WillScot Mobile Mini - Q4 2025

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Welcome to the fourth quarter 2025 WillScot Earnings Conference Call. My name is Cherie, and I will be your operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Charlie Wohlhuter. Charlie, you may begin.

Charlie Wohlhuter (Senior Director of Investor Relations)

All right. Thank you, Cherie. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our fourth quarter and year-end 2025 earnings call. With me in the room today are Worthing Jackman, Executive Chairman, Tim Boswell, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Matt Jacobsen, Chief Financial Officer. Today's presentation material may be found in our Investor Relations website at investors.willscot.com. Before we, we begin, I'd like to direct your attention to slide number two, containing our safe harbor statements. We will be making forward-looking statements during the presentation in our Q&A session. Our business and operations are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. As a result, our actual results may differ materially from comments made on today's call.

For a more complete version of the factors that could cause actual results to differ and other possible risks, please refer to the safe harbor statements in our presentation and our filings with the SEC. And now it's my pleasure to turn the call over to our President and new Chief Executive Officer, Tim Boswell.

Tim Boswell (President and CEO)

Thank you, Charlie, and good afternoon, everybody. We appreciate you joining us on today's call for a discussion of the operating environment, our strategic priorities, our fourth quarter 2025 results, and our outlook for 2026. I'd like to begin by saying that I'm grateful for and humbled by the opportunity to lead and support this remarkable company and its people on our next chapter of evolution. After spending considerable time across our operations in 2025, and as I approach my fourteenth anniversary with the company, I'm very excited about how we're positioned in the market, our talent level, the alignment of our team around priorities, and our culture and values that define how we show up every day for our customers and for one another.

Today, our business is emerging from a period of rapid transformation, with an opportunity to set a new standard of performance in our industry through focused execution of our strategy. As we will discuss today, we are beginning to see momentum from our commercial initiatives to improve local market execution, develop our enterprise accounts and in-industry verticals, and expand our more differentiated value-added offerings. We're backing this up with the strongest operational capabilities in the industry. Dependable execution is at the core of our right from the start value proposition, and we are executing a multi-year continuous improvement roadmap to further improve both our customer experience and our margins. This is a simple formula that builds upon the already outstanding financial characteristics of our business that include industry-leading free cash flow conversion and strong returns on capital.

And while we have not assumed any turnaround for purposes of our guidance, we do see encouraging signs of progress across the business, and the entire organization is aligned to drive a return to growth and shareholder value creation. This obviously starts with stabilizing the top line. Matt will cover the details of our Q4 results. The total revenue was down 2% year-over-year in the quarter, excluding write-offs, with the decline nearly all attributable to lower seasonal storage demand from one customer. Revenue from modular products was effectively flat year-over-year, so the lease portfolio is stabilizing as a result of our initiatives, despite the continued contraction of non-residential square footage starts in Q4.

Adjusted EBITDA of $250 million in the quarter was right on top of our guidance, although the 44% margin was a bit lower, driven by the revenue mix and some SG&A items. Cash generation remains strong, with $91 million of Adjusted Free Cash Flow in the quarter, and we returned $30 million to shareholders through share repurchases in our quarterly cash dividend while reducing $41 million of debt balances. Capital allocation was balanced as we managed leverage prudently and prioritize opportunities with the strongest returns. Overall, there were no surprises in the quarter from my perspective, which is important as our team focuses on getting back to more consistent and dependable execution for shareholders.

Looking ahead to 2026, our initial guidance is intentionally conservative, consistent with the approach that we articulated after the third quarter, and does not assume any improvement in business trends. Our internal plans and compensation targets comfortably exceed this outlook, although the market backdrop remains mixed, and we think the conservatism is prudent given our recent trends. That said, our top priority is returning the business to steady organic growth, and we believe there is a path to deliver positive organic revenue growth inflection in the second half of the year. We're seeing early results from our initiatives that, if sustained, would get us there. First, entering 2026, sales staffing is up 13% year-over-year and with greater tenure, stronger sentiment, and lower turnover across the sales organization.

In Q4, we strengthened our regional sales management layer so that we have consistent oversight and accountability at the local level, clearly aligned incentives, and improved sales enablement systems. We absolutely have a productivity tailwind from this team, and I'm very happy with the changes that we've implemented. Second, enterprise accounts is accelerating, with our focus on developing existing accounts in under-penetrated industry verticals. Enterprise account revenue was up 7% year-over-year for the full year in 2025, and up 10% year-over-year in Q4, excluding one large seasonal container customer. We expect to carry this momentum through 2026, delivering mid- to high single-digit revenue growth from the enterprise portfolio. And third, our expanded offering and focus on the customer experience absolutely complement these efforts, giving us more ways to win on every opportunity, and in some cases, opening new opportunities that we may not have pursued historically.

This is all consistent with what we shared in Q3, although we are a bit further along with the implementation and with clearer visibility into the impact on our leading indicators. From an order perspective, our modular pending order book is up 17% year-over-year, with a significant impact from large RFP wins in the enterprise accounts portfolio, which are often tied to large project demands, such as data centers, power generation, and large-scale manufacturing. This excludes demand related to the upcoming World Cup, which we expect will be an additional 2,000 units of demand in Q2 and Q3, albeit on short duration. If we exclude all enterprise account activity, modular pending orders are up 5% year-over-year, so we are seeing increasing order volumes across customer segments and across all product lines within our modular offering.

This is on the heels of 3% year-over-year activation growth in the fourth quarter on our modular products, and with strong order growth continuing into January and February. We've also seen order rates on our portable storage product lines up 11% year-over-year over the last 13 weeks, with that growth all coming from RFP wins within enterprise accounts, including some shorter duration retail store remodels. So it is good to see growth in the storage order rates, but it is not yet as broad-based as we are seeing in modular. So it is early in the year, though our commercial team is well organized, and with a significant order backlog, we are increasingly focused on operational readiness to support demand and have three key initiatives in flight across our field and centralized operations.

First, as Matt will discuss, we are advancing our network optimization plan following approval by the Board of Directors in December. This will allow us to exit surplus real estate positions and idle fleet while maintaining full service and coverage capabilities in all markets that we serve. Second, heading into Q2, we will be rolling out our enhanced scheduling and route optimization platform, which we expect will improve our dispatch function and transportation margins, as well as customer service. And third, we're continuing to make improvements across our support center operations, resulting in accelerated cash collections, reduced Days Sales Outstanding, and significant improvements in Net Promoter Score related to our invoicing and customer service functions.

We prioritized each of these initiatives to improve efficiency and the customer experience, and these will be sources of operating leverage when activity levels pick up across the network and reasons we're confident in our longer-term target range for EBITDA margins. Before I turn the floor over to Matt, I'd like to thank the entire WillScot team again for their support through our recent leadership transition. Over the last several months, we have worked hard and collaboratively to align on our strategic priorities, and we have a shared understanding that our success will be defined by disciplined execution that delivers consistent, repeatable results across the organization. The initiatives we have in motion, from strengthening our go-to-market strategy to continuous improvement of our operations, create a pathway back to sustainable organic growth and shareholder value creation, which is our focus. Matt?

Matt Jacobsen (CFO)

Thanks, Tim. I'll get into the details shortly, but overall, results the end of the year were in line or better than we had guided. In the fourth quarter, total revenue was $566 million, and Adjusted EBITDA was $250 million, representing a margin of 44.2%. Revenues in the quarter came in a bit better than we had expected, but were down $38 million, or 6%, versus the prior year quarter. Excluding the cleanup of out-of-period AR that we discussed last quarter, revenues were down approximately $12 million, or 2% year-over-year, the majority of which was driven by the reduction in our seasonal retail container volumes with one customer. While higher sales and delivery and return activity supported revenue performance above our guide, the shift in revenue mix weighed on consolidated margins by about 50 basis points versus our expectations.

We also incurred elevated levels of health insurance costs in the fourth quarter, which compressed margins by another 60 basis points and reduced the favorability to our guide from an EBITDA perspective. For the full year 2025, total revenue was $2.28 billion, and Adjusted EBITDA was $971 million at a margin of 42.6%. So overall, we ended up the year a little better than we had guided and are focused on operational discipline and cost control as we position the business to support a growing order book in early 2026. If we look a little bit closer at our leasing revenue on slide five, we can see the underlying stability in our leasing revenues. Here you can see our performance with and without write-off activity.

Write-off activity within leasing revenue was flat sequentially at approximately $25 million, but up approximately $19 million versus the prior year quarter. However, our modular space leasing revenues in the quarter were essentially flat to prior year, which, when combined with improved activity levels and the growing order book, as Tim highlighted, indicates lease revenue stabilization in our largest product class and the opportunity to drive revenue inflection in the second half of 2026. Portable storage leasing revenue was down approximately $10 million from the prior year as expected, driven by lower volumes and end-of-year seasonal storage business, partially offset by a modest sequential increase, driven by our climate-controlled storage offering.

VAPS revenue in the quarter was essentially flat in absolute dollars, both year-over-year and sequentially, with increasing VAPS penetration, which was up by 100 basis points year-over-year to 17.8% of total revenue, or 17.4% for fiscal year 2025. Turning to slide six. In the fourth quarter, Adjusted Free Cash Flow was $91 million, representing a 16.1% margin and $0.50 per share. For the full year of 2025, Adjusted Free Cash Flow totaled $489 million and exceeded our guidance of $475 million, representing a 21.4% margin and $2.70 per share. Consistent free cash flow conversion continues to be a unique strength of our business and has demonstrated remarkable resilience as the lease portfolio positions for inflection.

As shown on slide seven, for the full year, Net CapEx totaled $273 million, up 17% compared to fiscal year 2024. While we estimate approximately $200 million of our CapEx is for maintenance CapEx, we've been investing above maintenance levels to service large project demand with our FLEX product, additional complexes, and also in our newer product categories to support growth where customer demand is strong. We will continue to prioritize demand-driven investments in the more differentiated, higher value products. We also opportunistically allocated $145 million towards acquisitions, paid down $146 million in borrowings, and returned $151 million to shareholders through both repurchases and our quarterly dividend distribution program in 2025.

We will continue to take a balanced approach to allocating capital by managing leverage while being opportunistic with share repurchases and potential acquisitions. Moving to slide eight. We ended 2025 with total debt of under $3.6 billion, with leverage ratio at 3.6x. During the quarter, we amended and extended the maturity of our ABL credit facility to October of 2030 and used some of our availability to redeem $50 million of our 2031 notes, which carry the highest interest rate in our debt stack. Our next maturity is not for another 2.5 years, and we have sufficient flexibility and liquidity to fund our capital allocation priorities. Slide nine is new and provides an overview of our network optimization plan, which was approved by the board of directors on December eighteenth.

As leases expire over the next four years and we exit approximately 25% of our leased acreage, we expect to realize between $25 million and $30 million of annual real estate cost savings. Said another way, the annual growth rate of our occupancy costs should decline to a mid-single-digit average growth rate over the period, versus the 10%+ that we've been seeing over the last several years, helping support achievement of our EBITDA margin target range. As part of this plan, we recognized a non-cash restructuring charge of $302 million from accelerated depreciation on our rental equipment in the fourth quarter. That reduced the net book value on approximately 53,000 units to salvage value, which is approximately $10 million.

The move aligns with our strategy of shifting the portfolio towards higher value offerings, as presented at our Investor Day last March. In turn, stronger unit economics of our overall portfolio will support improved margins and ROIC, while still preserving sufficient capital to meet demand in all product categories. With regards to the optics of our utilization rates, the average size of our entire fleet over the quarter does not fully reflect the network optimization plan since we recognized the accelerated depreciation on the units in December. Therefore, you will not see the entire impact of our utilization until the first quarter of 2026.

But we have provided a pro forma view in the appendix, which shows that our utilization for both modular space and portable storage products increases by over 700 basis points after removing these units from the fleet. As we ramp up our network optimization initiative, we will also begin to incur cash costs related to rental equipment disposals and fleet relocation costs totaling about $60 million over the next several years, with an estimated $35 million in 2026. From a presentation perspective, fleet disposal costs will be included in restructuring expense, and both fleet disposal costs and fleet relocation expenses will be added back as we present Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted Net Income, and Adjusted Free Cash Flow.

The related salvage value from recycled containers and estimated real estate proceeds in future years will partially offset these cash implementation costs, but will have limited impact on earnings. Finally, on slide 10 is our 2026 outlook for revenue of approximately $2.175 billion and Adjusted EBITDA of $900 million. As we spoke about in the third quarter, relative to the $971 million of Adjusted EBITDA in 2025, we're entering the year with an approximately $50 million headwind in our traditional storage business.

Our outlook of $900 million is a conservative view relative to our current run rate beginning the year and does not include benefits from ongoing internal initiatives that, if sustained, could drive year-over-year leasing revenue growth at some point in the second half of the year and place us on a growth trajectory into 2027. As Tim mentioned, we're driving internal plans and compensation targets that would inflect revenue in the second half of the year and comfortably exceed the revenue and EBITDA guidance. For modeling purposes, the first quarter is the slowest period of the year for activations, and we will incur increased variable rental costs for the spring activation period, as seen in the sequential progression of our Adjusted EBITDA margins.

Based on where we're starting the year, we would guide to approximately $515 million of revenue for the first quarter and Adjusted EBITDA of approximately $200 million. Beyond the first quarter, we anticipate revenue to increase sequentially by 7%-8% into Q2 as we support our highest logistics activity quarter, including the beginning of the World Cup. For Net CapEx, we expect to invest about $275 million in 2026. Our Net CapEx plan maintains the same strategic approach, prioritizing high value and differentiated product categories, and will be slightly front half-weighted to support demand. Approximately 70% of our Net CapEx will be split evenly between normal modular refurbishments and new fleet purchases of differentiated product categories, such as FLEX and complexes, to support large project requirements.

25% directed towards continued VAPS investment and the remaining 5% towards infrastructure. Clearly, the 275 Net CapEx guide implies that we're investing into growth opportunities that are not fully reflected in our revenue and EBITDA guidance. As we progress through the year, we will adjust investment levels to reflect the demand environment, though, based on what we're seeing right now, we expect to invest at this annualized level in the first half of the year. Further down the P&L, we expect total depreciation and amortization to be approximately $400 million for 2026, or approximately $100 million per quarter. About $310 million related to rental equipment, and the remaining $90 million includes approximately $40 million of amortization expense and $50 million of other depreciation related to infrastructure.

Based on current debt balances, we'd expect interest expense to be approximately $215 million for 2026, including approximately $9 million of non-cash expense. Just as a reminder, the cash timing of our bond interest payments is concentrated more in Q2 and Q4. Finally, regarding taxes. Our effective tax rate remains approximately 26%, but cash taxes will remain isolated to state and local levels as they were in 2025, as we do expect our NOLs to shield us at the federal level in 2026. Based on current projections, we expect to become a full federal cash taxpayer in 2027. So in summary, the end of 2025 finished up as expected, and our outlook for 2026, as we sit here today, is a conservative view relative to our run rate entering the year.

If the positive commercial momentum that we're seeing today continues, we believe we could see year-over-year leasing revenue growth at some point in the second half of the year, which would drive us comfortably above our current outlook. Our internal team is fully aligned on inflecting revenue in the business and returning to growth. Back to you, Tim.

Tim Boswell (President and CEO)

Thank you, Matt, and thanks again to our entire team, who are aligned and focused on delivering results and delivering them in the right way, consistent with our values. WillScot is uniquely positioned in the marketplace with opportunities for growth that only we can execute, given our differentiated capabilities and without constraints, given our outstanding financial profile. I'm incredibly excited about our prospects in 2026 and beyond, and I see clear alignment between the strength of our culture, the execution of our strategy, the growth of our business, and long-term shareholder value creation. This concludes our prepared remarks. I will now turn it back to the operator to open the line for Q&A.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, press star one one again. Due to time restraints, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question will come from the line of Andrew Wittmann with Baird. Your line is open.

Andrew Wittmann (Senior Research Analyst)

Great. Good evening, and thanks for taking my questions, guys. So, I guess I just wanted to kinda, I guess, check in on the, on the order book. I mean, Tim, you, you gave some pretty decent stats here about orders kind of returning. You kinda hedged the comment, you know, that, you know, it's kinda early here. You got to see if this, this holds. Are you seeing anything seasonally that maybe accelerated some of the orders, that maybe they're running above trend? Or, or what are some of the other factors, I guess, that would, would lead you to believe that, that maybe this is good, but maybe it's not sustainable here? Because obviously the guidance is, is much lower. So I thought maybe you could just elaborate on that, please.

Tim Boswell (President and CEO)

Yeah, as you know, Andy, and good to talk to you. The seasonal activity usually picks up as we move deeper into Q1 and early Q2. So in a normal year, we still wouldn't have seen kind of the typical impact of that seasonal increase in construction activity in the Lower 48 states in particular. What I did call out is a number of larger RFP wins in our enterprise accounts portfolio, and that is a very big driver here of the momentum we're seeing in the business. As you will recall, we reorganized that team back in Q2 of last year, added some leadership depth across the team and organized it across five key industry verticals, and we're seeing traction really across all of those, with construction being the greatest.

You know, if I unpack what's going on in the construction vertical, data centers, not surprisingly, are popping up all over the United States, and we are present on many of those. As we look at data center activity, specifically in contractual or written revenue, we expect that that subvertical could be up 50% year-over-year in 2026. So we don't see that slowing down. So overall, the modular book is building earlier in the year than we would typically see and with a strong bias towards enterprise accounts we do have the World Cup coming up.

We try to keep that separate from the stats that we gave you, just 'cause that will be, you know, kind of a one and done deal, at least this year, until we get to the Olympics. But really encouraged by what we're seeing through the enterprise account team. And then, you know, the other important commercial strategy has been on dialing in our local market execution, and we made a number of structural changes through the second half of last year that I'm very pleased with. I think we're getting good momentum across the local sales org as well.

We're seeing that in some of the more transactional product lines within modular, which are also up from an order standpoint, not so much yet in storage, but those changes are fairly recent, and the early trends are encouraging. So, a little too soon to extrapolate all of that across the rest of the year, especially not knowing how the typical construction season is going to build, but I'm happy with the progress year to date.

Andrew Wittmann (Senior Research Analyst)

Got it. That's helpful. I guess, for my follow-up, I wanted to ask about VAPS as well. Tim, I mean, you've talked about, yeah, you know, kind of trying to go to market a little bit differently there, that maybe the last year or two wasn't totally up to your standards. It looks like there's a little bit better momentum coming out here. I guess my question is, is that true? Or have you made changes, and do you believe that they're benefiting on the VAPS? Or obviously, you're still not to your target levels, but you're starting to get a little bit of momentum there. So I just wanted to give you an opportunity to talk about that and let us know what you're doing there and seeing there, on that initiative.

Tim Boswell (President and CEO)

You're right, that the penetration levels, if measured in terms of percentage of revenue, of the lease revenue book, are slightly increasing. I'd say that's more of a function of the mix shift and the traction that we're seeing in the modular portfolio than it is improvement in terms of penetration on a per unit basis, which, as you'll recall, is how we used to look at it. I still think we have some opportunity and work to do there. And as I think about our commercial initiatives in the first half of 2026, you know, we made some changes to the regional sales leadership structure at the local level across the network.

And modular VAPS penetration in furniture, in particular, is a very high priority for that team as we kind of get back to the best practices that we know were working a couple of years ago. So I still put that in the opportunity column, Andy, and the only other thing I'd add there is the offering is continuing to expand. You know, fencing and perimeter solutions is set for nationwide rollout this year. So we are gonna have a tailwind across that solution set, in addition to the traditional offering, where we've got, you know, a further penetration opportunity just across all the volume that we're delivering.

Andrew Wittmann (Senior Research Analyst)

Super helpful. Thank you for those perspectives. Have a, have a good evening.

Tim Boswell (President and CEO)

You too.

Operator (participant)

One moment for our next question. That will come from the line of Angel Castillo with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Angel Castillo (Executive Director)

Thanks. Good evening, everyone, and appreciate taking my question. Tim, I appreciate all the color. I guess, just trying to make sure I understand this, because as we think about, you know, maybe a second half inflection point here, I guess I'm not entirely following why, you know, we're seeing modular orders on the non-enterprise build or rise 5% year-over-year. But, you know, and you're also talking about, I think, some perhaps maybe seeing some backlog build that's a little further out or earlier than normal. But why wouldn't we see some of this reflect itself, at least in 2Q and see more of a ramp-up there?

Is it just—Is this a factor of more mega-project than local, or, you know, why wouldn't we see that, I guess, that non-enterprise piece as well, showing up earlier?

Tim Boswell (President and CEO)

Well, as you look at the pending order book that we have today, we do expect a sizable portion of that to convert in the first half of the year. What we're not doing is extrapolating these activity levels deep into Q2, in the second half of the year, just given it's early in that traditional construction season, when activity would typically build. So the early signs are indeed encouraging. The majority of that order book activity should deliver in the first half. You know, lead times have not changed dramatically as I look across the portfolio. There is a heavy mix of mega-project activity, as I mentioned, data center, power gen, manufacturing, really across all geographies. But we're just not prepared today to extrapolate that into the second half of the year.

Angel Castillo (Executive Director)

Understood. Thank you. And then, sorry if I missed this, but I guess, did you say what your first 2026 free cash flow guide is? And just curious, you know, if you didn't, what that is and what the free cash flow margin kind of implied. Just help us bridge, you know, the puts and takes as we think about next year's or I guess, this year's free cash flow versus last year.

Matt Jacobsen (CFO)

Yeah, Angel, I can, I can take that one. I mean, we've, we've kind of included most of the, you know, most of the components there. But, you know, our, our math would say around $415 million of Adjusted Free Cash Flow. So just one thing to note there, we do expect, like I said, to incur, you know, roughly $35 million to implement our network optimization plan. That would be excluded from that 415, so think of that as kind of an adjustment to get back to an Adjusted Free Cash Flow.

But really, you know, between interest and the different pieces there, it's about where we're ending up. So, not a, you know, pretty resilient, honestly, in kind of looking at, you know, how the business has performed over the last few years in a macro decline. And as we start to get to that inflection point, the free cash flow has been really resilient.

Tim Boswell (President and CEO)

Only thing I'd add to that is just the CapEx guide. You know, given the activity levels that we're seeing right now in the first half of the year, we do expect to be investing at that $275 million Net CapEx annualized level. We'll, of course, revisit that, you know, weekly, is kind of our practice, based on the demand that we're seeing.

If we see these levels continue, I expect we, you know, hit that 275 level for the year. If things slow down, we'll obviously pull it back, and you'd see that free cash flow margin pop back up north of 20% versus where it sits in the current guidance. So we'll continue to take a demand-driven approach to the Net CapEx.

Angel Castillo (Executive Director)

Very helpful. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

One moment for our next question. That will come from the line of Steven Ramsey with Thompson Research Group. Your line is open.

Steven Ramsey (Deputy Director of Research)

Hi, good evening. Wanted to see if you could parse out the enterprise forecast of the mid-single-digit to high single-digit growth for 2026, and if the pricing contribution in enterprise is similar to the modular segment displayed in 2025, that points to volume being an equal contributor to the enterprise revenue growth. So maybe you can parse just the drivers of enterprise revenue.

Tim Boswell (President and CEO)

Steven, I think this is an easy one. It's really volume driven, right? We don't see significant pricing differences as we segment across enterprise and other customers. We take a dynamic approach to pricing. We look at customer characteristics and project characteristics and all those, those good things. But at the end of the day, you don't see significant price or VAPS penetration differences between the enterprise accounts, especially in modular versus other customer segments. So the growth in that segment is volume driven, and that's a function of going deeper with customers where we already have relationships, but maybe didn't have as robust of an account strategy, as well as the vertical business development strategy. And as you know, we touch every sector within the North American economy.

Historically, we've been very organized around construction, and we're taking that same focused approach and applying it to four or five other key industry verticals that we talked about at the Investor Day, where we know we've got great marquee accounts, great value proposition, and opportunities to grow with our existing offering.

Steven Ramsey (Deputy Director of Research)

Okay, that's helpful color. And then wanted to think about the sales staffing and the measurements you gave on numbers of better tenure, maturation, et cetera, and how that connects to the better order and activation trends coming in on a lag. How much of the activation and order growth is the maturing staffing and seeing more and capturing more opportunities versus the mega projects being better?

Tim Boswell (President and CEO)

I'd say it's earlier in terms of the impact of the field sales organization. Some of the changes that we put in place at the end of 2025 are just kind of taking hold now. You know, we've completed our first month of the year from a commission standpoint and exceeded the targets that we had deployed across the field sales organization. So that's a good start for the year and bodes well for earning potential across our sales organization. So that's a good thing. As I look at the objective metrics, staffing up 13%, turnover is, or at least voluntary turnover, is half of what it would have been back in the middle of 2024, when we were experiencing peak disruption from the field reorganization.

We measure employee sentiment across all categories quarterly, and, you know, that is a driver of performance, whether you're in a sales role or any other role, and we're seeing improvements there. So all of those are, you know, either quantitative or qualitative indicators that tell me we've got tailwinds across that team. We have made systematic improvements from a sales and enablement standpoint in our sales HQ. This is our CRM system, where we're taking a more prescriptive approach to prioritizing opportunities and next best, best actions for sales reps through our CRM, as well as through phone routing and other things. So sitting here today, we really don't have any other changes that we're contemplating for the field sales organization.

I feel like that work is done, the team is in place, the leadership is in line, the incentives are consistent across really all sales roles, which has been a long time coming. I'm happy with the positioning, and it's time to let them run.

Steven Ramsey (Deputy Director of Research)

That's good color. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

One moment for our next question. That will come from the line of Kyle Menges with Citigroup. Your line is open.

Kyle Menges (VP and Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks for taking my questions. I was hoping if you could just talk about the positive rate you're seeing in portable storage still, and just maybe what's driving some of that, and talk a little bit about how you're balancing rate versus market share within portable storage.

Tim Boswell (President and CEO)

Okay, I'll start. Matt, I'll probably miss some details, so you can jump in. If you look at the as-reported average rate, up 9% year-over-year that we report in the investor presentation, that is almost entirely mix driven by rapid growth within our cold storage offering. If I think about traditional storage, you know, those spot rates have bottomed over the last couple of quarters, it feels like, and are off significantly from where they would have been back at the peak in the middle of 2023. So I think we've digested that headwind, and that's included in the $50 million revenue headwind that Matt referenced for the traditional storage business. So I think that is behind us at this point. The favorable mix shift is driving that growth in AMR.

Our order book in cold storage, sitting here right now, is up 105% year-over-year. So that's performing quite well, and has an added benefit of taking us into sectors and customers where, you know, we really didn't have a hook previously. A good example of that would be third-party logistics, warehousing, and distribution. You know, we've had customers in that sector forever, but not with a targeted strategy. The flexible cold storage offering is really attractive across, you know, those 3PLs, warehousing and distribution and retail. And it's allowing us to then pull other more traditional parts of our offering into those types of customers. So really happy with how that's performing. It's a good example of how we're repositioning the portfolio towards higher value-added solutions.

Higher value-added solutions allow us to capture that value in pricing, and that's what you're seeing in the storage AMR.

Matt Jacobsen (CFO)

Yeah, not much to add there, other than, you know, the containers, if you look at them by themselves, are up about 1% year-over-year. So we're continuing to get, you know, impact of all the different pricing levers that we have, but it's been relatively it's been very stable, which is not a bad thing, but mix contributing to the overall increase.

Kyle Menges (VP and Equity Research Analyst)

Helpful. Thank you. And then follow-up question on AI and just how you're leveraging AI internally. And in your prepared remarks, I think you cited efforts you're making around minimizing logistics costs. I think some efforts around collections as well. I mean, these seem like areas that would be ripe for AI implementation. So curious what you're doing today, and if you're exploring just any use cases for AI internally in the future.

Tim Boswell (President and CEO)

We are indeed. First and foremost, we hope everybody just keeps spending on AI and building data centers. It's probably the most impactful thing that we see in the business right now. We've been stepping into this area for a couple of years now. We started with AI tools in our branches, and video monitoring of movements within our branches for safety purposes. Our pricing optimization platform is AI based. Internally, we have developed a sales call coaching model that is AI enabled. And just to dig in on that one a little bit, this is a tool that can review all of our sales call transcripts. It's got a scoring rubric whereby it can identify sales calls that, you know, could have been improved in some way.

It helps our sales coaches diagnose very quickly which reps need coaching on what topics and be a lot more efficient with how we spend that sales manager resources time, right? So there are a host of ways that we can deploy these tools in the back office. That said, we don't need to jump straight to being cutting edge on all things, right? There's still a lot of basic blocking and tackling in the back office, where we're seeing traction on collections and customer service the old-fashioned way, which I think can drive real margin improvement in the business. But I completely agree with you.

There are aspects of our, our sales model, aspects of our, customer service model, employee training, where AI is, is very relevant, and we are, we are very open to those opportunities.

Kyle Menges (VP and Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you, guys.

Operator (participant)

One moment for our next question. That will come from the line of Tim Mulrooney with William Blair. Your line is open.

Luke McFadden (Equity Research Associate)

Hi, this is Luke McFadden on for Tim. Thanks for taking our questions. Can you provide some insight into how conversations with your local customer set have been trending recently? I know things like interest rates, tariffs, building costs were a headwind for that customer cohort this past year. Is sentiment or confidence in the outlook for 2026 improving at all, with that customer set?

Tim Boswell (President and CEO)

You know, the best barometer there is the feedback that we're getting from our local general managers and our local sales team. And, you know, going back to November when we had those teams in for budgeting, and, you know, I've been out on the road recently, meeting with the teams for early updates in 2026, and that sentiment and that energy level is notably improved relative to where we would have been last year. I can't say that's all, you know, customer or market driven. A lot of that is being better organized internally, and with a better structure and accountability in place relative to how we entered last year. So I think that's probably the bigger driver of the two.

Luke McFadden (Equity Research Associate)

That's helpful color. And as my follow-up, I know one of your ongoing commercial priorities has been to do, improve, and do a better job winning subcontracted business on the large projects where you work closely with the prime GC. Can you provide an update on your progress there around winning that subcontract work?

Tim Boswell (President and CEO)

Yeah, this is pretty, pretty exciting, actually. Back in, it was early Q4, we introduced a kind of a rewards program and referral program for our larger general contractors. And this is a way to partner with our largest contractors and provide our customers with an incentive to help bundle more of that subcontractor activity with us. It has huge benefits to the primary general contractors 'cause they get more control and visibility and uniformity, frankly, across all of the subs coming on to the job site. And from our perspective, obviously, it's almost like an indirect sales channel that allows us to capture that activity more efficiently than, you know, targeting every subcontractor individually. So, very encouraged with the early performance of that program.

If you think about our focus on local sales market execution, you know, one thing that we had gotten away from over the last couple of years is having true account ownership at the local level. So what we've done is gone across every territory in North America. Obviously, every zip code rolls into one of our territory sales reps, and within those zip codes, we've got top accounts for which that territory sales rep is personally accountable for. So I think historically, we've done a good job targeting construction project activity through our various systems. What we got away from was just that ongoing account management and relationship development at the local level, and we've absolutely reemphasized that later in Q4 and going into 2026.

I think that's a really important ingredient for the effectiveness of the local sales organization, and it mimics that account focus and that account strategy that we've put in place at the enterprise level. We're trying to do it at both ends of the spectrum.

Luke McFadden (Equity Research Associate)

All makes sense. Thanks so much.

Operator (participant)

For our next question, and that will come from the line of Manav Patnaik with Barclays. Your line is open.

Ronan Kennedy (VP)

Hi, good afternoon. This is Ronan Kennedy in for Manav. Thank you for taking our questions. Are you helping with the underlying volume and price assumptions for the respective segments for 1Q and/or full year 2026? And can you comment on if and how conservatism, such as, I think, what was discussed in Andy and others' question as to not extrapolating order book conversion or not including any impact of commercial initiatives, is specifically impacting those assumptions and the opportunity for upside there?

Matt Jacobsen (CFO)

Ronan, I'll, thanks for the question. I'll try and capture that here. I mean, I think, you know, as we look at, you know, our pricing and volume assumptions and kind of what's in our guide and what we think is, you know, opportunity kind of above our guide, if the trends continue. Is that kind of what you were trying to get after?

Ronan Kennedy (VP)

Yeah. Yeah, and if you're able to help with how to think fundamentally about volume and price, you know, where that's been taken back, respectively, by conservatism and the potential upside.

Matt Jacobsen (CFO)

Yeah, no, I think, you know, I think as we look at, you know, our guide and we think about volume and price, I mean, you as we said in our opening comments, you know, the guide that we've provided is kind of a continuation of recent trends, right? And those trends have been, you know, having some volume pressures, obviously, on the storage side of the business. You know, we're starting the year with about a $50 million kind of headwind, so we're not assuming that that picks up and starts to reverse. On the modular side, you know, that's been a bit more stable, right? We showed Q4 modular leasing revenues were basically flat year-over-year.

And we're kind of, you know, starting from a, a standpoint of that, being the starting point for, you know, at least from a revenue perspective, not volume, but revenue, starting point for the year and, and that kind of continuing forward. And if these trends that we're seeing recently, you know, are sustained for, you know, a couple quarters, you start to then get to a point where, you're getting closer and closer to some potential volume inflection. That won't happen in two quarters, but you're, you're moving in that direction. And that's ultimately what we're all focused on, is driving internal, volume growth, doing that smartly, not at the expense of price, but, driving, driving, consistency there as well.

So, we're being conservative in the guide because it's only a month and a half in, and this is what we know today, but we know that can also change, as things go forward, and giving you guys an update here in a few months.

Ronan Kennedy (VP)

Got it. Thank you. And if I may, as a follow-up, can I ask, are you helping with how to think about and I know, Matt, you just alluded to, you know, it's only so far into the year, cognizant of that timeframe, but going back to last March and the strategic are the initiatives and the targets rolled out for the three- to five-year horizon. I would say things haven't necessarily played out as anticipated, certainly from a market demand dynamic standpoint. Then you had the 3Q 2025 introduction of further strategic initiatives, prioritization of some, the optimization initiative, and a fundamental shift to the more conservative approach to forecasting and guiding. Is there a way to think about the three- to five-year targets in light of all that?

Or is it, look, they're three-five years, and there's still plenty of time, and that's why it was three-five years? Or, you know, just interested in your thoughts on, on that, please.

Tim Boswell (President and CEO)

Ronan, I'll take this one. And I think you ended in pretty much the right place. Obviously, we didn't finish 2025 where we would have hoped back in March of 2025. So you can think of the starting point to get to those longer-term revenue and EBITDA targets is obviously lower, and the implication there is it may take more time to get there. So look at the outer end of that range. In terms of our strategic initiatives, the only thing that's new relative to where we were in March is the network optimization initiative. And that was a function of, hey, we see the market bottoming in a place that's lower than we anticipated, which means we've got an opportunity to optimize both fleet and real estate.

So that's a new one relative to where we would have been not quite a year ago, but the focus on local market execution, in terms of the changes that we've implemented, has played out very much with how I would have planned about a year ago. Enterprise accounts, the same, the focus on the value-added offering, the same. I mentioned in my prepared remarks, the focus operationally on route optimization and scheduling. We talked about that in March a year ago. We talked about optimization of back-office processes, and we're making progress across all those things. The reality is you can't really see the impact of those margin-oriented initiatives because they're being offset in 2025 by the natural negative operating leverage in the business in this environment.

So in my prepared remarks, I alluded to the fact that these are structural improvements to the business and the margin profile, margin potential in the business that we expect will manifest themselves when we get volume back, flowing back through all the branches. I like what I see, sitting here in mid-February from a volume standpoint, but in order to get that impact, it has to be sustained, and that's why we're taking a cautious approach to the guidance.

Ronan Kennedy (VP)

Thank you very much for that, Tim. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

One moment for our next question, and that will come from the line of Faiza Alwy with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

Faiza Alwy (Managing Director)

Yes. Hi, thank you so much. I wanted to follow up first just on the conservatism comments. Again, I just want to make sure I'm understanding. So as you're talking about, you know, revenue inflection in the back half, like, is that included in the guide as of right now? Or are you essentially saying that if current trends sustain, then that's where we will be?

Tim Boswell (President and CEO)

It's more the latter there, Faiza. Thanks for the question. I think, you know, we're seeing some good commercial indicators right now, but don't know that those will sustain themselves to get us to a point where we would see, you know, second-half inflection for sure. So our conservative guide is based on the run rate, you know, coming out of last year, based on, kind of where that would play out. So if we do see sustained, you know, consistent year-over-year improvement in the commercial activity, that would be above our current guide. And that's where we see that there could be a potential for inflection in the second half of the year, but that's not included in our guide.

Faiza Alwy (Managing Director)

Perfect. Thank you for that clarification. Then I have to ask about data centers, since we've been, you know, sounding so positive on that for good reason, I'm sure. Maybe help us think through, you know, like, what percentage of the business is that vertical at this point? I suspect it's small, but maybe you can give us some background on, you know, like, what's that RFP process like as you think about those RFPs? Like, what has been your win rate there? And you know, essentially, I'm trying to figure out what the competitive dynamics are there, because I think a lot of us believe in that, you know, that activity continuing. So any additional perspective there would be helpful.

Tim Boswell (President and CEO)

Yeah, I'm not going to have a precise quantification of this for you, Faiza, but I'll give you maybe a way to think about it. And first and foremost, I'd say from our perspective, this activity is picking up, not slowing down. At least that's been our experience here from Q4 coming into Q1. And as I said either in response to an earlier question, we measure the new contractual revenue that we write in any given period. This is number of units times the price, times the duration, is the total project value. And we think that the data center subvertical could increase by 50% or so on that metric in 2026. So that's a meaningful increase, but you're talking about less than 5% of our overall revenue at the end of the day.

So it's a very important and kind of unique change in the demand environment. We are absolutely taking advantage of it. I can think of data center projects from Des Moines to Milwaukee, Lubbock, and Abilene, Texas, Indianapolis, Jackson, Mississippi, Chicago. Reno is on fire, Northern Virginia, so it's everywhere, right? Can't quote you the win rate off the top of my head, but we're on all of those projects. There are situations, I'm thinking about Micron, not a data center, but you know, related to that supply chain, where you know, we'll have hundreds of units, but actually can't supply the entire demand across that project, and it's fundamentally changing the nature of the Boise market for the next 10 years, probably. So this is a very significant change.

As I reflect back to, you know, other changes like this in the business, like when the business was bottoming, coming out of the GFC, we had a very significant increase in oil and gas activity in 2011, 2012, 2013, which really led the reinflection of the non-res market coming out of the GFC. This feels a little similar to that, but I haven't seen anything quite like this since that time.

Faiza Alwy (Managing Director)

Great. Thanks, Tim. Really appreciate it.

Operator (participant)

One moment for our next question, and that will come from the line of Philip Ng with Jefferies. Your line is open.

Philip Ng (Managing Director)

Hey, guys, thanks for all the great color. I think in your prepared remarks, you talked about non-res square footage starts were down about 6% in 2025 and about 12% for the quarter. Is there a good way to think about the typical lag of that number to your units on rent? Because you're calling out pretty encouraging orders. I know it's very early to start the year, so just curious, what kind of end market assumptions are you kind of baking into your outlook for this year?

Tim Boswell (President and CEO)

It's a good question, Phil. This is Tim, and our activation volumes typically align with project starts, right? So the encouraging thing from my perspective is we're seeing meaningful activation and order growth in a declining starts environment, and that's a bit unusual in our business. To me, that means two things: We're outperforming that metric as an organization. I think that's got a couple of pieces to it. One, the local sales organization is better organized today than it would have been a year ago. Two, the enterprise efforts in the mix of that activity is working in our favor because we are disproportionately well-positioned to serve the needs of these larger industrial projects. In the case of some of these things, like this large soccer tournament that's coming up, I'm not sure anybody could do exactly what we're doing for the customer.

That's just a function of our unique capabilities and our unique value proposition, and I think the way we're organized right now, we're better positioned to take advantage of that.

Philip Ng (Managing Director)

That's helpful, Tim. I guess, kind of dig a little deeper on that. Can you remind us, like, what percentage of your business is actually tied to backlogs? I'm not as clear how good of a leading indicator is that in terms of leasing revenue, just overall, just be helpful to kind of get a little more color on that. And have you seen your units on rent, I guess, inflect, like, your order book, at least through early February?

Tim Boswell (President and CEO)

Yeah, on that, that latter point, I mean, we had a modest increase in modular unit on rent in January, which is seasonally unusual. We haven't seen that in storage. So, it is, you know, activations lead to order or orders lead to activations. You know, it's the basic sales funnel, and the order book that we see right now supports activation growth leading into Q2.

Philip Ng (Managing Director)

Yep.

Tim Boswell (President and CEO)

And if that's sustained, typically for a couple of quarters, you get unit-on-rent inflection, and that's been the, that's been the goal here for some time. And, you know, we're not making that assumption in the guidance, to Faiza's question-

Philip Ng (Managing Director)

Yep.

Tim Boswell (President and CEO)

A minute ago, but if sustained, these activation levels and order levels would support it later in the year.

Philip Ng (Managing Director)

Okay, super. Appreciate the color. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one, one. Our next question will come from the line of Scott Schneeberger with Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Daniel Hultberg (Senior Equity Research Associate)

Hey, guys, it's Daniel on for Scott. Thanks for letting us on. Could you please provide the bridge from the EBITDA in 2025 to the guide for 2026? I know you have the storage headwind, but the other components, are you able to quantify that?

Matt Jacobsen (CFO)

Yeah, Daniel, that is the biggest component. It's really a $50 million kind of, you know, headwind that we're facing. And then, you know, if everything else, you know, we've provided some conservatism to that point, which then brings us down to the $900.

Daniel Hultberg (Senior Equity Research Associate)

Gotcha. Thank you.

Matt Jacobsen (CFO)

So really, that's the main thing, right? So if obviously, if our commercial activity sustains like we've seen recently, we would go, you know, we would do better than that, and that's what we're driving to internally as a team. That's what all of our compensation is based on. But that's really the main brick in the bridge.

Daniel Hultberg (Senior Equity Research Associate)

Okay. So there's not a lot of real swing factors in that range that could put you higher and lower?

Matt Jacobsen (CFO)

I mean, there's obviously other opportunities and risks-

Daniel Hultberg (Senior Equity Research Associate)

Yeah.

Matt Jacobsen (CFO)

- but it really does boil down to that storage headwind.

Daniel Hultberg (Senior Equity Research Associate)

Okay. And on M&A, last year, in the second quarter of 2025, you had a pretty big M&A spend. Will there be a trickle-through to EBITDA growth in 2026 from that? And, the level of M&A spend you had in 2025 and in 2024, is that a good way to think about it going forward?

Tim Boswell (President and CEO)

It's a good question. You can assume that the impact of that, those acquisitions are fully in our run rate, exiting 2025, so I don't expect anything incremental for purposes of 2026 that we haven't already talked about. I think it's a reasonable M&A level to assume, but, you know, we don't really give M&A guidance, given it's difficult to predict the timing and profitability of those transactions. I would just point you back to the capital allocation framework, and over time, I think we've demonstrated that we have been able to deploy that roughly 25% of our available capital into tuck-in acquisitions. Nothing imminent to announce, sitting here today, but over time, I think that's been a reliable capital allocation framework.

Daniel Hultberg (Senior Equity Research Associate)

Gotcha. Okay. Thanks, guys.

Tim Boswell (President and CEO)

Thanks, Daniel.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We have now reached the end of today's Q&A. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Tim Boswell for any closing remarks.

Tim Boswell (President and CEO)

Thanks, Cherie, and thanks again to the entire WillScot team for your focus and dedication. Thanks to everyone on the phone for attending and for your interest in WillScot. We'll look forward to following up with many of you here in the coming days and weeks and providing another update after we conclude the first quarter. Thanks very much.

Operator (participant)

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's conference. You may now disconnect.