levers, value-added products levers, margin levers. I don't view that as a significant concern relative to the midpoint of the guidance given that we've taken a pretty conservative approach for the year as it relates to storage volumes. So look, as has been our history, we're trying to put forth numbers that we believe we can deliver. In order to get to the upside of this range, I think more has to go right, you probably need some of that storage end market recovery in a more significant way. Maybe some tuck-in M&A helps get you to the top end of the range, maybe stronger margin performance than we're expecting is an upside lever to get you to the top end of the range. But we've got multiple ways to win that I think get us to the midpoint.

Okay. Appreciate the color.

Our next question comes from the line of Brent Thielman with D.A. Davidson. Your line is open.

Thanks guys. Just a couple quick ones for me. Tim, I was hoping you could just level set us on interest expense expectations for 2024, just obviously, pre-McGrath. And then my second question, is there anything that precludes you from continuing with the buyback while we wait for the McGrath closure?

Yes. So on your first question, it's actually a good one. As we state in the materials, we're on about a $212 million cash interest run rate, inclusive of the swaps that we executed in January. That does not include about another $12 million or so of noncash deferred financing fees that are amortizing through the P&L. And I know some analysts out there are missing that, especially as you look at the Q4 numbers, right? So you got to take the cash interest, add another $12 million and you should be, at least on our current run rate, around $225 million of GAAP interest expense for the year, divide that by 4 for the current quarterly run rate. What we do with the debt balance as we progress through the year, obviously, there are different scenarios there that we'll adjust for. But that's the right baseline as you think about where we're at heading into Q1. We did pause the buyback in the middle of Q4 when we got to the point of having material non-public information relating to the possibility of a McGrath transaction. So the buyback has been on hold since that time. And as long as we have material, nonpublic information, then we will not be in the repurchase market, but that can change here as we release earnings obviously and as the transaction progresses. So it's kind of a period-by-period determination as to whether or not we should be in the market from a repurchase standpoint.

Okay. Understood. I thought of one other, if I could. Just you talked a lot about the end markets, especially retail non-res here. I think I'm more interested in I guess some of the other things you're doing internally that can move the needle on volume, without obviously wanting to sacrifice the higher lease rates you've earned here. I've heard you mention consolidating branches, sales forces, et cetera. But anything we can think of as sort of share capture initiatives irregardless of what these markets afford you over the next 12 months?

Yes, there are quite a few, Brent. I mean the field realignment is very meaningful. We've got a single general manager now responsible for every geographic market that we serve, a single leader and team that's accountable to our customers, and responsible for presenting all of our solutions at every opportunity to all of our customers. So that is a structural change that supports cross-selling. It is enabled by the consolidation of our CRM. Not only did we consolidate the CRM, we launched an algorithm-enabled opportunity prioritization tool for our sales reps, which takes some of the guesswork out of what is the next best opportunity that a sales rep should be working. And those recommendations are tailored to our sales reps based on their role, whether they're responsible for a territory or maybe they're responsible for a certain product category. We are supporting that. We're in the early stages of supporting that with much more sophisticated digital marketing tools, which we're starting to pilot here in Q1 and going into Q2. And we've got opportunities in enterprise accounts and vertical business development. So there's a fairly long list of things, in my opinion, that have the potential to drive volumes irrespective of markets, but they're also relatively early stage. So we haven't assumed any benefit of those in our assumptions for the first half of the year, but they're all quite logical and potentially impactful both individually and collectively. So I'm really excited about those investments and those changes in our structure that we made through the course of 2023. And frankly, we're getting a little bit impatient. We want to see the production that comes out of those investments. That's what we're excited to see here in 2024.

Excellent. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Angel Castillo with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Hi, thanks for fitting me in. Just a quick one, I just wanted to make sure, I guess, I understood correctly. It sounds like -- just looking at the slides, I guess, the average VAPS rate was down $274 for modular from $277. And I guess, as I recall from the third quarter, it sounded like you had seen kind of a strong inflection in your delivered rates. So just kind of trying to understand the bridge to that fourth quarter decline. And then as we think about the comments in the slides that talked about an LTM delivery rate that's expected, or I guess it's down 7%, and won't really inflect that until kind of the second -- or the middle part of 2024. So just trying to understand that and bridge to the $480 number that you talked about earlier.

Right. The $480 is the delivered rate that we've achieved through the course of February so far, and I think that was more like $450 or so in the month of January, so ramping up significantly relative to where we were performing in the second half of the year. And assuming we sustain those levels, which are in line with the historically, our historical highs going back to 2022, that LTM rate as reported under kind of prior quarter's methodology would inflect in that kind of Q2 time frame. So, I think it's just a reflection of you need more of that performance under kind of today's penetration rate to flow back into the LTM and offset some of those weaker periods post the CRM cutover in Q2 of last year.

Got it. So I guess for the current VAPS rate of $274, was that just essentially the flow-through of the CRM still kind of impacting?

Yes, the $274 was up 8% year-over-year. And so that's going to be a reflection of the increasing low penetration primarily in that number. And that's probably the biggest driver.

Got it. And maybe just a quick housekeeping one. Just in terms of the sequential step-up in new and rental unit sales for the fourth quarter, could you just give us a little bit more color on that and also your expectations for 2024?

Yes. It's probably two drivers, primarily. Given where fleet utilization levels are at, all else equal, we'll be a bit more opportunistic with some of the rental fleet sales. One of the acquisitions that we executed, I want to say it was the August time frame of last year, has some niche manufacturing capabilities, serving primarily the education market on the West Coast. And the full quarter contribution of that business is flowing into the new sales revenue line for purposes of Q4. So I think that kind of Q4 mix is probably a reasonable indicator of how we're operating going into 2024. Sales are inherently a little bit lumpier in terms of when they fall, so that mix could fluctuate over the course of a given quarter overall for the year. Like I said in my prepared remarks, I think there's some growth opportunity across new and used sales for purposes of 2024.

Great, helpful. Thank you.

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

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

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