I think this is the last panel for the morning sessions before we all break out to lunch. Here we have representing Custom Truck One Source, we have Ryan and Chris from the team. If anyone in the audience has any questions, please raise your hand. We'll get a mic over to you. With that, we'll kick it off to Ryan and Chris to kind of just give us an overview of Custom Truck One Source and kind of recent developments.
Sure. Abe, thanks for having us, and we appreciate you all coming. We love telling the Custom Truck One Source story. When we talk about just kind of a broad overview, we love to talk about our business and what we call the one-stop shop of taking care of our customers. Really, as we get into it, there really are two fundamental businesses in there. One is the specialty rental fleet. We have about 10,000 trucks in our specialty rental fleet today. Then the truck outfitting business, where we manufacture and outfit trucks as well. As you think about Custom Truck, there really are four primary end markets, and we'll get into those end markets. The first is utility. Utility represents about 55% of our revenue today.
That is both transmission and distribution work that indexes higher to the rental fleet as we get into the discussion we will talk more about. Infrastructure is just under 30% of our revenue today for us. That talks about roads and bridges, non-residential construction, and then refuse are the primary pieces that we put in the infrastructure category. Telecom and rail are each just under 5% of our revenue. Those are our four primary end markets. We will get into those. There is really strong demand, especially in T&D right now, that we will spend more time talking about. The business continues to perform. We have had a very strong 2025. Obviously, we are public, and we trade on the New York Stock Exchange as CTOS. We will get more into it, but I thought that would be a good intro.
Perfect. Maybe let's start high-level end markets. Obviously, everyone sees the headlines about AI data centers, utility. Kind of what's your view on the end market there, and how durable is that growth kind of looking out into the future, and kind of what are you seeing there?
Yeah, it certainly is durable, right, would be how I'd answer that question. We see good growth there. I think if you look at most of the industry analysts, the aggregators of information on IOU CapEx spend calling for kind of high single-digit growth rates for the next four or five years. That seems to be split. The distribution is kind of in that 8% range, give or take a percent. Transmission is in the low to mid-teens from a growth rate perspective as you look at some of the latest reports. I always talk about T&D as three really good tailwinds. The first is just the grid upgrade that has to happen. The age of the grid is certainly aging. There is a lot of infrastructure investment that has to happen in the grid regardless of what's going on just as population grows.
The second was electrification. Electrification was a really hot theme maybe two or three years ago. I would say that it's slowed down. It still is a good demand driver for our customers, the utility contractors that we serve. The third is data centers. For us, data center is just a very good demand driver for the grid. It means we need more power. It means more transmission lines have to be built. There is going to be more generation that's required, obviously, to power that. That all is great work for our customers, the utility contractors that we take care of every day. It feels like really, really strong demand. I would say the distribution kind of bottomed in Q2 of last year and has really been growing since really the 4th of July of last year.
Transmission has really begun to pick up like it normally does in the fall. It has been very active in the fall. There have been some new lines that have been announced. For us, that means more trucks that have gone out on rent for those new transmission lines.
It sounds like we're kind of in this early stage of this really large secular growth. You said T&D is skewed more towards rental. I guess, how do you think about rental penetration rates and kind of what differences do you see there between customer types or type of job?
Yeah. For Custom Truck, about 70% of our rental fleet skews towards transmission and distribution or towards utility. That is the heavier skew. When we talk about the universal rental fleet, we say that it is 25%-30% penetrated. When you compare that to gen rent, there is still a long way to run on that side of the business. There are a couple of dimensions to think about when you think about utility and you talk about utility rental. The first is by customer. Utility contractors generally rent about 50% of their fleet. That seems to be the historic norm as you look over time. It feels like some of the large contractors will pivot between skewing more towards renting and then skewing more towards owning.
That is where the one-stop model really came from, as we said, "Hey, let's get comfortable with the economics of both selling a truck and renting a truck." We are comfortable with both of those, and let's be able to pivot between those two. Fifty percent seems to be the average for a utility contractor. As more work is outsourced, that means there is more rental that happens. IOUs and power producers generally do not rent a lot of their equipment. They purchase a lot of their equipment. As contractors perform more of the work, that helps kind of the universal fleet. The other data point I would give you is that rental skews more towards transmission gear than it does distribution gear.
As you're entering kind of periods of good transmission growth, that also is generally a good tailwind for the rental fleet just because of the specialty nature of that type of equipment.
It seems like we have two tailwinds that should be benefiting your rental segment for the next however number of years.
That's right. Yeah, rental has been performing very well really since it troughed in Q2, beginning in Q3 last year. Distribution came back first, and now transmission is performing well. Yes, I do think it should be a good tailwind as we head into 2026.
Maybe focusing on the other side of your business, your truck and equipment sales business, TES, kind of what impacts are you seeing from whether it's government actions, including tariffs, EPA rulings? How have you kind of looked to mitigate that potential cost or those additional costs?
Yeah, it's a great question. There's a lot to unpack. You think about where government has played there. On the good side, right, a lot of the federal stimulus has been good, right, for that side of the business. I think that's been a positive. Obviously, all the recent tariff and EPA announcements have been real headwinds, right, on that side of the business. Tariff has been uncertainty for a lot of those contractors, just taking a wait-and-see approach to make sure they understand what's going on in the market before they're ready to make a purchase decision. That's been something that we've been dealing with on the non-T&D side of things. The EPA mandate is a really interesting one.
are some new rulings that came out even last week that they are going to stick with the EPA mandate for 2027, but they are going to now modify kind of how it is applied or how it is interpreted. We are still waiting on that ruling. I would say the impact of tariffs has been a cost increase. The team has done a great job of managing the cost increase. It has not been significant to Custom Truck where we have had to. We have been able to pass through those cost increases to our customers where we can and where that makes sense. We have been able to mitigate those. It has worked out to about 1%-2% of our overall spend. We have been able to manage that, we think, really well.
On the tariff side, the EPA mandate seems to be creating a bit of confusion or a wait-and-see approach in California in particular. We see that kind of in our sales volumes out there and in our customers' willingness to buy right now, where they're waiting to see kind of how it all plays out just because of the cost increase and how the EPA mandate will be implemented. As I said, the EPA last week said that they're going to keep the low NOx regulation for 2027 engines. I think we're still waiting on clarifying what exactly that means. I think there's some discussions around the warranty period, which is the big driver of the cost increase and how that's going to play through that we're still waiting for their final ruling there.
I think that the impact to us has just been some wait-and-see approach from some of those customers in particular.
Do you get the sense from speaking with customers that when that is clarified, that will almost release? I mean, I guess you also have one very beautiful bill has also been a potential tailwind. How is that kind of factoring what you're thinking?
Yeah, I think demand is still, trucks are still being used. There will be an increase, right, that comes, right, when kind of the EPA mandate in California is clarified. You are right, the one big beautiful bill is a very good tailwind for us. Who that really impacts the most are our small contractors. If you run a five-dump truck fleet, the one big beautiful bill and accelerated depreciation often means that December is the busiest month from a sales perspective just because people are choosing to take advantage of accelerated depreciation and not pay taxes, which is a good tailwind for us, obviously.
There is an aspect of that inventory balance and kind of how you've been able to mitigate the tariff. Can you update us there and kind of how you expect inventory to trend looking to the end of the year and maybe even into the following year?
Yeah. Yeah. As we entered this year, over the past couple of years, we had gone long on inventory. We thought it was the right thing to do, especially when there were some of the supply chain constraints. Ultimately, this year, we had given guidance that we'd get $200 million of our whole goods inventory down. We started the year at about $1.05 billion. That would have got us to about $850 million. As the year has progressed, given some of the pull forward on some of the tariff buy, we've kind of pulled back a little bit on that and said that we're now looking closer to $125 million-$150 million reduction in the gross inventory. It's important to note that our inventory, typically 80%-85% of our whole goods inventory is floor planned.
If we reduce inventory by $100 million, we're really unlocking $15 million-$20 million of pure cash. It would have an offsetting favorability on our EBITDA because we treat floor plan expense as a hit against our EBITDA. This year, by the end of the year, $125 million-$150 million gross inventory reduction. We think there's still some opportunity to reduce that next year. We've set a target to get about six months of our whole goods inventory on hand. I think we finished the last quarter at a little over seven and a half, roughly seven and a half months. We'll continue that journey as we head into 2026.
Maybe one more item on there. I know you're doing a Kansas City $10 million-$15 million incremental investment. What does that enable and why now?
Yeah. Our largest capital investment every year, obviously, is our rental fleet. Roughly $400 million gross, $200 million net. Non-rental CapEx typically ranges $25 million-$50 million. This really was just an opportunity for some property that became available that was adjacent to our property. Our largest site by far is our Kansas City campus. We made the decision to add, as we look out and see some of the demand that Ryan talked about, to really have the flexibility for that incremental capacity there on the Kansas City campus.
Maybe another aspect of CapEx, and this kind of falls up on the rental side with T&D. Rental CapEx, I believe at year end, you kind of increased expectations for 2025 by $50 million. What's the driver of that incremental? Is that a pull forward, or is that just what you're kind of seeing in the end markets out there?
Yeah. When we started this year, we gave guidance, as we do at the beginning of every year, that we'd have roughly $400 million of gross rental CapEx, net between $180 million and $200 million. The net is we sell the assets that we pull out of the fleet. As the year has gone on, Ryan touched a little bit about demand has really come back strong. It started last year in the second half of the year with distribution, and then it's just continued this year. We troughed at utilization of roughly 70% end of Q2, beginning of Q3 last year. We've now, coming out of Q3, indicated that we're now in the 80s.
Just the demand that we're seeing, we felt it was a good use of capital to go ahead and increase our investment this year by $25 million-$50 million in terms of the net investment. You could argue potentially it's a pull forward just given the demand we're seeing because we do think we'll pull back a little bit on the net investment in 2026 to unlock some free cash flow. It really was driven by demand, the demand we're seeing.
That's promising. That's a good type of CapEx growth. Leverage today, I mean, we're at a fixed income conference, four and a half times today. What's your longer-term goal, or what's your goal at the end of 2026, and kind of what levers are you going to pull in order to reach that goal?
Yeah. As a publicly traded company, we hear quite often at the equity conferences that magical three times leverage, and we take it seriously. Our goal is to get to three times. We think we'll meaningfully make movement here in Q4 and then through next year to get there. It really will take probably to 2027 to get to that three times leverage. The levers are really some of the things we've talked about. If you look back over the past four years, we've invested heavily in our rental fleet. We've de-aged it from a little over four years to a little under three years. That's required a net investment over the past four years of between $700 million and $750 million.
We do think we're at a position now where we could age the fleet and unlock some of that cash flow as we move forward. I think that's going to be one of the levers. Clearly, we're seeing growth. We will see some growth in EBITDA that's going to help there as well. I think the continued journey on the networking capital, in particular the inventory unlock, is going to be another component. Really those three.
Can you frame how you think about your ABL and the availability there? And then how you think about what's the optimal level that you kind of want to keep on that?
Yeah. At the end of the last quarter, I think we were right just above $700 million on the $950 million. I think we had a couple hundred million of suppressed availability. We feel very comfortable where we are from a liquidity standpoint. As we were just talking about, I think we're now going to see the unlock of free cash flow. We will use the free cash flow to pay down the ABL on that journey to get to three times leverage. In terms of M&A, which I think is a natural related question, I wouldn't anticipate any meaningful transformative M&A of size. I do think we'll continue to look strategically and do small geographic expansion-type acquisitions. I wouldn't expect anything meaningful there.
We're in December, kind of closer to year-end. I'm not asking for anything quantitative, although if you want to give it, that'd be great. As we kind of look from 2025 into 2026, qualitatively, what are good guys, bad guys, new items, items that won't repeat? Just give us a super high level how we're kind of thinking about how we should kind of frame the upcoming year.
Go ahead.
Yeah. I mean, we talked a lot about the demand. The demand tailwinds that we're seeing, we think are going to continue into next year. T&D has come back strong. Ryan often talks about, especially on the transmission side, those are long-term projects. Those projects are starting now and will continue. We expect to see that demand. We've talked about the big beautiful build. There's going to be an impact here at year-end. The interest rate environment has improved and hopefully will continue to improve. I think from a demand environment, everything we see is strong. We have the capacity. We've talked about some of the investment we've made on our Kansas City campus. We've done some things out west in the Phoenix area. We feel like we have the capacity to really be able to serve that demand.
When I look at risks, it really is going to come down to execution and really making sure that we capitalize on the demand that we're seeing. I'll let Ryan add any incremental color he may have.
No, I think you hit most of it. It feels like T&D is in a really good spot, right, heading into 2026. It will be interesting to see if kind of some tariff certainty or clarity maybe is better and just as interest rates continue to move down, if that spurs a little more demand on the infrastructure side, which I think would be good. The interest rate piece and Chris talked about bringing overall inventory down, I think is a good tailwind for 2026 when you think about the floor plan expense and kind of how that impacts the P&L. No, I think he hit the points.
Are there any other levers to think about on the EBITDA margin side?
Yeah. We'll talk a little bit about price, right? I think anytime you're going into a good demand environment, certainly on the rental side, there's the opportunity to understand price. We think that heading into 2026, we should have some opportunity to increase price. Obviously, a lot of that will be used to just offset the cost increases that we're seeing from tariffs. We do think there should be some positive leverage there on the price side. There are a lot of CI, continuous improvement initiatives that are in play on our upfitting and manufacturing side too that we should be able to begin to think about, can we get back to expanding margin on the TES side right now?
Maybe take a more of a strategic look kind of at the company as a whole. In the corporate world, we've seen a lot of spinoffs, breakups. There seems to be like it's been a trend kind of we've been seeing. I guess, how do you think about the manufacturing and the rental business kind of being together today? Does it have to be together? Can it be separated?
Yeah. It's a great question. It's a question we have kind of responded to a lot more lately. The history of Custom Truck is that the businesses, it was valuable to have the two businesses put together because our customer, utility contractors, would often pivot between renting a truck and purchasing a truck from us as we've grown and now that we're the size that we are. I think we certainly have begun to entertain the idea of maybe there's a cleaner way to explain the business, to talk about the specialty rental fleet on one side where there's plenty of pure public company comps just on the rental side of the business, and then to talk about the truck upfitting business that's now of scale, right? It's north of a billion dollars of third-party sales.
If you were to think about the rental fleet as a customer, all of a sudden it becomes $1.5 billion of revenue that you would have on the upfitting or sales side of the business. To me, that's now of scale where I think it can stand on its own. It can support kind of growth at that level. It's a discussion that we have a lot more of. There would be pure play comps to think about, a Federal Signal or a Douglas Dynamics or an Alamo Group are often the names that are mentioned in that discussion. You would have more of a United Rentals or WillScot or Ashtead Group on the specialty rental side of things as well. It's a discussion we've had a lot more.
I think we've said if that was the right direction, we've thought through a little bit of how would you execute that. I think we're comfortable we can do it. Where we're still spending time is like, how do you take care of the customer, right? That's where the business really started by taking care of the utility contractors. What would that look like? How would we do that well and make sure it's not disruptive to the customer?
Are there potential dis-synergies that are in there away from maybe another corporate office and simply cloning you two?
Not many. I mean, not many as you think all the way through it. You have got to think about how you take care of customers. That is really the biggest. And how would you make sure you service them and still work together, right, in some capacity? As you think about the branch network, there are 40 locations around the country. There are really five, seven if I include our manufacturing locations that are primarily upfitting, and the rest are primarily, and there are a few that do both, primarily service locations that are servicing the rental fleet in particular. We have thought through what that could look like if that was the direction we chose to go.
One area I guess we haven't talked about really much yet is the aftermarket parts and service. I guess how do you see that fitting in between those two aspects and over the other two segments?
Yeah. It's obviously important, right? And there's portions of the aftermarket business, our PTA parts, tools, and accessories business that primarily is a service offering to our rental customers. That would obviously stick close to that rental side of the business. Otherwise, we really would say that the location would dictate how we would handle that. It's important for our sales customers to make sure that we can service their trucks. To me, that's an area that we know we can invest further in. There's an opportunity to invest further there. Keeping the rental fleet up and running has been the number one priority of our branch network. That would obviously continue to happen on that side of the business.
I mean, you kind of brought up various, I guess, what would you say, public market comps in each of the businesses. I mean, if I were just to do simple math and apply, slap on EV EBITDAs, there seems to be a disconnect here.
Yep.
I guess, how do you think about that disconnect? How do you kind of start to highlight it out there and really maybe close that gap?
Yeah. Yeah. It's a great question. We talk about that a lot, certainly as a public company. Whatever multiple you want to use on either side of the business, I would argue is higher than obviously where we trade today. There is just some, okay, let's explain the business and make sure people understand the asset intensity of the rental business, but the higher EBITDA margin or adjusted gross margin on that side of the business and how that looks compelling. There is the free cash flow generation, but lower gross margin that you see on the truck sales side of the business. Both of those as pure plays, I think, trade at a higher multiple than where we trade today.
The other big unlock that's important in there to think about is right now when we put $400 million into the rental fleet, which was the gross CapEx number that Chris used, we transfer that to the rental fleet at cost. If you really were to think about it as two, you would transfer that to the rental fleet, that margin, and everybody can use whatever margin they want to assume there. Kind of our standard margin is that mid-teens margin. All of a sudden, there's $60 million, give or take, of additional gross profit or EBITDA that would exist when you think about the two businesses as a standalone. To me, those are the two big unlocks. You've got to think through the capital structure of what that would look like.
One of the things we talk about, we talk about a lot now is our leverage levels, which are high for a public company. We're very comfortable with them from running the business day to day. That's something that you'd have to think about. Obviously, the other big piece is the shareholder base that we talk about. Platinum, who has been a great partner and has put the deal together, is still the majority owner. They own 70% of the shares outstanding. They have been a great partner too. You've got to think through kind of those lenses as well to really begin to unlock the valuation side of the story.
Right. That actually leads me to my next question. Platinum owns 70%. A little bit unusual for a public company. I guess, remind us how they got involved and how they ended up owning 70%. Maybe the obvious follow-on is what's their ultimate goal here?
Yeah. They've been a great partner, and they love kind of the in-market exposure in the business, right, that we're building here. Just to reset, they invested in April of 2021. Four and a half years ago, they invested at $5 a share. That's where they invested with the thesis of what I describe as a traditional LBO of the previously Blackstone-owned portfolio company that was Custom Truck One Source. Their vision was to do an LBO of that business, but then to also merge it with Nesco. Nesco had been owned by Energy Capital Partners and went through a De-SPAC transaction back in 2019. That was the public entity that existed at the time. In April of 2021, Platinum wrote a $750 million check, and then we raised a $140 million PIPE as well with the vision of putting those two businesses together.
That was their thesis. It was about $1.3 billion of revenue in 2021. It'll be about $2 billion of revenue this year. There has been very good growth kind of over that story. EBITDA has gone from $290 million to $380 million at our midpoint for this year. There has been very good growth over that time period. I think that's Platinum's view: great business, executing well. We love the in-market exposure. We love the asset intensity of rental. We love kind of how it all fits together. We have been frustrated with how the share price has performed given the business. From their perspective, the business has performed much better. I always say Platinum, they're a capitalist. They will figure out how to kind of monetize their investment, right? That's the business that they're in.
There are lots of options and lots of ways to think through what that could look like.
I know there's a fixed income conference, but obviously, you have shareholders as well, equity shareholders away from Platinum.
Sure.
I guess, what's the feedback that you usually get? Or what do you think is kind of preventing you from realizing what you think you should deserve on the open market? What's the number one or two feedback you get?
The number two things we talk about on the equity side or where we've been talking leverage, right, is number one. The Platinum overhang in their ownership position is number two. Those things we just talked through. Those to me are the two biggest. Obviously, the way we improve leverage, Chris talked about kind of the deleveraging activities that are in play and will continue into 2026. I think we're thinking through that. One other thing I would add is just generating free cash flow. Chris talked about it, but we have invested so heavily in the rental fleet to bring the age of the rental fleet down.
As we think about heading into 2026, that's the other big piece for us is how do we age the fleet just a little bit and use that as a significant lever to deliver free cash flow.
Today, we're at like four and a half times. End of next year sounds like we're deleveraging another turn or so, kind of closer to what public market investors kind of hope for as something with a three handle.
That's right.
Is that a fair statement?
Yep.
That's a fair statement.
Fair statement.
Yes. Okay. Great. We have about near the end of the time. Are there any other questions out there in the audience? Please.
No, I think the former. I think you could definitely, as Ryan described, they're two very different businesses. I think the TES or the new sales, the sales business generates more free cash flow. We've been investing heavily in the rental fleet. I think you would definitely get two businesses that would have leverage profiles that would match those businesses. Certainly, I think that would be doable.
Not sure if you did anything.
Yeah. No.
Any other questions out there? I mean, with that, we've kind of reached the end of the time. Do you have any closing thoughts? Important items I didn't touch on, emphasize, or key messages for bondholders?
No, I think you hit it. Thank you for having us, Abe. It has been a great conference.
Please, everyone, let's thank Ryan and Chris for talking about Custom Truck One Source.
Thanks, everyone. Appreciate it.