Hello, and welcome to the Ashtead Group plc full year and Q4 results analyst call. I will shortly be handing you over to Brendan Horgan and Alex Pease, who will take you through today's presentation. There will be an opportunity for Q&A later in the call. For now, over to Brendan Horgan and Alex Pease at Ashtead Group plc.
Thank you, Operator, and good morning, all. Welcome to the Ashtead Group full year results presentation. I'm joined, as usual, this morning by Alex Pease and Will Shaw. In addition, we have Kevin Powers with us, who joined in May to lead our Investor Relations for Sunbelt Rentals when the primary listing moves to the U.S. early next year. Kevin, now, as you would expect, is working very closely with Will and the team. Most of all, we're happy to have him on board. Turning to slide three, I'll begin this morning, as I always do, by addressing our Sunbelt team members listening in, or perhaps more significantly on the recorded call later in the morning U.S. time. Referencing slide three to specifically recognize their leadership and the health and safety of our people, our customers, and the members of the communities that we serve.
Your commitment and efforts resulted in a fiscal year with a total recordable incident rate of 0.65 and a lost time rate of 0.1. Both of these metrics represent record performance in frequency and severity. This is all achieved through the team's collective and ongoing progress of our Engage for Life program, which is central to the Sunbelt culture. Part of this progression, and importantly, keeping our guards up against complacency, was the holding of our 13th annual safety week, throughout which every single branch, every day, the week of May 12, held engaging sessions with all of our team members, introducing and reinforcing practices and habits of a world-class safety organization. To the team, thank you. Thank you for your efforts to date and your ongoing commitment to Engage for Life. Turning now to the highlights for the year on slide four.
We delivered strong performance in the year, with group and North America rental revenues up 4%, which was consistent with the guidance that we gave in December. These rental revenues and strong fall-through delivered group EBITDA growth of 3% to $5 billion, PBT of $2.1 billion, and earnings per share of $3.70. These are record rental revenues and EBITDA for the year, with group EBITDA also progressing from a margin standpoint to 47%. From a capital allocation standpoint, and in accordance with our Sunbelt 4.0 priorities, we invested $2.4 billion in CapEx. This fueled existing location fleet needs and greenfield openings. Despite this level of investment, we delivered near-record free cash flow of $1.8 billion. This fueled, for us, record returns to shareholders of $886 million through dividends paid in the year of $544 million and share buybacks of $342 million.
Our current $1.5 billion buyback program, which, as you know, was initiated just in December, we fully intend to complete the balance in the current year. This year's results were achieved as we executed our plans to gain from the clear and ongoing structural momentum in our business and our industry and our ever-strong positioning within it, such as gaining share among large strategic customers across many construction and non-construction market segments, including the exciting mega projects arena, which continues to expand in this era of deglobalization, technology-related construction, and infrastructure. This also came from the rapid growth of our newly opened 3.0 locations and the everyday winning of new customers, gaining market share through new customers who seek solutions through our broad range of general and specialist products and services. I'll give some added color on these points in just a moment.
This was a year of execution and investment in the ongoing improvement in our business while capturing the available growth from the current market conditions and positioning us for even more growth and success in the future. This leads me nicely into an update on our 4.0 progress in the year and will begin that on slide six. We launched Sunbelt 4.0 at our Powerhouse event in April of 2024. Since then, our team has been laser-focused on advancing each of the five actionable components, which you know as customer, growth, performance, sustainability, and investment. Over the next few slides, I'll highlight some of the successes we have delivered in the first year and the plans to progress to deliver even more, starting with customer and growth on slide seven. Our customer obsession journey is well underway.
During the year, we introduced enhanced training programs touching every one of our team members and recently launched a new customer obsession metric to provide real-time customer feedback to our team members. Illustrating our customer obsession and growth are the 42,000 new customers added in the year on top of the 118,000 new customers added during 3.0. In total, these market share gains, these customers generated $1.9 billion of rental revenue growth in the year. Contributing to these market share gains and ongoing growth is our ability to leverage our expanded network of locations and density to further advance the cross-selling prowess between our general tool and specialty businesses. We successfully added 61 locations throughout North America in the year with a nice mix of general tool and specialty businesses.
These are helping to drive growth and advance our clustered market strategy by delivering added convenience, depth, and breadth of product and solutions. Importantly, growth in the year continued to be supported by rate progression as we were able to demonstrate to our customers the value of our extensive range of products, services, and value-add solutions. Moving to performance on slide eight. Our performance actionable component is designed to leverage our platform, optimize our processes, and energize our technology, all with the output of improved customer experience and operational efficiencies, contributing to margin improvement over the course of Sunbelt 4.0. There were three main areas of focus you'll remember that were embedded in this actionable component. First, leveraging our SG&A through extracting the value from the investments we made during 3.0. In the year, we delivered efficiencies, allowing us to reduce G&A costs while still delivering expansion and growth.
Second is the growth and maturation of the 401 locations, these locations which were opened or added during the three years of Sunbelt 3.0. These locations have grown to over $1.9 billion in revenue, which is 19% higher than last year and $900 million in EBITDA, while also progressing margin by 280 basis points in the year. These locations are on average only 33 months young, so I think we can agree there's ample runway for growth incumbent in these 401 new locations. There's a detailed scorecard I think you'll want to check out of this new cohort in appendix slide 43. Thirdly, operational excellence, which is built to leverage our scale and leading technology platforms across our network of locations and clustered markets. Among the areas of opportunity are logistics and repair and maintenance activities, which is worthy of a little bit more detail on slide nine.
The logistics associated with delivering rental assets to our customers and executing field service and repair is a part of our operations, a large part of our operations, and therefore a large cost base in which we currently spend roughly $1 billion a year. Operationally, we've been moving to a market-based logistics model, or internally, as we refer to them, MLOs, where our drivers, trucks, and dispatchers serve all locations in the cluster rather than being allocated to individual locations, as was historically the case. By the end of the year, we had embedded MLO operations in 16 of our clustered markets and have seen immediate improvement in metrics in these clusters.
For example, in the four MLOs that were in place for the full year, our days to pick up, which is the time it takes for us to pick up equipment after, of course, a customer is called off rent, was reduced by over 25%, and the spend on third-party haulers was reduced by 40%. We continue to advance our MLO expansion with a playbook to reach an excess of 30 of our top 50 markets by the end of fiscal year 2026. This transition to MLOs has been supported by our full launch of VDOS 4.0 our proprietary vehicle dispatch optimization system, which has been reimagined and repowered to improve availability, utilization, efficiency, and user and customer experience, resulting in improved order capture through a clear path to say yes to our customers.
Every single branch and MLO are now using this new system and beginning to realize its early benefits. Finally, touching on sustainability and investment on slide 10. On the environmental front, we're on track to meet our 2034 target to reduce our scope one and scope two carbon intensity by 50% with a number of ongoing initiatives around our transportation fleet and how we source electricity for our locations. On investment, we allocated capital dynamically throughout the year to maintain our fleet, fuel growth categories, and greenfield openings and bolt-on acquisitions, and have executed returns to shareholders through increased dividends and share buybacks. In summary, Sunbelt 4.0 is off to a strong start with further exciting progress expected in this new fiscal year. With that, I'll hand it over to Alex to cover the financials in more detail, but also give our guidance for the new year.
Alex.
Thanks, Brendan, and good morning, everyone. Before I get into the numbers, I thought it would be helpful to give you a brief update on the relisting project. As you know, we received strong support from our shareholders at last week's AGM, with over 96% voting in favor of the resolutions. We're making good progress on the U.S. GAAP conversion and on Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, which means we're still on track to implement the move of the primary listing to the New York Stock Exchange in Q1 of calendar year 2026. We're also beginning to make plans for an investor event in New York shortly thereafter, which we'll be providing more details on as we progress through this year. Turning now to the full year results themselves on slide 13. Firstly, as you may have noticed this morning, we've reassessed the basis of our segmental disclosures.
The group operates under two primary geographic regions reflecting its North American activities and assets and its U.K. activities and assets. The North American business is farther split operationally as general tool and specialty, reflecting the nature of its products and services and the management structure of the group. As such, the group is identified as reportable operating segments as North America general tool, North America specialty, and the U.K., which we believe reflects better the basis upon which we review the performance of the business internally and aligns with the basis of our strategic growth plan, Sunbelt 4.0. Prior year comparative information has been restated to reflect these updated segments. To help you navigate your way through this change, we've included the full year results under the old segmentation on slide 31 in the appendix. Group rental revenue increased 4%.
Total revenue was down 1%, reflecting the planned lower level of used equipment sales. Our growth was delivered with strong margins, an adjusted EBITDA margin of 47%, and an operating profit margin of 25%. As expected, the lower level of used equipment sales resulted in lower gains on sale of $81 million compared with $223 million a year ago, which affects the absolute level of EBITDA and operating profit. After an interest expense of $559 million, adjusted pre-tax profit was 5% lower than last year at $2.1 billion. The higher interest expense reflects principally higher average debt levels. As explained at Q3 and in the press release, we are adjusting out non-recurring costs associated with the move of the group's primary listing to the U.S. These amounted to $15.4 million in the year. We will continue to track these as we move through the new fiscal year.
Adjusted earnings per share were $0.37. On slide 14, we've shown the group performance adjusting out the impact of the sales of used equipment, which were significantly lower in fiscal year 2025 versus fiscal year 2024. As you can see, that total revenue, excluding this impact, would have been 3% higher, and operating profit would have been up 2%. Now turning to the businesses, slide 15 shows the performance for North American general tool. Rental revenue for the year grew by 1% to $5.9 billion. This has been driven by a combination of volume and rate improvement, demonstrating the power of our diversified business model as well as our disciplined execution. As Brendan will discuss later, strengthened mega projects have mitigated ongoing moderating conditions in the local commercial construction market.
The 5% fall through in total revenue reflects the lower level of used equipment sales than last year, which I referred to earlier. As Brendan has already explained, we have been laser-focused on the performance actionable component of Sunbelt 4.0, and the team is making strong progress, driving value from our significant investments in logistics, telematics, maintenance execution, and we're already seeing the results. The team is also demonstrating strong cost-controlled discipline with operating costs around 5% below prior year. These actions resulted in an EBITDA margin of 54%. After the impact of lower gains on disposals and the higher depreciation charge, operating profit was $2.1 billion compared to $2.4 billion last year. Operating margins were 33%, and ROI was 20%. Now turning to North American specialty on slide 16, rental revenue was 8% higher than a year ago at $3.3 billion.
As with GT, this has been driven by a combination of volume and rate improvement. Rental revenue growth in the fourth quarter was impacted by the inclusion of both film and TV and oil and gas, which were both down significantly in the quarter. We took similar actions taken to control cost and specialty, and this has contributed to an EBITDA margin of 48% compared to 44% last year. After the impact of the higher depreciation charge on a larger fleet, operating profit was approximately $1.1 billion at a 33% margin, and ROI was 30%, clearly illustrating the higher returns achievable in the specialty business. As specialty becomes a larger part of the overall business portfolio, it should help to drive up overall group returns in the future. Turning now to the U.K. on slide 17, and please note that all of these numbers are now in U.S. dollars.
U.K. rental revenue was 5% higher than a year ago at $778 million. In line with the 4.0 strategy, the focus in the U.K. remains on delivering operational efficiency and long-term sustainable returns in the business. While we continue to make progress on rental rates, these need to progress further. As a result, the U.K. business delivered an EBITDA margin of 26% and generated an operating profit of $69 million at an 8% margin, and ROI was 7%. Across all three segments, our results have shown the resilience of our business model and our disciplined execution despite challenging market conditions. Slide 18 sets out the group's cash flows for the year. This emphasizes the strong cash generation capability of the business across a wide range of market conditions.
We maintain a strong focus on working capital management, which has resulted in cash flow from operations of $5 billion in the 12 months, which is a 99% conversion from EBITDA. As many are aware, two of the key attributes of our business model are both the resilience across the range of market conditions, which I mentioned previously, and the agility with which we can control capital spending, reallocating capital dynamically to maximize value. In this environment, where certain segments of our markets are more moderate and we have some latent capacity, we spent $2.7 billion compared with the $4.4 billion last year. We adjusted our priorities to principally fund fleet replacement and some pockets of growth. This strategy generated near-record free cash flow for the year of $1.8 billion, despite some of the transitory softness we've discussed.
This ended up significantly higher than our guidance of around $1.4 billion, principally because of the timing of fleet landings at the end of the year, where payment will be made in fiscal year 2026. While we've reduced our capital expenditure, this has not been at the expense of the future. We've executed on our fleet disposal plan as intended. We've isolated areas of the business with lower demand and dynamically reallocated our spending to growth markets such as power and HVAC and specialty businesses more broadly, as well as the mega projects arena where demand is higher. We're also using our improved logistics and telematics system to proactively reposition our existing fleet to higher growth markets. One example of this is utilizing latent capacity in our network to fund more than 60% of the OEC required in our greenfield locations.
This is how we can continue to grow even when our absolute spending in capital dollars is lower. Turning now to slide 19 and our guidance for revenue, capital expenditure, and free cash flow for the fiscal year 2026. We expect group rental revenue growth to be between flat and +4%, reflecting the ongoing dynamics in some of our end markets. Gross capital expenditure is planned to be in the range of $1.8 billion-$2.2 billion, and I will give a little bit more detail on this in just a moment. Finally, based on this guidance, we expect free cash flow to be between $2.0 billion and $2.3 billion, which again reflects the timing and payment of fleet landings around fiscal year end. On slide 20, I've broken down that CapEx guidance.
You'll see that we're planning rental fleet CapEx as follows: for North America, between $1.3 billion and $1.6 billion, and for the U.K., between $110 million and $130 million. For North American general tool in the U.K., these are largely replacement requirements, while in North America specialty, we're still funding pockets of growth. In all cases, there is a focus on improving time utilization and taking advantage of the latent capacity in the fleet that we already own. It's also worth noting that lead times with our key suppliers are relatively short at the moment, so there's considerable flexibility in these plans as market conditions improve. With that, I'll hand the call back over to Brendan.
Thanks, Alex. I'll now move on to some operational detail, beginning with North America on slide 22. The North American business delivered good rental-only revenue growth in the year of 4%. Specialty performed strongly with growth of 11%, with general tool up 1%. As Alex mentioned, the fourth quarter growth figure for specialty reflects the fact that the North American specialty segment for reporting purposes now includes oil and gas and film and TV, which were previously reported in the U.S. general tool and as part of Canada, respectively. I'll say that again, oil and gas would have been part of the GT reporting previously, and film and TV, of course, would have just been captured in Canada as that was reported. Excluding this, North American specialty grew 8% in Q4 and 12% for the full year.
As expected, we continue to realize moderating local non-res construction market activity through the fourth quarter, and this is offset in part by the ongoing strength of the mega project landscape and the broader non-construction markets, both of which I'll further detail shortly. Importantly, rental rates continue to progress year on year as utilization levels are improving across the industry. We anticipate continued discipline in our business as we deliver added value to our customers. This is ongoing evidence of the progressing structural change in the business and leveraging our internal pricing tools and disciplined rate approach. Moving on to slide 23, we'll cover the activities and outlook for the construction market. Consistent with our usual reporting of construction activity and forecast, the slide lays out the latest Dodge figures and starts, momentum, and put in place.
Outlook for construction growth continues to be underpinned by mega projects and infrastructure work, which remain strong and in some cases are gaining even further momentum. This is a portion of the market where we enjoy outsized share and continue to be positioned extraordinarily well as more of these very large projects begin and enter planning. Our cross-functional sellers and solutions experts are highly engaged with these contractors, our customers, and in many cases, the owner or developer themselves, bringing our broad range of solutions and capabilities to bear on these not only large, but highly complex projects. At the same time, as I've already mentioned, the local commercial construction space continues to moderate compared to what were really high recent years, as this prolonged environment of uncertainty has weighed on local and regional developers. This predominantly impacts some of the small, mid, and regional-sized contractors.
Nonetheless, the SME contractor landscape is a powerful and important part of our customer base. Although we're seeing some positive trends in local planning, it will take some time for this segment to see a meaningful uptick. However, it will rebound, and as I've said before, when it does, I think it will quite strongly. When this inevitability happens, we're in a position of strength to benefit, benefit with our customer relationships, cross-selling opportunities, coverage of products, services, and markets, and capacity, all part of our long-held clustered market strategy. Let's move on and talk a bit more about mega projects on slide 24. This is, of course, a slide you should now be pretty familiar with. It delineates mega project starts in count and value, looking at the last three years have gone by, as well as the next three years.
This is broken down in our fiscal years for context. What should you draw from this update, particularly when compared to equivalence stats from our prior updates? One, some have been pushed a bit right. This should come as no surprise, showing projects of this scale and sophistication take some time to get started. However, this should not be confused with projects being canceled. Two, the funnel keeps growing as the mega project landscape continues to expand and strengthen. This mega project era is being driven by deglobalization, technology advancement, and the related construction that comes from that manufacturing and production modernization and infrastructure. For these reasons and ongoing momentum, we believe this is a feature of our end markets, which will be present at a significant scale for years to come.
We continue to experience a very strong win rate in this arena and are highly engaged in project planning and solutions with associated customers and project owners. Turning now to slide 25, which, of course, puts in scale our non-construction end market. Over half of our business is outside of commercial construction. As we have detailed over the years and probably best showcased most clearly during our AnyTown exhibit as part of last year's event in Atlanta, these markets are both large and expansive. So many of our product categories have remarkably universal applications, which presents a vast opportunity to advance rental penetration ever more broadly across our end markets. Whether it's the planned or the unplanned, there are abundant activities throughout these non-construction markets where our products and services deliver the requisite solutions.
We've made great progress across these segments over the years and will continue to do so throughout 4.0. These are big end markets with big opportunities to continue the expansion of our TAMs. Moving to capital allocation on slide 26. Alex or I have covered most of these capital allocation elements throughout this morning's presentation. However, I'll highlight again our launching of our buyback program in December of up to $1.5 billion over 18 months. This program takes into account our latest CapEx plans and demonstrates the optionality and confidence which comes from the fundamental strength and our cash-generative growth model. As I said in the highlights, we expect to complete this buyback in full in the current year while maintaining leverage within our target range of one to two times. There is also a robust bolt-on M&A landscape, which we've so often exercised.
Our business development team continues to work our pipeline to find opportunities that align with our strategy, which will surely result in future additions. All this is consistent with our long-held policy, and we will continue to allocate capital on this basis throughout 4.0 . Turning to the summary slide on 27. To conclude, we've had a year of strong performance, delivering record rental revenues and EBITDA through capturing the available growth in these market conditions. The results again demonstrate the through-the-cycle cash generation, which is so powerful at our current scale and current margin, with which we deploy through our capital allocation priorities to maximize our benefits in this structural growth business. We have dynamic flexibility and optionality to invest in segments, organic expansion, M&A, market opportunities, and of course, returns to shareholders as we've covered through today's update.
Our business is growing and our business is improving, positioning us for even more success over the years to come. We look forward to a strong fiscal 2026 as we continue to grow and advance our business to benefit all of our stakeholders. With that, Operator, we'd be happy to open the line for Q&A.
If you wish to ask a question, please press Star one on your telephone keypad. That is Star one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to retract your question again, please press Star two. Up first, we have a question from Lush Mahendrarajah from JPM organ. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got three, I think, if that's okay. The first is just on sort of exit rates and current trading. I mean, it'd be good to get some color on May trading and what you're seeing there. I mean, looking at that chart on slide 22 sort of shows split on rent pulling away from the sort of 2023, 2024 lines. Just be good to get an update of sort of what you're seeing there. That's the first question. The second is just on the rental revenue guidance. I guess how are you thinking about the building blocks of that in terms of local mega projects, rates, etc., and sort of time utilization, I guess, as well? How do you see the sort of phasing of that recovery through the year?
I guess what gets you to the upper end? The last is just on your comments around at the start of the presentation on market share and sort of some of the accounts you've been winning in the last year, but also the last four years. I mean, when you look at those account wins, I mean, I presume they're mostly in sort of local, but it'd be good to get some color there. I mean, how is that working? I mean, the backdrop's tough. You're pushing rates and sort of still taking market share. I mean, can you talk about some of the dynamics there and how you think you've been so successful in sort of continuing to drive market share?
Sure. Thanks, Lush. I'm going to do one and three, and Alex will take two. Simply put, in terms of entry rate, May was +2% in North America on a billions-per-day basis. You mentioned that graph on slide 22, which, you're right, shows that separation in terms of fleet on rent. We're certainly not here calling some change to that local non-res market, but nonetheless, we're pleased with that progress. We'd like to post a couple more quarters of that as we move forward. Anyway, 2% on a billions-per-day basis. I'm glad you asked this question about market share. I'm actually going to refer to a few slides here. I think the first one would be beneficial to take a look at, which is slide 7.
Slide 7, we just demonstrate the real progress that we continue to make in terms of adding new customers. Let's just be clear here. These are B2B accounts. These are businesses that before having an account with Sunbelt Rentals, they did one of two things. Mostly, they rented from someone else. Secondly, perhaps they would have owned equipment rather than rented equipment. Nonetheless, we added 42,000 new customers that generated over $400 million in revenue in the current fiscal year. Those 118,000 customers that we added over the course of just three years, those added $1.4 billion. For a combined $1.9 billion. When you start to think about the context to lean into your question there a bit when it comes to you suspect these are mostly local. Yeah, of course they are local.
What happens is, I mean, let's face it, we went through a period as a business and as an industry when you had not a whole heck of a lot of supply and a pretty really surprisingly strong end market. The sales force at large was, they were shuffling to say yes and finding availability. When things do get a bit tighter, albeit good, you know what you do? You turn more stones. That's exactly what this illustrates in terms of the sales force finding more customers. These are wins, and these are winning market share. Of course, when you talk about slide 8 there, which I'll refer to now, it is really these new locations. When you think about gaining market share, these are 401 locations in the center of that slide that are only 33 months old on average.
There's that appendix slide, which is slide 43 that will be worth you taking a look at. These businesses grew 19% in total revenue, but 24% in rental revenue in the year. There's only one answer as to where that revenue is coming from, and that's coming from ongoing gains. Finally, and I'll get off of my market share talk here, if you refer to slide 40, we have chronicled really well. Janelle actually led this during our capital markets event in April of 2024 of our deciles in the business. Of course, this is a straight pull from that slide. Our statement is this: we are winning market share with the big. We're winning market share with the middle, and we're winning market share with the little.
Unapologetically, we are proportionally higher SME to some of our competitors, but it is a core part of the market that we really like. If you take, for instance, that slide, I'll just reference a couple of lines illustrating the winning and growing of the top. What were 22 customers that made up 10% of our revenue last year are 20 of our customers now. Instead of $20 million as a median, it's $28 million today. The second decile was 99 customers; today it's 75. Do not mistake that for losing customers. The point is those customers are getting larger significantly. Those customers went from doing $7 million a year to doing $10 million a year. This really demonstrates our ongoing growth in market share on these mega projects, but also through leaning in and turning a few more stones. That's one in three.
Lush, and as I said, Alex will do two.
Yeah. Let me just give you a little bit of color on the rental revenue guidance. Obviously, in the prepared remarks, we've referenced flat to 4%, so midpoint at 2%. Again, a fairly modest amount of growth driven really predominantly by the specialty business. If you want to weigh the specialty business versus the general tool, you'd find specialty probably in the mid-single-digit range, and then GT still positive, but probably in the lower end of the single-digit range. The U.K. probably looks a little bit more flattish year over year. If you think about bridging that to your total revenue, remember we're in this world where we'll probably have lower sales of used equipment. That's probably about a $40 million headwind year over year.
That ought to get you to a pretty good estimate on what total revenue looks like. Probably one last point to make, and then I'll go into what would bring you to the lower end or the higher end of that range. If you think about seasonality on that total revenue, remember in the first half of last year, we had about $100 million of hurricane revenue. I think it's reasonable to expect the year to be more back half weighted than front half as you think about the timing. Obviously, as Brendan would have mentioned in his prepared remarks, we're yet to sort of call the sequential strengthening of the non-residential local construction market, which would also sort of lead you to a more back half weighted year.
In terms of the underlying assumptions and what might lead you to the lower versus the higher end of that range, obviously, at the higher end of the range, we would anticipate an accelerated strengthening of that non-residential construction and an increased utilization of our existing fleet. Just to dimensionalize that, a 2% increase in utilization represents about $350 million of incremental revenue. To the extent we're utilizing that latent capacity to drive growth, that would be positive. Obviously, continued rate progression, which is what we're seeing. To the extent you do not see either one of those two things materialize, that would probably lead you more towards the lower end of that range. Hopefully, that helps give you some additional color.
Okay. Brilliant. They were really helpful, guys. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Up next, we have a question from Katie Fleischer from KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning. You mentioned some of the cost controls that were put in place this quarter that you executed well on that were able to drive some of that margin improvement. Can you just talk about the opportunity to maybe build upon those and how we should think about the opportunities to strengthen margins going forward?
Sure. I'll hit the first part of the question, and then Brendan will actually talk at more length around margin progression. Yes, we took some action last year around just getting our cost structure more in line. As you know, during Sunbelt 3.0, there were significant investments, particularly on the technology stack, that required us to really add resource to do the coding and the development of that technology architecture. As we got through the back end of Sunbelt 3.0, we really looked hard at evaluating whether those investments needed to continue or whether we could actually take some of the fixed cost structure out of the business. We did, in fact, remove some of the fixed cost structure out of the business.
That being said, a lot of the margin progression is really leveraging those investments that we made during 3.0 through things like the MLO, the optimization of our repair and maintenance activity. That is where you really see the leverage come through. I'll let Brendan talk in more detail about that.
I think really, thanks for the question, Katie, and I think Alex has really hit it. I'll just kind of double down on the fact that this was, of course, part of the plan as we entered Sunbelt 4.0, and we clearly outlined what those three steps were. Some of the G&A activity Alex mentioned is just what you would expect. You go through a build period, and then you prepare yourself for a run period. The overarching theme is this, though, from an SG&A standpoint. We have in place the SG&A level to build on top of that what our expectations and ambitions are around Sunbelt 4.0 as we continue to grow the business. We doubled the size of specialty over 3.0, and you put in place some infrastructure in order to do that. Now that's in place, and you move that forward.
Really, these efficiencies, I would have mentioned in the prepared marks, this delivery cost recovery and in those markets reducing outside hauler by 40% in those four. I appreciate that's a small segment of the total. As an organization, when I mentioned $1 billion in North America, just a touch over a billion in the denominator there, $250 million of that or so is wages for our skilled drivers we have that deliver great customer service. It's almost matched that in outside haulers. We know that we have the embedded efficiencies, but you have to marry the technology with that to actually be able to extract it. That's what we're seeing. This is not an overnight thing. I want to emphasize this is margin progression over the course of 4.0.
Really good start, as you'd expect to year one in the sort of moderated growth arena that Alex would have outlined in terms of that range. It's a bit harder to come by. Nonetheless, we are confident about that progression as we move forward throughout 4.0.
The other, just the final point that I'd make that Brendan again touched on in his prepared remarks, the progression of the locations that we added. Remember, we added 401 locations over the course of 3.0. For context, year one of those locations, EBITDA margin is around 32%. When we exited 2025, that margin rate was closer to 49%. As we scale those locations and mature those new businesses, we will actually get the margin more in line with what our broader group margins are. There is still probably 200 to 300 basis points more upside as we scale those. We will continue to invest to the tune of north of 60 locations in this year. I think the continued progression of the greenfield businesses is another area where we drive significant margin potential.
Great. Thank you, Katie.
Okay. Great. Thank you both. That's helpful. Just another quick follow-up on that. I think I heard you mention that as specialty becomes a larger part of the business, we can expect that to drive some stronger performance. How do you think about that long-term split between gen rent and specialty? Is your M&A strategy going forward going to reflect that greater emphasis on the specialty business?
Yeah. I mean, it's likely. If you look at the 401 that Alex just referenced and we had talked about before on what you'll see highlighted there in slide 43, that was, of course, biased to our specialty business over the course of that time. From an M&A standpoint, as you can imagine, we scour that, and it's quite robust in the specialty landscape as well. Over the course of the last four years, if you think about it, we've more than doubled the specialty business while growing general tool nicely when you had a really strong end market. As Alex will have again guided, today it's a bit more than 30% of the total business. We would expect that to continue to migrate. A lot of it really just depends on what the end market unfolds.
As you see a return to that local non-res, whenever that may be the case, your GT business will grow a bit more in line with or maybe not lagging to the extent in which it does from the specialty business. Our thing is this, and it's important, even as Alex would have mentioned, kind of the range there between GT and specialty. Our specialty business by design captures and has an ongoing opportunity for a very broad TAM. As a result of that, you'll see some undulation in certain segments, but overall, we like that. You would expect that to progress over time. One would see it growing closer to the 50% mark over quite some time. Much of that, again, has to do with what the end market deals us from a non-res standpoint.
All right. Thanks. I'll pass it on.
Thank you.
Thank you. From Morgan Stanley, we now have Annelies Vermeulen with our next question. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, Brendan. Good morning, Alex. I have three as well, please. Just coming back to the market share gains, could you elaborate? You've talked a lot about the 42,000 new customers you've added in the year. Do you think you also took share with existing customers in terms of share of wallet relative to other rental players? As part of that, do you think you've benefited in that regard from some of the disruption at some of your competitors in recent months? Therefore, do you think that that market share progression can continue at the same pace looking ahead? Secondly, on the locations, I think you mentioned, Alex, you'd expect to do north of 60 locations this year. How do you think about the mix there in terms of greenfield versus bolt-ons? I think you've mentioned previously valuations starting to normalize.
Could we see more bolt-on activity this year, particularly in the context of that fairly buoyant free cash flow you expect it to generate? Lastly, just on the Big Beautiful Bill, I think I gleaned from Will this morning that if the bonus depreciation rules were enacted, then that would benefit your free cash flow, I think. Is there anything else we should consider if that bill does go ahead in terms of what it can mean for your numbers? Thank you.
Short answer to your first question is yes when it comes to market share, as I would have demonstrated looking at that cohort slide. We are this remarkably national or North American-reaching company today. We bring these capabilities to bear with these national strategics, which are growing significantly. We are also gaining share across those deciles, of which we are very confident. I am not going to comment on disruption or otherwise. I think that consolidation, as we have demonstrated for years and years, is very positive for the industry. I am sure that will all go just fine throughout that whole thing. The 60, just for reference that Alex mentioned, are the 60 that were opened over the course of last year. We have plans for similar location ads this year.
Those are just our greenfields, not to be confused with what would be so our bolt-on M&A that we would do in large part would be incremental to those greenfields. As I've said, look, it is as busy a pipeline as we have seen. As you know, based on, I'll say this gently, only completing five acquisitions over the last fiscal year, we have been firmly holding to our valuation metrics. It goes through the ordinary meat grinder in our business of both location, where it is, proximity to the rest, the specialty business line that it may bring, the culture of the business, the reputation of the business, but also the valuation. We thought there was a bit of a disconnect there for a while. None, and I mean, none of the businesses that we had interest in have transacted.
There is a number of them out there that we have talked with, and we have put our valuation on. They are choosing to contemplate, and we are choosing to wait. Time will tell in terms of what that is. Make no mistake, it is a robust landscape. In the meantime, we are just going to grind away doing what we do, adding to the next chapter of the 401 locations that we have talked about. Alex, the biggest.
Sure. I'll hit the bonus depreciation. I'll give you some color on tax more broadly. As you think about sort of the GAAP tax rate, so the statutory tax rate, that's typically we anticipate around a 25%-26% rate. Now, if you shift over to the cash tax, because we do have such a significant amount of depreciation, cash tax is around 34%. Your specific question, what's the potential impact of going from the current regime where we're winding down the bonus depreciation to the Big Beautiful Bill proposal where we reinstate the 100% depreciation, that would be worth around 10 percentage points. That would take you from your 34% to your 24%, roughly around $200 million of cash impact. It is a fairly material impact. Of course, as we thought about guidance, we thought about the current tax regime.
We did not contemplate what may happen in the future. That would be upside to the guidance that we provided.
Annelise, you also sort of alluded to what would the impact be on the broader economy. I'd say that may be a touch above our collective pay grades here. Worth mentioning related to the bonus depreciation, that also includes capital investment in manufacturing, production, so construction in other words. The other one, of course, from an overall consumer appetite, if there were the ability, and I'm neither stating a pro or a con in this, but when it comes to taxes over time, as a for instance, that's quite a boost to the skilled trade across the land. Obviously, that's a big part of the overall consumer. Time will tell. Obviously, it's going through this process through Congress, which is at a minimum an interesting one to watch as it goes through this process, of course, of reconciliation. Anything else, Annelise?
No, that's very clear. Just coming back to the market share gains briefly, again, that pace of adding new customers that you've done, how much of that do you think has been sort of the launch of 4.0? Or rather, do you think that that pace of new customer wins, do you think you can continue that over the coming year and in years ahead?
Yeah. I mean, look, just to point out the 42,000 customers, those are accounts that we have opened who rented. Rest assured, there is a pipeline of accounts that have been opened that we have not quite yet gotten to the rental point. Some of those happened yesterday that will rent next week, etc. Just do the math there. You had 118,000 over the course of three years, and then you had 42,000 in the course of the first year of 4.0. It is all in a way remarkably normal. The biggest difference is when you look at cost of acquisition of these new accounts, this year, of course, apps and bolt-ons, these are just fresh, organic, brand new accounts that the Salesforce has gotten.
We have every confidence not only to speak to our market share gains, but think about it more broadly when we get off of that market share piece, which is just look how big the landscape is in terms of opportunity for growth. Our business has been around for a bit, right? And we've added 140,000 new accounts over the course of four years. That's really what you have to think about in terms of how much progress there is to extend, as we talked about so often, the proliferation of rental with so many different customers out there. I mean, our room for opportunity to ongoing growth in customers is dynamic.
That's very helpful. Thank you both for all the detail.
Thanks, Annelise.
Thank you. We now move on to Will Kirkness from Bernstein. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thanks very much. I just had a couple of clarification questions, really. The first one, just looking at rental revenue growth in the fourth quarter, general tools was +1 from -1 in Q3. Just with the reallocations that have happened, I wondered if you could give us a number as you did with specialty. Secondly, just kind of thinking about utilization, I guess you gave the uplift of what a couple of percentage points would be. Is that about how far away you feel you are from a good utilization number, or is there even a little bit more to do? Lastly, just on the accounting side, there looks to have been a reallocation in central costs and also to U.K. profitability. I just wondered if you could explain that. Thank you.
Let me start, and then I'll have Brendan follow up. On the rental revenue in Q4, the number that you would look at as it relates to reallocations probably would not affect your comparable. Remember, film and TV has always been within the specialty business. The difference is we did not report specialty. It would have been in the Canadian segment. The oil and gas business was historically within, again, would have been within the general tool business. Again, we did not report that externally. That would be within the U.S. reported segment. There really was not a reallocation issue as you look at the historical reporting comparability. In terms of the reallocation of support costs, that predominantly affects the North American business. That would not affect the profitability of the U.K. business.
Remember, the U.K. business largely has all of its own support costs, whereas within North America, a lot of that cost is held centrally within our support office. What we tried to do was pull out things that were not directly contributing to the contribution of those individual reporting segments, but it would not have affected the U.K. profitability margin. Remind me again, Will, because I lost track of it. What was your second question?
I'll get that. Time utilization, as I would have commented. Look, we feel good about our sort of reaching that inflection point in terms of year on year. You've got a bit of latent capacity there, which, of course, we will exercise, which really gives you, it's quite a nice position to be in. In other words, you've got some latent capacity to realize progress as we've demonstrated, but also as we do see whenever it may be some of the market conditions turning where you can actually test that and be confident of that before you were to up CapEx, as a for instance. Furthermore, across the industry, what we've seen is a better balancing from a supply and demand standpoint, which will underpin that rate piece that I've talked about.
Again, Will, just to reference on that slide 22, I appreciate there's that one piece on GT that has got oil and gas, and it's the U.S. and Canada. Those are reflected across the eight quarters as shown. You're not going to have all that big of a difference between U.S. and Canada. Canada had some pockets of some real strength and then a bit of drag from a RESI standpoint in Ontario in particular. U.S. was broadly, when you look at it, kind of across territories. It looks a bit like that, the -1 and the +1 .
Okay. Thanks so much.
Thanks, Will.
Thank you. We are now moving to a question from Arnaud Lehmann from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you very much. Good morning, Brendan. Good morning, Alex. Firstly, just a clarification on Q4 rental revenue. The published is plus one, and then on a billing day basis, plus three. Is this just a working day effect, or is there anything else to mention, the small discrepancy? Secondly, on your fiscal 2026 CapEx guidance, is it all replacement at this stage, or is there any gross? I think at the midpoint, about $2 billion. Is there any gross CapEx in there at this stage, or is it just replacement? Lastly, I guess more broadly, your business model is working. There is less gross, less CapEx, and therefore more free cash flow generation, at least for fiscal 2026. What is your mindset about it? Are you disappointed by the gross, or are you happy about more free cash flow?
I.e., if tomorrow gross comes back, will you happily ramp up the CapEx very quickly, which would negatively impact your free cash flow? I mean, it's more of a qualitative question, but any color would be helpful. Thank you.
Yeah. I'll start with the last one there in terms of disappointed or happy. Look, you just run the business. As we've said, at our current scale and margin, it's one of the remarkably powerful and dynamic attributes of this business. We say sort of internally, I've said to a number of people, I say record free cash flow. I say record free cash flow, and I appreciate that technically it's a touch short of record free cash flow. I'm going to use that actually to bring you to a slide that I think is important to understand, which is slide 32. The reason why I can't say emphatically record free cash flow was, in fact, in fiscal year 2021, we generated $1,822 million in free cash flow. This year, we generated $1,790 million in free cash flow. Look at the difference.
Back in 2021, you remember, of course, that was really the full year of COVID, where you completely cut the spigot off from a CapEx standpoint, and you deal with that black swan event, which we did. A lot of that investment would come very, very late in the year, and you invest less than $1 billion. Whereas this year, we still put a hearty $2.5 billion of CapEx in the investment to maintain our fleet, to grow, make no mistake, our fleet in certain segments where there's strong, strong demand. We still generate nearly $1.8 billion in free cash flow. The way in which we allocated, we were very pleased to do. Remarkably comfortable with a $1.5 billion buyback. It's not disappointed at all in the growth. That's just a matter of what happens from an end market standpoint.
The key to it all, Alex would have touched on this in his prepared script. Yes, it's the growth, but it's also the remarkable resilience and now so clearly demonstrating the strength of the free cash flow through the cycle. Alex also commented on the shorter lead times. Rest assured, when we see increased demand, whether that be come from even more mega project wins or fueling specialty businesses like our power and HVAC business that grew over 20% last fiscal year, our climate control business that's still growing in really strong figures, or some of our even smaller but newer businesses like temporary fence or temporary walls or our industrial tool business, we will fuel those in a minute.
Our load banks team comes to us and says, "Can we have an extra $50 million in CapEx because we have an order pipeline that will be higher than the fleet that we have, the inventory that we have in our fleet?" Of course, we will, and we have all the flexibility to do so. At some point in time, we'll see markets turn from a local standpoint the other way. Very quickly, we will amp up that CapEx. From a lead time standpoint, today, you're talking for your core products, 60-120 days. Some of the things around power, etc., are a bit longer, but those, of course, are planned differently. Your first question is purely billing days, a number of days, so nothing else to that. Our CapEx as it relates to fiscal year 2026, it's really a tale of two worlds.
Our general tool business would have been really leaning into a replacement exercise. Certainly, let's not forget this phrase that we've so often used, "Growth disguises replacement." John and the team who will have gone through their CapEx planning, if you have an area that's got a bit less demand and you have 10 telehandlers to replace, you may only replace seven of them, but as a company, we'll buy 10 and we'll put those extra three into a market that's growing significantly. From a specialty standpoint, of course, there's replacement, but you'll have more growth embedded in that given the nature of the trajectory of that business.
Superb. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. We are moving on to a question from Neil Tyler from Redburn Atlantic. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you. Good morning. Two questions still, please. Firstly, just back to the topic of capital allocation and M&A. Just to, I wonder if you can help me understand. You mentioned you've been very clear that it's price that's the sort of sticking point in terms of M&A. I guess theoretically, were the price to come down, would you be happy bringing acquired assets and branches into the business even if demand hadn't improved much? Would you, I suppose, mirror that in that scenario with a reduction in your own CapEx to try to drive up utilization? Do you understand the sort of, I guess, the perspective I'm coming from? That's the first question. The second question, really sort of shelving the Dodge construction forecasts for the time being.
Have your customers or conversations with your customers altered at all since the events of early April and the uncertainty that they've created? Brendan, perhaps you can sort of talk about anything that you want to in terms of how the conversations might have altered against that context. Thank you.
Sure. Thanks, Neil. I'll work backwards on that. Our discussion with the larger customers, but also the owners in that sense, so I'm speaking to this mega project landscape, they've not really changed much. Obviously, everyone's trying to just understand what the rules of engagement are. When you look at what the strength is really in that segment, there are obvious things we've talked about around EV and batteries in general that are a bit softer. Really, in our view, that's more got to do with just demand in general. Outside of that, when you look at data centers, I could say data centers three times in terms of not only what those progressing to start, but also the pipeline is in that environment. When you look at semiconductor, when you look at LNG, those plans are continuing to move forward.
With those larger customers, we're continuing to see their pipelines actually expanding. Their outlook is actually improving even when it comes to sporting arenas, etc. They're just trying to get a grasp, of course, of what those costs might be. I think there's varying expectations in terms of what it all may come out to. In terms of capital allocation, the scenario you painted was if more of the businesses that we like and we'd be happy to acquire would be more in our level of valuation, of course, we would acquire them. I don't think you take a short-term view in that. Most of these that we would do, you have this interplay between are you adding fleet to a marketplace, which is, I think, part of what you're getting to.
What was for a period of time probably oversupplied a bit to where we are today. Look, we look at an acquisition not as a six-month or what's going to happen in the current year. These are long-term decisions in nature, and that's exactly how we take them. Yes, we would do that. Really, one doesn't necessarily depend on the other as it relates to would we take our CapEx down. It all depends on the deal. Generally speaking, the type of acquisitions we do, one of the common characteristics is they're undercapitalized. These are individual businesses. They don't get overly leveraged. What we bring is quite often quite a growth to the overall fleet mix.
You have picked up on a really good point Alex made in his prepared remarks, how we have been able to fuel 60% of the fleet of our greenfields we opened during FY 2025 through existing fleet in locations, speaking to some of that latent capacity. That is our view. Big pipeline out there. I am glad you asked about that commentary around customers. Now, when you talk to our OSRs and DMs about local customers, I think the same thing they will tell you. They are just scraping and clawing a bit more because if you look out most any skyline in some of the cities, there is just a bit less of that out there than what there once was. That is one that, of course, we keep a close eye on when it comes to activity day in and day out.
Thank you. Thank you. That's very helpful.
Thank you.
Thank you. From Barclays, we now have James Rose with our next question. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks. Good morning. I've got two, please. The first is on general tool margins versus specialty margins. The EBITDA gap between them is about six points at the moment, 54% to 48%. Is that a sensible gap we should expect in the longer term, or how would you characterize it? Is there more upside in general versus specialty to the longer term? Then second, if we look at the ROI for specialty, it's 30%. Is that a level which you think could be sustained all throughout 4.0? Is that a sensible sort of incremental ROI we can think about for specialty?
Yeah. I'll start here. I mean, look, fundamentally, and actually, it was quite lost on some over the course of 3.0 when we so rapidly expanded our specialty business. The specialty business is going to have, it's going to be less capital intensive and therefore a smaller D. Fundamentally, you have a specialty business that will generally have a lower EBITDA margin than you will do with general tool. When you get to EBIT or operating profit, you'll have a higher margin relative to general tool. From an ROI standpoint, of course, a lower capital-intensive business is going to lead to fundamentally a higher ROI at the levels in which we have. I mean, certainly, from an ROI standpoint, maintaining that over the course of 4.0, there's no reason why you wouldn't.
One of the things you'll see in the future of our CapEx as we go forward, when you think about mix, there are so many product assets within specialty in particular that just have a longer useful life than does generators. Take, for instance, large generators, load banks, air conditioners, chillers. These are not machines that are operated with someone sitting in the seat or holding the steering wheel. These are self-contained units that have the capability to run for a long, long time, and the customers are remarkably happy with them over time. Again, that speaks to James, the very nature of that book value getting lower and, of course, your return being higher. There'll always be puts and takes in any sort of year. Take, for instance, the year we had, as strong as the year we had in specialty was.
Remember, it was absent a lot of that E&D revenue from the project, of course, that we would have talked about that had the issues late last year and through this year. We were absent so much of that labor revenue that we would have otherwise had. Specialty still posted those really strong results despite that headwind, which actually carried on a bit into the now new current year. Did I get both of your questions there, James?
Yeah. Both in one. Thanks very much. Cheers.
Thank you.
Thank you. We are moving on to a question from Alan Mijes from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hey. Good morning, Brendan. Good morning, Alex. A few from me, please. You obviously talk a lot about the optimistic outlook for mega projects. Could you maybe just remind us what the rough portion of your North American business is now exposed to these types of projects and how that's maybe trended year over year? Secondly, just on specialty, if I understand that correctly, the Q4 growth would be 8% without the reclassification, and that compares to 9%. It's obviously still slowed a little bit during the year, and it's running slightly below that of your largest peer, which I think is closer to 15%. Can you maybe talk a little bit about some of the color around the slowdown, maybe where some of that relative underperformance is, particularly thinking about, is it more end-market related or the specific verticals that you're exposed to?
Third question, just maybe some comments on rates, and apologies if I missed this for early. Obviously, you still talk about rates progressing positively. Just provide a bit more color around this and maybe how you think about expectations for FY 2026. Anecdotally, we hear that obviously the rate environment is a bit more challenging. Maybe at the local market, there's a bit more kind of questions around some of the rate discipline in the industry, but maybe bigger players versus smaller players, that's less relevant. Any comments there would be really appreciated. Thank you.
I'll take them in order, one, two there, and maybe Alex will touch on three around rate. Mega mix, first of all, let's go to 30,000 feet. Half our business non-construction, half our business construction. In recent years, from a start, not a put in place, you've had about 30% of starts that would have met our definition of mega projects. That would be $400 million and above. Everyone's kind of got a different measure as it relates to that, even from an analyst standpoint. Nonetheless, that's what ours is. That's not yet making up 30% of the put in place by the very nature that we've talked about in terms of time, in terms of ramp. As we've said, we will enjoy at least 2x our share. I think those give you the component parts to sort of build to that mega project.
Overall, you're talking kind of still single digits, but approaching high single digits of the overall revenue. We would expect that to climb as this more progressive starts and you get some more crest as it relates to those. Specialty, look, I appreciate you quoting some others from time to time, and you can pick any point in the cycle, and there will always be differences based on what is happening from an end-market standpoint. We have designed our specialty business and our specialty business segments to be clear again, to be very much broad from a TAM standpoint, and actually help us from an overall diversity and balancing our business out during certain times of economic cycles. Let's not forget to reflect over, say, for instance, post-COVID, when we saw still explosive growth in our specialty business.
When you think about those lines, it's worth understanding the puts and takes, as I said. If we just look at the year, power and HVAC + 20%, climate +10%, industrial tool +15%, trench + 13%, ground protection + 11%, temporary fencing over +150%, + 60% for temporary walls. You will always have things like scaffolding - 17%, -18% because it's going to be a lumpier business when you have big projects. You're going to have businesses like our temporary structures where you've got some migrant camps that come down, or you've got some mega projects that were extensive in temporary structures that will come down. You can't miss the broader point of what really is a runway for ongoing structural progression within specialty. We don't spend much of our time measuring that up against what someone else might quote as their version of specialty.
It's all demonstrating specialty's ability to continue to grow.
Yes. I'll touch on the rate expectations. Obviously, we don't talk specifically about rate other than to say that we have seen it continue to progress, and we anticipate seeing it continue to progress. That's driven by a couple of things. Obviously, Brendan refers frequently to the structural progression of the industry and the level of discipline that we've been demonstrating, all the players have been demonstrating, really just managing fleet capacity and healthy balance sheets that allow us to do things that maybe we hadn't been able to do in years past. More importantly, we view pretty strongly that we're able to capture the value for the service that we provide to the marketplace. We are not a commodity industrial cyclical business. We are a business services company. Let me give you some examples of how that manifests itself.
First of all, the quality of our assets is second to none. When we talk about replacement capital this year and utilizing latent capacity, don't confuse that with diminishing the quality of our assets. Brendan mentioned about the mix of our fleet being variable, the levels of utilization perhaps allowing us to extend the useful lives for some period of time, but our assets are second to none. The second is the breadth of our asset portfolio. When you think about competing with a smaller local provider, they just can't provide the breadth of products and services that we can provide. We are able to extract value because of that. Third, the customer service. Brendan will have talked about the logistics and our ability to place fleet anywhere within our clustered markets, our ability to mobilize service 24 hours a day if an asset breaks down.
The scale that we have to service national accounts on a national basis that, again, local, regional providers cannot do. Frequently or almost always, as Brendan will talk about in one-on-ones, the quality of the conversation with our customers does not revolve around rate. It really revolves around the breadth of service that we can provide. Yes, we continue to expect rate to progress based on all those things that I have described.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our final question for today comes from Carl Raynsford from Berenberg. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yeah. Good morning, Brendan and Alex. Just three from me with your clarifications, really. The first, on your growth guidance of 0-4%. I appreciate that you've adapted the reporting segments. Is there any way you could give some color on how the U.S., Canada, and U.K. fit into that equation, please? The second, it depends on how the cycle progresses over the next 12 months. Are you able to give any sort of guidance around used equipment sales versus the 2025 number of $470 million based on how you're seeing things today? Lastly, just really a follow-up on Will's question around the U.K. I see cost is down around 6-7% in North America general tools as a proxy, but roughly flat to very slightly down in the U.K. I'm aware this is immaterial from a group perspective and perhaps a misunderstanding.
Could you touch on if there's a structural issue in the U.K. around the ability to derive efficiencies like you had in the U.S.? Thank you.
Yeah. Let me take the first part of your question, and then I'll turn it over to Brendan to talk specifically about the U.K. On the 0-4% guidance, breaking that down, I think I gave sort of directionally the split between GT and specialty in my prior comments. As it relates to the U.S. versus Canada, we think about those as the North American market. There is a lot of synergy across the two markets. Canada, obviously, you'll see we anticipate continued softness in the film and TV business, which we pointed to again in the prepared remarks. I do not think we anticipate that changing. That going forward, you'll see reflected in the specialty results.
The other area in Canada, which is perhaps a little bit different than the U.S. market, is we have more heavy exposure to residential construction, particularly in Ontario, sort of the eastern provinces. That part has been a little bit softer. In terms of relative strength between the U.S. and Canada, I would anticipate the U.S. being a little bit stronger, a little bit overweighted on that 0-4% growth, partially offset by the Canadian business. I actually did not—I heard you ask the question about used equipment sales, but I did not fully hear it. Brendan is nodding at me that he did hear it. I will turn the last two questions over to him.
Yeah. I think really from a—I mean, you'll see, of course, the guidance of proceeds of $475 million. If you do the math, that will have a bit less in gains year on year, which is a combination of quantum, but also really us just taking kind of the residual values, if you will, that we've been experiencing towards the back part of the year. We saw it come down over the course of the year. We've been experiencing some flattening in that as of recent months. If history is a predictor of the future, that tends to normalize when you do kind of find that bottom quite quickly. That is what our position is. Obviously, as we go through the quarters, we'll update if that's any change. That is not really the underlying business. Appreciate the fact that it impacts cost.
Your point on cost around the U.K., as you would have heard kind of throughout for 4.0, etc., this business has improved remarkably in terms of the service we're giving to our customers and the operational capabilities. What Phil and the team are laser-focused on now, incumbent in 4.0, which in short is to achieve acceptable levels of returns and sustain them. Part of that challenge is just the cost base that goes along with this business, in particular, G&A. That is part and parcel of the plan that the team is employing. I'm sure that Alex and I would both agree that they have a good plan on the table for the year, and we'll see how that progresses. In the end, that is a business that is cash-generative.
When we get that margin and by extension, return level to where it need be, part of that will indeed be cost and just the reconfiguring of how we deploy that business.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Carl.
Thank you. That concludes today's Q&A session. I would like to hand the call back to the management team for any additional or closing remarks.
Yeah. Thank you, everyone, for taking the time this morning and allowing us to go through our growth in the year, the real resilience that we have in this business, illustrating our advancement in all of our Sunbelt 4.0 actionable components, and of course, the cash. Thank you for your time, and we look forward to speaking with you at Q1.
This now concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your line.