Greetings, and welcome to the Sunbelt Rentals Fiscal Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. You may be placed in the question queue at any time by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. We ask you please limit yourselves to one question and one follow-up, then return to the queue. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Kevin Powers, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Today, we're reviewing our third quarter results ended January 31st, 2026, with comments on operations and our financials, including our view of the industry and strategic outlook. The prepared remarks will be followed by an open Q&A. Let me remind you that today's call will include forward-looking statements. These statements are based on the environment as we see it today and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations and projections. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the factors identified in the press release and our Form 10-K, as well as other filings with the SEC. Today, we're reporting financial results on a GAAP basis. In addition, we'll be reviewing or we'll be discussing non-GAAP financial information that we believe is useful in evaluating the company's operating performance.
Reconciliations to these non-GAAP measures to the closest GAAP equivalent can be found in the earnings release and the conference call materials. This morning, I'm joined by Brendan Horgan, our CEO, and Alex Pease, our CFO. I'll now turn the call over to Brendan.
Thanks, Kevin, and good morning, everyone. This is a landmark set of results for the company in the sense that this is the first under the name Sunbelt Rentals and our first since we've successfully moved our primary listing to the New York Stock Exchange on March 2nd. This milestone was achieved with a monumental amount of work, and as such, I'd like to use this as an opportunity to thank our leadership and team members across our finance, tax, legal, IR, and HR functions for their diligent, thorough, and quality work. It's an exciting time for the business, so let's get into it, beginning as usual with safety on slide five. Safety of our people, our customers, and the members of the communities we serve. Safety is a core operating priority for Sunbelt and a key indicator of execution discipline.
As you can see, both our Total Recordable Incident Rate and Lost Time Incident Rate continue to trend lower, even as we support higher activity levels and a larger footprint. That progress reflects consistent focus on training, standardized processes, leadership priorities, and accountability across this organization. Importantly, these improvements are structural. They are not one-off. Our industry-leading safety performance supports higher productivity, better customer outcomes, a more engaged workforce, and is foundational to our success. To the team, thank you for your ongoing dedication to the perpetual improvement to our Engage for Life culture. Turning now to slide six, and to cover the key messages you will hear from Alex and me today.
First, this is a solid set of results in line with our expectations, with group rental revenue growth at 2.6% for the quarter, despite the ongoing impact of a quieter hurricane season compared to an active period in the second and third quarters of last year. On an underlying basis, growth in the third quarter was 4%, a sequential improvement from the first two quarters. Second, the strength of free cash flow after CapEx investment in fleet and business expansion demonstrates the through the cycle free cash flow power of this business at our present scale and margin. Generated record free cash flow of $1.4 billion year to date, which is an 83% improvement on last year.
Third, while our key construction end markets remain mixed, we continue to be reassured that the local non-residential market is now in equilibrium in terms of completions no longer outpacing starts. Additionally, we continue to see positive momentum in many of our internal and external leading indicators. Megaproject activity continues to be strong across data centers, healthcare, infrastructure, energy, and manufacturing, and we are winning share across our regional and national strategic customers. Fourth, our strong free cash flow generation has enabled us to return nearly $1.4 billion to shareholders year to date through dividend payments and share buybacks. We commenced our new share buyback program of up to $1.5 billion at the beginning of March to coincide with the relisting on the New York Stock Exchange.
Finally, based on recent performance and trends, we've narrowed and increased the midpoint of our full-year rental revenue growth guidance. Moving on to the financial highlights of the first half on slide seven. Notably, these Q3 results are the first to be presented under U.S. GAAP. This impacts some of the key income statement lines, particularly EBITDA, which is lower principally due to differences in the accounting for leases under U.S. GAAP, with most of the costs going into operating expenses and compensating reductions to non-rental depreciation and interest further down the income statement. Alex will cover this in more detail shortly. Total rents revenues were up 2.6% in the quarter, strengthening sequentially and consistent with the full year guidance we gave in December.
Leading indicators, both internal and external that we track, have continued to trend positively, and therefore we remain cautiously optimistic that these trends in our business will continue and are early but positive signs for the local non-residential construction portion of our end markets. As when they do recover, we expect our growth momentum to further accelerate and our results to strengthen. In the third quarter, total company Adjusted EBITDA, reflecting the impact of U.S. GAAP accounting, was $1.1 billion at a 41% margin. Noteworthy, our North American year-to-date Adjusted EBITDA margins were 45%. I'll further note, this includes all central costs across the group. As we explained in the results for the first two quarters, these margins reflect disproportionately higher Specialty growth rates at lower EBITDA margin, but higher return on investment.
They also reflect the mixed effect of higher ancillary revenues, the proactive reposition of our fleet to drive utilization and unlock pockets of growth and increased repair costs as a larger portion of the fleet comes out of warranty coverage. From a capital allocation standpoint and in line with our Sunbelt 4.0 priorities, we've invested $1.8 billion in CapEx year to date, focused on a mix of replacement and growth. Free cash flows we've said year to date was $1.4 billion, which is a record demonstrating the resilience of our business while we continue to deliver and invest in growth. This strong cash flow generation is supporting our share buyback activity. We completed the previous $1.5 billion program at the end of February before commencing the new $1.5 billion program last week.
Slide eight shows fleet on rent for North America over the last four years. You can clearly see that our efforts to drive growth with existing fleets has resulted in improved time utilization. This supports a more constructive rate environment and contributes to strengthening ROI. It also demonstrates our disciplined and flexible capital allocation approach. Turning to slide nine. Rental revenue on a billings per day basis for General Tool grew 2% in the quarter, reflecting positive volume momentum and resilient rates in the end markets, which continue to be mixed. As expected, we continued to experience a moderated local non-res construction market, offset in part by the ongoing strength of the mega project landscape and the broader non-construction markets.
Specialty delivered growth of 5% in the quarter, and this strength continues to be broad-based across multiple lines like flooring, temporary fencing, structures and walls, trench safety, and of course, power and HVAC. On a constant currency basis, U.K. rents revenue was down 2% in the quarter, reflecting the ongoing challenges in the U.K. markets. We are making good progress, however, with the restructuring actions that we announced in December. On slide 10, we've set out the main leading indicators for the construction sector, namely Dodge Starts, Dodge Momentum Index, the Architecture Billings Index and Federal Funds Rate. The outlook for construction growth continues to be underpinned by mega projects and infrastructure work, which remains strong and in many cases, gaining further momentum.
We've made great progress in mega project wins year to date with a growing funnel of future projects and advancing market share with our strategic customers, both regionally and nationally. The breadth and depth of our product offering across Specialty and General Tool lines, our ability to deploy integrated solutions at scale, and our leading fleet quality place Sunbelt at a significant advantage to our competitors. Very few in the industry can even compete in this rapidly evolving space. Combine this with a technology suite that is second to none, and it creates a platform that can deliver world-class customer experience, efficiencies, and value across a wide range of complex applications. As it relates to our local non-res end market, we remain in moderate environment.
However, as I flagged with the Q2 results, both our internal leading indicators, such as quotations, reservations, and continuing contract count activity and key external indicators are encouraging. The Dodge Momentum Index, in particular, remains near record highs. Just to remind you, this index represents non-residential projects, excluding manufacturing that are below 500 million and entering the planning phase for the first time, and is therefore representative of the future velocity in what we refer to as that local non-residential construction market. This clearly indicates ongoing strong planning activity across our non-residential construction end markets, which will lead to an increase in starts likely within a period of 12-24 months. While clearly a positive leading indicator, it may take some time for this planning to translate into project starts, and when it does, we are poised to benefit.
Before I hand it over to Alex, I'll just touch on our Sunbelt 4.0 strategic plan on slide 11. We're gonna give you an updated, a detailed progress report on Sunbelt 4.0 at the Investor Day, so I won't go into any further detail now. As I previously mentioned, our team has been laser-focused on advancing each of the five actionable components, which you know as customer, growth, performance, sustainability, and investment. Our clarity and mission throughout the organization is certain and our momentum is building. I look forward with the team to highlighting the number of exciting developments while we're together in New York. With that, I will hand it over to Alex.
Great. Thank you, Brendan, and good morning to everyone on the call. Our third quarter results for the total company under U.S. GAAP are set out on slide 13. Total revenue and rental revenue both increased 3% in the quarter, reflecting a sequential improvement despite the ongoing impact of the quieter hurricane season. Adjusting for the impact of this rental revenue growth in the quarter was around 4%. The adjusted EBITDA margin and adjusted operating margin continued to be strong at 41% and 20% respectively in the quarter. In line with first half performance, the margin performance primarily reflects the fact that top line growth is being driven disproportionately in the Specialty business with lower margin but higher ROI, as Brendan mentioned. Additionally, we're incurring higher internal repair costs and also higher delivery costs due to the planned repositioning of fleet to drive growth and utilization.
Depreciation at $543 million was flat, reflecting the tight fleet discipline we have maintained this year as we have delivered improved time utilization. After an interest expense of $98 million, reflecting lower average debt levels, adjusted pretax profit was $441 million. Adjusted earnings per share were $0.78, reflecting lower adjusted net income, but was partially offset by the benefits of the ongoing share buyback program. ROI on a trailing twelve-month basis remains strong at 14%. Turning to slide 14. Our year-to-date results are set out on this slide. Notably, rental revenue increased 2%. Adjusted EBITDA margins were a strong 43%, and Adjusted EPS of $2.97 was consistent with prior year. Notably, as Brendan mentioned earlier, North America Adjusted EBITDA margin was a healthy 45% inclusive of total company central costs.
On slide 15, we're highlighting how Adjusted EBITDA, profit before tax, earnings per share, and free cash flow would have looked under IFRS. The difference for Adjusted EBITDA is primarily driven by the accounting for leases as an operating expense under U.S. GAAP compared with IFRS. This results in a higher SG&A expense with offsetting benefits in the form of lower depreciation and interest charges. The difference in adjusted profit before tax is primarily from stock-based compensation charges being excluded from adjusted measures under GAAP. Adjusted EPS is impacted by the aforementioned adjustments, but is offset by the tax effect of these adjustments and resulting in a higher adjusted net earnings. Free cash flow is a non-GAAP measure, but is also primarily affected by the classification of the operating lease payment impacting operating cash flow.
Under our updated reporting under U.S. GAAP, we've also removed the exclusion of non-recurring costs to better reflect the cash generative nature of the business. Slide 16 shows the performance for North American General Tool in the quarter. Rental revenue grew by 2% to $1.4 billion, driven by improved volume, time utilization, and stable rates. As I explained previously, margins were impacted in the quarter, primarily by growth being driven by higher activity levels. Adjusted EBITDA was $767 million at a margin of 50.3%, and adjusted operating profit was $414 million at a margin of 27%. Turning now to North America Specialty on slide 17.
Rental revenue was 4% higher than the third quarter last year at $851 million as the non-construction market continues to be strong across multiple business lines, as Brendan mentioned earlier. On an underlying basis, adjusting for hurricanes, rental revenues were up around 7% in the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA was $407 million at a margin of 45.4%, and adjusted operating profit was $271 million at a margin of 30%. Turning now to the U.K. on slide 18. U.K. rental revenue was 2% higher than a year ago at $182 million, benefiting from favorable FX movements. The U.K. business delivered Adjusted EBITDA of $49 million at a margin of 23% and operating profit of $7 million at a margin of 3%.
As mentioned with the second quarter results, we're restructuring the U.K. business to better position it for the future and aiming to deliver improved margins and returns at a sustainable level while positively impacting our customers' experience. This involves aligning the network of locations to current business needs, rightsizing the staff, and disposing of non-core fleet and business lines. Slide 19 again illustrates the flexibility, resilience, and agility of our capital allocation model. When markets are experiencing the transitory headwinds we have experienced over the last few quarters, we remain extremely disciplined in our deployment of capital to support strong utilization and rate discipline. When markets are growing more rapidly, we accelerate capital spending to capture opportunities in market share. In all cases, we generate significant free cash flow in excess of our investments, which we return to shareholders in the form of dividends, debt repayment, and share buybacks.
We have started the year strongly with over $1.4 billion generated year-to-date. This is a record and significantly ahead of the comparable period last year. We're on track to deliver record free cash flow generation in the full year. Slide 20 updates our debt and leverage position at the end of January. This again clearly demonstrates the strong cash generative nature of the business as we have lowered net borrowings by over $200 million in the last year to $7.6 billion. This is despite the fact that year-to-date, we've returned approximately $1.4 billion to shareholders through the share buybacks and dividends. We've invested $1.7 billion in cash CapEx, and we've invested $162 million on 10 bolt-on acquisitions.
In addition to that, we've opened 30 greenfields in North America, of which 14 were General Tool and 16 were Specialty. As a result, leverage was 1.6x net debt-to-EBITDA, well within our stated range of between 1 to 2x net debt-to-EBITDA. On the M&A front, we have a robust pipeline which we continue to develop and pursue opportunistically as long as it is accretive to growth and generates margins and returns in line with our capital allocation expectations. Turning now to slide 21 and our updated guidance for revenue, capital expenditures, and free cash flow for fiscal year 2026. Based on our performance year-to-date and strengthening trends, we have narrowed and increased the midpoint of our range for rental revenue growth to 2%-3%.
With growing confidence in our end markets for fiscal year 2027, we're modestly increasing gross CapEx guidance to $2.2 billion-$2.3 billion. This is driven by funding ongoing Specialty segment growth and recent major project wins. Further, replacement timing between Q4 and Q1 of next year. Updated CapEx guidance for fiscal 2027 will follow in our June full-year results. Lastly, because of these planned investments, we're now expecting free cash flow of approximately $2 billion. Importantly, this free cash flow outlook is now provided in accordance with U.S. GAAP rather than IFRS. With that, I'll hand the call back to Brendan.
Great. Thanks, Alex. Turning to slide 22, Alex and I have covered all of these capital allocation elements as part of our remarks this morning, so I won't cover them again. However, the slide serves as a consolidated reference and all consistent with our long-held policy, which we will continue to allocate capital on this basis throughout Sunbelt 4.0. To conclude, let's turn to slide 23. In summary, I'll leave you with a few takeaways one should gather from our update today. One, the performance year-to-date resulted in exactly what we expected in revenue growth, improving time utilization, free cash flow, and advancing our 4.0 plan.
Two, we're continuing to see positive leading indicators in our business activity levels and in our pipeline, coupled with an encouraging indication of market demand statistics and building momentum, all of which is reflected in our updated full-year guidance for our revenue growth and the CapEx that Alex has just referred to. Three, when you piece this all together, you should clearly see the continued secular progression in our business and indeed industry. This demonstrates ever so clearly that even during this modest growth environment, we continue to maintain discipline in pricing, investment, and strategic focus, all while delivering record free cash flow, which we have used across all of our allocation priorities. This business and balance sheet is stronger than ever and puts us in an incredibly powerful position, giving us great flexibility and optionality as opportunities unfold.
Finally, we're looking forward to seeing many of you in person in just a couple of weeks at our March 26th Investor Day in New York City, where we'll give you an update on our 4.0 progress and showcase our growing capabilities. With that, we'll be happy to take questions. Operator, over to you.
Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you'd like to be placed into question queue, please press star one on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, we ask that you please ask one question and one follow-up, then return to the queue. You may press star two if you'd like to remove yourself from the queue. One moment please while we pull for questions. Once again, that's star one, and please limit yourselves to one question and one follow-up. Our first question is coming from Annelies Vermeulen from Morgan Stanley. Your line is now live.
Hi. Good morning, Brendan. Morning, Alex. I have two questions, please. Firstly, on the upgrade to the CapEx guidance, you've talked about a bit of a pull forward of spend, in effect, taking some of the full year 2027 CapEx budget into 2026 ahead of those landings. Could you talk a bit, little bit about the split of that versus how much of it is indicative of perhaps an improving demand outlook? You also mentioned some recent mega project wins. Just wondering how we think about that and especially heading into full year 2027. Secondly, I just wanted to ask about rates. I think one of the last times we spoke, you mentioned a dynamic pricing pilot. Are you seeing some good traction there?
Is there a plan to roll that out more broadly? Are you confident in positive rate growth as we move through calendar 2026? Thank you.
Great. Thanks, Annelies, and good morning. First of all, on CapEx, I would answer it this way. It's 50/50. As we've talked about in Q1 and Q2, half of that modest increase will continue to fuel a growth CapEx in certain of our Specialty segments, which as you'll see in the quarter- by- quarter, we see ongoing momentum there, and we're seeing that as recent as February. The other half of that is really. It's literally replacement timing between April and May. It's something that we do, we call internally advanced replacement. I'll give you a for instance. Pick any town, North America, Atlanta, Georgia, because it comes to mind.
If there were 10 telehandlers to be replaced in Atlanta in the first half, or let's just say first quarter, we will land between April and May-June timeframe, 10 telehandlers. We may dispose of nine, and therefore, in that market, we now have 11. As we test the waters and compare it to what our time utilization and pricing expectations are, if that sticks, we may order another for the 11th and therefore contribute to growth. At this moment, just so we're clear, that's not growth CapEx. That is indeed replacement CapEx. We took advantage of some OEMs having some green gear available to ship. We see this moving activity. Fifty percent fueling growth in Specialty and mega project, recent big project wins, and 50% of that at that advanced replacement.
I'm sure we'll talk about that in June and full year in terms of how that's working. You asked a question about rate and specifically about a pilot that we've shared to some extent, which we call intelligent customer pricing. That pilot's progressing really well. We have that going in three test markets, and we have three control markets that correspond with that. I wouldn't be answering so fully simply right now if I didn't anticipate the team talking about that two weeks from today at our Investor Day. I would answer at least by saying that's very positive early signs. We're testing and making sure that not only do we deliver our targeted rate improvement, but it also doesn't have a degrading effect on our time utilization.
Thus far, we can report positive results from that and very importantly, great buy-ins. We have a really high efficacy rate of taking precisely that prescribed rate. This is nothing new when it comes to dynamic pricing overall. It's a new layer of our dynamic pricing system.
That's great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Next question is coming from David Raso from Evercore ISI. Your line is now live.
Hi. Thank you for the time. You mentioned rates were roughly flat. Curious if you can give us a little color, local market rates versus large projects and some of the at least hints of optimism maybe around local. At what level of confidence are you in the sense of when do you start to think about that when it comes to your CapEx budget or changes in rates in local markets? Just curious. I'm just trying to gauge you a little bit on that level of optimism and also how the rates are trending between those two at the moment, rather distinct markets.
Yeah, David, great question. You're right in terms of, you say flat, we say resilience. I think your question around how is pricing and the integrity of pricing and the discipline of pricing in the markets in that local non-res. The short answer is it's very strong. That's very strong especially when we know that we've had a significant decline in that local non-res construction market, which speaks to this output of this structural progression, that we've talked to and documented so many times. Just for clarification, our testing of the next level of our dynamic pricing system is tuned really just to that.
Sure, it impacts in some way, shape, or form some of our national and regional strategic customers, but largely that is tuned right into that local non-res. I think we sit here today with optimism that our ability to balance both fleet investment and pricing is positive. I think, frankly, when we are 12 months, 18 months removed from this last 18 or 24 month period that we're in, this is gonna be a real case in point as to how significantly the industry and all of our systems and our discipline have progressed to deliver that sort of result. I would in summary answer, we are cautiously optimistic and positive about our ability to progress pricing as we move forward.
I appreciate it. Thank you.
Thanks, David.
Thank you. Next question is coming from Lush Mahendrarajah from J.P. Morgan. Your line is now live.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got two, please. The first is just on margins in Q3. I sort of appreciate all the headwinds you've walked us through, sort of similar through the year. I think the year-on-year step-down in Q3 was a bit higher than the first half of the year. Is there anything particular in the quarter that sort of drove that? I guess how should we think about that through the year? The second question is just on local. I think it's two or three quarters now where I guess you've been talking about leading indicators improving.
What do you think the timeline is on when you start to see that coming through in your numbers, please?
I'll hit the margin point, then I'll let Brendan talk about the local market. I will point out we've talked about the strength in the DMI for quite some time, and that is about a 12-24 month lag because that's projects entering planning. That planning cycle is about 12-24 months. Brendan will talk at length about the internal leading indicators which we track, all of which are trending quite positively relative to where we were a year ago. Back on your margin point, you know, really the headline message here is mix. It's mix from a couple things. I mentioned in my prepared remarks the mix of specialty growth outpacing General Tool growth.
It's important to remember Specialty has lower EBITDA margin, but higher ROIC because it has higher cap factors and it's less capital intensive. That's actually a good thing. The other area that grew significantly year-over-year was ancillaries. An example of this, we just completed the Super Bowl, and there is a huge amount of installation of cable to power that entire event. Another example would be every time we support a data center, we have to have step up and step down transformers, which we re-rent from third parties. By the way, those re-rentals eventually will become additional CapEx and additional specialty service lines, but we haven't gotten there yet. That re-rent is up about 42% year-over-year.
If I look at the cost items on the income statement, the things that I mentioned in my prepared remarks around internal rental repairs driven by the equipment coming off of warranty, the outside hauler expense as equipment is moved around to unlock utilization and capture these pockets of growth. Really, those are actually internal repairs are down sequentially, so we're making progress on the internal repair line item of the P&L. On outside hauler, that's sort of flattish as we continue to run the business, and we continue to unlock these pockets of growth with existing fleet. As you think through, you know, expectations for the balance of the year, again, it's largely going to come down to mix.
I would expect it to look and feel pretty similar to what we've seen for the balance of the year. I guess that gives you a lot of color on margin, and I'll turn it over to Brendan to talk more about our leading indicators on the local market.
I think, Lush, Alex answered half of it already. I would say it, and I'm trying not to be tongue in cheek here, it's three months closer than it was when we last talked. The important thing is the DMI continues to be positive. If you look at February's print, which just came out on Thursday, 23 more projects entered at $100 million or more. There was a nice range in those. We had convention center, we had some schools, some dormitories, and a handful of the smaller, as we call them, data centers, 'cause they're in that $200, $300, $400 million range. Also, I would refer to something else that's given us this.
Some of the questions, as for instance, that David would ask about pricing in that local non-res arena. Look at GT, how GT trends. I appreciate it's slight with the 2% print that we saw in the quarter on volume. Those are positive signs. Of course, General Tool, light Specialty participates in megas. But we're just seeing some of that activity pick up, which gives you the sense that for sure now, starts are not being outpaced by completions. You might be making that turn just a bit. I would refer to slide eight, I believe it is, in today's deck, which just shows the fleet on rent year-over-year.
If you look at that momentum and that delta as that's progressed through the year, you'll see the notable impact of the hurricane piece. Look, it continues to be a positive in terms of what we're hearing from customers. You know, our sales force is quite enthusiastic as they enter the spring. As I've said before, we're gonna be balancing all this in terms of our level of investment and our conviction around being able to progress price at the same time.
Cool. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Next question today is coming from Paddy Bogart from Melius Research. Your line is now live.
Hi, thanks for taking my question. It's been great to see the strength in the mega projects. I'm just curious, can you talk about the full lifecycle profitability for you on mega projects versus other projects?
I think you said, full lifecycle utilization. Was that the question?
Profitability, sorry.
Oh, profitability, I'm sorry. In short, when we look at the full lifecycle of a mega project compared to that of the rest of the business, there's parity. You'll have some projects that'll be a touch higher, you'll have some projects that'll be a touch lower. The important thing to understand, and as part of what Alex has spoken to in terms of those fleet loadings for those mega projects, you have to picture it about, you know, with a relatively slow buildup. A very long crest, and then also a relatively slow build down. On both ends of that, you're gonna have a bit lower than you would normally because you load in, let's just say, $30 million worth of fleet and eight people.
Early on, you know, it may take you six, eight months to get to time utilization levels that we would expect there, which would be higher than the rest of the business. You've got all of your costs from the beginning in that in terms of a skilled trade. Then when you get to that crest, which oftentimes lasts two-plus years, two, even three years, you still have the same number of people that you began with. Your fleet grows over time, and your time utilization gets far higher. During that crest, it's actually accretive to overall margins. Then when you're coming down, it's about the same. All in all, we consider it a wash, but that's just the life cycle of that mega project.
That's helpful. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Katie Fleischer from KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now live.
Hey, good morning, guys. Alex, I appreciated all the color you gave around, you know, the ancillary dynamics, and it's I think it's pretty clear what's going on there. I'm just curious how you're thinking about that going forward. You know, it seems like it's becoming a bigger part of the business, both for you and some of your peers as well. How do you think about maybe offsetting some of those margin impacts and continuing to drive stronger EBITDA margins when we do see some more volume improvement?
Yeah. This is actually kind of a great news part of the story because as you know, as we grow Specialty, we're basically displacing re-rent. Some of these re-rental categories, we're actually getting to understand that market. We're understanding how it interacts with the rest of the portfolio. It builds relationships with the suppliers that we're working with. And ultimately, I think you'll see, some of the re-rental equipment turn green, over time. That's kind of the longer term. I think the other thing to think about, re-rent as, again, a positive part of the story is it really points to the solution selling capability of that Specialty business and the interaction between Specialty and General Tool.
As we develop more and more fulsome solutions, think about a complex data center project where you've got a General Tool doing a lot of the construction work. You've got the power and HVAC segment. You've got, as I mentioned in my remarks, the step-down transformers. You think about the complexity of that solution, it really speaks well to the, you know, underlying growth algorithm for the overall solutions that we're providing to the market. You didn't ask the question, but I'll answer it around some of the cost items in the P&L and how we're addressing that. I don't wanna front run what we're gonna talk about in the Investor Day, but you will hear, if you come to the Investor Day, you'll hear about the progress we're making in the market logistics operation centers.
You'll hear about how they're taking out significant usage of outside haulers. They're optimizing the use of the fleet, so really limiting our transportation costs. You'll hear about the Market Service Operations, where we're improving the productivity of our internal labor and our internal repair labor. So a lot of the work when we talk about the performance kind of vertical of Sunbelt 4.0 is well in flight, and you'll hear a lot about it when you come to the Investor Day on the 26th. You know, the other thing that I'd point out is let's not lose sight of the fact that the North America market, which is our core market, continues to have extremely strong margins at 45%. That's inclusive of all of the central company costs.
You know, I think that's just an important thing to underscore as we think about the underlying profitability of the business.
Okay. That's helpful. I know U.K. is small, but just wanted to ask about margins within that business. It feels like they've been challenged for a while now. There's been a few different rounds of actions there to improve those. What gives you confidence that these new restructuring activities should help drive stronger margins in that business over the long term?
Yeah, Katie, we are running the playbook that we covered at the half. That team has gone through this restructuring with areas like reducing G&A expense, consolidating to a degree the footprint, disposing of non-core assets, all in a way to deliver a leaner overall operation that is more in tune with what we're experiencing in the markets there. That business is remarkably well-positioned even in the current infrastructure and construction and maintenance environment that it has. So, you know, we have a strong confidence that you will see that progress. That doesn't happen overnight. That happens over time. That's what we're doing. We're running the playbook.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you. Next question today is coming from Neil Tyler from Rothschild & Co Redburn. Your line is now live.
Yeah, good morning. Thank you. Two questions, please. Firstly, your release mentions market share gains with strategic accounts, which I presumably, you know, you've mentioned deliberately. I wonder if you can share any insight into either way you think this share is accruing, whether it's General Tool, Specialty construction versus non-construction or any particular region versus another. You know, if there's anything specific you want to put that down to at this point. Actually a follow-up to Annelies's question on CapEx. Just want to make sure that the increase, which I'm pretty sure it is all volume rather than value, and whether there's anything in your mind pulling forward that CapEx, sort of looking forward to OEM inflation for next year. Thank you.
Thanks, Neil. I'll take the market share piece, and but I will do it in a manner not to steal the thunder that you will hear from Janelle two weeks from today. I will remind you of the decile slide that we cover, where we break out the customers that make up our top 10%, next 10%, et cetera. You will see in black and white the significant growth in those tranches of customers to the tune of 50% in deciles in some cases, when you look at average or median spend compared to the last time you've seen that print. With every certainty, we are gaining share with those national and regional strategic customers. Importantly, it is in the construction and the non-construction space, 'cause you'll also see how diverse that is.
I wouldn't chalk it up to any one geography in particular. Certainly when we see, you know, some of the mega projects and infrastructure, they are quite broad, not only in makeup, but also in geography. It is, quite frankly, across the board. When you see also, I will mention, you know, we just got the update from Dodge for construction put in place, the slide that you're so used to seeing in the deck, and you'll see it today. It points now more clearly than ever in terms of that local non-residential degradation that we have experienced over the last two years. Again, you'll see that in black and white, how much that was.
Therefore, you'll see there is no other answer that as we've continued to grow through that period of weakness, it's coming from market share gains.
Yeah, I'll try to hit the CapEx question. You know, just to draw you back to Brendan's comments on the prior question regarding CapEx. About 50% of the incremental increase is driven by growth. That growth is coming from mega projects. It's coming from some of the Specialty segments, particularly in load banks, coming from some of the earthmoving equipment that's again used in the mega project space. All of that is really you know, oriented toward capturing the growth and really contributing to the increased revenue guidance that we provided. Then the other 50% is literally simply a question of when it landed, the time of year it landed. You might ask, "Well, why didn't we just wait?" The reason is because we're pretty optimistic as we look forward to next year.
As the market begins to recover and all these leading indicators begin to materialize into activity, we wanna make sure we have the fleet on the ground to take advantage of that as we get into the spring season. As it relates to your specific question, you know, volume versus value. Look, we are kind of coming off the period of really significant inflationary effects. Inflation has mitigated largely. It's really mostly volume related, not inflation related. You know, that being said, don't forget that when you roll off equipment that's seven years old and you put in brand-new equipment, you do typically have around 20% lifecycle inflation. That's what we would've said consistently over the years.
Yeah, just to add that on that last point, so we're clear. Yes, there's still the life cycle. We are expecting zero virtually sequential inflation for our assets.
Perfect. That's very clear. Thanks very much.
Thanks, Neil.
Thank you. Next question today is coming from Rory Mckenzie from UBS. Your line is now live.
Oh, good morning, everyone. It's Rory here. I just wanted to follow up on the point around profitability pressure in Q3. Your group return on investment was down 1 percentage point, I guess despite the fact you're flagging higher specialty mix, which as you explained, is lower margin, but a higher return. Also, I guess despite the fact you had a relatively low quarter for fleet CapEx, so utilization has been up. Looking at the ROI lens, can you talk about the pressures on the business today? Is this the mix of projects you were speaking about? Is it just those cost pressures that you're past? And then also related to that, how do you think about, you know, allocating CapEx and investments when you've been seeing that ROI come down for a longer period? Thank you.
Yeah. It's a great question, and I guess I'd start by pointing out the depreciation number on the income statement, where depreciation for rental fleet was actually flat year- over- year versus a growth of rental of, call it 2.6%, 2.5%. You know, that points to the fact that the fleet is getting more highly utilized, which we've spoken about. It speaks to the capital discipline. If you were to look several quarters previously, you'd actually see depreciation outpacing rental revenue growth. I think that should give you some confidence that, you know, utilization of our capital is actually getting optimized. As it relates to the compression in ROI, it's really just math. As you live through this life cycle cost inflation, your asset base increases.
In a world where EBITDA is slightly softer or EBIT, which is what we use for the ROI calculation, is slightly softer. Sequentially, you would expect a bit of compression. As we begin to see the impact of the market logistics operation centers, the market repair centers, a lot of the intelligent customer pricing and rate improve. Not uncommon to see in periods where the market is a bit frothier. You'll get ROI in the range of 18%-19%.
In periods like this, you'll see, you know, ROI in the 14%-15% range, just a function of the activity level and where we are in the cycle. By the way, that's still significantly above our cost of capital and generating significant economic profit for our shareholders.
All right. Thank you.
Thanks, Rory.
Thank you. Our next question is coming from Karl Green from RBC. Your line is now live.
Yes. Thank you very much. Good morning. Just a couple of questions. Firstly, just going back to the point about the importance of ancillary revenues. Can you indicate how rental-only revenues trended in General Tool throughout the year to date? That would be super helpful and any kind of sense as to how that's tracking on a sort of like-for-like same store basis. Then the second question, completely unrelated, could probably work it out as I dig into some of the notes, but how has the gains on sale of used equipment impacted the margins in this quarter, please? Thank you.
Yeah. I'll take the gain on sale. I would say we are in a period where, you know, the used asset pricing, you know, has been softer than what we would have seen coming out of COVID. It's been, you know, at a pretty low point relative to where it's been historically. That being said, unlike prior quarters, this quarter we did see an actual gain on sale of around $2 million. It was small and not what we would have seen in some prior years, but it did turn positive. In terms of pure rental revenue growth for GT, it was about 150 basis points.
For Specialty, it was around 3.5 basis points, which is consistent with the remarks. Sorry, 350 basis points, so 3.5 percentage points. It's consistent with the remarks that we've kind of been saying of Specialty growth kind of outpacing GT. By the way, entirely consistent with the remarks we've made on non-residential, the local non-res construction, which is predominantly impacting the GT business and the non-construction portion of the business, predominantly impacting the specialty piece of the business. Hopefully that helps.
Just to add an exclamation point to that, the sort of specialty in that sort of three pure rental, double that in total rental. Ancillaries are growing at two times the pace of pure rental revenue and hence that mix. As a reminder, that is profitable revenue.
The margin impact on the quarter at 250 basis points versus the year at 140 basis points is purely revenue geography and the cost associated with that revenue. It's no longer the underlying that we've documented so much around the internal rental repairs and the repositioning fleet, et cetera. That's steady as it goes. Frankly, it's tailing off a bit more positively now as some of the operational imperatives that Alex spoke to are gaining even further traction, which you'll see much more clearly two weeks from today in New York City.
That, that's great. Just to clarify on General Tool rental only, 'cause I guess greenfields haven't been that pronounced. You're still in positive territory on a like-for-like basis for rental only. Is that-
It would be, yes.
Yeah.
Yes.
Great. Thanks, guys. Appreciate that.
Thanks, Karl.
Thank you. Next question is coming from Allen Wells from Jefferies. Your line is now live.
Hey, good morning, gentlemen. Apologies, my line dropped earlier. But I just wanna double-check. Clearly some optimism on the mega project theme still there, but could you talk a little bit about the competitive dynamics in that mega project market and to what extent maybe these have been unhelpful in the margin pressure story, particularly when I think about 3 Q versus 2 Q? I know some of your peers have talked about some of the challenges there. And secondly, just following up, I think a little bit on Karl's question. You historically have disclosed the kind of M&A contribution in the quarter versus the organic growth split. Definitely, I think in general in 2 Q. Is it possible you can provide the organic versus M&A split for 3 Q as well?
I can answer the second one very easily. It's almost all organic. You can see the total investment in M&A throughout the whole year was a sum total of $162 million in purchase price. That's gonna have no effect. This is all organic growth that we're delivering today. I'll emphasize what Alex said. His prepared remarks. Make no mistake, there is a robust, very active pipeline from an M&A standpoint, which we are quite excited about. I didn't fully understand your question around M&A's. Were you speaking competitive landscape around M&A's or something different?
No, sorry. Only just to be clear. The impression that it comes across from some of your peers and then more broadly in the market is that, you know, there's just a lot more competition, a lot more of your peers are trying to be more active in those mega project market that's driving potentially some pressure on the pricing and margins that you can deliver against those projects or the industry can. I just wondered if that's something that you're seeing and particularly if you've seen anything sequentially step up in Q3 versus Q2 that may also explain some of that margin pressure.
The margin pressure would not be attributed to other than what Alex covered in detail of some of the ancillaries that go along with a mega project, which is construction. Let's also think about, you know, large scale events like he would have referenced in the Super Bowl, and there are many others of those. Nothing has changed between Q1, Q2, and Q3 when it comes to the competitive set. What is a.
What is a newer and increasing feature are our customers, in particular, the larger they get and the more complex the challenge or the problem is, they're looking for solutions providers with greater breadth, greater expertise. They're looking for one throat to choke, in a very inelegant manner to answer that question. We're seeing that trend more and more. Of course, any rental company who's out there would love to participate on a mega project and deliver 100 telehandlers. The problem is the customer wants 100 telehandlers, plus they want load bank solutions, fencing solutions, ground protection solutions, power plants, and all the transformers that you heard Alex talk about. That's the direction of travel. It's not just the big getting bigger structurally. It's the big getting bigger and big growing breadth.
There's a very big difference when you really dissect the larger rental solutions providers in this industry and those that are really gen rents companies with a bit of scale.
Thank you.
Thanks, Allen.
Thank you. We've reached the end of our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over for any further closing comments.
Great. Thank you, operator, and thank you all for joining. It's a bit different that we will be seeing you in person for an Investor Day in literally two weeks time. Speaking on behalf of the team who you will see there, they are extraordinarily excited about sharing with you a comprehensive update on Sunbelt 4.0 and actually taking you through a real-life experience of our Connect 360 at every touch point with our customers and every touch point with our team members. We look forward to seeing you in New York City. Until then, have a great day.
Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference and webcast. You may disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.