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Bank of America Global Industrials Conference

Mar 22, 2023

Speaker 3

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Hopefully, you've had a chance to grab a coffee at the break and ready to listen in. Larry, Mark, glad to have you guys here at the conference with us. I believe you have a presentation to kick us off, so I'll pass it over to you for introductions and the presentation.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Sharif.

Larry Silber
President and CEO, Herc Rentals

Good afternoon. Thanks, Sharif, and glad to be here. As you can see, we brought the sun with us from sunny Florida, so thank you very much. You're welcome. We appreciate being here. I'm Larry Silber, President and Chief Executive Officer of Herc Rentals. Joining me today on stage is Mark Humphrey, who's our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. In the audience is Leslie Hunziker, who is your primary contact, our Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Communications for the company. We're happy to be here with you this afternoon, Sharif, and we appreciate the invite from Bank of America and look forward to sharing our story with you. As always, before I get started, I'd like to point out our safe harbor statement and information regarding non-GAAP financial measures.

If your eyesight is very good, you can read. If you read really quickly, you can go through that. It's certainly in the deck that we've prepared for the conference. Today, what I'd like to talk about is Herc Rentals is one of the leading full-line equipment rental suppliers in North America. We have a vision, a mission, and value statement that really supports our company purpose. Our company purpose is in big letters there, is we pledge to equip our customers and communities to build a brighter future. Everything that we do is centered around safety in our business, critically important to where we are. Obviously, over the last several years, we've adopted ESG measures and have set very, very tough standards and goals to go forward on that.

A little about Herc Rentals for those of you that don't know us. We are one of the oldest, largest equipment rental providers in North America. We are nearly 60 years old. Formerly, back prior to 2016, part of the Hertz Corporation, and separated then and became an independent in 2016. We have 6,600 team members as of December 31st of 2022, and we operate from over 350 locations in North America in 42 states and five Canadian provinces. We are a North America-focused company, and we intend to continue along that path on our journey.

We serve an addressable market in North America that's estimated to be about $60 billion in rental revenue today and growing, and we think that's quite an ample opportunity for us to continue to grow our business as we've been growing it over the last several years. We're making great progress in our business in executing our strategy as we shift this business into higher gear. First things we had to do was stabilize our base and get ready for growth. We had an investor day about 2 years ago. We came out with these 5 strategies, which was really around growing our core business and expanding into specialty businesses through investment in a, in a multiple area, ways of fleet, of M&A, new greenfield locations, in what has been a very healthy and positive demand environment.

At the same time, we've invested into technology in our business to improve our customer experience and enhance our operating efficiencies. We think today we have one of the most, if not the most advanced technology platform in the industry, providing services and capability to our customers as well as to ourselves and our vendor partners. As we expanded our sustainability program that I just mentioned, we set specific goals around GHG emissions intensity to reduce that by 25% by 2030, using 2019 as our base year. We're at a best-in-class level, I mentioned earlier, around safety, we think we are leading our industry segment in our safety performance, and we've been operating very strongly around that, which is important in the States.

We're a Gold Military Friendly Employer recipient this past year. Importantly, you know, as we've invested in this business over the last several years in fleet growth, we've also focused on, you know, properly allocating capital to our business through a combination of the M&A, greenfields or brownfield startups, if you will. We began an annual dividend a year ago. We increased that dividend this year, and we've also executed on, you know, an opportunistic share repurchase program this past year. Our 5-year financials look like this that we recently reported our 2022 results which showed the progress that we've made to date, and it's been nothing short of exceptional, quite frankly. We delivered record level financial performance across the board which is indicated here.

Equipment rental revenue growth grew 34% last year on top of 24% in 2021. In supporting the rising demand that we had in the business and the growth, we invested $1 billion in net fleet CapEx purchases last year. While improving our fleet productivity, as evidenced by our annual increase in dollar utilization on a year-over-year basis. We also invested in expanding our branch network by completing 18 acquisitions, strategic acquisitions, last year in urban markets that increased our densification as well as added to our specialty business capability that we've been looking to grow out. Also, we opened 21 greenfield locations in key urban markets that I just mentioned in North America.

By focusing on our rate of growth and operating efficiencies, we more than offset the inflationary pressures as we delivered 160 basis points of adjusted EBITDA margin improvement last year and on 120 basis points of higher ROIC. Before we move on to the Q&A with Sharif, I'd like to, you know, talk a little more about where we're operating from and the position that we're at today, which is much stronger than any other time in the history of our company. We're experience all trends that are consistent with an industry upcycle. I say we're sort of the middle stages, if you will, of the cycle.

We're seeing very good performance and gaining share in a growing market where scale and capability matters, and when it comes to capturing new business, winning talent, and driving profitability in the business. We are one of those companies of scale in North America. There is a attractive long-term industry growth dynamics that, you know, everybody's heard about, whether it be from the infrastructure spending, the onshoring that's going on in North America, as well as the megatrends or the mega projects that we hear about every day, whether it's around EVs or battery plants or data centers or warehousing and the like.

Non-residential construction recovery, you know, prior to this, and we don't know what the status of this banking trend, although we've not heard anything that's negative at this point from our customer standpoint, is on the upswing, and that's supported by the latest Dodge data. We're investing in our business to sustain profitable growth. We've been an opportunistic consolidator over the last two years, creating a high-performance branch network to achieve a maximum return on investment and boost efficiency. Our expanded capabilities in our solutions business, what we call ProSolutions. We're a solutions-based provider. We've also expanded our technology capability, where we can run our business, and our customers' fleet requirements through an app, either on an iPhone or on an Android device.

We have a much broader offering of specialty equipment that complements our general line equipment and provides incremental growth opportunities for us. We have a very strong balance sheet that Mark will talk to during the questions, that ensures fleet availability to meet the continued robust demand that we're experiencing in the market. We have a diverse, you know, flexible business model that provides resiliency, as evidenced by our ability to respond and adapt to the trials and the tribulations that we all experienced during COVID. We're focused on, you know, reducing and...

reducing risk and balancing our revenue streams, driving efficiencies with a broader and diverse customer set, both at the national account and at the large and local customers and small businesses, both on public and private projects across multiple verticals today, which is something that was new to our business over the last couple of years. We have a very flexible asset management philosophy, it provides for organic growth and certainly micro and macroeconomic resiliency in the markets that we operate. Of course, we are very disciplined in our capital management, you know, underpinned by our strong balance sheet. We're investing to sustain profitable growth while returning value to our shareholders through combination of dividends and opportunistic share repurchase. Exciting times for Herc Rentals.

We're in the best of times for our business, and we're quite pleased about our performance and look forward to sharing more of our story with you, here this afternoon. Sharif?

Speaker 3

Thank you for that. You've spoken a bit about some of the targets set and recent financial performance. For those in the audience that are a bit less familiar with Herc, could you describe the split from Hertz and progress since?

Larry Silber
President and CEO, Herc Rentals

Yeah. Great question. You know, there's been an unbelievable transformation of the business over the last 7 years. A lot of that has been to drive performance to get on par with some of our larger peers that are headquartered either in the U.K. or in the United States. Really it was started with first separating the business from a former parent company that had underinvested for 6 or 7 years in this business. Really let those larger competitors sort of grow more rapidly against that business for a period of time. That began with the separation, the planning for the separation in 2015, the separation ultimately and the spin to become an independent public company in July of 2016.

We then had to focus on a total transformation of the business, beginning with the fleet. Refreshing that fleet, building that fleet, to be premium quality equipment to serve our customer base that demands and expects premium gear, you know, to focus on their operations. We had to rebuild our whole, our business system platform, separate that, upgrade it, and bring it up to modern standards, which we've completed. Recently in the last two years, we've accelerated that to sort of put a best-in-class customer solution out there with what we call our ProControl NextGen that provides the capabilities that I mentioned before around fleet management and access to that fleet.

We had to rebuild and retool our sales force, give them the tools to operate, to create dynamic pricing in the market, give them professional pricing tools to manage that, give them better tools to manage the fleet and the efficiency of that fleet. We had to also shed ourselves of geographic markets and businesses that we didn't wanna be in. When we arrived in 2015, the company operated in Saudi and Qatar, in Spain and France and Portugal, in China and South America, and in many, what I'll call local, small local markets in North America that we didn't necessarily wanna be in. We had to change our strategy to be in large urban markets, high density population centers for the business.

I can go on and on here, but I don't wanna run out of time for more questions. There's really been a total transformation, rebuilding our team and bringing in a professional management team that had been sort of underdeveloped and under-cared for under the former parent company.

Speaker 3

You mentioned the two larger peers in the competitive space. Can you speak to a bit of where Herc fits into that large rental player landscape and what differentiates you?

Larry Silber
President and CEO, Herc Rentals

Yeah, great question, Sharif. You know, we're referred to today as the big three favorably. We've been able to, you know, grow share most recently, where we were sort of stuck at a 3% share, but over the last 2 years, we've been able to accelerate our share. Really, the difference today, other than perhaps some scale, is really where the big three separate themselves from the rest of the market. I say, you know, we have all the capability to operate very similarly to our 2 larger peers. They have some product portfolios that we don't have and don't really wanna be in. They're in some geographies, obviously, that are outside of North America that we're not in and don't wanna be in.

That is the main difference, but it's really how do the big three separate themselves from the rest of the market? That's really the difference in the marketplace today. Capability, scale, size, ability to grow, ability to be competitive, ability to purchase at a very scalable level and to be on par is, you know, we're neck and neck with them, and we've certainly demonstrated that in our ability to close the gap around EBITDA margin, about around pricing performance, and about and around growth, where we actually have outgrown them as a percentage of our business the last couple of years. We're still in a catch-up mode.

Speaker 3

In your opening presentation, you mentioned that given all the turmoil in financial markets, customers weren't seeing any impact. Just given the macroeconomic backdrop, could you give us your view on the longevity of the cycle?

Larry Silber
President and CEO, Herc Rentals

You wanna grab that one?

Mark Humphrey
Senior Vice President and CFO, Herc Rentals

Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, as Larry stated, right, I think we're sort of in those middle innings of this. I think the opportunity that is sitting in front of us with, you know, potentially over $1 trillion of opportunity between infrastructure and onshoring and the like, you know, gives us tremendous confidence as we look forward to 2023 and beyond.

Speaker 3

Mm-hmm. One of those drivers has been all the investment in infrastructure, these large projects. What are the competitive dynamics like on those large projects that the large rental operators I've all spoken to, and, you know, is there room to play for everyone on these?

Larry Silber
President and CEO, Herc Rentals

Yeah. Well, there's not room to play for everyone. It's really gonna be down to the big three. There's plenty of room for ourselves and our two larger peers to share in an outsized share of those projects. 'Cause really our smaller competitors, the mom and pops, the small regional players, really aren't gonna be invited to participate heavily. It's really gonna be, you know, one of the big three being named the primary provider on those projects and the other two of us being the secondary and tertiary provider. None of us probably have the capability to be a complete total supplier to any one of those big mega projects, infrastructure projects or onshoring projects.

You know, one of us will all get a primary and a secondary position, many of those have been awarded today, and that's the way it seems to be rolling out. Look, there's just not enough fleet in the market for, you know, that to go to any one player or any one player to buy enough fleet to go service those. The smaller players, the regional players, the mom and pops don't either have the fleet, don't have the technological capability, don't have the footprint, the locations or the infrastructure support, you know, whether it's mechanics and the like to support that type of activity. It'll fall mostly to the big three.

Speaker 3

Mm-hmm. You mentioned the supply of equipment. Has that improved at all? I understand you're adding quite a bit of CapEx this year, and have you seen better availability from the suppliers?

Larry Silber
President and CEO, Herc Rentals

You wanna grab that?

Mark Humphrey
Senior Vice President and CFO, Herc Rentals

You know, I would say that the supply chain issues still exist, right? I think what we have been able to see is better visibility to deliveries. From an overall perspective, we foresee sort of as we move out into 2023, it's still going to be a bit messy.

Speaker 3

Kind of coming back to the expected growth you see, if a downturn in commercial real estate, anything of that nature should occur, how quickly are you able to pare back some of that CapEx? What's sort of the playbook into a downturn?

Larry Silber
President and CEO, Herc Rentals

Yeah, just quickly turn back to COVID when, you know, when the whole world shut down quickly, we were able to pare back very quickly. All of our OEM agreements have 30-day notice for cancellation of any outstanding orders. We have the ability to turn the faucet off very quickly, should there be any change in dynamics. We don't expect that to happen, Sharif. We think we're in a pretty robust market, and even if there were to be, you know, some shortfall in the areas you're talking about, we think there's enough activity and investment in, you know, the other areas of infrastructure spending, mega projects, onshoring and the like that would more than offset any downturn. We think we're gonna continue along our path to bring the equipment in.

We also, you know, have a need. Obviously, during COVID, we extended the life, and we delayed the normal rotational sale of that equipment. We believe now with what we're bringing in this year, we have an opportunity to resume a normal rotational but even on a larger fleet, so that means there'll be a larger amount of rotation out. We're gonna need that capital, not only for growth but for rotational purposes that we deferred during the COVID period, you know, for as much as two years.

Speaker 3

And on that, what's sort of the normal level of rotation that you expect versus where you pulled back in the last few years?

Mark Humphrey
Senior Vice President and CFO, Herc Rentals

I mean, I think when you think about sort of, you know, in fleet at $5.6 billion at the end of 2022, right? If you think about that on a seven to eight-year sort of rotational basis, right? There's probably $600 million-$700 million-ish each year that we would probably look to refresh.

Speaker 3

How far down did that fall in these last few years?

Mark Humphrey
Senior Vice President and CFO, Herc Rentals

I wouldn't say necessarily that we are behind. I think when you think about sort of the technological advances that all of this equipment has, right? It's more of a want to refresh and sort of customer facing than it is a need to. You know, we'll do this in a thoughtful way as we walk forward. Again, just sort of at a high level, this sort of $600 million-$700 million is probably the refresh that's needed.

Speaker 3

Changing gears a bit, you know, you've spoken about specialty rental and some of the dynamics there. Are there any areas you're seeing that are you're sort of excited about, and what are some of the differences in the specialty rental space versus the gen rent?

Larry Silber
President and CEO, Herc Rentals

Yeah, great question. We're excited about specialty in general. Specialty is a new area for Herc over the last 7 years. We introduced that, you know, year 1, starting with power generation, with HVAC product, moving into pumping solutions, revitalizing a business that had existed but had gone away under the old regime. Then, you know, moving into some new areas like floor care and most recently into areas of trench shoring through some acquisitions that have given us a foothold and some scale and some capability to expand that. We're first starting in the Western U.S., and in the Southwest, and then bringing that to the other parts of the country. All of our specialty businesses are exciting for us.

They add a capability to our general rent business to get more share of wallet from our existing customers, as well as pick up new customers that, you know, traditionally didn't rent that gear, and now have the capability by renting from a bona fide supplier and one that's reliable. At the same time, it allows us to solutionize and get a higher level of pricing, if you will, higher margin for that business, 'cause we're not just providing gear. We're providing solutions to customer problems or customer challenges that allow us to put a broader array of gear, with broader, if you will, engineering expertise associated with it.

Speaker 3

Could you speak to some of those underlying services within the solutions that allow you to drive the margins there?

Larry Silber
President and CEO, Herc Rentals

Yeah. Well, you know, for one thing, you know, if this building as an example, this room all of a sudden didn't have air conditioning, it was a hot day today with that sunlight being much brighter, they'd have to cool this building off. If the air conditioning wasn't working, they might call us to come in and determine how much air would be needed, and then how much power there would be needed to power that air conditioning on a temporary basis to either heat or cool this building, as an example. That isn't done by just, say, bring in 5, 100-ton chillers. We'd have to come in and do a survey, do an evaluation. What's the cubic footage of this? How much power is available from the local utility in the market?

How much extra power do we need to bring in to power that? We would engineer that along with the building maintenance person to do that. That could happen on new projects where, you know, for instance, Tesla or one of these EV plants might be building a new plant out in the middle of the Phoenix desert, and there's no power out there. They say, "Hey, we're gonna build this facility. We need you to come in on a temporary basis to power this until we get the grid connected to the building that we're building." We'll come in and determine with the general contractors, what they're gonna be doing during the period before the grid is actually connected, and we'll engineer what needs to be brought in, how many megawatts of power.

We'll bring that in, set that up, cable it, get it running for them. In some cases, we'll even leave operators on site to make sure that things operate for them. For that we get, you know, we get to charge more money and for those services.

Speaker 3

Understood. Thank you. You know, this year there's been a bit more of a focus on operating leverage. How do you feel that's gone so far, and how do you feel that it's on targets?

Mark Humphrey
Senior Vice President and CFO, Herc Rentals

Yeah, I mean, I think I would take you back to probably the middle of 2022, where we began to see sort of those, you know, 50% sort of dollar flow-throughs beginning to happen in Q3 and Q4. I think, you know, as we continue to push rate increases into 2023, and we begin to cross over, a lot of those inflationary pressures that we had in 2022, you know, I think you'll see, and our goal is to sort of return to sort of a mid-fifties flow-through rate in 2023.

Speaker 3

Just sitting here today, how have some of those inflationary pressures changed since 2022, if any?

Mark Humphrey
Senior Vice President and CFO, Herc Rentals

You know, I mean, I think we're probably seeing a more normalized, you know, labor component to the P&L. I mean, there was a lot of, you know, there was a lot of inflationary pressures really across the board in 2022, and that's one. That's about 30% of our expenses is labor. You know, that's feels like it's gone back to, and should be able to cross over to a little bit more of a normal cadence here in 2023.

Speaker 3

Then you mentioned expecting a bit more seasonality this year, a bit of a return to that normal. Has that kind of begun to happen this year? Have you seen that?

Larry Silber
President and CEO, Herc Rentals

We have. I think we started seeing the return to that as we entered into the Q4 of last year. We expected that to continue into Q1, and I think we are in a more normal seasonality. Obviously, we're beyond the COVID extremes and everything that happened to sort of get the world back on track post-COVID. While we're seeing that return to seasonality in our business, we're not seeing improvements on the supply side that allow us to have the same seasonality to order equipment in Q4 and deliver in Q2. We've been ratably taking equipment in Q4 and in Q1 so that we're ready for that seasonality as we enter into spring.

Speaker 3

Speaking to that, how have lead times trended recently and over the last few years for that equipment?

Larry Silber
President and CEO, Herc Rentals

Yeah, look, lead times really haven't changed very much. You know, from a manufacturing standpoint, I'd say, we're still placing orders a year in advance. And in some cases with, you know, just in the last 2 weeks with one of our major suppliers, they've actually pushed our 2023 orders, 30% of our 2023 orders into 2024. Lead times haven't changed. Capacity hasn't changed. They are getting a bit more reliable that when they say they're gonna deliver something, they'll deliver it, not necessarily according to our order date or our expected date or our want date, but according to what they say they're gonna get it at. We are seeing some improvement there, but not in an overall capacity or a lead time reduction standpoint.

Speaker 3

Have any of them spoken about increasing that capacity, or do you foresee any increase in that?

Larry Silber
President and CEO, Herc Rentals

You know, quite frankly, I've seen, you know, one of our majors talk about and actually set up some operations, I call it nearshoring, not onshoring. They brought some of their business back to Mexico. Still in the ramp-up stages of that facility, so it hasn't really added any capacity to this point. A couple of others are talking about adding capacity within North America, but really haven't seen the benefits or even the results of that yet. There's still a big labor shortage in North America. Even if they were to put up bricks and mortar, the labor is, you know, we're at 3.5% unemployment in North America, right? We were meeting with someone earlier from Spain and just couldn't fathom that with, you know, 17%-20% unemployment.

In North America, there is a labor shortage. Even if they did add bricks and mortar, and even if their supply chain did get better, they might not have the labor available to pool, to sort of get that production up.

Speaker 3

Mm-hmm.

Earlier you mentioned that you were sort of in the middle innings and, you know, Herc has had this focus on dense urban areas. How do you see that evolving over time or even over the coming few years?

Larry Silber
President and CEO, Herc Rentals

Yeah, look, I think our immediate focus obviously was to get the business back to focusing on large urban markets, top 50 MSAs in North America of over 1 million people. There are another 50 markets or so, plus or minus, that have more than 1 million people, which would then lead us to then grow into what I would call the top 100 MSAs. For now, our focus is top 50 major urban markets, create density in those markets, add locations, grow our share, and as we do that'll expand us into the next 50 urban markets that all have over 1 million people. We'll grow into that area while expanding our specialty business, our core business, and into what I'll call some adjacencies, you know, that support our general rental business.

Speaker 3

Speaking to that expansion, you've had quite a pipeline of M&A opportunities. Is it still a good time to pursue those, and do you foresee continuing to do more bolt-ons?

Mark Humphrey
Senior Vice President and CFO, Herc Rentals

Yeah, I mean, I think as we've previously stated, you know, we anticipate to spend $500 million in 2023, much like we did in 2022, as well as 2021. Larry was speaking about those performances earlier. You know, I think, the pipeline is strong, both from a General Rentals as well as a specialty perspective, and we really like these opportunities because it gives us people, fleet, and locations that are tough to come by today, and then ultimately gives us a customer list that has very little overlap to ours.

Speaker 3

Mm-hmm.

Larry Silber
President and CEO, Herc Rentals

That said, you know, M&A is opportunistic, fortunately, it's been on our side. We tend to be, you know, favored today, you know, having completed, you know, the number of deals, 30 transactions in the last 2 years. As Mark said, the pipeline is full. We have plenty of opportunities ahead of us, we expect to continue along that path this year.

Speaker 3

Thank you. I think we just have a few minutes left. I'd like to open up for questions from the floor.

Larry Silber
President and CEO, Herc Rentals

We've got a microphone coming up.

Speaker 3

Yep.

Speaker 4

Thank you. 2022 was a robust year in terms of rental rates and pricing. Can you just talk about what your guidance is for 2023 based on some of the commentary of the strength you're seeing in infrastructure, some of the funding? Is there upside bias to that? What would be a more normalized rental rate environment maybe if we get to 2024?

Mark Humphrey
Senior Vice President and CFO, Herc Rentals

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, as you referenced 2022, right? We sort of posted a 5.8% rate lift in 2022. I think there are some tailwinds certainly as we walk into 2023 on the contract side, we're looking for mid-single digits growth again in 2023. I think, you know, we've stated that we would be comfortable and sort of in that, you know, mid-single digit range as we walk forward over the next couple of years as opposed to going, you know, to a 10 and walking it back. You know, a small stair climb is really our preference.

Speaker 4

You highlighted in your slide deck a net fleet CapEx about $1 billion in 2022. Can you remind us what your outlook is for 2023? If we do see a commercial real estate downturn, I understand it might be a small exposure for you, would you pare back that CapEx when you enter 2024? How would you kind of think about some of these moving pieces?

Mark Humphrey
Senior Vice President and CFO, Herc Rentals

Yeah, I mean, I think, 2022 was, like you said, it was about $1 billion, and we've guided midpoint of that guidance from a CapEx perspective in 2023 is about $1.1 billion, which sort of equates to somewhere in that 18%-20% growth off of in fleet of 2022. You know, and I think as Larry was talking about earlier, right, if, you know, God forbid, you know, the winter hit, right, we have this ability to sort of shut down POs sort of plus 30 days out. You know, I think those are the levers that we would pull in the event that something happened that was unforeseen as we sit here today.

Larry Silber
President and CEO, Herc Rentals

Short of a, of a rough winter or a COVID shutdown, we'd probably continue where we are 'cause we do have some fleet rotation we'd like to do and to go back to a more normalized fleet rotation type of experience. You know, unless it's a severe winter or a COVID shutdown, we'll probably continue on where we're at. You know, keep in mind, I just mentioned a couple of our suppliers have already moved some of our CapEx requirements into 2024 because they don't have the capacity where they're having supply chain limitations or constraints.

Speaker 4

You may have answered the question. I wanna follow up again. The general thinking historically has been that when residential goes down, non-residential follows. It's sort of logical. What gives you the confidence that this time is going to be different? Do you have a backlog, or are people ordering for these mega projects already?

Larry Silber
President and CEO, Herc Rentals

Yes. Great question. First of all, we're not in residential. If we're there, we're by accident, right? We don't encourage our people or go after any residential business, so we have no exposure there. You know, everything that went down-In non-res, you know, whether it been hotels or commercial real estate, you know, office buildings, things like that, was already down in COVID and never came back. We don't have any exposure there per say. The second part of your question, yes, we are already seeing the benefits of the onshoring of some of the mega projects and some of the extensions of some of the, you know, the big projects that we've been on, whether it be data centers, warehouses, EV plants, battery plants that we've already been heavily participating in.

We're seeing the continuation and rollover of some of these new projects happen already. We're seeing some of that benefit today. Shovels are in the ground, we're gonna see that ramp as we go through 2023.

Speaker 4

Just to follow on that, you know, with all these infrastructure dollars coming in, what's the longevity of that? You know, how many years of construction does that support? You know, how much equipment can really be absorbed over what time period?

Mark Humphrey
Senior Vice President and CFO, Herc Rentals

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, as I stated earlier, right? There's sort of a $1 trillion worth of business here, right? If you think about that from the rental share of that's in this sort of $20 billion-$30 billion range. Obviously, that's not all sort of one year of activity, right? We're, we're kind of viewing it as a longer tail, something that's probably outwards five years.

Larry Silber
President and CEO, Herc Rentals

Because of the nature of these large projects, whether it be infrastructure or mega or onshoring or, you know, the other things that you're seeing in the industry, and because only the really large players, the players of scale, which we are, and we hit on all the points of that scale that's required, we're gonna get an outsized share of that business, you know, commensurate and probably greater than our existing share, along with our two larger peers. They will probably get an outsized share of that as well. The bigger players will participate at a greater level than, you know, the smaller regional mom and pops, may ever get a chance to. Yes.

Speaker 3

Mm-hmm. You've spoken about this a bit, but what are sort of the one or two big differentiators between the large players that really lets you compete on those projects in terms of technology?

Larry Silber
President and CEO, Herc Rentals

Yeah, look, you know, obviously our people, right? Are number one in everything that we do. The fact that we're, you know, so focused on safety in our business, which is really important to all of these players. Our locations. Being in and around these large urban markets, where these projects tend to operate is a, you know, key differentiator, you know, for us and our larger peers to everybody else. From a technology standpoint, that's a big investment, you know, in technology. Our new technology platform was many tens of millions of dollars of investment over several years to get to where we are.

Smaller regional players, mom and pops, just aren't gonna have the capability or the wherewithal to invest in that, and that'll separate the larger players from, you know, the smaller players in terms of ability to capture that business.

Mark Humphrey
Senior Vice President and CFO, Herc Rentals

I would say finally there, right? It's breadth and depth of fleet as well, fleet offerings. You know, we've been able to sort of, you know, grow our fleet as well as our technology, people, et cetera, on-site capabilities, to be able to service these needs.

Speaker 3

Thank you. With that, I think we're just out of time. Thank you so much for coming to speak with us today.

Larry Silber
President and CEO, Herc Rentals

Sure. Thank you.

Mark Humphrey
Senior Vice President and CFO, Herc Rentals

Thank you.

Larry Silber
President and CEO, Herc Rentals

If anybody has any follow-ups, please get ahold of Leslie, and she'll be glad to answer any questions for you. Thanks, Sharif.

Mark Humphrey
Senior Vice President and CFO, Herc Rentals

Thank you.

Speaker 3

Thank you.

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