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Amerco (UHAL -0.01%)
Q1Â 2020 Earnings Call
Aug 8, 2019, 11:00 a.m. ET
Contents:
- Prepared Remarks
- Questions and Answers
- Call Participants
Prepared Remarks:
Operator
Good morning, and welcome to the AMERCO First Quarter Fiscal 2019 Investor Call and Webcast. [Operator instructions] And the correct title is the AMERCO First Quarter Fiscal 2020 Investor Call and Webcast.
I would like to now turn the conference over to Mr. Sebastien Reyes. Please go ahead, sir.
Sebastien Reyes -- Director of Investor Relations
Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. Welcome to the AMERCO first quarter fiscal 2020 investor call. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that certain of the statements during this call, including without limitation, statements regarding revenue, expenses, income and general growth of our business, may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended.
Forward-looking statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties, some of which cannot be predicted or quantified. Certain factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. For a discussion of the risks and uncertainties that may affect AMERCO's business and future operating results, please refer to Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2019, which is on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
I'll now turn the call over to Jason Berg, Chief Financial Officer of AMERCO.
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
Thanks, Sebastien. Speaking you -- to you today from Phoenix, Arizona. After a few minutes of prepared remarks, we'll open it up for question-and-answer, like usual.
Yesterday, we reported first quarter earnings of $6.76 a share, compared to $6.53 a share for the same period in fiscal 2019. Equipment rental revenues increased just over 4% at approximately $32 million. We saw an overall improvement in the number of transactions along with revenue per transaction. Revenues from both the one-way and in-town markets increased, and these trends were similar for both truck and trailer. Compared to the end of the quarter last year, we had a modest increase in the number of independent dealers on our network, along with an increase of approximately 80 company-owned locations.
U-Move revenue growth has continued into July. Capital expenditures on new rental trucks and trailers were $561 million this quarter compared to $440 million. Our truck purchase schedule is skewed heavier to the first half of the fiscal year. Proceeds from the sale of retired equipment decreased by nearly $29 million to $158 million in fiscal 2020. The decline in proceeds was a result of the pace of sales in the first quarter of last year, being higher than usual, rather than they're being any weakness in the resale market this year.
In fact, gains on the disposal of rental equipment were flat for the quarter, while the number of units sold decreased by a few thousand. The sales process is giving us an indication that we've made some progress on the equipment damage issues that we've mentioned here over the last several years.
Storage revenues were up $12 million or 14%. Average monthly occupancy throughout the first quarter of this year for the entire portfolio was 68%. To give you a sense of same-store occupancy performance, on this call last year, I reported to you that locations opened at least three years had average occupancy of just over 87%. Well, looking at those same locations this year, they are up to 88.5%, about a 0.5% improvement. A large portion of the revenue gain came from the growth in occupied rooms. The average number of occupied rooms during the first quarter of this year increased 40,100 rooms compared to the same time last year.
If you look at just the end of June instead of the three month average, the increase came in at just over 43,000, about a 70% improvement in the pace of net movement compared to last year at this time. And we've continued to accelerate this pace now into July.
Our real estate related capex for the first quarter of this year was $218 million, that's just about where it was last year at this time. However, within those figures there has been some reallocation. The portion attributable to acquisitions has declined, while the amount coming from construction and improvement has increased. Over the last 12 months, we've added 5,780,000 net rentable square feet to the portfolio, about 1.9 million of that came on here during the first quarter. Operating earnings in the moving and storage segment increased to $1.5 million to $202 million for the quarter.
Wanted to touch on a couple of items here. First, depreciation expense on the rental fleet was up $8 million, while depreciation on all other assets largely storage-related assets increased by about $6 million. Gains on the sale of rental equipment were flat, and we did recognize a $1.6 million gain on the disposal of real estate. This was due to the condemnation of a portion of one of our properties out in Texas. Personnel cost, property insurance expense, property taxes and freight expense, the four of the larger expenses that generated increases in the quarter. These expenses in aggregate were up approximately $31 million.
Of note, we did see some relatively small decreases in fleet maintenance expense for the quarter. As of June 30, cash and availability from existing loan facilities that are moving into storage segment totaled $576 million.
One last comment before we go to questions. As of April 1 of this year, we adopted -- we were forced to adopt a new accounting standard for leases. The adoption resulted in nearly $1 billion of net property, plant and equipment being reclassed to a new balance sheet item called, right-of-use assets financing. As of June 30, 2019, the balance of this new line item includes, rental equipment that we purchased under financing liability leases or what I would call capital lease. Operating leases, primarily locations that we're leasing the ground or moving centers, are included now in right-of-use assets operating.
In our earnings release, we've included a non-GAAP table in the last page to help compare our PP&E from this year to previous years. I would certainly welcome any feedback from our investors on how to improve this disclosure related to the new standard. While this caused the geography of our balance sheet to change, there was no economic impact to our business from the adoption of this new accounting standard.
With that, I would like to hand the call back to, Nancy, our operator to begin the question-and-answer portion of this call.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Ian Gilson from Zacks Investment Research. Please go ahead.
Ian Gilson -- Zacks Investment Research -- Analyst
All right, thank you. Jason, revenue was up 4.5% -- revenue was up 3% [Phonetic]. So when we sort of squeeze the margins somewhere, and this is basically been happening over the past year results. When can we see a reversal basically of that trend?
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
Great, great point, Ian. We're working very hard right now to reverse that trend. On the equipment side, I would say that the first half of this year, we're increasing the fleet, from a timing perspective, this going to happen more in the first half. And we're going to need to try to catch up to the fleet growth here on the transaction side, and that didn't happen in the first quarter. So utilization was down just a little bit.
On the storage side, much of the focus in the organization has been on filling storage rooms. And I would say that in the first quarter we -- we had quite a bit of success in doing that. And from what I've seen in July, we've increased that pace even faster. So our issue right now is utilization of the assets that we've invested. And the financial performance is reflecting the fact that we're not fully utilized. I don't have a specific time, what I can tell you, in two years it's all going to be fixed, some of it will continue to depend upon the pace of reinvestment. But I think it is important to understand that there is continued demand for renting the equipment, and we're seeing a good pace of filling these rooms that we're building. So at some point, we're going to start seeing the payback. On the storage side, I think we're starting to turn the corner there.
Ian Gilson -- Zacks Investment Research -- Analyst
Okay. On the depreciation line, 2018 it was $126 million -- 2019, $126 million, and then this year, $141 million. Basically you said what we have a $8 million?
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
The equipment went up $8 million for the quarter compared to last year at this time. And everything else, which is largely buildings, improvements and the equipment that we put in the building is up about $6 million in the quarter.
Ian Gilson -- Zacks Investment Research -- Analyst
And should that stabilize looking forward?
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
We're going to see depreciation continue to climb this year with the amount of box trucks that we're buying. In particular, we're buying a lot of the 26-foot truck, which is our most expensive truck, that's front loaded to -- at the first half of this year. Our dynamic depreciation on the fleet, we take the largest depreciation charges in the first year. So we're going to see a depreciation on the fleet continue to increase throughout the year. And I think as we put more of these real estate asset online and we build out of them, we're going to see that continue to climb also side. I don't think we're going to see that number come down here in the near future.
Ian Gilson -- Zacks Investment Research -- Analyst
So, what I'm hearing you say basically, you are going to continue to emphasize fleet per share [Phonetic] as compared to the fleet leasing?
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
To us, it's one of the same. However, which is to buy it. But I'll say, fleet acquisition.
Ian Gilson -- Zacks Investment Research -- Analyst
Okay. And have the new accounting regulation changed your perspective on how to invest?
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
No, we haven't seen our lenders react in the changes to how they want to finance the equipment. So, most of what we're doing right now is capital leases. Those were on balance sheet before for us. So again, I haven't seen anything where there has been an economic impact to us from that standard. It's just been a whole lot of work for the accounting.
Ian Gilson -- Zacks Investment Research -- Analyst
Okay, great. Thank you very much.
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
You're welcome.
Operator
And our next question comes from Jamie Wilen from Wilen Management. Please go ahead.
Jamie Wilen -- Wilen Management -- Analyst
Hey Jason, in the last call, Joe talked about his most important figure and looking at truck rental was -- it was the utilization rate. Obviously, that's down a little bit, but the utilization rate is a very simple number, the number of trucks out there and how many rentals we have. My question is, why don't we reduce that denominator? Why don't we reduce -- why are we greatly expanding our truck fleet so much? I love to see U-Haul trucks on the road, but I really not in favor, when I go past the dealerships in 25 trucks sitting there. Why don't we try to optimize this truck fleet as opposed to maximize it, so we can optimize the utilization rate?
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
Well, our whole goal here is try to optimize that. So I would hope that when you see the 25 trucks, that's on a Wednesday, and not on a weekend, but I completely get your point. Where we're at today is, our teams -- these opportunities that with additional fleet when we get it distributed to the right markets, where we think it's going to be needed, I think we'll see utilization climb. Now, we saw that last year. We slowed purchase a little bit, utilization improved. This year, we've been wanted to go back and hit the fleet a little bit. We have a little bit of extra purchases this year in our largest truck, because Ford is getting ready to change over the model, and they have a new engine.
And for a whole number of reasons, including our ability to sufficiently repair those units in the future, we're probably buying a little bit heavier than what we normally would buy right now. But then it's going to give us the flexibility in the future to do the kind of pivoting that you're talking about, that if we wanted to the -- the quickest way for us to adjust fleet size is to sale, not necessarily through on the acquisition side. You want a certain amount of new trucks coming in. At our current size, gross fleet spend a year is probably going to be somewhere around $1 billion, in order to maintain a size of fleet this much. And from what we can tell, we still think that we're going to be able to get to that optimization point with this many truck.
Jamie Wilen -- Wilen Management -- Analyst
Would you believe your fleet expenditures next year to be larger, equivalent to or smaller than what you're going to do this year?
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
I think it will be less next year because I don't think we're going to have this little bit of displacement from the 26-foot truck.
Jamie Wilen -- Wilen Management -- Analyst
Okay. And then as you look out on the self-storage side, when do you reach that inflection point where you say, well, let's slow down our capital expenditures and just run with what we have to improve? Again, the utilization rate of the self-storage operation as well as profitability, because as you know, the new ones we open don't really add to income there. They detract for a couple of years.
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
Yes. And I think we're at that point, and it is probably not the easiest to see. But in the first quarter, we spent $218 million on acquisitions in construction, which is what we spent last year. But in that, the acquisition piece of that was down from $124 million to $73 million. So we bought fewer properties and we've been trending down that way. And we've been spending more on trying to complete the project that we have, so that we can start renting them and getting some cash flow out of them. So there has been a bit of a -- I'll use the word again, a bit of a pivot to completing what we have and not bringing in new properties for that.
Jamie Wilen -- Wilen Management -- Analyst
So as you look out to next year, would you expect your capital expenditures on self-storage to be lower than what it's going to be this year?
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
No. I think, if anything, maybe we have another year of high construction costs, which might fill in the gap for decreased acquisitions. But I view that as a good thing. We have this large group of less than productive assets on the balance sheet right now that that you're talking about, I've been talking about. And the sooner we can get those projects built out and finished, and our guys renting them, guys and gals renting them, the better off we're going to be. So, on the acquisition side, that's kind of an opportunistic, but I think we're a little bit more focused right now on finishing what we have versus finding a whole bunch of new stuff.
Jamie Wilen -- Wilen Management -- Analyst
Okay. The existing self-storage units you mentioned, the three-year figure, they've gone from 87% to 88.5% occupancy rates. How are the rates on a per square foot that we are renting those facilities for?
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
There is a lot going on.
Jamie Wilen -- Wilen Management -- Analyst
How they changed?
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
Well, there is a lot going on in the quarter. So if I try to dig down into a same-store rate to get a health, opposed to what the health is on the same-store rate, I think we're probably up 1% or 1.5% on rate. Overall for the quarter, I think if you were to do the math, it would look like, our average revenue per unit decreased a bit. And I think, we used our promotional special or one-month free storage with the rental of a truck, what was a little more per prevail in this quarter versus the first quarter of last year was probably affected the revenue per storage unit, a little bit there. But otherwise, the underlying health of the storage rates has been fairly resilient for us, and we're seeing smaller increases, whereas we used to see maybe a 3% increase for the year. It's less than that, but we're still seeing some increases. And our asking rent for people who are moving in today, are above where we're at before, whereas some people are getting all of the revenue increases from the in-place customers, we're still seeing some health at the asking rent.
Jamie Wilen -- Wilen Management -- Analyst
Okay. And then the new facilities, your leasing is going -- you mentioned July was a bit of an accelerated rate. How's the household market out there? How much additional discounting do you have to do to increase those occupancy rates?
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
For us, what we found is, it's our people paying attention to the product. And the increased utilization of the discount from the truck rental, I think, is a reflection of just us paying a little bit more attention, where we have a captive customer, who is utilizing another one of our products, and we should be offering them storage in the process. And I think that that focus now has resulted in us having more successful filling rooms faster. So I think that's a big part of what's happening here.
Jamie Wilen -- Wilen Management -- Analyst
Okay. And lastly on self-storage. In the last year, how many of your units that were relatively immature, have now crossed over to where they are positive cash flowing as opposed to negative?
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
Great question. I don't have the number of units. I would say, in previous calls, and I think, I discussed on the Analyst Meeting last year, we've been tracking the cash flow profitability of locations over the last 18 quarters, and that number continues on a year-over-year basis to improve. So the -- on those, say, 395 properties that we've been tracking here over the last four years, I think there has been about a $5.5 million improvement in NOI quarter-over-quarter here. So I think, I'm looking at them in quarterly cohorts, and I think we picked up two or three more quarters that turn -- of acquisitions that turn profitable or turn positive.
Jamie Wilen -- Wilen Management -- Analyst
Okay. And has Joe made any progress on changing the corporate name from AMERCO to the more well-known U-Haul?
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
I think he is out filling rooms right now, and that's little bit down the list.
Jamie Wilen -- Wilen Management -- Analyst
Okay. All right, thank you, Jason. Appreciate it.
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
Thanks, Jamie.
Operator
The next question comes from George Godfrey from CL King. Please go ahead.
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
Hi, George. Are you there?
Operator
The next question comes from George Godfrey from CL King. Please go ahead.
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
Are you on mute George?
George Godfrey -- CL King -- Analyst
I can now, yeah. Can you hear me now?
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
Yes.
George Godfrey -- CL King -- Analyst
Okay, sorry about that. I was on speakerphone, but usually I don't have that issue. Jason, I heard everything you said about the investments in the fleet in the rooms, the storage facilities. If I look at net capex for FY17 and '18 actually, the net capex was down due to strong proceeds from the sale of property equipment. But if I look at '19, the year that we just completed, net capex was up 90%, and listening to your comments and looking at Q1, the net capex being up again another 90% in Q1. You're expecting a real -- a large net capex for 2020 relative to what we saw in the prior years coming into '19 as what I'm taking away?
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, it's going to slow down over the next three quarters. This going to be the heaviest that we see. But yeah, it's still going to be heavy.
George Godfrey -- CL King -- Analyst
Okay. And then the piece of rooms being filled up, do you see the occupancy rate being at an inflection point here 68.4% in Q1? Or do you think that that still trends down as you're bringing on the square footage?
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
I look so little at that overall occupancy rate because it's affected by how good of a job we're doing by adding rooms into the portfolio, and we've been doing a better job at adding rooms. I'll say that the spread between the percentage of rooms occupied and the percentage change in the rooms available, those two numbers have been coming together. So I think that's a good point. I don't think we're quite at that inflection point yet, because we're -- it's easier to add rooms than it is to fill rooms. And we done a good job of adding the rooms. But those two numbers are coming together. And, whereas we were plus 40,000 here at the end of June. I think we got that number closer to plus 50,000 here at the end of July. So our team is really hard at that. And I don't think we're quite there yet, George. But I think we're getting closer.
George Godfrey -- CL King -- Analyst
And you said you're having more success at filling up those rooms. Is there something that change in the market that is leading to that greater success in filling up the rooms?
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
No, it's the same thing that's usually the issue for us. On a performance basis, its how much we focused on it? And how -- when we decided to actually get our act together and go at it. And this number, Joe has led the charge on focusing on filling the storage room. And so the organization as a whole, has put most of their attention on that. So you may see that in other areas. But right now, the storage program is certainly benefiting from that focus, but I don't think that that there is anything in the storage market, if anything, the storage market continues to be more, more challenging. This is just more of a reflection of when we put our minds to something what can we accomplish.
George Godfrey -- CL King -- Analyst
Got it. And my last question, I'm looking at the slide presentation from last year's Investor Day. And I know the next one were coming up here in a couple of weeks. Specifically the pipeline of self-storage, and it looks like it's about 11.8 million in square footage, the pipeline from a year ago. Do you happen to know what that is approximately, as we sit here today?
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
Yes, the projects that we have active right now that we're working on is about 10.9 million square feet. And then we have another group of projects that aren't as far along in the permitting or land use process. But I can give you a number, it's about a little over 3 million, 3.25 million square feet. But I can't give you a date as that's much more squishy as far as when we'll be able to start those projects. But the big decrease has been, I don't recall the specifics on that slide, but the pipeline of projects in escrow, that we're looking to buy that number come way down.
George Godfrey -- CL King -- Analyst
Okay. So that's what I was going to follow -- so the 10.9 million square feet that you just quoted there is that comparable to the under contract figure that you had in your slide from a year ago 6 million?
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
I think the under contract is at the last column on this slide.
George Godfrey -- CL King -- Analyst
Yes.
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
Those are -- that number is probably closer to like 1.5 million square feet now.
George Godfrey -- CL King -- Analyst
Okay. So the pipeline in under contract figures from a year ago of both come down when you -- got it.
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
We closed on most of the under contract, and that would have shifted up into the other numbers I just gave you. And then new stuff that that we haven't bought yet, but under contract is, what I just talked.
George Godfrey -- CL King -- Analyst
Great. Thank you, Jason. Thanks for taking my questions.
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
You're welcome.
Operator
The next question comes from Craig Inman from Artisan Partners. Please go ahead.
Craig Inman -- Artisan Partners -- Analyst
Hey Jason, you there?
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
Good morning, Craig.
Craig Inman -- Artisan Partners -- Analyst
Hey, good morning. I was curious about leverage and with the capex build, and the truck cycle being a little heavier. How do you feel about balance sheet flexibility and specifically should economic conditions change? What kind of -- how do you ensure, we have enough liquidity to move through a down cycle doing the capex builds on the self-storage?
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
Sure. Well, we have a prioritization process on the storage side, where conversion project are at the top of the list, because those are the easiest and the cheapest complete and get up and running. And then we are little more selective on which ground-up projects we chose to start, because those take much longer or heavier from a capex perspective. And we usually have a little bit -- well, quite a bit less invested in just the land. So it's a little bit easier to put those up on the shelf, and get to them a little bit of both. But if something were to happen, we would immediately hit the prioritization thing and probably start benching a bunch of the ground-ups. And then we try to do our conversions in phases, so there is a point where we could stop and we just try to fill what we have, and not spend any more money yet, on those -- and to other more self-sufficient.
On the equipment side, we've certainly put ourselves in a position with the spending that we've done in the fleet that we could go for a while without spending a whole lot on box truck. There is a certain amount of rotation that we need to do on the pickups and cargo vans each year. But that's fairly capital self supportive, it's not a huge working capital spend for us. So -- and from a liquidity perspective, we've been very fortunate to have an excellent and broad lending group, who buy into our business plan, and have been very receptive to lending on our assets. So we've tried to bring back some liquidity from assets that we purchased that that aren't stabilized yet, but are certainly on their way to stabilization. And we've had good success with terms and rate on bringing in some cash in the interim on those.
Craig Inman -- Artisan Partners -- Analyst
Yes. That makes sense. What about depreciation? I can get kind of closer to this figure, but I'm curious if you could talk about it. Depreciation as a percentage of the figure that's tied to real estate. How would you think about the number?
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
I guess, I haven't thought of that number in that relationship before. So I'd have to think about that and maybe get back to you. I haven't really looked at that.
Craig Inman -- Artisan Partners -- Analyst
Okay. And then Rideout [Phonetic] called out, I know their trucks are different weakness in the used market, in terms of pricing. Are you guys seeing any of that in the vans, trucks or even in the boxcars?
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
On the box trucks, no, not so much. I mean, we've done some things where we're starting the equipment a little bit differently. So we probably have -- the gains on the box truck sales have decreased a bit, but that's such a small piece of the overall sales picture. Our big things is the pickups and the cargo vans, and that market is still been strong.
Craig Inman -- Artisan Partners -- Analyst
Okay. And 1% change in utilization still about, what is it $5 million in revenue for the self-storage?
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
I think we're at like $5.3 million, right now.
Craig Inman -- Artisan Partners -- Analyst
Okay. Okay, that's all I have right now.
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Craig.
Operator
This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks.
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
Thanks, Nancy, First, I'd like to thank everyone for participating in this call. Thank you. And I want to remind you that on August 22, here in a couple of weeks, as George said, we have a few important meetings for shareholders. So at 9:00 AM, Arizona Time on the 22nd, we're going to start off with our Annual Shareholder Meeting. Once again, this is going to be a live video feed broadcast over the Internet, where everyone can participate in this meeting. And then about two hours after that, at 11 o'clock Arizona Time, we're going to do our Virtual Analyst and Investor Meeting.
Joe Shoen, our CEO is going to be moderating both of these meetings. And we're going to have some key executives for some brief presentations and then questions and answers. So, please feel free to start submitting your questions to Sebastien ahead of time. Last year, we had great participation from those who submitted their questions earlier. I think we had more questions than we could even get to. And this does allow us to get to as many of the questions as possible, and it gives us the chance to prepare better answers for you. So, I look forward to speaking to you all in a few weeks. Thank you very much.
Operator
[Operator Closing Remarks]
Duration: 32 minutes
Call participants:
Sebastien Reyes -- Director of Investor Relations
Jason A. Berg -- Chief Financial Officer
Ian Gilson -- Zacks Investment Research -- Analyst
Jamie Wilen -- Wilen Management -- Analyst
George Godfrey -- CL King -- Analyst
Craig Inman -- Artisan Partners -- Analyst
