Image source: The Motley Fool.
Trinity Industries Inc (TRN 1.39%)
Q2Â 2020 Earnings Call
Jul 23, 2020, 11:00 a.m. ET
Contents:
- Prepared Remarks
- Questions and Answers
- Call Participants
Prepared Remarks:
Operator
Welcome to the second quarter results conference call. [Operator Instructions] Before we get started, let me remind you that today's conference call contains forward-looking statements as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and include statements as to estimates, exceptions, intentions and predictions of future financial performance. Statements that are not historical facts are forward-looking. Participants are directed to Trinity's Form 10-K and other SEC filings for a description of the certain of business issues and risks, a change in any of which could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements.
I would now like to turn it over to Jessica Greiner, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Jessica L. Greiner -- Vice President, Investor Relations And Communications
Thank you, Bree, and good morning, everyone. I'm Jessica Greiner, Vice President of Investor Relations and Communications for Trinity. We appreciate you joining us for the company's second quarter 2020 financial results conference call. Our prepared remarks will include comments from both Trinity's Chief Executive Officer and President, Jean Savage; and Eric Marchetto, the company's Chief Financial Officer. We will hold a Q&A session following the prepared remarks from our leaders. During the call today, we will refer to a few slides highlighting key points of discussions. The supplemental materials are accessible on our IR website at www.trin.net. These slides can be found under the Events and Presentations portion of the site along with the second quarter earnings call event link.
It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Jean.
E. Jean Savage -- Chief Executive Officer And President
Well, thank you, Jessica, and good morning, everyone. The pandemic and economic events of the second quarter created a very challenging operating environment for Trinity. Today, I'd like to share with you Trinity's responses to these challenges and our longer-term plans to become a returns-focused company. In these difficult times, Trinity's leadership and employees remain focused on taking the right actions now to best position the company for future success. Our first priority remains the health and safety of our people, including the protocols we implemented to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 in our production facilities and offices, in alignment with CDC and WHO guidance. I want to thank the people of Trinity for their hard work and continued focus on safety.
Together, we are ensuring Trinity's high-quality railcars continue to deliver essential goods across North America and the world. We experienced weak railcar demand in the second quarter due to the economic ramifications of the pandemic and the major energy price and demand decline earlier in the year. The major decline in crude oil prices led to a number of bankruptcies for frac sand providers in the second quarter. As a result, Trinity reduced the carrying value of our small cube covered hopper fleet in our lease portfolio. Eric will discuss more details about resulting actions we have taken in his prepared remarks.
While railcar loadings have improved somewhat in recent weeks, increasing COVID-19 cases in the U.S. potentially threaten the resurgent economic and rail market activity. We are closely monitoring our supply chain and engaging with our customers to keep our production plans and lease fleet operations aligned with the demand for railcars and related services. Industry metrics reports that approximately 32% of the North American railcar fleet is underutilized. We expect the pricing environment for rail equipment, new and existing, to remain pressured as long as this number is elevated. In this type of environment, our commercial focus is to maintain the utilization of our lease fleet and then meet demand for newly manufactured railcars as appropriate for our customers. Recently, railcar inquiries from strategic buyers have increased relative to last quarter, and I expect a number of these opportunities will convert to orders or lease contracts soon.
I am proud of recent transactions in which we leveraged the full breadth of our platform. In one case, we provided a strategic customer existing railcars within our lease portfolio, modification services and new rail equipment in one transaction. This carefully crafted solution created a differentiated experience that met the customers' business needs and will create a long-term value for our shareholders. The best near-term opportunity for demand improvement for new and existing equipment, we believe, will be in the agricultural market. Not only has agricultural traffic experienced relatively fewer headwinds during the pandemic, but a significant portion of the existing covered hopper fleet for grain is reaching the end of its useful life. We also see potentially large replacement needs in the box car and aggregate open hopper and gondola fleet in the coming years.
Managing through a cyclical downturn is very challenging. Our leasing operations delivered a solid second quarter, given the environment. Declines in revenue from lease rate and utilization pressure were offset by effective cost management, among other items. Our lease operations team has continued to experience high levels of customer satisfaction as we've invested in the state-of-the-art tools and technology. These tools are an important element of our focus on customer experience as well as driving operating efficiencies while maintaining a safe railcar fleet. In our products group, I also commend our plant leadership and employees for their continued focus on safely leading production requirements. During the second quarter, Trinity delivered just under 3,000 railcars and reported a 2% margin in the rail products segment. Volumes fell quicker than our ability to reduce costs as we manage the impacts of the coronavirus. The impact of having higher risk and potentially exposed employees shelter in place did have an impact on our ability to align some of the cost to the volumes. Pricing was more aggressive also.
Since the beginning of the year, we reduced our manufacturing workforce by 35%, which has resulted in almost $40 million in overhead cost savings. Additional efforts are under way to align our cost structure with production levels for the rest of 2020 while we simultaneously work to move lower value-added fabrication to the supply base. This will allow us to reduce our cyclical risk by reducing the internal labor required through a cycle. For the remainder of my remarks, I want to focus on additional actions Trinity is taking to improve the performance of our platform going forward. Our focus on cash flow in the current environment, our optimization progress to accelerate the company's financial performance and our longer-term strategic planning to continue creating shareholder value. Trinity's unique rail platform, strong balance sheet and cash flow generation enable us to manage through the COVID-19 pandemic from a position of strength.
The scale of our leasing business and the long-term nature of the lease contract protect the company from short-term market disruptions and are critical to the relative stability. Right now, we are highly focused on managing the effects of the coronavirus to minimize the disruption of our business and maximize our cash flow. Our financial position is sustained by committed future lease payments of $2 billion, our products backlog of $1.3 billion, our solid liquidity and approximately $1.6 billion of unencumbered rail assets.
I'd also like to highlight our efforts to accelerate the company's longer-term financial performance through platform optimization, which has been a key focus for management and the Board in the last year. We are addressing optimization in all areas of our organization, including our operations and our balance sheet. Trinity's business leaders have made difficult people-related decisions in recent months. Organizationally, we have restructured the company from Trinity's former holding company model to a more effective and efficient operating model aligned around our customers and markets. When combined with our actions from the first quarter, the results of these efforts will yield a total annualized cost savings of $30 million in SG&A and cost of sales, which achieves the $25 million to $30 million target we set at the beginning of 2020.
Slide four of the supplemental materials provide a few details of our cost activities. As we work through the process flows for various production and service functions with the implementation of our new organizational models, we are establishing additional structural savings goals that will be part of our near-term focus. The management teams are reviewing aspects of our business operations, including our supply chain costs, idle facility carrying costs and various service fees. Looking specifically at our balance sheet optimization efforts, we delayed our plans to access the capital markets in the second quarter to allow the pandemic-related volatility around interest rate spreads to slow. Subsequent to quarter end, we are pleased to complete the upsizing of TRL2017 with an additional $225 million of promissory notes, which bear interest at LIBOR plus 1.5%.
We also maintained our dividend during the second quarter. Highlighting our commitment to shareholder returns as part of our capital allocation strategy and our confidence in the strong cash flow generation capability of our platform. In addition to the shorter-term initiatives to accelerate our financial performance, we are actively engaged in our longer-term strategic planning process. We are evaluating both further platform optimization initiatives as well as growth opportunities. These efforts are aimed at: improving the performance of our lease fleet, reducing the cyclicality of our platform of businesses, continuing our operational improvements and evaluating growth into the rail transportation services space. We believe Trinity's position as a provider, servicer and owner of railcar assets ideally position us to engage with our customers on innovative products, services and solutions that increase the attractiveness of moving freight by rail.
Our analysis is ongoing, and we look toward sharing the results and decisions from this work at Trinity's Investor Day in the near future. We aim to be the premier provider of rail products and services and are motivated to drive freight on to the North American rail network. We see Trinity's purpose as moving goods and commodities by rail for the good of all an integral part of our commitment to sustainability. We have a strong financial position to weather the current economic storm and be opportunistic when attractive value propositions arise. Trinity's rail platform is built to deliver, to deliver essential goods to society, deliver innovative solutions and high-quality products to our customers and deliver high-quality earnings and returns to shareholders through the railcar cycle.
I'll now turn the call over to Eric to discuss specific financial details for the quarter.
Eric R. Marchetto -- Senior Vice President And Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, Jean, and good morning, everyone. Trinity's performance in the second quarter reflects the steps we are taking to create liquidity in the near term while improving our returns through disciplined capital allocation. We are not providing specific financial guidance given current uncertainty, but we believe the company will continue to generate significant cash flow due to the resiliency of our platform of businesses and their inherent financial synergies. Referring to page five of the supplemental material, we are focused on maximizing the cash flow of the businesses and maintaining a strong level of liquidity. As of the end of the second quarter, the company had liquidity of nearly $710 million.
Our liquidity position is further enhanced \ by the recent $225 million financing noted in our press release. We continue to expect over $300 million of cash refunds of prior year tax \ losses by year-end, resulting from tax provisions in the CARES Act. Our June 30 balance sheet also reflects our expectation for an additional $150 million of cash tax refunds to be received in 2021 associated with our 2020 tax year, demonstrating the value-enhancing tax attributes of our platform. Furthermore, Trinity has unencumbered assets of approximately $1.6 billion as dry powder, which could be available for monetization through additional leverage or secondary market transactions. We believe our balance sheet and financial strength enable Trinity to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic and capitalize on opportunities that may emerge for value creation.
We work diligently to maintain a diversified portfolio of railcars, manage the credit profile of our customers and stagger our portfolio expirations to maximize risk-adjusted returns. On our last call, we referenced challenges faced by many of our frac sand customers as a result of the one-two punch from the structural changes within the frac sand supply chain and the drastic fall of energy prices, including increased pressure related to the COVID-19 pandemic. We have been closely monitoring the structural changes in the frac sand market and working aggressively with our customers as appropriate to restructure lease arrangements, to maintain associated cash flows and keep these assets utilized. Ultimately, in the second quarter, four of Trinity's frac sand customers filed for bankruptcy, while others remain financially vulnerable, changing the expected recoverability of cash flows from the lease contracts for this railcar type.
As a result, these filings necessitated the company estimate the fair value of these railcars. Our analysis concluded with a $369 million pre-tax noncash charge against the small cube covered hopper fleet within Trinity's railcar portfolio, which reflects our estimates of the fair value of the assets based on the cash flows that have been stressed by continued pressure on the lease contracts and the future salvage value of the assets. This impairments charge does not impact does not have an impact on our liquidity position, nor does it affect our compliance with the debt covenants within our rail securitizations. A portion of the impairment charge affected railcars in our partially owned portfolios, and thus has been apportioned to the noncontrolling interest on our balance sheet. Following the impairment charge, our small cube covered hopper fleet represents 3% of the net book value of our owned and partially owned portfolio.
During the second quarter, we sold a portfolio of railcars to one of our RIV partners. The total proceeds of the portfolio were $74 million with a gain of 6%. These high-quality, lower-yielding assets were a good risk-adjusted fit for our partner's portfolio. This allowed for a need to deploy capital to higher-yielding investments while we continue to earn fee income by managing these assets. This sale highlights our ability to leverage our platform, to create mutually beneficial transactions for ourselves and our partners, as well as our renewed focus on a disciplined capital allocation framework to drive long-term value creation. As we evaluate the future growth of our lease fleet, we are highly focused on the returns of the portfolio as part of our plan to drive the performance of the company to a mid-teens pre-tax ROE. We believe we are taking the necessary actions to position the company for accelerated performance as the market recovers, with heightened focus on the levers within our control.
Turning to page six of the supplemental materials. In lieu of guidance last quarter, we presented base case and stress case scenarios as guideposts that managers would use in determining our actions and capital allocation considerations. While the market uncertainty continues to cloud our ability to predict the timing of a rail recovery, our actions and our performance from the second quarter have improved upon some of the assumptions in the scenarios we provided. The 2020 production plan is essentially sold with approximately 41% of our backlog value to be delivered by year-end. Given the North American railcar loading trends and our success in renewing railcars in the quarter, we expect our lease fleet utilization will remain above 90% in a downside case. Our prior stress assumption for limited railcar sales would also improve following the small portfolio sale in the second quarter.
Furthermore, we have additional line of sight on potential smaller railcar portfolio sales in the balance of the year. Our cost initiatives will also yield savings, achieving our target set for the year with more actions to come. Of the $70 million in annualized savings actions year-to-date that Jean mentioned, approximately $30 million is structural and will result in decreases in SG&A and other overhead-related items in the future. Regarding capital allocation, our net investment in lease fleet will now likely fall between $350 million and $450 million as a result of RIV and secondary market activity. We've also deferred some manufacturing capex projects. However, we do still plan to complete the expansion project for our new maintenance facility in Iowa.
Our expectations for the year now include approximately $90 million to $100 million of manufacturing capex for the year. We did not repurchase any shares during the quarter in order to preserve our liquidity and bolster our financial position, but this tool is available as we continue to optimize our balance sheet. In May, the company announced our 225th consecutive dividend, maintaining the dividend at $0.19 per share for an annualized yield of approximately 3.5% as of the close of market yesterday.
Trinity is in the middle of a very exciting transformation. While combating the economic ramifications of the pandemic, we are putting the building blocks in place for the Trinity of tomorrow. We expect to share specific insights into our operational strategy and long-term performance expectations at an Investor Day in the weeks following our third quarter conference call. We will ask that you stay tuned for further details as we look forward to sharing these plans with you very soon. In closing, management is aligned in our expectation that the financial and commercial synergies of the rail platform enable both meaningful investment in the business and substantial return of capital to shareholders. We are demonstrating these results even in a sharp economic downturn. We believe our platform has the ability to generate positive cash flow even in down cycles, and we remain committed to investing in our railcar lease fleet through the cycle, with a focus on returns for the portfolio. As we manage through COVID-19 environment, we are committed to a prudent capital allocation strategy and strong liquidity to maintain our position of strength. Through it all, we believe TrinityRail's platform is built to deliver.
Operator, you can now take us in the Q&A.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
[Operator Instructions] And we'll go first to Steve Barger with KeyBanc Capital.
Steve Barger -- KeyBanc Capital -- Analyst
Hey, good morning everybody.
Jessica L. Greiner -- Vice President, Investor Relations And Communications
Good morning.
Steve Barger -- KeyBanc Capital -- Analyst
So first, I just want a big picture question. One of your leasing competitors talked about how just years of strong deliveries have resulted in overbuild that's going to take a while to unwind by building below replacement. So first, can you tell us how you think about that, both in the context of your position as a leading OEM and then from your perspective as a lessor?
E. Jean Savage -- Chief Executive Officer And President
This is Jean. I'll go ahead and start, Steve. Thanks for the questions. When you look at it, it's really going to vary by the different markets that you're looking at and different car types that go into those. So on some of the car types, we're already seeing a pickup in momentum there. Agriculture is one of those, flat cars and also vehicular flat and box cars are already seeing the upswing. And you don't have as much of the newer fleet in there or oversupplied maybe to absorb. If you look at some of the harder-hit areas, say energy right now, they will be absorbed. It may be a little bit slower for that absorption to happen. But over time, you'll see some of those cars start to age out and need replacement or you'll see them go out because of a HM-251 or other requirements to upgrade that car type.
Steve Barger -- KeyBanc Capital -- Analyst
Right. And so, I guess, to that point about the various car types, you mentioned in your prepared remarks that you have inquiries that you expect to convert to orders or lease contracts. Can you talk about the size of any of that in terms of units?
E. Jean Savage -- Chief Executive Officer And President
So I can't talk about the size, but I will tell you, they are substantive, well above what we had in the last quarter.
Steve Barger -- KeyBanc Capital -- Analyst
Okay. And so and you said that slots in the back half are basically sold out. Is the 2Q run rate a reasonable way to think about production for the back half, just for our models?
E. Jean Savage -- Chief Executive Officer And President
So coming out of Q2, we are holding some people for the opportunities that are in front of us. If those do close shortly, we will have to start production in the third and fourth quarters to be able to meet the delivery time frame for those orders that are out there. And so I would say that if those don't come to fruition, we will have additional downsizing in the third and fourth quarter.
Eric R. Marchetto -- Senior Vice President And Chief Financial Officer
And Steve, this is Eric. I'd just add in my comments, I mentioned that 41% of our backlog value we expect to deliver by the end of the year. So that'll give you a little more insight on run rates.
Steve Barger -- KeyBanc Capital -- Analyst
Perfect. And just one more, and I'll get back in line. Just a similar question on revenue per car. Is the mix that you expect in the back half similar to what you saw in 2Q in terms of revenue per car?
Eric R. Marchetto -- Senior Vice President And Chief Financial Officer
Our mix is going to continue to change as it slows down. So I'm not sure it will be an exact 1-for-1 just as the mix, it will become a little less tank car weighted as we move on. So that will have a bit of impact on the ASP.
Steve Barger -- KeyBanc Capital -- Analyst
Perfect, thanks.
Eric R. Marchetto -- Senior Vice President And Chief Financial Officer
Thank you.
Operator
We will go next to Matt Elkott with Cowen.
Matt Elkott -- Cowen -- Analyst
Good morning. Thank you. Can you guys talk about your the manufacturing margin outlook in both the base case scenario and the stress case scenario? Just trying to gauge how much more operating manufacturing margin pressure we could see while we deal with this environment?
E. Jean Savage -- Chief Executive Officer And President
Sure, Matt. This is Jean. I'll take that one. So as we look at the year, as I just mentioned, with the deals that we're currently negotiating, we are holding on to some headcount to make sure that we could meet that production if necessary. If those do not happen, we have additional optimization or rationalization that we have to do. We also have some work to do, where we'll be taking out some of our higher-cost footprint. We're going to be reducing our manufacturing support functions and administrative overhead costs.
As you work through that, you're going to have a few bumps and bruises along the way in that transformation to get you to the point where you need to be long term. So I would expect that as we finalize those, you may have some pressure. But if we close those deals, you may have some tailwind coming in.
Matt Elkott -- Cowen -- Analyst
Okay. That's fair enough. And Jean, you mentioned potentially looking at some high-cost manufacturing footprint to rationalize or convert or get rid of. I think, historically, in the last several years, you guys have manufactured most of your cars in Mexico. Would first of all, how has the split between Mexico and the U.S. been this year during the pandemic? And would the facility that could be eliminated, would they be in Mexico or in the U.S.?
E. Jean Savage -- Chief Executive Officer And President
So when you look at it, we have manufacturing for new cars in both the U.S. and Mexico. And we see ourselves continuing to have both of those. One area that we have recently closed is our wheel shop that was here in the U.S. and outsourced that product. We're also looking at outsourcing some additional fabrications that are lower value for us that would give us, one, the ability not to have to have as many people to produce a car; and two, to look for some opportunities to reduce its overall cost. So that's the direction that we're heading.
Matt Elkott -- Cowen -- Analyst
Okay. And just one more follow-up on the uptick in orders question. I think you mentioned an uptick in inquiry as of late. Can you give us an idea on how much of that is financial buyers looking for cars with leases attached to deploy capital to? How much of it is shippers with underlying freight needs looking to lease cars or potentially shippers looking to buy cars that are now manufactured?
E. Jean Savage -- Chief Executive Officer And President
So I'm going to start and then let Eric jump in on this one. We're really seeing the opportunistic buyers come out. We're in a down cycle right now. Pricing is getting aggressive, and those who have some aging fleets that want to replace them or have some additional demand are coming out and looking for those opportunities. So that's where we're seeing it happen. And Eric, if you want to add to that?
Eric R. Marchetto -- Senior Vice President And Chief Financial Officer
Sure. Matt, when we're talking about converting inquiries to orders, we're not talking about portfolios of railcar leases. We're talking about users of the railcar equipment that have demand. And as we mentioned earlier, replacement is still a big driver. And I think that replacement demand will be a larger driver rather than growth demand over the next several quarters. And that's where we're seeing opportunities as users of rail equipment that have some discrete replacement opportunities that they're looking to take advantage of the current market.
Matt Elkott -- Cowen -- Analyst
That makes sense. Just a quick follow-up on the order question. I think you guys got 40% or just over 40% of the orders of the industry orders this quarter or in 2Q. That's slightly above meaningfully above what you've done in the last several quarters, where it seemed like you were getting less aggressive with orders. Is there any are we reading too much into this? Or is there any change of strategy? Are you willing to take more, 50 orders here, 50 orders there during the downturn? Or is it just an anomaly?
Eric R. Marchetto -- Senior Vice President And Chief Financial Officer
Yes, Matt. So those numbers just came out as we were preparing to kick off the call. So I haven't had a chance to look at a lot of them. When you look at when you're talking about quarter orders for the industry of 1,900 units, it's probably too small a number to really get a lot of trends from. I would say that the orders that we took in the quarter were a little more leasing weighted than we had been running. And they're more specialty railcar related. The nice thing about specialty railcars is they tend to have a little higher margin than some of the other railcars. So we're real happy with the level of orders that we took. The fact that it was 44% of the market is more of an outcome. I wouldn't say it was anything deliberate on our part in terms of that.
Matt Elkott -- Cowen -- Analyst
Great, thank you very much.
Operator
We'll go next to Gordon Johnson with GLJ Research.
James Bardowski -- GLJ Research -- Analyst
This is James Bardowski in for Gordon. Just had a question on your capital allocation. Now you had you guys didn't have any stock buybacks last quarter, for the first time in a while. Now I know that you have a lot of liquidity on hand, but your relative price-to-book valuation is now currently above your peers in the leasing group. So effectively, one of your targets has reached another target you guys had more internally, of course, is your leverage targets. I believe it was between 60% and 65% loan-to-value. So last quarter at 57.1%, it should be a bit higher with the $225 million facility you just closed, correct? So that said, you're now even closer to your 60% to 65% target. So question is, should we expect the lack of stock buyback to be the new normal? Or are you raising your leverage targets?
E. Jean Savage -- Chief Executive Officer And President
So I'm going to say that in the last quarter, the reason we weren't in the market actively buying was we had stated that we wanted to ensure that our liquidity and cash were good. We're still trying to see what was playing out with COVID-19 and what that meant for the market and for the future of what was going to happen. So that was the pause.
Eric mentioned in his script that we still have $90 million available to us for stock share repurchases. And that will go into our future thinking for the capital allocation.
Eric R. Marchetto -- Senior Vice President And Chief Financial Officer
Yes, James, I'd just add that the financing that we just did doesn't necessarily isn't necessarily just additive to leverage. Some of that will some of those proceeds will be used to pay down our revolver and our warehouse. But as Jean we look at from our capital allocation, we're going to still generate a significant amount of cash flow. And the share repurchases are one of the things that we'll look at in terms of what to do with that cash that we're going to generate.
James Bardowski -- GLJ Research -- Analyst
All right. Jean, Eric, that is very helpful. And I just have a real quick follow-up. I thought I saw you guys saw $70 million mentioned in the press release that you have in cost savings currently under way. Just quickly, how much of that is cyclical or variable versus fixed? And how is that allocated among the segments?
E. Jean Savage -- Chief Executive Officer And President
So James, one thing, if you look at slide four, it does talk about, executed year-to-date, we've got $58 million, total identified of $70 million. When you look at cyclical, it's showing $38 million executed and $40 million identified. The one thing that I want to draw your attention to is the fact that we are looking at outsourcing some of the lower-value fabrication items, which will also change some of that cyclical reduction to a more permanent status. So when you're asking for the percentages, I'm going to throw that to Eric. I've not looked at it that way, and I don't know that we have that now.
Eric R. Marchetto -- Senior Vice President And Chief Financial Officer
Yes, I think that's enough.
E. Jean Savage -- Chief Executive Officer And President
Yes. Thanks.
Operator
Justin Long with Stephens. Please go ahead.
Justin Long -- Stephens -- Analyst
Thanks and good morning. So I wanted to ask about the secondary railcar market and what you're seeing out there. How has that market progressed 2Q and I guess quarter-to-date as well? And maybe you could speak about both the level of activity and what you're seeing in terms of competition on any deals that are out there today?
E. Jean Savage -- Chief Executive Officer And President
Well, I'll start and let Eric jump in. So Justin, right now, the secondary market's still open. It's available. It's not as deep as it was last year, but the buyers are out there looking for some good deals. And we're also out there, and we could be out there as a buyer or a seller, depending on what we see available and how good the deals are. Eric, I don't know if you'd add?
Eric R. Marchetto -- Senior Vice President And Chief Financial Officer
I think that's got it covered. Justin, we it's not there's still deals. If there's a few participants that would have been participating in the last couple of years that maybe on the sideline. But for the most part, the market is still there, and you're able to get deals transacted either buying or selling.
Justin Long -- Stephens -- Analyst
Okay. Great. And then on the lease rate trends, I was wondering if you could comment on how you've seen lease rates progress here over the last few months? And I know it's going to vary significantly by car type, but just from a high level, would love to understand how much of a pullback we've seen? And as you think about the market going forward with the rail volumes getting a little bit better sequentially, do you think there's an opportunity for the lease rate environment to bottom at some point later this year? Or do you think it's going to take longer than that?
E. Jean Savage -- Chief Executive Officer And President
Okay. Justin, I'll start with that one. If you look at the lease rates, we have seen the market get more aggressive there. If you're comparing us with the LPI that others talk about, we've not nearly seen the reduction in rates that they have, but we are still seeing that headwind come in. We look at what's going on with new cars going into our fleets. We typically have a higher lease rate there. So even though we're seeing some headwinds, it's not been significant for us overall. As far as when we would see them going back up, we would hope for it to be very soon. But with COVID-19, we're really not sure what to expect on that. But you hit the right metric as car loadings continue to go up, we would expect to see the lease rates starting to rise.
Justin Long -- Stephens -- Analyst
Okay. Great. And last question, just quickly. Jean, it sounds like we're going to hear more about the strategic plan after the third quarter. But I did want to ask, just from a high level, if you could speak to your commitment to continue operating an integrated platform? Is that something that still has the support of management and the Board? Or is there any openness to evaluating strategic alternatives on that front?
E. Jean Savage -- Chief Executive Officer And President
Okay. Sure, well, Justin, I'll talk to that. So the Board and management are aligned on the platform that we are operating in. We believe we can bring the best value to the company and to our shareholders with our rail platform. Some of the benefits of that is the cost-advantaged railcar equipment sourcing, tax-advantaged lease fleet investments, offsetting manufacturing taxable income and then the lower relative admin cost.
And then commercially, it gives us direct engagements with the customers over multiple touch points. We get actionable rail intelligence through this and valuable sales channels. So with all of that said, our move forward is looking at the platform in total. But as always, as a Board and as a company, when new things arrive, we'll take a look and see if we still have the right perspective or if we need to reevaluate.
Justin Long -- Stephens -- Analyst
Okay, great. I appreciate the time.
Operator
Thank and We'll go next to Allison Poliniak with Wells Fargo.
Allison Poliniak -- Wells Fargo -- Analyst
Hi guys, good morning.
Jessica L. Greiner -- Vice President, Investor Relations And Communications
Good morning.
Allison Poliniak -- Wells Fargo -- Analyst
I want to go first to the rail products profitability, just go back to that question to make sure I understand it. I guess two pieces to it. One, it does sound like you're hanging on to some incremental capacity based on sort of the order activity you're seeing in the market. I guess with that, could we assume maybe some level of increased pressure into Q3, depending on timing of those orders? And I guess how quick would the conversion rate be from sort of orders to production? And the second part of that profitability question will be around COVID. I think you mentioned some costs that sound like they could be more one quarter in nature hopefully, assuming we're getting out of this. Was that impactful or I would say material to the quarter in terms of the headwind?
E. Jean Savage -- Chief Executive Officer And President
I'll start with the COVID and then move on, Allison. So for the COVID-19, my estimates are between $4 million to $6 million impact in operations for the quarter. And that was related to not only additional cleaning that we had to do. It was also related to employees that were high risk sheltering at home or those that were exposed and had to shelter at home until we were sure they were not affected by this.
Do I think that will be as high in the future if the COVID-19 positivity rate goes down? No, but it's really going to depend on what happens with COVID-19. We do have a lot of our management's time in the facilities spent ensuring people are following the rules, that they're working safely, and that takes a toll over time. So we are hopeful that, that will go down, but I can't say absolutely that it will.
For the third and fourth quarter as far as the production, we will know, we think, shortly if those orders will close. And we would be able to convert and start producing those very quickly in the third quarter. So we are holding for a short amount of time. If they close, we'll start that operation. Like I said, have some tailwind for us. If they don't close, we'll take the appropriate actions and make the reductions that are needed.
Allison Poliniak -- Wells Fargo -- Analyst
Great. And then I just want to go back to the commentary around the orders, trying to reconcile orders with sort of the storage that's out there. It sounds like there's clearly some verticals that are interesting, which makes sense. And then you certainly have a level of replacement needs over the year. I guess if we look at that storage number, and I know it's an elusive question in terms of what's normalized storage here, but it sounds like most of these are either storage-indifferent, meaning it's a vertical or it's just equipment that wasn't going to come back anyway. Any color that you can provide around that?
E. Jean Savage -- Chief Executive Officer And President
So when you look at the 32% in storage, I can't give you a lot of details, but there are two major markets that are driving that storage. And Eric, if you want to add more color?
Eric R. Marchetto -- Senior Vice President And Chief Financial Officer
Yes. So Allison, certainly, the small cube covered hopper fleet related to the frac sand fleet is adding a lot of cars in storage. I'd say that's 55,000 to 60,000 cars of that total number. And then you got open covered hoppers, coal cars, and there's still some tank cars in that number as well. When you look at the opportunities that are out there, one, that number you called, it is elusive. You can still get demand in those categories because the market's not completely efficient. But as I mentioned, the replacement demand will still drive that. It's going to drive a lot of order activity in the next few quarters. And then there are still pockets of growth in the petrochemical space. We're still seeing growth there that you're going to have. So there's not one railcar market. There's markets of railcars, and you're going to continue to see pockets of demand even in when the macro numbers look like there shouldn't be.
Allison Poliniak -- Wells Fargo -- Analyst
Great, thanks so much for the color.
Operator
We'll go next to Bascome Majors with Susquehanna. Please go ahead.
Bascome Majors -- Susquehanna -- Analyst
Hey Eric, can you hear me?
Eric R. Marchetto -- Senior Vice President And Chief Financial Officer
Yes, we can.
Bascome Majors -- Susquehanna -- Analyst
Okay. Sorry, I was on mute. It's unusual to see an asset writedown for an operating lessor, particularly midyear, but what's happened in the frac sand industry with the spate of bankruptcy filings and distress and all that is also quite unusual here. So I was hoping you could give us a little color on after the writedown of the covered hopper fleet, how much book value remains on the books for Trinity, and whether this assessment that you guys did on impaired or not impaired was specific to that fleet? Or if you also considered other pockets where there are such size as the stress just not as necessarily as acute here?
Eric R. Marchetto -- Senior Vice President And Chief Financial Officer
Sure. Sure, Bascome. The impairment charge that we took is complicated, and I refer you to page five and 14 of our press release to see how some of the mechanics go through, how they flow through our financials. In terms of other car types, we are always monitoring our fleet for those situations. So it's not just an annual thing that we're doing. We look at that all the time in terms of monitoring our fleets.
You mentioned some of the unusual changes and extraordinary changes that we had this quarter that really made us, that triggered that impairment around the bankruptcies and around our outlook that those cars were going to remain overbuilt. That industry has 125,000 small cube covered hoppers. As I mentioned earlier, I think 55,000 to 60,000 of them are underutilized. With our outlook for domestic drilling and specifically, Wisconsin white sand being used in the Permian, we don't think that's going to come back to the degree that it was. And so we really looked at it and the change in the committed cash flows because of the bankruptcies triggered that impairment. And so other car types, I believe that the credit profile of the rest of our portfolio is significantly better than the credit profile of our same customers. And therefore, those committed cash flows have a much higher likelihood to be converted to cash. And that really the looking at the impairment, we don't see it at this time anywhere else.
Bascome Majors -- Susquehanna -- Analyst
And can you add how much book value is.
Eric R. Marchetto -- Senior Vice President And Chief Financial Officer
Yes. Yes. I'm sorry. And I think I mentioned it. About 3% after the writedown, the book value of our small cube covered hopper fleet, which is not just our sand fleet, it's the whole it's our small cube covered hopper, which would cover other commodities, is about 3% of the net book value of our fleet at the end of the quarter.
Bascome Majors -- Susquehanna -- Analyst
And I believe we addressed this at least directionally last quarter. But could you remind everyone who's trying to really assess the book value and what to pay for that, how much book value might be left in some of the larger tank cars exposed to crude oil and/or the coal market? And that's all for me.
Eric R. Marchetto -- Senior Vice President And Chief Financial Officer
So I'd refer you to our investor deck that has those breakouts. Now unfortunately, when you get into the crude oil, that tank car goes we don't necessarily have crude oil tank cars. We have tank cars that carry crude along with other commodities, and those markets are able to move. For example, we just had a large deal where we converted crude oil to other refined products that we just closed at the end of the quarter. That was all for existing railcars. But I would refer you to our investor deck. We will be updating that in the next in the days to come as well, which will have the updated net book value percentages in the breakout in all the different categories that they have.
Bascome Majors -- Susquehanna -- Analyst
I'll refer back, and I know I said that was the last one. But Eric, I thought of one more while you were giving me that answer.
Eric R. Marchetto -- Senior Vice President And Chief Financial Officer
Yes, sure. No problem.
Bascome Majors -- Susquehanna -- Analyst
Yes. You said in the slide deck, and I know there will be more disclosure on this in the 10-Q when it's out, but you said you had $1.6 billion of unencumbered railcars. It looks like that went up $100 million, $150 million quarter-over-quarter. But that happened with the $370 million writedown and you guys adding $225 million in debt after quarter end. So you how did the unpledged collateral go up? Can you just help us unscramble that? And whether or not that's pro forma or not for the debt you added after quarter end?
Eric R. Marchetto -- Senior Vice President And Chief Financial Officer
It does not include the debt we added afterwards, and we can get into all the mechanics on a follow-up. But effectively, the changes would be the adds to our fleet. There were no financings that would have affected that in the quarter and the then the small cars that we sold in the quarter. So those are the ins and outs, then we'll be happy to walk you through it.
Bascome Majors -- Susquehanna -- Analyst
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. We'll go next to Barry Haimes with Sage Asset Management. Please go ahead.
Barry Haimes -- Sage Asset Management -- Analyst
Hi, thanks for taking my question. I had a question related to the $350 million to $400 million investment in the lease fleet. Any feel for how much of that in effect is replacement? So keeping the fleet size constant, but you've got certain cars that you need to scrap versus how much of it is actually increasing the fleet in terms of new units?
Eric R. Marchetto -- Senior Vice President And Chief Financial Officer
Sure. Thank you, Barry. So with the average age of our fleet of nine years, we don't have a lot of attrition in our fleet of 130,000 railcars. So really, when you think about our adds to our fleet, that'd be additive to our fleet, there's not much in a way of replacement.
And when we talk about those numbers, that's net of any railcars that we of any assets we sell for the year. And they're also all on firm committed leases with customers. So those are kind of there's no speculative adds in that in those numbers as well.
Barry Haimes -- Sage Asset Management -- Analyst
Great. That makes sense. But just one follow-up, quick follow-up?
Eric R. Marchetto -- Senior Vice President And Chief Financial Officer
Sure.
Barry Haimes -- Sage Asset Management -- Analyst
Nine years is the average age. But if you look at what's the oldest tranche, how old are the relatively oldest cars on the lease fleet?
Eric R. Marchetto -- Senior Vice President And Chief Financial Officer
So without getting into handfuls of cars, our really most of our lease fleet has been originated since 1979 when we started. And so our oldest cars are generally, there's still some of those that are in there. We don't have much in the way of I think it's about 0.5% that's over 35 years of age. So it's a very small number. It's definitely skewed to the lower end of the range.
Barry Haimes -- Sage Asset Management -- Analyst
Thanks so much. Appreciate help.
Eric R. Marchetto -- Senior Vice President And Chief Financial Officer
Yeah. Thank you.
Operator
And there are no further questions at this time. I'll turn it back to Jessica for any closing remarks.
Jessica L. Greiner -- Vice President, Investor Relations And Communications
Thank you, Bree. That concludes today's conference call. A replay of today's call will be available after 1:00 Eastern Standard Time through midnight on July 30, 2020. The access number is (402) 220-6088. A replay of the webcast will also be available under the Events and Presentations page on our Investor Relations website located at www.trin.net. We look forward to visiting with you again on our next conference call. Thank you for joining us this morning.
Operator
[Operator Closing Remarks]
Duration: 54 minutes
Call participants:
Jessica L. Greiner -- Vice President, Investor Relations And Communications
E. Jean Savage -- Chief Executive Officer And President
Eric R. Marchetto -- Senior Vice President And Chief Financial Officer
Steve Barger -- KeyBanc Capital -- Analyst
Matt Elkott -- Cowen -- Analyst
James Bardowski -- GLJ Research -- Analyst
Justin Long -- Stephens -- Analyst
Allison Poliniak -- Wells Fargo -- Analyst
Bascome Majors -- Susquehanna -- Analyst
Barry Haimes -- Sage Asset Management -- Analyst
