GATX Corp

NYSE:GATX

Earnings Call Analysis

GATX Expects 2023 Earnings Above Guidance

GATX has seen a robust third quarter in 2023, reporting $52.5 million in net income, up significantly from the $29.1 million in the same period last year. North American railcar demand continues to be strong, with the Lease Price Index renewal rate jumping 33.4%, and fleet utilization nearly perfect at 99.3%. Remarketing efforts brought in $13 million in the quarter and $88 million year-to-date. Rail Europe also experienced healthy demand with investment reaching nearly $130 million. Portfolio Management thrived, thanks primarily to the aerospace sector, pushing total investment volume to over $360 million for the quarter and $1.2 billion for the year. Given the positive trends, GATX anticipates full-year earnings to modestly exceed the top end of their guidance range of $6.50 to $6.90 per diluted share.

Strong Earnings and Continuing Growth

GATX Corporation has showcased a remarkable increase in its earnings, reporting a third-quarter net income of $52.5 million, or $1.44 per diluted share, up sharply from $29.1 million, or $0.81 per share, in the same quarter of the previous year. This significant rise in net income, despite the previous year's tax adjustments and other items negatively impacting by $10.8 million, reflects the company's growing financial strength.

North American Rail Business Booming

The Rail North America segment continues its robust performance with fleet utilization reaching an impressive 99.3%. Strong demand across a majority of car types has led to renewals at higher rates, with a notable 33.4% positive change in the GATX Lease Price Index renewal rates and an average extension term of 65 months. Nearly 84% of lease rates were successfully renewed during the quarter, and new railcar placements from past supply agreements keep the sector thriving.

Rail International and Portfolio Management Shine

Internationally, Rail Europe saw an uptick in renewal lease rates because of stable demand, and although faced with slight softness in the European intermodal sector, it still managed a healthy 96% fleet utilization. The portfolio management's third-quarter returns were primarily boosted by solid performances from Rolls-Royce and Partners Finance affiliates and a robust spare aircraft engine market, leading to a substantial quarter investment volume of over $360 million.

Bright Outlook with Expected Earnings Surpassing Guidance

With a strong operational foundation, GATX is set to potentially exceed the high end of its full-year earnings guidance for 2023 which is in the range of $6.50 to $6.90 per diluted share, excluding impacts from tax adjustments and other items. This optimism stems from the company's favorable performance thus far and confidence in its business outlook for the remainder of the year.

Mixed Trends in Lease Rates and Remarketing Income

Lease rates exhibited mixed trends with most tank car types experiencing a slight increase in rates, while most freight car types remained stable. Nonetheless, coal and small-cube covered hoppers saw a decrease in rates by about 5% to 10%. Despite these variances, GATX has accrued close to $90 million in remarketing income over the first nine months, with the expectation of continued activity, albeit at a slower pace, in the fourth quarter.

Maintenance Costs and Strategic Responses

The company encountered higher-than-anticipated maintenance costs due to a rise in assignment volumes and compliance works. However, GATX managed these costs efficiently, and the per-unit cost for repairs in their own facilities stayed in line with expectations. The firm also faced inflationary pressures and foreign exchange headwinds but kept net maintenance expenses within the anticipated range.

Adapting to Non-Renewals With High Utilization

A non-renewal event has not derailed the utilization rate of GATX's railcar fleet. Cars that aren't renewed have been rapidly redeployed, maintaining the high utilization statistic and demonstrating agility in the face of changing customer agreements.

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q3

[Operator]

Good morning. My name is Rob, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the GATX Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

Shari Hellerman, Head of Investor Relations. You may begin your conference.

[Shari Hellerman, executive]

Thank you, Rob. Good morning, and thank you for joining GATX's 2023 Third Quarter Earnings Call. I'm joined today by Bob Lyons, President and CEO; and Tom Ellman, Executive Vice President and CFO.

Please note that some of the information you'll hear during our discussion today will consist of forward-looking statements. Actual results or trends could differ materially from those statements or forecasts. For more information, please refer to the risk factors included in our earnings release and those discussed in GATX's Form 10-K for 2022 and in our other filings with the SEC. GATX assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.

Earlier today, GATX reported 2023 third quarter net income of $52.5 million or $1.44 per diluted share. This compares to 2022 third quarter net income of $29.1 million or $0.81 per diluted share. The 2022 third quarter results include a net negative impact of $10.8 million or $0.31 per diluted share from tax adjustments and other items.

Year-to-date 2023, net income was $193.2 million or $5.30 per diluted share. This compares to $107.5 million or $2.99 per diluted share for the same period in 2022. The 2023 year-to-date results include a net negative impact of $1.1 million or $0.03 per diluted share from tax adjustments and other items. The 2022 year-to-date results include a net negative impact of $55.2 million or $1.54 per diluted share from tax adjustments and other items. These items are detailed in the supplemental information pages of our earnings release.

Now I'll briefly address each of our business segments. At Rail North America, fleet utilization was 99.3% at the end of the quarter. Demand for the majority of car types in our distinct fleet remains strong, and we continue to extend renewals at higher rates. The third quarter renewal rate change of GATX's lease price index was positive 33.4%, with an average renewal term of 65 months. Our renewal success rate remained very high and nearly 84% in the quarter.

We continue to successfully place new railcars from our community supply agreements with a diverse customer base. We've placed all 4,800 railcars from our 2018 [ Trinity supply ] agreement. And we've placed all 7,650 railcars from our 2018 Greenbrier supply agreement. In addition, we've placed over 2,400 railcars from our 2022 Trinity supply agreement. Our earliest available scheduled delivery under our supply agreements is in the third quarter of 2024.

The secondary market for railcars in North America remains active. We generated remarketing income of approximately $13 million in the third quarter and over $88 million year-to-date. Within Rail International, while Europe continued to experience increases in renewal lease rates versus expiring rates, driven by stable demand for most car types. Rail Europe's fleet utilization remained healthy at 96%. Although there is continuing softness in the European intermodal sector, which is the primary driver for the utilization dip at Rail Europe.

During the quarter, Rail Europe and Rail India continue to take delivery of new cars and grow the fleet. Rail Europe's third quarter investment volume was nearly $130 million.

Turning to portfolio management. Third quarter results were driven primarily by the solid performance of the Rolls-Royce & Partners Finance affiliates. Our wholly owned aircraft engines portfolio also contributed to higher earnings. Global demand for aircraft spare engines is robust as international air passenger traffic continues to recover.

As noted in the release, we continue to identify attractive investment opportunities across our global businesses in today's environment. Total investment volume was over $360 million in the third quarter and over $1.2 billion year-to-date. Finally, reflecting favorable operating performance to date and our outlook for the remainder of the year. We expect 2023 full year earnings to modestly exceed the high end of our previously announced guidance range of $6.50 to $6.90 per diluted share, excluding any impact from tax adjustments and other items. And those are our prepared remarks.

I'll hand it back to the operator so we can open it up for Q&A.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from the line of Justin Long from Stephens.

[Justin Long, analyst]

Maybe I'll start with a question on North American Rail. Could you talk about the trend in absolute lease rates that you saw on a sequential basis in the third quarter? And then anything you can share on your expectation for remarketing in the fourth quarter? Just curious what's baked into the guidance.

[Thomas Ellman, executive]

I'll take the first one and then turn it over to Bob for the second one. So compared to the prior quarter, most tank car types were up a couple of percentage points in terms of lease rate. Most freight car types were relatively flat. The exception of that were coal and small cube covered hoppers that were down about 5% to 10%.

[Robert Lyons, executive]

Yes. And on remarketing income, Justin, it's always a little bit more difficult to predict coming into the fourth quarter just because of seller -- or I'm sorry, buyer activity in terms of timing. So it gets a little difficult. Through the first 9 months of the year, we're close to $90 million already in remarketing income. So we'll see some more activity in the fourth quarter, but not on the same magnitude if you annualize the last 3 quarters.

[Justin Long, analyst]

Okay. Great. That's helpful. And secondly, I wanted to ask about maintenance expense in both North America and the international business. It seems like we had a decent-sized step-up on a sequential basis. And in North America, if I go back to your expectations for maintenance expense at the beginning of the year, we're tracking pretty far ahead of that. So I was just curious if you could give a little bit more color on what's driving this kind of magnitude of the increase and how to think about maintenance expense going forward?

[Thomas Ellman, executive]

Justin, this is Tom. I'll once again take the Rail North America and then turn it over to Bob for International. As you stated, maintenance costs are higher than we expected coming into the year. This variance was driven by higher-than-expected volume, which was a result of a few more assignments of existing cars than we thought we would have and a little bit more compliance work coming in than we expected. This caused a percentage of maintenance that we do on our owned facilities to fall a bit from the recent history. However, it's important to note that the unit cost per repair on our owned facilities is in line with our expectations and very attractive relative to third-party alternatives. In fact, our relative advantage actually grows during times of limited industry capacity.

As you know, we always provide commentary on 2024 or the next year, during our January earnings call and we'll continue to do that. However, it's fair to say that one of our goals will be to increase the percentage of maintenance performed in our own facilities.

[Robert Lyons, executive]

Yes. And on the international side, Justin, from an overall standpoint, the net maintenance expense is actually not -- it's coming in the range of what we had anticipated. We had very sharp inflationary impacts, as you might recall, during 2022. So coming into 2023, we knew we would feel the full impact of that this year, both in terms of energy costs and labor costs being the 2 biggest drivers there. We've also had some FX headwinds as well. But overall, nothing material in terms of the deviation from what we expected coming into the year.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Matt Elkott from TD Cowen.

[Matthew Elkott, analyst]

Good to see some of the strong metrics, utilization and rates and even the renewal success rate, although the renewal success rate did decline, can you guys talk a bit about this?

[Thomas Ellman, executive]

Yes. So Matt, in terms of the given quarter, that can move around a little bit and the degree of precision that's implied there is really more than exists. A couple of transactions can move that. The important thing I'll note is a nonrenewal does not necessarily mean a non-utilized car. And as you noted, the utilization remained very, very high which means that any car that for whatever reason, is not being renewed is being quickly put back to work.

[Robert Lyons, executive]

Yes. And I would add to that, too. There are times, Matt, where -- especially in this type of rate environment, where certain customers may say no. And given the diversity of our fleet and our commercial capabilities, we're comfortable taking a car back and putting on lease with the next customer. So that would obviously impact your renewal success rate. But in the end, any renewal success rate up in the ZIP code of where we're at today is really, really strong.

[Matthew Elkott, analyst]

That's very helpful. And then one more question. I believe, Shari mentioned that the first available -- scheduled deliveries from your manufacturer suppliers is for 3Q, I believe, last quarter, you said first quarter. Am I correct? Or just any clarification on this would be good.

[Shari Hellerman, executive]

Yes, Matt, so it's third quarter of 2024 right now. And so backlog for both tank and freight cars are about a year out.

[Robert Lyons, executive]

And yes, that's on our supply agreement, Matt.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Allison Poliniak from Wells Fargo.

[Allison Poliniak-Cusic, analyst]

I just want to go back to Europe, just on sort of that intermodal pressure that you're seeing reflected in the utilization side. Is that starting to stabilize for you? Or does it feel like it could take another leg down? Just trying to get a sense of where that is today.

[Robert Lyons, executive]

I don't know if it's going to take another leg down, Allison, but it's going to take a while to recover. We only have about 2,000 intermodal wagons in our fleet in Europe out of a fleet -- total fleet of over 29,000 wagons. So it's a small minority of our fleet but it's the one that's under the most significant pressure. For example, we have roughly 1,100 idle wagons in Europe. That's it. Over half of those are intermodal. So the market has faced a lot of pressure, as you would expect. It's the most economically sensitive and the economic environment in Europe is fleet across regions and pretty challenged overall. I don't see that abating here in the next 3 to 6 months. It's going to take a while for that market to work. But long term, we feel very good about the assets we own, they're relatively new and in the push in Europe for more products from truck to rail. There will be a point where those assets are going to be fully utilized and good assets for GATX in the portfolio.

[indiscernible], so we're going to deploy capital where we have our highest return opportunities. We're not pegging any particular percentage for Europe or any percentage for India or our engine leasing business, for example, that falls out of where we see the best return and the best opportunity. So fortunately, right now, we're seeing them across the board. As you said, it's pretty well diversified. I don't see that changing here in the near term.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Justin Bergner from [ Gabelli Funds ].

[Justin Bergner, analyst]

The first question I have would just relate to some cleanup questions. Did you repurchase any shares in the quarter?

[Thomas Ellman, executive]

We did not.

[Justin Bergner, analyst]

Okay. And then secondly, the other revenue in Rail International, could you just clarify sort of what's in it and why it's been ticking up over the last year? Is that just commensurate with the growth of the international business?

[Thomas Ellman, executive]

Yes. Justin, my guess is you're actually referring to the Portfolio Management segment.

[Justin Bergner, analyst]

I guess you can cover that as well, but I was asking about the international.

[Thomas Ellman, executive]

Okay. So in portfolio management, the key driver is the [ gel engines ]. So we've noted before that we have engines that are used to support the business in Rolls-Royce that has a -- that supports their total care maintenance program. And this is a pool of engines that rather than being on a fixed lease to a single airline are leased to several different airlines to support that program. And because the accounting is a little bit different, that shows up as other revenue rather than lease revenue, and those engines, those 15 engines that support that pool have been added between the fourth quarter of 2022 in July of 2023, and that's why you see the big step-up in the Portfolio Management segment.

[Robert Lyons, executive]

And on the International side, Justin, unlike in Rail North America, where other revenue primarily represents repair revenue that's -- those are repairs that we filled back to the customer. And international, it's a much smaller percentage of the overall revenue line, less than 5%. And it's really a myriad of items. Some of that is damage for railcar -- recovery on damage for railcars. It can be billbacks to customers, we have some interest income in there as well. So there's a whole host of items in there, but nothing in particular and really should be no change in the trend line.

[Justin Bergner, analyst]

If you had to handicap sort of what parts of your business are tracking ahead of your earlier guidance to allow you to come in modestly ahead, which segments of the business would you put [indiscernible]?

[Robert Lyons, executive]

Yes. I'll comment first and maybe if you want some additional color, Tom can weigh in too. But the big driver has been portfolio management, the engine leasing business. When we were in the depths of the pandemic and coming out of it last year, the expectation was for the global aerospace sector for air travel to really not fully recover at the earliest until 2024. Domestic travel was above pre-pandemic levels already. International travels at about 90% -- 97% of what it was pre-pandemic. So the recovery there has been much faster. So our utilization of engines has been higher than anticipated. Bad debt expense is lower than anticipated. All the things you'd expect to see in a recovery just occurred much quicker than anyone anticipated. And we've been able to deploy capital directly into engines at a pace above what we originally thought. So you're seeing that pick up in our other revenue within portfolio management, as Tom mentioned.

[Justin Bergner, analyst]

Great. If I could just get one last one in. The higher interest rate environment, how does that sort of affect the dynamic between higher lease rates and higher cost of capital?

[Thomas Ellman, executive]

So you really got to think about that in 2 different ways. So for the existing fleet, the interest rate environment actually has very little impact. That's sort of a car type by car type, what's the supply-demand dynamic. And that's really what drives the rate environment on any of those existing cars. On a new investment where you have the ability to decide to invest or not to invest obviously, higher interest rates makes your threshold a little bit higher for total investment and a little bit more challenging to invest in that kind of environment unless you can get the lease rate. It's important to note though that, that overall dynamic is helpful because if it makes that new car more expensive, it makes the alternative of renewing an existing car more attractive and that's really the primary benefit that you get.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from the line of Brendan McCarthy from Sidoti.

[Brendan Michael McCarthy, analyst]

I just have a quick question on the balance sheet. It looks like recourse leverage had a very small increase to [ 3.2 from 3.1 ] where it's been in the past handful of quarters. I think I recall the company's aim is to stay under the investment-grade cap of like 3.5. But are you comfortable with that metric approaching 3.5? Or how can we think about the debt level?

[Thomas Ellman, executive]

Yes. So certainly, we're very comfortable with where it is. One of our key criteria always is ensuring consistent access to attractively priced capital. So we're in constant communication with the rating agencies about where they're comfortable on their various metrics. And it's very clear that they're comfortable below that 3.5 to 1 level and certainly could be comfortable with something even higher for the right situation and the right environment.

[Brendan Michael McCarthy, analyst]

Got it. That's helpful. And then one last one for me. I think we've talked about this metric before in the past, but I'm wondering if you can shed light on to the percentage of the lease portfolio that has been repriced at higher rates since you've been able to meaningfully increase lease rates since roughly early 2022.

[Thomas Ellman, executive]

Yes. So it's very difficult to precisely predict home -- or not for predict, but precisely indicate how much of the fleet has repriced into a more attractive environment. We've mentioned for a while now that sequential lease rates were up quarter-over-quarter. We're going on like 3 years of that situation occurring, but that was from a pretty low base. And if you look at when lease rates started to get up over that long-term average, it was somewhere in the 2022 time frame. So looking at it from that perspective, you might say about 1/3 of the fleet is repriced in an attractive environment. But if you wanted to go back to when the lease rates increased, you'd have a higher percentage and if you wanted to say, when did we start feeling good about extending lease term, we might have a slightly lower percentage. So it's hard to really give you an absolute number there.

[Robert Lyons, executive]

Yes. And I would just add to, in terms of the runway we have for positive differential, we have a lot of runway and being [indiscernible] cars in for 5- to 6-year terms at these rates at positive differentials, we are embedding a lot of high-quality cash flow into the portfolio.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Bascome Majors from Susquehanna.

[Bascome Majors, analyst]

Bob, to follow up on that last question, what is the shape of the expiring rate of your North American portfolio as we go forward 1, 2, 3 years, understanding that, that portfolio may change and this won't hold?

[Thomas Ellman, executive]

Yes. So as you know, we provide guidance at the January earnings call every year, and we'll give some information about the exploration profile going forward. If you looked at us over a long period of time, you'd see that in some of the lower years, it's 13,000 to 15,000 railcars expiring. Some of the higher years, it's a little over 20,000. So we'll give more exact guidance in January, but it's -- that gives you some kind of range of where you might expect it.

[Bascome Majors, analyst]

But from a rate perspective, does the expiring rate go down similar up next year in the North American portfolio?

[Robert Lyons, executive]

Yes. It's -- we will get into that in January. Bascome will lay that out for you. But as I said previously, in terms of my confidence level and positive differential there's a lot of runway there.

[Bascome Majors, analyst]

And just we don't talk as much about that concept on the International book. Is there anything unique there? Should we think fairly pro rata similar [ silica economics ] to kind of the tops down directional view we just talked about in North America?

[Robert Lyons, executive]

Yes, the actual lease terms in Europe are much shorter, typically than they are in North America. That's been the case for decades. It's really hard just from a commercial standpoint to move the needle much on term. So you see a greater percentage of the fleet rolling over each year in Europe. But also, historically, the lease rate variability is much lower than it is in North America. That tends to be a single-digit up or down percentage-wise. Good environment, bad environment, you don't see the rate swings like you do in North America. We're certainly pushing rates higher because in certain car types in Europe right now, the environment is in our favor to do that. But nothing on the magnitude that you would see in North America, for example, an LPI of plus 33%. Yes, a really good renewal in Europe is in the 5% to 10% plus range and a bad day if a couple of percentage points off.

[Bascome Majors, analyst]

Thank you for that clarification. Just one last one. The -- you've talked pretty constructively about your momentum in a lot of your businesses, both last quarter and this quarter. As we look into next year without necessarily getting into quantitative guidance, but what keeps you up at night? What are the risks in you're continuing to deliver the kind of results we've seen from you over the last couple of years here? Just curious where we should watch and sharpen our pencils on downside potential.

[Robert Lyons, executive]

Sure. Well, from a -- I'll go back to a question that came up previously in the call with regards to the 1 area of outperformance this year has really been Portfolio Management on the engine side. But what's encouraging to me is behind that, whether it's Rail International, Rail Europe, Trifleet, what have you, India. We have continued to build a really solid foundation for the future here, whether it's managing the existing lease portfolio and certainly, through the investment volume that we're seeing last year and this year, we're putting a lot of capital to work in really attractive returns for GATX for our shareholders for the long term. So I feel very good about that. I feel really good about where the business is today, how it's been managed and positioned we're in.

What keeps me awake at night is the bigger macro factors that are outside of GATX's control. And we've seen a number of those in the last couple of years, whether it's the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, kind of the unpredictable macro things are what keep me awake at night. But I guess what allows me to go back to sleep at night is we've been through those for 125 years. And we have the business in a really, really stable, strong foundation right now that we can respond and accordingly, whatever macro challenges are thrown our way.

[Thomas Ellman, executive]

And Bascome, I would say, to some degree, you answered your own question, when you talked about that we've been talking constructively about each segment and then Bob reminded that the investment volume has been strong across all those segments. So 1 of the sources of resiliency and strength is that there's really some reason for optimism across all those segments.

[Operator]

And we have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. Ms. Shari Hellerman, I turn the call back over to you for some final closing remarks.

[Shari Hellerman, executive]

I'd like to thank everyone for their participation on the call this morning. Please contact me with any follow-up questions. Thank you.

[Operator]

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.