United Rentals - Q3 2023
October 26, 2023
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Good morning, and welcome to the United Rentals Investor Conference Call. Please be advised that this call is being recorded. Before we begin, please note that the company's press release, comments made on today's call, and responses to your questions contain forward-looking statements. The company's business and operations are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond its control, and consequently, actual results may differ materially from those projected. A summary of these uncertainties is included in the safe harbor statement contained in the company's press release. For a more complete description of these and other possible risks, please refer to the company's annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022, as well as to subsequent filings with the SEC. You can access these filings on the company's website at www.unitedrentals.com.
Please note that United Rentals has no obligation and makes no commitment to update or publicly release any revisions to forward-looking statements in order to reflect new information or subsequent events, circumstances, or changes in expectations. You should also note that the company's press release and today's call include references to non-GAAP terms such as free cash flow, adjusted EPS, EBITDA, and adjusted EBITDA. Please refer to the back of the company's recent investor presentations to see the reconciliation from each non-GAAP financial measure to the most comparable GAAP financial measure. Speaking today for United Rentals is Matt Flannery, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Ted Grace, Chief Financial Officer. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Flannery. Mr. Flannery, you may begin.
Matt Flannery (President and CEO)
Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining our call this morning. As you saw in our third quarter results, the team continues to raise the bar, as evidenced by the new high watermarks we set across this quarter's revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and returns. As you've heard me say many times, our employees are the key to our results. Their focus on safely supporting our customers is paramount to generating value for our shareholders, and I'm most thankful that our team again delivered a company-wide recordable rate below one. This goes without saying, but safety is not only a differentiator in the eyes of the customer, but it's also critical that we take care of our most valuable assets, our team. Looking towards the rest of the year, our reaffirmed guidance for 2023 reflects our confidence in the outlook of our business.
As I'll touch more on later, this is driven by both what we hear from the field and the tailwinds we see on the horizon. More generally, we're confident in the strategy that we've developed. The competitive advantages we've created over the last decade position us well to continue to outpace the industry as we drive towards our long-term goals. Now let's dig into the third quarter results. Total revenue rose by 23% year-over-year to $3.8 billion, a third-quarter record. Within this, rental revenue was up 18%, with broad-based growth across verticals, regions, and customer segments. Fleet productivity increased 1.5% on a pro forma basis.
Adjusted EBITDA increased 22% to a third-quarter record of $1.85 billion, translating to a margin of over 49%, while adjusted EPS grew by over 26% to a third-quarter record. And finally, our return on invested capital expanded to a new record of 13.7%. So let's dive into a bit more of the details behind these results. Used equipment sales more than doubled year-over-year to $366 million as we normalized volumes and rotated out older fleet after holding back in 2022. Rental CapEx was in line with expectations at just over $1 billion, reflecting a more normal quarterly cadence and as the supply chain has recovered our need to pull spend forward is behind us. And now to Ahern.
As we approach the first anniversary of the deal, the integration remains on track, and the highlight continues to be the quality of the team. As you know, people are one of the key components we add when we bring companies on board and integrate them into United Rentals. Looking forward, this added capacity, combined with my comments on CapEx and supply chains, should position us well to serve our customers as we enter 2024. Ahern is another great example of the strength we have in leveraging our balance sheet as a way to benefit both our customers and our shareholders. Now let's turn to customer activity and demand. Key verticals saw broad-based growth led by industrial manufacturing, metal and mining, and power.
Non-res construction grew 9% year-over-year, and within this, our customers kicked off new projects across the board, including numerous EV and semiconductor-related jobs, solar power facilities, infrastructure projects, data centers, and healthcare. Geographically, we continued to see growth across all Gen Rent regions, and our specialty business delivered another excellent quarter, with organic rental revenue up 16% year-over-year and double-digit gains in most regions. Within specialty, we opened 14 cold starts during the quarter, resulting in 39 new specialty location openings this year. Turning to capital allocation, in addition to the investments we've made in growth, we returned $350 million to shareholders through share buybacks and dividends this quarter, and remain on track to return over $1.4 billion of cash to shareholders this year. As we look ahead, we feel confident in our outlook.
This is supported by the ABC's Construction Confidence Index, which remained strong across the third quarter, as did its Construction Backlog Indicator. The Dodge Momentum Index, which advanced sequentially in September. Furthermore, non-res construction spending and non-res construction employment both remain solid. And most importantly, our own customer confidence index continues to reflect optimism, while early indications from our field team on their expectations for 2024 are also encouraging. Finally, I'd like to acknowledge the team for their efforts in earning our company's recent selection to the 2023 Time Magazine's World's Best Companies and the US News and World Report's Best Companies to Work For list. Recognition like this comes as no surprise when you see our employees' dedication and hard work in the field, day in and day out. To wrap up my comments today, Q3 was a strong quarter.
We remain very pleased with how the year is playing out. Looking forward, the opportunity ahead of us around large projects is unlike anything in my career, and we're uniquely positioned in the rental industry to win more than our fair share of the $2 trillion plus of investment we see on the horizon. Not only do we have the scale, technology, and one-stop-shop solutions to make us a preferred partner, but we have a history of execution our customers can rely on. We set high expectations for 2023, and I'm proud of the results we're delivering. We feel good about the rest of the year and what's ahead for United Rentals and our investors. With that, I'll hand the call over to Ted before we open the line to Q&A. Ted, over to you.
Ted Grace (EVP and CFO)
Thanks, Matt, and good morning, everyone. As you saw in our third quarter release, our team again delivered strong results that were consistent with our expectations and importantly, keep us on track for another record year. I'll add that we continue to feel very good about our prospects beyond 2023, based on our strategy and the tailwinds we've discussed extensively. While it remains a little premature to say too much about next year, given where we sit in our planning cycle, I will say that 2024 is shaping up to be another year of growth. Certainly more to come there in January, with our focus today on our third quarter performance and the balance of the year. Now, one quick reminder before I jump into the numbers.
As usual, the figures I'll be discussing are as reported, except where I call them out as pro forma, which is to say, the prior period is adjusted to include Ahern's standalone results from the third quarter of last year. With all that said, let's get into the numbers. Third quarter rental revenue was a record at over $3.2 billion. That's a year-over-year increase of $492 million, or 18%, supported by diverse strength across our end markets, as you heard Matt say. Within rental revenue, OER increased by $413 million, or 18.5%. An increase in our average fleet size contributed 22.2% to that growth, partially offset by a 2.2% decline in as-reported fleet productivity and assumed fleet inflation of 1.5%.
Also within rental, ancillary revenues were higher by $83 million, or 19.7%, while re-rent declined $4 million. On a pro forma basis, which, as you know, is how we look at our results, rental revenue increased by a robust 10.2%, with fleet productivity up 1.5%, reflecting a healthy rate environment that continues to be supported by good industry discipline. Turning to the used results, third quarter proceeds roughly doubled to $366 million, reflecting more normalized volumes as we continue to refresh our fleet. The decline in our third quarter adjusted used margin to 55.2% was largely due to expanded channel mix required to drive higher volumes, the impact of some cleanup actions we took on Ahern fleet, and the normalization of supply-demand dynamics.
Importantly, we continued to take advantage of a robust used market by driving strong volume growth in our retail sales at attractive pricing. I'll also note that our average fleet age was 51.6 months at the end of the quarter, which is essentially back to pre-pandemic levels. Moving to EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA in the quarter was a record $1.85 billion, reflecting an increase of $329 million, or 22%. The dollar change includes a $264 million increase in rental, within which OER contributed $252 million and ancillary added $19 million, while re-rent declined $7 million year-on-year. Outside of rental, used sales added about $85 million to adjusted EBITDA, while other non-rental lines of businesses contributed another $15 million.
While SG&A in the quarter did increase $35 million year-on-year, as a percentage of sales, it declined 180 basis points to 9.9% of total revenue, reflecting another quarter of very good cost efficiency. Looking at third quarter profitability, our adjusted EBITDA margin decreased 80 basis points on an as-reported basis, but increased 20 basis points on a pro forma basis to 49.1%. This translates to as-reported flow-through of 46% and pro forma flow-through of better than 50%. Notably, if we excluded the impact of used in the quarter, our core flow-through exceeded 53% and was in line with second quarter results. And finally, adjusted EPS increased 27% to a third quarter record of $11.73.
Shifting to CapEx, gross rental CapEx was $1.03 billion versus net rental CapEx of $664 million. The $257 million dollar decline in net rental CapEx largely reflects our return to more normalized used sales levels this year. Year to date, gross rental CapEx through the third quarter has totaled almost $3.1 billion, representing about 90% of our full-year CapEx plan, which is in line with both our expectations and historical year-to-date levels. At this point, it is our sense that the supply chains have largely normalized, which should enable us to return to more typical quarterly cadences going forward and better match the timing of deliveries with seasonal demand.
Turning to return on invested capital and free cash flow, ROIC set a new record at 13.7% on a trailing twelve-month basis and remains well above our cost of capital, while free cash flow also remains a good story. The quarter came in at $339 million, translating to a trailing twelve-month free cash margin of 12.8%, all while continuing to fund robust growth. Moving to the balance sheet, our net leverage ratio at the end of the quarter was flat sequentially at 1.8 times, while our liquidity totaled $2.7 billion, with no long-term note maturities until 2027. Notably, all of this was after returning $1.05 billion to shareholders year to date, including $750 million through share repurchases and $305 million via dividends.
So let's shift to the guidance we shared last night. We reaffirmed within our ranges for total revenue, EBITDA, and Free Cash Flow, reflecting our continued confidence in delivering a record year. Within this, we raised the midpoint of total revenue by $50 million to a range of $14.1 billion-$14.3 billion, reflecting cleanup actions being taken to dispose of some older fleet acquired that comes with no margin benefit. Just to avoid any confusion, that is to say, the fleet is being sold at the values they are recorded at on our balance sheet. You see this in our implied used sales guidance of $1.5 billion at midpoint, which is an increase of $50 million versus our prior guidance.
Adjusted EBITDA guidance is $6.775 billion-$6.875 billion, which maintains the midpoint at $6.825 billion. And finally, I'll point out that we expect to generate free cash flow of $2.3 billion-$2.5 billion, of which we'll return a little over $1.4 billion to our investors through repurchases and dividends. This equates to more than $20 per share or around a 5% yield on return of capital at current share price levels. So with that, let me turn the call over to the operator. Operator, could you please open the line?
Operator (participant)
At this time, we will open the floor for questions. If you would like to ask a question, please press the star and one on your telephone keypad. You may remove yourself from the queue at any time by pressing star two. Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one. Our first question will come from David Raso with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.
David Raso (Senior Managing Director, Industrials and Machinery Research)
Hi, thank you for the time. I know you don't want to give 2024 guidance, but can you help us with just two elements, just at least how you're thinking about it? The productivity measure, and let's just think of it as a as-reported basis. Ahern anniversaries in mid-December and the toughest part of the Time U comps, you know, we start to anniversary soon, given peak supply chain constraints, you know, about, you know, three or four quarters ago. How should we think about productivity with those two items sort of anniversaring? How are you thinking about productivity's ability to go back to flat, to maybe up all in, as reported? And then also, any help you can be at all with...
You noticed, you mentioned the supply chain now is loose enough, you can go back to your normal cadence on CapEx. How are you thinking about the fleet going into next year? There's some carryover growth, but just curious how you're thinking about, you know, replacement CapEx next year, or is there some growth CapEx? Just to help frame those two big building blocks for thinking about 2024 as an up or down year. I know you're saying up, but just want to get some of the pieces. Thank you.
Matt Flannery (President and CEO)
Sure, David. Now, without giving guidance, I'll just try to help out. First, on your first part of the fleet productivity, I think you captured it well. We absolutely expect next year to have positive fleet productivity. While anniversaries are very tough, and even on a pro forma basis, you know, when you think about this year, we still had tough comps from a time utilization perspective, and we've talked about that over that unusual time that just we didn't feel was healthy and put way too much hand-to-mouth orders and customer relationships at risk. So we've run really strong time this year, as I told you guys in July, back over what we were in 2019, and we think this is a more appropriate level, and so we wouldn't expect time to be a headwind next year.
And with that being said, you know, the industry still needs to get rate. So we think about the two largest contributors to fleet productivity, you know, we call one flat and the other one positive, and then mix will be what mix will be. We certainly expect to have positive fleet productivity next year. And as far as fleet CapEx cadence, we certainly... I think the supply chain's not 100% back to normal, but-
... probably close, probably about 90%. There's still a couple of categories of high time unit assets that we can't get as quickly as we want. But frankly, I don't think we're gonna be able to front-load them either because they're just in tough supply. So I think a more normalized cadence is the right way to think about what we'll do from a capital perspective. And, you know, we're not gonna give CapEx guidance right now, but think about off of our base of $21 billion of fleet. We usually want to sell 11% or 12% of the fleet a year, right? To keep it fresh. And as Ted mentioned in his comments, we're really pleased that we got back to pre-pandemic fleet days, and we want to keep that rolling.
So roughly, if you think about those numbers, you're talking about somewhere between $2.3 billion-$2.5 billion of fleet sold to get that 11%-12%. And if we think about the replacement CapEx on that, at this point, certainly higher than 15%. Let's just round up to 20%, and you're talking about somewhere between $2.8 billion-$3 billion of CapEx for replacement next year, depending on how much we sell. And I'd use that as a baseline, and anything over and above that, we'll obviously communicate in January. That'll be our growth CapEx. We do expect 2024 to be a growth year, and we expect there will be some growth CapEx, but we're just not, we just haven't worked through the planning process yet. We'll give you better guidance in January.
David Raso (Senior Managing Director, Industrials and Machinery Research)
All right. Thank you. And lastly, with all that said and how you're perceiving the world going into 2024, I know I asked this last call, too, but the leverage down at 1.6x, the net debt to EBITDA at the end of the year. Can you just give us some framework or how you're thinking about M&A versus other uses of that balance sheet and cash flow, or the leverage is expected to stay, you know, continue to go down next year? Just trying to get a sense how you're thinking about it. Thank you. I'll hop off.
Matt Flannery (President and CEO)
Yeah. I'll answer a little bit of it, and I'll let Ted jump in here. Certainly, you know, we always talk about the use of our capital is gonna be growth business. So first and foremost, feed the organic growth that and to meet the demand that our customers expect us to meet. And then secondly, M&A. If we find opportunities where we can be a better owner of a business, we certainly have shown a history of that, and frankly, we're pretty good at it, so why not utilize the balance sheet for that?
That pipeline remains robust, but we have a high threshold, so I'm not pointing to anything imminent other than the fact that we're always looking, and we'll have a specific lean to any new products we can add or specialty, but then also to add capacity like we did with a couple of deals, including Ahern this past year. As far as after we've used capital for growth, I'll let Ted take that.
Ted Grace (EVP and CFO)
Yeah. Thanks for the question, David. So as everybody saw, we're leveraged about 1.8 at the end of this quarter, and the implied guidance would have us at around 1.6 at year-end. So, you know, a little bit below that, that bottom threshold we had introduced in 2019 of two. We do think the strategy overall has served us very well, and it's accomplished a lot of what it was intended to accomplish, which primarily was to allocate excess free cash flow to reduce the equity volatility and improve valuation. And so when we measure kind of our absolute and relative beta, when we look at our absolute and relative multiples, we think that it has been quite successful in delivering what we wanted. In terms of what's next, certainly that's something we've talked about that we're still working on.
We would expect to have an update for the street, you know, as we introduce our 2024 guidance and all the related capital allocation programs that'll be underpinned by that plan. So, more to come there in January.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. We'll take our next question from Rob Wertheimer with Melius Research. Please go ahead.
Rob Wertheimer (Founding Partner, Machinery Analyst)
Thank you. So my question is on rental gross margin, and I think Ted mentioned that you, you still have some cleanup, I guess, activity on the Ahern fleet, which may be depressing gross margin. I think you have extra depreciation. But it seemed a little sequentially weaker than 2Q, and I'm just wondering if there was any other driver or if it was incremental activity related to Ahern that drove that. And I guess, Ahern probably didn't have specialty, so I wondered if you could address the fleet gross margin as well. Thank you.
Ted Grace (EVP and CFO)
Yeah. So if we look at that Gen Rent rental gross margin, you know, I'd say in line with our expectations. While you did see the as-reported margin down 320 basis points versus 270 last quarter, pretty minor when you convert that into dollars. You'd be talking about, you know, just that 50 basis points being equivalent to about $12 million of cost on a revenue base of about $2.3 billion. There's always puts and takes within cost structures, as everybody knows. Depreciation was part of that. So if you think about that 50 basis points, you know, the incremental depreciation we recognized in the quarter as we go through final purchase accounting on Ahern was probably, you know, 30 of those basis points would have been captured in that.
Otherwise, you always have one-time costs or other cost dynamics that may be hitting you. We, we don't think there's really much to be made of it. I... the question's a very fair one to ask. In the scheme of things, given the numbers I just walked through, I think it's pretty, you know, we would characterize that more as quarter-on-quarter noise. Within specialty, you know, you saw flat margins, I guess, year-on-year, off record at 52.2%, so very strong performance there. There really wasn't much to call out. We did have some mix shifts within the different pieces of specialty, that would have been relative headwinds. But again, if we can grow a business at 16% and generate 52% margins, we feel really good about that.
Rob Wertheimer (Founding Partner, Machinery Analyst)
Perfect. That, that answers that. If I'm allowed, you guys have some experience with mega projects by now, and I know there's a lot of different kinds of mega projects running from LNG to airport to semiconductors to whatever. … But there's a lot of just questions if commercial or office or whatever construction declines and megas rise. Do you, do you have a sense if on a dollar-for-dollar basis, you lose a dollar in one, you gain a dollar in the other, if that's materially different on mix? And I'll stop there.
Matt Flannery (President and CEO)
Materially different on what, Rob?
Rob Wertheimer (Founding Partner, Machinery Analyst)
On mix.
Matt Flannery (President and CEO)
You say mix?
Rob Wertheimer (Founding Partner, Machinery Analyst)
On mix. So if you, you know, if you lose a dollar of office construction, you lose a certain amount of revenue, you gain a dollar of mega construction, you gain a certain amount of revenue. How does that shift out for you? Thank you.
Matt Flannery (President and CEO)
Thanks, Rob. I'll take that. So we're probably thinking more about if you're thinking about what that larger customer, larger project, longer duration rental does from a mix perspective, there's a bigger variance if you're thinking about just transactional business. So certainly, our largest customers get a little bit of leverage out of their spend with us than Joe the plumber walking in the store. So that's where the biggest gap is. But one of the reasons why we built a go-to-market to make sure we specifically cater to these large customers, large projects, and large plans, is because when you could put those big block of revenues to work at one site, you could serve them much more efficiently.
So on the top line, there may be some variance, certainly between your transactional business, in the top line rate that you charge, but margin-wise, we historically don't see much of a difference because of that lower cost to serve, and that's why, you know, we've built this go-to-market to cater to those projects.
Rob Wertheimer (Founding Partner, Machinery Analyst)
Thanks.
Matt Flannery (President and CEO)
You're welcome.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question comes from Steven Fisher with UBS.
Steven Fisher (Managing Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Thanks. Good morning. Just to follow up on the, the mega project discussion, I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about what's happening beneath the surface there on, on the mega projects within your pipeline. Obviously, there's some headlines about some projects experiencing some delays, but I guess to what extent are, are any new ones coming onto the radar screen as well? Or is it more like just a known population at this point? Curious about the, just the flow of what you're seeing in the market opportunities there.
Matt Flannery (President and CEO)
Sure, Steve. I would call the handful, and I think it's less than a handful, somewhere four or five projects that have hit the headlines are really not relevant to the whole pipeline that we're tracking. And to be fair, I'd say the same about new ones coming on. We do find out about new things coming on all the time, but the base is pretty robust and pretty well-known quantity. And we've been tracking that, and that number remains strong at a steady level. When we think about the other, about the thing about these handful of projects, none of them are macroeconomic related, right? There are some delays that you'd call political, right? Maybe that there was a Chinese partner that one of the plants was dealing with that got some noise about.
Others are permitting. There was a job in South Carolina that got delayed because some environmental potential issues that they have to work through. So we're not seeing things that are slowed down because there's economic issues. It's really more just individual issues that are coming up for each of these projects. So we're not anything that we're concerned about. There's still a robust pipeline of jobs, many of which we have fleet on today and many of which we know are coming out of the ground in 2024.
Steven Fisher (Managing Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Great. And then just a bigger picture question about Ahern. When we think about next year, are there actual tailwinds in 2024 from Ahern, or is it more just a kind of like a neutral, you know, you said kind of just lapping the utilization? And what about the synergies? I know there have been some plans about synergies, so I'm curious if it's actually going to be adding from Ahern next year, or just sort of like a neutral.
Matt Flannery (President and CEO)
I would call it more neutral. The egg's pretty well scrambled at this point, other than some of the cleanup we're doing, and certainly will be by year-end when we lap the anniversary. As far as the synergies, we did a good job. We'll meet the synergies that we had guided towards and that we had targeted by year-end. We're pretty close to done with them now. So we're in good shape there, and it'll be nice to have a little bit cleaner view to share with you all. No more pro forma, as reported. I know it's been confusing on some of the metrics specifically, and all that'll be cleaned up by year-end.
Steven Fisher (Managing Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Terrific. Thank you very much.
Matt Flannery (President and CEO)
Thanks, Steve.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question comes from Jerry Revich with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Clay Williams (VP Equity Research)
Hi, yes, this is Clay Williams on for, for Jerry Revich. Quick question. One of the hallmarks of your, of your acquisition strategy has been the ability to get acquired businesses to post utilization and margins that are, you know, typically with the base, in line with the base business. You know, as we approach the one-year anniversary on Ahern, you know, when do you- does this asset gonna have comparable fleet productivity and margins as the, as the base business, or still work to do there?
Matt Flannery (President and CEO)
So usually, we say as far as... So there's a differentiation, right? So the asset attributes, which would be more the fleet productivity, will get there next year, right? Somewhere around. But you have to remember, it would be a like-for-like asset. To—they didn't have specialty, they didn't have some of the higher dollar-yield items. But when you think about the assets we bought from them, by next year, we expect them to look, the performance to look like the assets that we own in that category. Now, when you think about margin, it'll to get all of our processes implemented in their stores, it usually takes a little longer. Now you're talking eight—somewhere between 18 months to two years, depending on how fast we move.
So there'll be a little bit of drag still on the operations of those stores as they implement all the, the new activity, the new tools, but from the fleet productivity, it should be mostly realized by next year.
Ted Grace (EVP and CFO)
The one thing I might add, and just for everybody's benefit, each deal certainly has its unique profile from a margin standpoint. Just for clarity's sake, we've talked about this pretty extensively, but the deals we do tend to be margin dilutive structurally. That's not to say they're not very good deals economically. The returns have clearly been very attractive. But if you think about Ahern, they were doing 35% EBITDA margins, LTM, fully synergized, they were going to be sub-40%. That was the same thing for BlueLine. I think NES, fully synergized, they would have been 42%. Neff was closer, but certainly, if you look at GFN, they were doing LTM, EBITDA margins of 27%. They were in the low 30s, synergized, and the same thing was true with Baker. So, we do do a great job.
We take pride in the fact that we're able to integrate these companies and extract a lot of value, including through cost synergies, but there has been, you know, that dynamic. So I just, Greg, I'm sure you appreciate that, but for other people's benefit, I just want to make sure we added that.
Clay Williams (VP Equity Research)
Thanks. Thanks, appreciate it. On guidance, midpoint of guidance implies margins are slightly up sequentially in Q4 versus 3Q. This is better than a normal seasonality. You know, what's improving versus normal seasonality, or should we not be looking at it from a, you know, midpoint to midpoint? Thanks.
Ted Grace (EVP and CFO)
Yeah, just we have always been consistent in telling people, "Don't anchor to midpoint." And it's not to kind of give a wink or a nod which direction you should be thinking, but, you know, we've given that range. That's kind of where we feel comfortable indicating fourth quarter. But, you know, beyond that, we don't give quarterly guidance, as you know.
Clay Williams (VP Equity Research)
Thanks.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. We'll take our next question from Tim Thein with Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Tim Thein (Managing Director, Machinery Research)
Thank you. Good morning. Matt, back to your earlier comments on, you know, that you expect fleet productivity to be positive in 2024. Do you think that—do you still believe that, or do you, you know, confident in terms of the ability to exceed inflation? I know you mentioned positive, but is your expectation that can be positive in excess of inflation? And to that point, you mentioned the replacement, the dollars you'll be replacing, you know, upwards of 20%.
Is that just as you think about, you know, bringing in more fleet today that you're dropping out from, you know, 7-8 years ago, is that 1.5% number the, you know, close to what you think actual inflation rate should be in this, in this environment?
Matt Flannery (President and CEO)
Sure, Tim. So first off, that'll always be our goal, to outpace inflation, and we think we will. We feel confident we'll have positive fleet productivity, and frankly, we need to outpace that inflation, right? The whole point of fleet productivity was to make sure that we generate revenue growth higher than the fleet growth. And that fleet growth, some of it's inflation, so you got to exceed it. As far as the 1.5-point bogey that we put out there a couple of years ago, it's, in reality, it's a little bit higher today. Where that extra inflation gets captured in mix, which gets captured in the fleet productivity report.
So whether we change that bogey to higher, if we make that 2-2.5%, and then we add it back in and the fleet productivity looks better, it's really just right pocket, left pocket. We're keeping it at 1.5% for now, just for simplicity's sake and keeping it consistent. But we still absorb that extra inflation, and that comes in as negative mix. So you guys still see the whole picture, and we'll probably continue to do that, going forward, and we've talked about it a little bit internally, and we think it's easier to keep the metric consistent, and we do expect to exceed that inflation, even with the extra mix headwind.
Tim Thein (Managing Director, Machinery Research)
Okay, understood.
Matt Flannery (President and CEO)
Hopefully that makes sense.
Tim Thein (Managing Director, Machinery Research)
You know, it does. Thank you, Matt. And then, you know, you guys have a good lens into the kind of supply-demand balance in the industry from a number of sources, but, you know, including the Rouse data. And, you know, it seems to us anyway, that... You know, you mentioned earlier, supply chains are loosening up. And, you know, some of the OEM dealers that are seem to be getting more active in rental, also seem to be catching up in terms of product availability. I'm curious if that's coming through in terms of the, you know, that supply-demand data that you guys see, and just how, if at all, it's influencing or informing you about your CapEx plans for 2024.
Matt Flannery (President and CEO)
Sure, Tim. Well, it's certainly gotten better, right? So supply chain's certainly gotten better, and I think you're seeing, I think you'll see most of the industry run more normalized utilizations. You've seen that this year, and that's a good thing, right? Because you can run the business more efficiently and frankly, be a more reliable partner to your customers. But I think the next big leg of growth from the OEM is still going to be replacement. I don't think that as OEMs grow their volume, this is going to be all this extra fleet in, in the system. There's still a lot of replacement CapEx that needs to be served, and especially in some of the areas that's been dragging. So I think that'll be more the, characteristic in the next year or two. We're getting ahead of the curve.
You see how much we're trying to focus on the used sales to get that fleet age right. So we feel good about where we are, but we're still going to have a lot of replacement CapEx next year, just like the rest of the industry.
Tim Thein (Managing Director, Machinery Research)
Okay, thanks for the time, Matt.
Matt Flannery (President and CEO)
Thanks, Tim.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one at this time. Our next question comes from Neil Tyler with Redburn Atlantic. Please go ahead.
Neil Tyler (Equity Research Analyst)
Yeah, good morning. A couple of smaller questions left, please. Firstly, on just going back to your comments, Matt, about the Ahern synergies. I thought you'd made comments at the previous couple of quarters that the revenue synergies, you know, might take a bit more time to crystallize and probably wouldn't be expected to come through in the first 12 months. So I just wanted you—I wanted to just check where you stand on that and the thoughts. And I understand that, you know, and to use your words, the egg's fairly well scrambled at the moment, but if you can just sort of help us understand how the cross-selling has been going there.
And then the second one, just a bit more specific on the use proceeds, as you move into next year. First of all, you know, it sounds as if you've broadly sort of caught up, in terms of, you know, exiting or, you know, shedding the fleet of the older assets. So presumably the used fleet will be slightly younger, but I guess we're all expecting used prices to normalize downwards a bit. So if you can help us sort of, you know, think about the percentage of OEC, perhaps at those proceeds, we'll track through the next twelve months or so.
Matt Flannery (President and CEO)
Sure, Neil. Thanks for giving me the chance to clarify. Our cost synergies will be realized. You are absolutely right. Our revenue synergies will take longer, so I'm so knowledgeable of that, that I heard it as cost, even if it wasn't asked that way. So thanks for that clarity. But the cross-selling is going well, and, you know, we're on schedule, and, you know, that usually takes a couple of years to fully bake, and we're on track for that. I think the customer base and the sales teams that come with that are very pleased to have a full portfolio to sell. So that's working well.
And then as far as the use proceeds, yeah, I mean, certainly we've talked about these dynamics for a while now, and as the supply chain normalizes, you know, the expectation would be that, that incremental buyer who couldn't buy new and was left to only buy used, you know, fades. And so on a relative basis, you see not as much demand versus supply. Now that's something we've talked about and expected, and in 2024, that likely is going to be a dynamic that people should be looking for. On the other hand, you're still going to have fleet inflation, and Matt alluded to kind of the cumulative 20%. That's, for us, in a very good position. I would say fleet inflation, more broadly, is higher, and ultimately that provides an umbrella for used pricing.
So these are those kind of cross currents that we'll be balancing next year. We certainly would expect to have recovery rates, you know, well above historical levels. You know, 2022 set an unsustainable bar. I think everybody understood that there was some temporary benefit there that led to us getting $0.74 on the dollar, if I'm not mistaken, selling 8-year-old equipment. That's, that's not normal, and that's not something anybody ever expected to be sustained. You're seeing normalization this year with that channel mix. Next year, you know, I think you'll see us kind of normalize again. So ultimately, those recovery rates, they, they won't be at 2022 levels, but they won't be back to those kind of pre-20 levels either. And then the other part about fleet age, Neil, it won't be tremendously different.
I mean, we've still got this; we just got back to more normalized fleet age. We've always had plenty of, you know, 8-year-old equipment to sell. So, we don't think that 7-8-year-old average range that we've been hitting will be changing that much.
Neil Tyler (Equity Research Analyst)
Okay, that's really helpful. Thank you.
Matt Flannery (President and CEO)
Neil, do you have a third question? I thought you, you said you had three. I don't know if two or two were baked within you.
Neil Tyler (Equity Research Analyst)
No, just the two at the moment. Thanks. Yeah.
Matt Flannery (President and CEO)
Okay.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question will come from Stephen Ramsey with Thompson Research Group. Please go ahead.
Steven Ramsey (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Good morning. I know it's early days on megaprojects getting ramped up. I'm curious on the secondary effects that you're seeing there, if the rental market in those geographies is tighter and helping utilization and rates more broadly besides just the project itself.
Matt Flannery (President and CEO)
Yeah, just generally, yes, but I think you're talking about mostly the larger companies that are going to be supplying these jobs, and we'll all mobilize the fleet to get there to take care of the customers. But generally, it will tighten up in the surrounding areas. And then the other part of a lot of these plants, especially the ones that are built in more rural markets, is you'll have infrastructure built around them, whether that be feeder plants, whether that be residential, and then the retail and the schools that go with it. So these are big boons for these markets overall that we think the whole... You know, we certainly expect to get our fair share plus, but that the whole area will benefit from.
Steven Ramsey (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
That's helpful. That's all for me. Thanks.
Matt Flannery (President and CEO)
Thanks, Stephen.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question will come from Seth Weber with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
Seth Weber (Senior Equity Analyst)
Hey, hey, guys. Good morning. It's Seth. I just wanted to go back to the used used equipment discussion again for a second, just to clarify. It sounds like you kind of tweaked your channel mix here to help get rid of some of the older fleet, the acquired fleet. Can you just talk to what you think your channel mix will be going forward? You know, whether it's more wholesale, less auction, what have you. Just, you know, how should we think about, you know, the channel mix to sell used equipment going forward relative to where it's been for the last couple of quarters? Thanks.
Matt Flannery (President and CEO)
Sure, Seth. So if you go back to pre-COVID levels, we're usually about two-thirds of our volume were retail and less than 5% auction. And whatever fell in the middle layer between trades and brokers varied a little bit on years just based on what kind of negotiations we did with vendors what were the assets we needed to replace and so on. I think we expect it'll get more normalized to that type of atmosphere. You know, obviously, you saw 17% auction this past quarter. That's that might be the highest we've ever done, but that's certainly a large number for us, and that was just blowing out some of the, some of the older assets from the $2.2 billion of acquired fleet that we had through M&A, right?
Everybody had their 5%-10% in the back of the lot that you had to either decide to work through or get rid of. So we just decided to clean that up. But we'll get back to more normalized channel mix than what you saw pre-pandemic.
Seth Weber (Senior Equity Analyst)
Okay, that's all I had. Thank you, guys.
Matt Flannery (President and CEO)
Thanks.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question comes from Michael Feniger with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Michael Feniger (Managing Director Equity Research)
Yes, thanks for taking my questions. Matt, we haven't really seen how rental holds up in a higher-for-longer interest rate environment. How does that kind of typically weigh on project activity, but also impact that rent versus own trade-off? How does this kind of higher-for-longer rate environment differ from other periods when we think of the impact to the rental equipment space?
Matt Flannery (President and CEO)
So when, for my thirty-plus years of doing this, anytime capital becomes more expensive, it, it's logical to think that people pay more attention to what they spend their capital on. So when you think about customers that were owning or wanted to own, it adds another barrier of thought to them to then think about the opportunity to try rental. And once they do, the math just works. When you think about the lack of... Even in a, in a flat, interest environment, when you think about once they get over the fact that, can I get what I want when I need it? Our industry's come such a long way that we don't lose customers. They don't go the other way after that, because the rental experience is much better. They have flexibility to turn the assets in when they don't need them.
They don't have to deal with all those soft costs of storage, maintaining, transportation, and the reliability, right? So our mechanics are usually going to do a heck of a lot better job than somebody who's working on, on equipment once in a blue moon. So all those variables mean greater rental penetration, and I think a higher interest environment just adds another layer of that higher penetration. So that, that's what would be our expectation. That's what history has taught us.
Michael Feniger (Managing Director Equity Research)
Thank you. And my follow-up is just, clearly, there's some moving pieces for the construction cycle next year, offices, commercial versus infrastructure, industrial, upstream energy versus downstream. Just help us in the context of fleet intensity. You know, we saw this in 2015, 2016 with fears of the oil downturn. Just how much fleet would you know come out of some of these weaker pockets compared to the fleet necessary to service some of these other markets that are seeing tailwinds? If you could just kind of help us conceptualize some of those moving pieces. Thank you.
Matt Flannery (President and CEO)
And Michael, Mike, the pockets you're talking about, are you referring to what areas? Because I, we—I think you heard in my opening comments, we're seeing pretty broad-based demand. All the verticals that we serve, ironically, other than oil and gas, I think we've all seen the rig count come down, have been, we're positive in Q3. So we're not seeing a lot of those soft pockets. Say a little more what you're thinking about.
Michael Feniger (Managing Director Equity Research)
Well, I guess if those pockets do soften next year, Matt, how should we think about the business model reacting and the fleet that services maybe some of these more pockets that the market is worried about, you know, commercial real estate, private office, relative to the fleet that's required for some of these other end markets that are seeing really strong verticals, you know, or strength on a multi-year basis?
Matt Flannery (President and CEO)
Okay, great. So we have always somewhere between $3 billion and $3.5 billion, right, at our disposal to reposition fleet profiles, if that's what's necessary. But one of the great things of the model is we have very fungible assets, right? If we, the fleet we use may vary a little bit, depending on what type of construction is going on. Maybe in some of these stadiums, you're going to need bigger booms, and maybe on some of these mega projects, you're going to have a higher propensity for a full breadth of fleet from more dirt moving because they're bigger footprints.
But our fleet breadth can really account for that, and it's one of the great parts of the rental model is, as long as you don't get overly specialized, which we don't, you don't that, that fungibility allows you to move it from different types of work to the other. And that's, that's something that, on the margin, if there's some changes, we certainly have, just within our replacement CapEx, the opportunity to reprofile and send that fleet to the right place.
Ted Grace (EVP and CFO)
Mike, what I might add, and it's really difficult to get into demand intensity by sub vertical, if you will, but the way we've kind of talked about this publicly and we look at it internally is just more from a top-down perspective. And if you think about the verticals where certainly we feel very good, things like manufacturing, power, infrastructure, transportation, healthcare, et cetera. If you look at the dollar value of those projects and those markets versus the areas you're alluding to, which maybe it's aspects of office, it's aspects of commercial, just the absolute dollars are much greater in the areas that seem to be opportunistic. And so from a weighted basis, that's where we, you know, see our opportunity growing next year.
Michael Feniger (Managing Director Equity Research)
Thank you.
Ted Grace (EVP and CFO)
Thank you, Mike.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. At this time, we have no further questions in queue. I will turn the call back to Matt Flannery for closing remarks.
Matt Flannery (President and CEO)
Great. Thank you, operator. And that wraps it up for today. And I want to thank everyone for joining us and remind you all that if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to Elizabeth anytime. Operator, you can now end the call.
Operator (participant)
This does conclude today's call. We thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at any time.