Okay. Thanks very much, everybody. I appreciate you jumping back in after lunch. We're very excited to get back started with our transport and transport-related track this afternoon. We have GATX joining us to start off the afternoon. From the company, we have Robert Lyons. He's President and CEO. Very happy to have you back at the conference. Thanks for the support. Maybe the best way to start is to kind of kick it over to you to talk a little bit about the company's sort of competitive advantages. How do you think you maintain market positions, sort of just kind of where you see yourself in the market and the competitive landscape today?
Sure. First of all, thank you for the opportunity to be here. Thank you all for attending and hearing the GATX story. It's always nice to play a home game. We've been in Chicago for 127 years. Started here as a railcar leasing company in 1898. That's still what we do today. I'll spare you the details on the other intervening 127 years. We are focused on the railcar leasing market. We also have a sizable aircraft engine leasing portfolio and a container leasing business based out of the Netherlands. The bulk of what we do is, as I mentioned, in railcar leasing. Our expertise in that market has been really honed over years. We are a full-service operating lessor. We put the cars out on lease to our customers, over 800 of those here in North America.
Whether it is over a 5-year or 7-year or 10-year term of that lease, we have the cars that will meet our customers' needs, highly diversified fleet. We do the maintenance. A competitive advantage for us and a big differentiator. We touch the assets every single day. That affords us a relatively deep asset knowledge on how those assets are going to behave over their 30-year- 40-year life. That is something that our customers have come to rely on GATX for: safe, quality, efficient service.
Some news recently with the Wells Fargo Rail asset acquisition. Maybe you could talk a little bit about that, provide an overview of the transaction. Maybe talk about what was the drivers of you guys executing here.
Sure. Yes, roughly a week and a half ago, we announced that in partnership with Brookfield Infrastructure Partners, we would form or had agreed to form a joint venture, which will acquire all of Wells Fargo Rail's assets. The joint venture is going to acquire 105,000 railcars directly, which will be in the joint venture with GATX as the controlling partner and manager of those assets. We have options to buy Brookfield down over a multi-year period. In addition to that, Brookfield is going to buy 23,000 cars and roughly 400 locomotives directly from Wells. Those are on finance leases. That is a bit of a different animal than what we typically do, but fits well within the Brookfield universe. We will manage those too. The opportunity there really is to fully leverage the platform we have here in North America.
We have the best commercial and operational team in railcar leasing in North America, outstanding customer base, a highly diversified fleet. We can add to all of that through the acquisition of this portfolio.
You talked about that option with Brookfield to kind of buy them down, get you up to 100% of the JV over time. I guess, how do we think about that? What is the value creation opportunity for you? What would be the trigger points that you'd look at to kind of execute on those options over time? Maybe walk through the structure a little bit?
Sure. It'll initially be a 70% equity ownership of Brookfield, 30% of GATX. We have annual options, which will allow us to essentially buy them down if everything kind of proceeds according to plan over a 10-year period. 10 options. If they actually extend longer than that, to the extent we choose not to exercise one option, there's a cure period. The benefit of doing it this way, first of all, is bringing the partnership together, our asset knowledge, our operating expertise in the market, with many benefits that Brookfield brings to the table in terms of their relationship with Wells, which was very important here, their financial scale, and structuring capabilities. All are beneficial.
From our perspective, doing it in this manner allows us to control the assets from day one and control the portfolio from day one, but keeps GATX in a very flexible financial position. We want to continue to be able to invest in all of our markets, in Europe, in India, in aircraft engines, in our tank container leasing business. Through this joint venture structure, we retain that flexibility. We retain our credit ratings, our investment-grade credit ratings, which all three agencies reaffirmed shortly after we made the announcement. A lot of benefits on both sides.
Like you said, if this plays out according to plan, it'll get exercised sort of prorated over the 10-year period?
Correct. Our expectation is that we will exercise those options and eventually take 100% of the ownership of the pool. The key is we're not obligated to. If something transpired in the financial markets or in other, could it be in the rail market? Unlikely. If something unforeseen occurred, we would have the flexibility to not exercise in a given year and make it up at a later date if we wanted.
Can you pull any of that forward?
Not technically, but based on the use of cash flows and asset sales during that 10-year period, some of those proceeds can be used to buy down shares. It may not be a full 10 years. It could be something shorter.
Okay. Got it. That's helpful. I think you talked about the transaction being modestly accretive in the full year after closing with, I think, more material contribution beyond that. Maybe talk a little bit about some of the revenue and platform opportunities that you see and maybe kind of walk through what that material contribution afterwards might look like.
Sure. You'll do your best to try to pin me down on what material contributions mean. I'll do my best to give you some guidance, but.
I appreciate that.
Until we close and truly own the assets, it's a little bit difficult to weigh in. Accretion is the order of the day. The benefits long-term for GATX are the fact that, again, we're going to continue to diversify our fleet. I think it's a very good outcome for our customers. We'll have a broader pool of assets to be able to make available to them. They can manage their railcar needs now through one entity as opposed to ourselves and Wells. We think many of the benefits we bring to the assets we buy today, whether it be commercially or operationally, we can bring to this portfolio too. From an operational perspective, Wells Fargo Rail, because of regulatory reasons, they have to outsource all their maintenance to third parties. We'll continue to do that initially.
Being a maintenance provider and an owner of facilities in North America, we have a pretty deep knowledge of the maintenance cycle. We think we can bring a number of benefits to bear on the portfolio through that avenue as well. Additionally, on top of being one of the biggest buyers of railcars in North America, I think assets as well in what is a pretty liquid secondary market here in North America. This is a nice inventory addition to be able to selectively pull assets from this pool and potentially sell down at some point in the future.
Got it. I think maybe talk a little bit about the North American business and sort of the % of lease versus own in North America has increased over time. I guess maybe what do you think of the outlook, the long-term outlook about sort of the mix of the business? Do you see a similar trend on the international side?
Yeah. The biggest shift in the lease versus own has really been among the Class I railroads. As they've pared down the number of railcars that they own, they're probably down to 14% or 15% of the total $1.6 million in North America. They may pare that down a little bit more, but that big move has kind of been made. We and other lessors have been the beneficiary of that. We think whether it's customers or the Class I railroads, they'll continue to look at leasing as a real flexible option for them and one that ties up less capital. We can manage the maintenance for them. There are very clear benefits to leasing versus owning. They'll always likely own some share. That's the same for shippers too.
Our customers, a lot of our big customers own some portion of their own fleet and then will lease in the bulk of their equipment. We see that continuing. In Europe, the bigger driver in Europe is really not so much lease versus buy, but truck versus rail. The government's push across Europe is to move more product from truck to rail. The Green Initiatives in Europe we see as a real nice tailwind for driving increased demand for wagons in Europe.
Those will be on the lease side, you'd imagine, where they will?
I believe so. Yes. The benefits are the same there. We do maintenance in Europe. We can bring those same benefits to our customers. In India, the growth prospect is quite different and very strong because you have a country of 1.2 billion people that is continuing to industrialize, grow, infrastructure needs, whether you pick your period 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. They are going to need a lot of steel, a lot of cement, a lot of coal gets moved, automotives. A lot of that will be moving by rail.
Okay. Okay. I guess, how do you think about tariffs and how they impact the business? I think we've talked a little bit about the market, leasing market being supply-led. Maybe how do you think about tariffs and how that impacts the market?
Yeah. The supply-led recovery we have seen in our market over the course of the last few years continues, whether it is Trinity, Greenbrier, Union Tank, FreightCar America, the big national steel, the big builders in North America have been very disciplined about, in some cases, paring back their manufacturing capacity and bringing it much more in line with replacement demand. That is a benefit to everybody in the marketplace. Tariffs right now, the biggest impact we see is the uncertainty it causes among our customer base. For our customers, whether it is food and ag, chemical, fertilizer sectors, what have you, auto, they like visibility. Right now, predictability and visibility are tough to come by. Their decisions regarding new railcar adds are slow in coming. When I look at the market, when we look at the market right now, it still remains very bifurcated.
For the installed base, the 1.6 million railcars that are already in service in North America are 110,000. Demand for that is very high. Customers are very eager to hold on to what they have. Adding is a different discussion. That is why new car placements are more challenging today than an existing car renewal. We see very attractive lease rates on existing car renewals. It is more challenging on the new car side. That is the biggest place we have seen it.
Is it more just companies sitting on their hands to some extent, trying to wait out the uncertainty that we're in and get some degree of trade certainty?
Exactly. We renew 20,000 cars a year. We have a lot of customer interaction. We do it in very small lots, 200 cars, 300 cars at a time or less. We are constantly getting feedback from our customer base. That is what we hear the most, is hard to predict, cannot plan, not of the mindset of, "Okay, let's go add 500 cars. Let's add 1,000 cars." It is definitely keep what we have. The growth side of the equation is much tougher.
How does the pipeline develop in a situation like that? Is it an extent where they say, "Well, we think we want these cars, but maybe let's see if we can get a later date where we take them," or anything different there? Any maybe sort of specific color by car type as well?
Sure. I think this kind of cuts across almost all car types. They will commit to term leases on that existing fleet, for sure. We're doing on average four-year or five-year renewals somewhere in that zip code. They are committing for a pretty attractive period of time. Again, it just manifests itself more on, "I'm going to add to my fleet. I'm going to scale up a little bit." We're not seeing that.
Okay. I guess maybe drilling down a couple, you mentioned auto. I'm just curious how that's played given what we have heard about tariffs. We had the rails here earlier today. I guess there's maybe some mixed dynamics. I think UP's talked about auto being down. CP on the cross-border side said it's kind of running pretty close to what they would expect. I don't know if you have any thoughts there.
Yeah. Utilization of our fleet has remained quite high.
Yeah.
Again, I would not say there is a tremendous amount of active dialogue about adding to those fleets, but existing rolling stock remains in very good demand.
Let's talk about remarketing income from railcars in North America. I think that's been good over the last couple of years. Anything unique about the current environment, the secondary environment that makes you feel good about this?
Yeah. I would say I'm very encouraged by the activity in the secondary market, especially if you look over the course of the last few years, as interest rates started to march up. I don't know when exactly, but I'm sure at some point in an earnings conference call, we fired a bit of a warning shot saying, "We don't know as interest rates start to move up, whether that's going to negatively impact activity in the secondary market." That rate move has largely happened. We've seen really no impact in the secondary market. Demand remains high. Both the breadth and depth of buyers is robust. The assets we put into the market are attractive. They're generally with very good customers, good assets, long-term leases. We find quite a few ready homes for those assets. That's been encouraging.
Even the Q1 of this year, despite kind of macro volatility, uncertainty, tariffs on, tariffs off, etc., very good level of activity in the secondary market in the Q1 . We are a participant as well. We are not only a seller, but we are always looking to buy. It is competitive. We certainly do not win everything we bid on.
Yeah, so talk a little bit about that. What's attractive to you guys participating in that market?
It's the opportunity to really be selective. Most sellers, like ourselves, if you put a package in the marketplace for 700 cars or 800 cars, it's usually sliced up into a number of smaller different riders by car type, by customer, what have you. We like that flexibility to be able to look at an entire package and say, "Okay, out of the 700 cars or 800 cars in this package, we'll bid on 200 cars that we really like for various reasons. The rest we'll kind of leave for somebody else in the marketplace to look at." Again, even the 200 cars or so we'll bid on, it's competitive. There are others out there looking to add to their portfolios. Really that optionality has been quite nice. We've added a lot in the secondary market over the course of the last few years. We've seen really good opportunities.
Do you think that continues?
I think it will. That secondary market has really been quite healthy, resilient. As I said, despite kind of week-to-week or month-to-month headlines and volatility in the equity markets or debt markets, the buyers have been there.
Any car types in particular in the secondary market that jump out and markets?
Nothing in particular. One of the benefits GATX has is this 160 different types of cars in the portfolio spread across 800 + customers. We can offer cars in lots of different lots. That is what we do. Every quarter, every six months, we put a package in the secondary market. In all likelihood, we're not going to sell them all. There is going to be some pockets there where we just think the market did not value it the way we would as a whole. We will keep it. We will move on. Demand has been pretty good. Interest has been pretty good. As I said, we see it on both the buy and sell side across asset types.
You mentioned competition in that space. Anybody unique jump out at you, or is it sort of the usual suspects?
I would say the usual suspects. We have not seen any new sizable financial investors come into the market, any new names. We have definitely seen some portfolio acquisitions, more sizable ones over the course of the last couple of years. In the kind of as-you-go secondary market activity, not a lot of new players, which is fine. A typical package will go out. You are going to have a buyer list of 25 or 30 different institutions. What I am encouraged about is when we go into that market to sell, we will see most of those 25 or 30 active. They are obviously not all going to win their bids, but they are all in there.
Yeah. You're getting bids from everybody.
Yeah.
Okay. When you think about secondary as an avenue for growth for you, what do you think that looks like over the next two or three or four years compared to going with new cars?
We're always going to have a new car need because we scrap, even today, GATX's fleet standalone, not to mention with the addition of the Wells Fargo Rail portfolio. We scrap about 2,500 cars-3,000 cars in a given year. We're going to need to refresh that and replace those for our customers. We're always going to be in the new car market at some level. The secondary market is a real nice supplement to that and has been. We've invested several hundred million in the last few years in the secondary market and would like to continue to do that.
Now, on the sell side, obviously, as I mentioned before, with the addition of the Wells Fargo Rail portfolio, it just adds a whole another pool of assets from which we can be very selective and potentially go into the market from time to time and see what the market's appetite is for those.
Okay. So let's talk about the international business. I know you touched on this a little bit earlier, Europe, India, and specifically. What's sort of the outlook for 2025? Maybe we can even sneak a peek into a little bit longer than that. But what do you think about sort of Europe and India in the next year?
I think I would like to start by peeking into 2026 because 2025, the economic environment is pretty challenging in Europe right now, particularly in Germany, which is the big driver for chemical petroleum, kind of the tank car moves in Europe. It is definitely more challenging in Europe these days. They are going to continue to add to their fleet. Just last week, I think, we were at the Munich Transportation Fair and celebrated GATX Rail Europe's 30,000th wagon put into service. I think across sectors, also on the freight car side, which has been underweight for GATX Rail Europe, we are seeing more opportunities. That will be a good avenue for growth for us. India is its own unique country with its own dynamics.
Almost regardless of economic activity in India, the need for increased moves by rail transportation, infrastructure development, it will continue. I've had the benefit of going to India. I go probably once a year to see our team there. Each trip, you can literally see development under everywhere you go, whether it's in Delhi or Mumbai or Calcutta. It's impressive.
How do you see the balance of the three core businesses, North America, Europe, and India, kind of as you look out over the next couple of years, just given that sort of very robust growth?
From a unit growth standpoint, India has the biggest upset. They have the benefit of starting off a smaller base, so they'll be able to continue, I believe, to continue to grow that fleet without any significant issues. Europe and North America, it will be a bit more opportunistic. Our focus over the course, particularly here in North America, really over the course of the next year or +, will be integrating once we clear the regulatory requirements. We'll be integrating that portfolio.
Yeah. I guess just sort of proportionally, what do you think India can be of the business in a few years from now?
I do not want to put too much pressure on them. I mean, there are 10,000 wagons-10,500 wagons today. Over a five-year period, you could easily add probably another close to 800 wagons-1,000 wagons a year. They are primed for growth, very good team. We will continue to look for opportunities to kind of expand the service offering we have in India. It is the one market right now where we do not do maintenance. All the maintenance in India is done by the Indian Railway. It is certainly an area we think we can bring a lot of expertise if we could do that at some point in the future.
What needs to happen to unlock that opportunity for you?
Right now, everything's done by the Indian Railway. They would have to get comfortable that third parties can do service, do maintenance service in India, and hopefully see the benefit of relieving themselves of some of that burden and requirement. We have a very good dialogue with the IR. Things take time longer in India than they do elsewhere.
Okay. I guess we talked a little bit about tariffs and thinking about it from a U.S. angle. When you think about your international businesses, is there any impact that we need to consider?
No. I mean, the only thing internationally, as I mentioned already, from a kind of on-the-radar standpoint, is the economic environment in Europe, which is fairly unpredictable at this point and pretty tepid growth. It's hard to slice that up between what's tariff-driven, what's economic, kind of core economic concerns. But that's the one market where this year's growth will be a little bit probably light of where it's been the last couple.
Okay. I wanted to touch base on the engine leasing business and the JV with Rolls-Royce. Kind of wanted to get a sense of what the outlook that is for this year. How do you think about performance has been good. So I guess how do you think about the opportunity for 2025?
Yeah. The performance has been very strong. I mean, if there's any business that's been tested, it's that one. Nobody had in their models, us or anybody else, that a pandemic would occur and travel would basically go to zero for some extended period of time. That was a challenging environment for Rolls-Royce and definitely for our partnership, our RPF. They came through very strong. Customer collections remained quite high. Utilization of the engines remained quite high. If you look out over the course of the next 10 years, just from a replacement standpoint, the number of aircraft that need to be delivered is substantial. All of those will need, they all need engines. They all need spares. We're in the spares business. Mathematically, it's fairly predictable in terms of the number of engines that need to back up those that are on wing.
We think the growth prospects in engine leasing are quite strong. Now, from our standpoint, we invest there two ways, right? We invest directly through GATX engine leasing. We also have the joint venture that is investing. This year, there will probably be north of $1 billion that they will invest directly within the joint venture. The last few years, GATX has done roughly $250 million of engines directly. We have indicated we expect to be somewhere in that range depending on Rolls' demand or Rolls' production schedule. It may be a little light of that, but we are expecting a good number this year. Beyond that, the direct engines are a little harder to predict because it is more Rolls is in a much stronger financial position today than it was four or five years ago. They have a lot of alternatives for how they sell and finance those engines.
We're one of them and a good one. It could be more challenging further down the road to see some of those direct investments. Our portfolio is in great shape. Through the JV, roughly $800 million-$1 billion a year of investment volume is a lot. That's a really, really good opportunity for GATX.
In terms of the wholly owned side of engine leasing, so I guess. How do you think about that developing? I think you have 40 wholly owned engines or close to 40 wholly owned engines in the portfolio today. Where does that go to?
I think we'll see after this year kind of what comes forth, what's in the pipeline from Rolls. It'll probably primarily be back half of the year loaded. That's a bit more of a year-by-year situation. It's a little bit more difficult to predict what the numbers will be 2026 or beyond. I do know that within the joint venture, $800 million- $1 billion a year is very achievable. We dipped down in the pandemic or post-pandemic area to $152 million-$250 million of investment volume there, kept the team very focused on the existing asset base. We've come through that extremely. They did an outstanding job running the business and come through very strong and are back in more of a proactive investment mode.
If there are any questions from the audience, we're almost out of time, but I do have one more. You guys can think about that for a second. This has been a good market for you guys to deploy capital into. As you think about the next year or two or three years, sort of what's the capital allocation strategy? Which parts of the business get the most dollars?
The one that generates the highest return.
That's a good answer.
It doesn't matter whether it's India, Europe, North America, our tank container leasing business, or engines. Our job is to deploy capital in the highest risk-adjusted return opportunities we can for the shareholders. Our framework won't change. We believe our shareholders want us to reinvest in the business. We're going to use our cash flow to do just that as we've done for many years now, redeploy capital into the business to the extent the opportunities are there and the returns are there, keep the balance sheet in great shape. That's our second priority. Our investment-grade credit rating is very important to us. We want to keep the balance sheet pristine and in a position where we can be really opportunistic like we have been with the Wells portfolio. The third priority is to the extent there's excess capital, we will return it to shareholders.
We have done that through dividends, which I think now we have paid uninterrupted since 1919, and periodic share repurchase. Those are the three pillars.
Crystal ball, which is the asset type or opportunity that's got the best return?
We just.
Obviously, very midfield here.
We just announced a $4.5 billion deployment here in North America, which we think will generate a very attractive return. As my message to our other business unit leaders in Europe and India, TriFleet, Rolls-Royce, we have spent a lot of time working on that joint venture structure and that option structure to give us maximum flexibility to invest in every market. We expect to invest in every market.
Good answer. Listen, Robert, thanks so much for joining us. Really appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.