Earnings call transcript: U-Haul Holding Q3 2024 beats forecasts, stock dips

U-Haul Holding Co. (UHAL) reported its third-quarter earnings for 2024, surpassing analyst expectations with an earnings per share (EPS) of $0.35, beating the forecast of $0.33. The company also exceeded revenue projections, reporting $1.39 billion against a forecast of $1.35 billion. According to InvestingPro data, U-Haul maintains profitability with a healthy current ratio of 2.36, indicating strong short-term financial stability. Despite these positive results, the stock dipped 1.1% in after-hours trading to $70.78, reflecting investor concerns over declining year-over-year earnings and increased operational costs.

Key Takeaways

• U-Haul’s EPS of $0.35 beat the forecast of $0.33.
• Revenue reached $1.39 billion, surpassing expectations.
• Stock declined by 1.1% in after-hours trading.
• Equipment rental and self-storage segments showed growth.
• Operational costs and declining earnings remain concerns.

Company Performance

U-Haul’s overall performance in Q3 2024 showed resilience in key segments despite a decline in net earnings. The company reported a net income of $67 million, down from $99 million in the same quarter last year. Growth in equipment rental and self-storage revenues helped offset some of the declines, with equipment rental revenue increasing by $39 million and self-storage revenues up by $17 million. InvestingPro analysis reveals the company has maintained a strong 5-year revenue CAGR of 8%, demonstrating consistent long-term growth. The moving market is showing signs of recovery, contributing to the company’s revenue growth. For deeper insights into U-Haul’s financial health and growth prospects, investors can access the comprehensive Pro Research Report, available exclusively on InvestingPro.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $1.39 billion, up from $1.35 billion forecast
• Earnings per share: $0.35, down from $0.51 last year
• Equipment rental revenue: Increased by $39 million
• Self-storage revenue: Increased by $17 million
• Capital expenditures for new rental equipment: $1.587 billion

Earnings vs. Forecast

U-Haul’s earnings per share of $0.35 surpassed the analyst forecast of $0.33, representing a positive surprise of approximately 6%. The revenue of $1.39 billion also exceeded expectations by $40 million. This performance demonstrates the company’s ability to outperform market predictions despite a challenging environment.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings announcement, U-Haul’s stock fell by 1.1% in after-hours trading, closing at $70.78. This decline reflects investor concerns over the company’s declining earnings compared to the previous year and rising operational costs. While the stock remains within its 52-week range of $59.70 to $79.04, indicating moderate volatility, InvestingPro analysts maintain price targets ranging from $73.69 to $120, suggesting potential upside. The company’s EBITDA stands at a robust $1.67 billion for the last twelve months.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking forward, U-Haul aims to increase its annual storage revenue by approximately 50% through continued investment in its storage development pipeline. The company plans to moderate its investment pace from $1.5 billion to a more sustainable level, maintaining a debt-to-EBITDA ratio under 5x. According to InvestingPro’s Financial Health assessment, the company maintains a FAIR overall score, with particularly strong ratings in profit and price momentum metrics. U-Haul’s strategic focus remains on expanding its U Box storage services and optimizing its fleet.

Executive Commentary

Joe Schoen, Chairman, stated, "We’re in a position to benefit with any increase in consumer activity." Sam Schoen, Executive, emphasized the potential of U Box storage, saying, "U Box is a part of our product line that wants to run." These comments highlight the company’s strategic focus on expanding its storage and moving services.

Risks and Challenges

• Rising operational costs, including personnel and liability expenses.
• Declining year-over-year earnings.
• Competitive pressures in the truck rental and storage markets.
• Potential impacts from economic fluctuations on consumer activity.
• Challenges in fleet optimization and electric vehicle strategy.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts focused on the company’s pricing strategies, the growth potential of U Box storage, and challenges related to electric vehicle mandates. Executives addressed these concerns, highlighting ongoing efforts to optimize fleet operations and expand storage capacity.

Full transcript - U-Haul Holding Co (UHAL) Q3 2025:

Conference Operator: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Yuheult Holding Company Third Quarter Fiscal twenty twenty five Investor Call. At this time, all lines are in a listen only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. This call is being recorded on Thursday, 02/06/2025. I would now like to turn the conference over to Sebastian Reyes.

Please go ahead.

Sebastian Reyes, Investor Relations, U Haul Holding Company: Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. Welcome to the U Haul Holding Company’s third quarter fiscal twenty twenty five investor call. Before we begin, I’d like to remind everyone that certain of the statements during this call, including that 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 the company’s business and future operating results, please refer to the company’s public SEC filings and Form 10 Q for the quarter ended 12/31/2024, which is on file with the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission. I’ll now turn the call over to Joe Schoen, Chairman of U Haul Holding Company.

Joe Schoen, Chairman, U Haul Holding Company: Thanks, Sebastian. I’m excited to see some positive leadership for the country. My experience is that consumer optimism is good for the self move business. I’m seeing increased optimism with both customers and U Haul team members. Often, we are hit by a weather event in the fourth quarter that noticeably dampens rental transactions.

So far, this has not been the case. As of this point, U Haul has not had significant property or casualty losses due to the LA fires. Sometimes, an event like this stimulates rental transactions. However, this does not appear to have been the case in Los Angeles. We’re continuing to make progress with truck additions and deletions to correct the imbalances in our fleet due to COVID supply chain disruptions.

Our typical truck can be a ten year asset, so it takes some time to work through fleet imbalances. Should the Trump administration progress in reducing crushing regulations, U Haul is in a position to emerge from the electric vehicle mania with only modest damage. The medium truck industry has been heading towards an unknown end. The industry needs to focus on customer needs. The Truck Share business, where we compete with Penske budget, enterprise and multiple local businesses, remains very competitive.

As near as I can tell, market share is fairly stable right now. Our U Box business continues to grow. Our teams continue to master the elements of this business. We are getting okay self storage results, but are having to work hard to achieve them. The storage industry is busy dialing out personal contact and customer service.

I still see the other approach as the road our customers want us to follow. I think our results validate our approach. I plan to continue to drive hard on adding storage product and take another look at this in early summer. Like yourselves, U Haul is watching the tariff proposals. The supply chain, of course, is complex and likely some misery will result.

Overall, I am willing to let Trump and his team manage and U Haul to react. I’m the most optimistic I have been in some time. As always, however, the proof will be in the pudding. Jason, do you want to

Jason Schoen, Financial Executive, U Haul Holding Company: give them some numbers? Thanks, Joe. So yesterday, we reported third quarter earnings of $67,000,000 compared to $99,000,000 for the same quarter last year. That translates to $0.35 per non voting share this quarter and $0.51 per non voting share for the third quarter of last year. Earnings before interest taxes and depreciation EBITDA at our Moving and Storage segment, and we’ve adjusted that to account for the change in interest income presentation, increased by $47,800,000 due primarily to a stronger quarter of revenue growth.

The disconnect between earnings per share and EBITDA is due primarily to three factors: first, fleet depreciation from the increased level of fleet acquisitions the last several years second, the reduced gains on the sales of retired pickups and cargo vans and third, the declining interest income at the Moving and Storage segment as we’ve reduced our short term cash balances as we’ve reinvested the funds. Of the $0.16 per share decline in earnings, $0.13 is from the decrease in gains on the sale of equipment, $0.12 from depreciation and $0.05 can be attributed to the interest income variance. Looking at equipment rental revenue results, we had a $39,000,000 increase, which is a little over 4.5% for the quarter. This is also better than the 1.51.7% improvements that we posted in the first and second quarters of this year. In addition to the continued strength in average revenue per transaction and growth in in town transactions, we saw additional last mile revenue come through during the end of the quarter.

In town revenues on the trailer and towing device fleet also increased during the quarter. And in January, we saw revenue continue to trend positively compared to the same time last year. Capital expenditures for new rental equipment for the first nine months were $1,587,000,000 dollars That’s a $237,000,000 increase compared to the same nine month period last year. Proceeds from the sales of retired equipment, meanwhile, decreased by 73,000,000 to a total of $521,000,000 That’s a combination of us selling fewer pickups and cargo vans along with lower average sales proceeds on the units that we did sell. A portion of that is what’s leading to some increases in our depreciation.

Switching to self storage, revenues were up $17,000,000 That’s an 8% increase for the quarter. Average revenue per occupied foot continued to improve across the overall portfolio of approximately 90 basis points. And if you look just at the same store portion of the portfolio, we were up just over 3%. Our occupied unit count at the December was up nearly 42,000 units compared to the same time last year. And over that same time frame, we added 80,000 new units.

And it’s this differential that led to our average occupancy across the whole portfolio declining to 78.7%. Splitting out the same store portion of the portfolio, we saw average occupancy decrease by 50 basis points to 92.4%. During the first nine months of this year, we invested $1,214,000,000 dollars in real estate acquisitions along with development costs for self storage and U Box warehouses. This was a $245,000,000 increase over the first nine months of last year. Looking just at the quarter, we added 2,300,000 new net rentable square feet, with the majority of that being newly developed locations.

We currently have approximately 8,500,000 new square feet being developed and we expect to see the pace of new deliveries remain elevated into next quarter. Our U Box revenue results are included in other revenue in our 10 Q filing. This line item increased $9,000,000 of which U Box was a major contributor. We’re seeing both U Box moving transactions and U Box storage transactions grow. Over the last twelve months, we’ve increased our warehouse space or covered storage capacity for these containers by over 20%, and we should continue near that pace for at least the next twelve months.

Operating expenses at Moving and Storage were up $11,600,000 We did have another quarter of declining fleet repair and maintenance costs. This time, we were down close to $10,500,000 Some of the larger expense increases. Personnel costs were up just over $15,000,000 although that increase is largely in line with the pace of revenue increase. We also had liability costs associated with the fleet go up $16,500,000 and property taxes were up just over $4,500,000 As of December 2024, at our Moving and Storage segment, cash along with availability from existing loan facilities totaled $1,348,000,000,000 dollars On our Investor Relations website, investors.uhaul.com, we posted some supplemental materials

Sam Schoen, Executive, U Haul Holding Company: for the third quarter in

Jason Schoen, Financial Executive, U Haul Holding Company: addition to our typical earnings release and 10 Q filing. You can click on these in the lower right corner. Before I hand the call over to our operator for questions, I want to thank and recognize our newest analyst, Steven Ramsey at Thompson Research Group, who recently initiated coverage. He joins Keegan Carl at Wolfe Research and Steve Ralston at Zacks Investment, who have been covering us as well. I would encourage anyone interested to reach out to any of these three as they all have excellent insights.

With that, I would like to hand the call back to our operator, Joanna, for questions and answers. Joe, myself and Sam Schoen will be available for questions.

Conference Operator: Thank And the first question comes from Stephen Ralston at Zacks. Please go ahead.

Stephen Ralston, Analyst, Zacks Investment: Congratulations on the good quarter with that significant uptick in revenue growth. My first well, my question concerned about the drivers in that growth. I noticed that the revenue per transaction has steadily increased for the last at least three quarters. It seems like you have a good pricing environment?

Joe Schoen, Chairman, U Haul Holding Company: Yes. So I would say the answer to that is yes.

Stephen Ralston, Analyst, Zacks Investment: Could you add any color to that? There was concern about the, well, competition, other things involved also.

Joe Schoen, Chairman, U Haul Holding Company: Sure, sure. Well, I’m one of these people who is always very tentative on increasing prices. I always want to communicate a value to the customer before we just try to pass along price increases. And there’s been a lot of cost increases over the last thirty six months, not all of which have been passed along, but some of which we’re still going to have to figure out how to pass along, mainly in equipment acquisition. But it’s been in personnel, but we’re just like everybody else there.

Everything’s up. So the customer is showing some willingness to recognize that, participate in those increases without feeling they’re being beat up. You read the same stuff I do, people feeling beat up about the supermarket pricing, about energy pricing. And I try to keep U Haul where they see it. We’re trying to do some sort of value pricing.

Yet we needed the price increase.

Stephen Ralston, Analyst, Zacks Investment: Despite what you said, I did notice that it seems like you have instituted some cost controls because sales were up 4% to 7% depending on what you’re looking. But your operating expenses were only up 1.6% and I’ve been basically harping on this for the last few quarters. But it seems like something happened that you gained control of your costs.

Joe Schoen, Chairman, U Haul Holding Company: Well, always, there’s a delay reaction in a lot of this stuff. So I think I got the attention of my team probably six months ago, but then it doesn’t really filter through to financial results in a visible way for several months after that.

Stephen Ralston, Analyst, Zacks Investment: One thing I noticed and I’m surprised you didn’t mention it that, you’ve set a record for the company. Your pipeline for the well, the trailing twelve month new net rentable square foot has reached a record. You posted 7,400,000 square feet. Prior to this, it was in the three, four, like 6,100,000.0, quite an accomplishment. And with your mention of acquiring more assets in the pipeline, at least statistically is stable there at 16,800,000 square feet.

Do you expect to be in the 7,000,000 or 8,000,000 net square feet trailing twelve months going forward for a while?

Joe Schoen, Chairman, U Haul Holding Company: I think that’s faster than we can hold that. Some of this is opportunism, of course, if there’s something becomes but there’s not a lot of whatever you want to call them, suite deals in the storage business right now. So I think that’s faster than we can maintain.

Stephen Ralston, Analyst, Zacks Investment: I see. This

Jason Schoen, Financial Executive, U Haul Holding Company: is Jason. A little bit of color. Our acquisitions of existing storage properties over the last twelve months is about 1,000,000 square feet heavier than it was the year before. So that’s part of that increase. And then the variance over last year at this time also is we were in the process last year of switching over to more ground up development and now we’re starting to see a bunch of those lost or launched whereas last year they were just getting started.

Stephen Ralston, Analyst, Zacks Investment: Thank you. And one last question concerning U Box. I don’t know if it’s the first time I saw it, but you emphasized that the revenues are driven not only by the rentals, but of the storage. Is there something happening in U Box where people are storing more on your lots as opposed to just rentals and moving?

Sam Schoen, Executive, U Haul Holding Company: This is Sam Schoen. I’ll comment on that. I think you’re exactly right, Stephen. That’s a good observation. Of course, that is part of the reason we’re in this business is not just to serve the moving customer, but also the storage customer as well.

And in many cases, they’re the same customer. And I think as we get better at selling and explaining the advantages of this unique product that I think a lot of consumers don’t really fully appreciate how versatile it is. As we get better at explaining that, we get more conversions to the self storage end of the deal. And of course, that’s why we’re in the business. That’s why I would invest in U Haul is that’s really the exciting part of U Box is its storage potential and we’re starting to see some exciting progress on that side of it.

Stephen Ralston, Analyst, Zacks Investment: Again, congratulations and thank you for taking my questions.

Conference Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from Kegan Karl at Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Keegan Karl, Analyst, Wolfe Research: Yes. Thanks for the time guys. In the release, Joe mentioned that moving activity ticked up in the quarter driving both demand for product and services. I guess, I’m just curious, can you maybe quantify the transaction volume increases and how it trended by month?

Jason Schoen, Financial Executive, U Haul Holding Company: We’re going to have to go to chase about that. Sure. So for the quarter, the transaction growth came from the in town business, which was up just under 2% on transactions on one way transactions, which is a smaller number, it was down. It was still negative for the quarter. We’re still seeing revenue per mile gains in the one way business, which is helping to offset the mileage decreases there.

And I think the normal growth that we would have seen in the quarter then got bolstered by a couple of percentage points from some last mile business that came in that helped push up the revenue per mile for the in town and the miles per transaction.

Keegan Karl, Analyst, Wolfe Research: I guess on the bimonth basis, did you notice anything that stood out? Maybe was November better than October? Did you see sequential improvement each month? Just kind of curious on that cadence.

Jason Schoen, Financial Executive, U Haul Holding Company: I would say October and November were fairly steady, as in towards the December when the last mile business came in. November, December looked a lot like what we had seen the previous quarter and a half, two quarters.

Keegan Karl, Analyst, Wolfe Research: Okay.

Jason Schoen, Financial Executive, U Haul Holding Company: If you’re looking to run the revenue out, I wouldn’t say that 4.5% growth or 4% growth, but what we saw in the quarter would be reasonable. It’s probably going to be a little bit better than what we saw in quarter one and quarter two. But quarter three probably won’t repeat yet.

Keegan Karl, Analyst, Wolfe Research: Okay. That’s really helpful. And I know Joe touched a little bit on January. I guess I’m just curious like are you seeing sequential acceleration from December to January? Or is it more just the year over year improvement that you noticed?

Jason Schoen, Financial Executive, U Haul Holding Company: We always look at it year over year because there’s so much seasonality to it. So, it did when I’m making comparisons and saying it’s up, it’s always to the same time in the previous year.

Keegan Karl, Analyst, Wolfe Research: Got it. I guess just shifting to U Box. Obviously, growth continues to be strong there. If we take a very long term view, I mean, how should we think about margins in that business relative to your storage business at what you would consider either a full or stabilized occupancy level within U Box?

Jason Schoen, Financial Executive, U Haul Holding Company: Well, I’ll start with that and then Sam can fill in or correct me if he has any other thoughts on it. But Keegan, remember when we walked a few of those warehouses when you were out here, the newer warehouses that we have stacked much higher. So, as we get more of these boxes into storage, it’s going to help the theoretical margin, however you want to come up with that for UBox, because we’re just getting better utilization of the asset. So, Sam, I don’t know what

Sam Schoen, Executive, U Haul Holding Company: you want to say. Yes. No, I mean, that’s the same thing I was going to say. The way I describe it and think about it is using a different word, which is density. And the exciting part of the U Box storage solution is that we’re getting increased density in the same footprint that you would in a traditional facility.

So if we can use this moving activity to follow the U Haul formula and use our moving activity to generate containers and storage, we’re going to be able to put that density to use and be really efficient. So, I think that’s a wise question you’re asking.

Keegan Karl, Analyst, Wolfe Research: I guess just to wrap this up, I mean, is it fair to assume that margins would be similar to self storage or could they even be higher? Like I’m just trying to get a better feel for in the long run how this business can play out.

Sam Schoen, Executive, U Haul Holding Company: Well, of course, I’m shooting for hire, but we have a lot of work to do. So I think you having that expectation and issuing that challenge, I’m willing to accept.

Keegan Karl, Analyst, Wolfe Research: Okay. No, that’s really helpful. I guess just maybe if we take a bigger picture view, you obviously have a lot of land in your development pipeline and you mark them at cost. I guess, if you were to actually take what’s in your portfolio, both land and buildings, what do you think it’d be worth at today’s market prices? And what sort of disconnect is there between what you’re marked at versus what it’s theoretically worth?

Jason Schoen, Financial Executive, U Haul Holding Company: Key, that’s a great question. That’s not something that we’ve really discussed publicly other than to say we communicate to folks what the unencumbered balance or value is in the portfolio. You can see what how much we’ve borrowed against real estate and then the book value. And that can kind of give you some sort of triangulation as to the I’ll call it, excess market value over books in the portfolio. But I guess, I would consider it fairly significant when I look at our ability to borrow, which then puts our market value at least into perspective.

We have quite a bit of capacity to borrow. If we had to, if we had the earnings to support it, we could easily go out with the assets that we have and borrow another $2,000,000,000 against real estate.

Keegan Karl, Analyst, Wolfe Research: Okay. I mean, that’s a good segue into my next question, which obviously the cash balance is down, it’s down near $1,000,000,000 down materially from the peak. I guess just how should we think about your funding of growth going forward? You mentioned that you could take another $2,000,000,000 on. I mean, should we expect you to take on more leverage in the near to medium term to fund growth?

Jason Schoen, Financial Executive, U Haul Holding Company: I’ll start with this one. There’s two tracks here. One, we are going to be going out and we’re going to do some normal borrowing that we would do each year. We still have our guidepost of trying to remain under five times net debt to EBITDA, which gives us quite a bit of runway. And then the exciting part is a lot of the assets that we’ve invested in are starting to launch.

You see that in the net rentable square foot number. And that’s just going to give us more flexibility in financing future acquisitions. I would say the pace that we’ve been on the last twelve months, the $1,500,000,000 if you look out the next year or two, will probably slow a bit.

Keegan Karl, Analyst, Wolfe Research: Okay. And then just last one for me to kind of wrap everything up. I mean, if you would assume your entire storage portfolio stabilizes today, where do you think that actually puts your total portfolio EBITDA margin at? Or where do you think it can trend to? And the reason I’m kind of framing it like this is, obviously, the large portion of your storage portfolio that was recently delivered and is likely negative on the EBITDA side.

So, if you’d get that stabilized, I mean, where could your margin trend and what sort of expansion could we expect?

Jason Schoen, Financial Executive, U Haul Holding Company: Well, we don’t have a separate, separate margin number for self storage. I would say that with the current square footage that we just reported, excluding any sort of rate increases, if we get that up to our same store occupancy number today, that would be an extra close to $170,000,000 of revenue. And the vast majority of that would fall to the bottom line. And then beyond that, in the development pipeline, we have probably close to $350,000,000 of additional revenue or maybe a little bit higher than that. I might be understating it.

So, between what we have or what we are building now and what we have behind it, I think has the opportunity to increase our annual revenue by about 50% from where we’re at today.

Keegan Karl, Analyst, Wolfe Research: On the storage, just from the storage line, I think,

Jason Schoen, Financial Executive, U Haul Holding Company: right? Yes.

Keegan Karl, Analyst, Wolfe Research: Okay. That’s super helpful. Thanks for the time, guys. Really appreciate it.

Conference Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from Stephen Ramsey at Thompson Research. Please go ahead.

Stephen Ramsey, Analyst, Thompson Research Group: Hi, good morning. Thanks for having me on the call. I wanted to go back to this moving business and the higher cost world that everybody is operating in. It sounds like competitors are raising prices as well. Given your cost advantages and your approach to serving the customer at lower price to serve them.

Do you get a sense that competitors are raising prices more than you are and your cost advantages enable you to gain share in a different way in this environment? And then kind of a follow on to that, do you think when one way moves pick up that the pricing dynamics allow you to gain even more share when that happens?

Joe Schoen, Chairman, U Haul Holding Company: This is Joe. There’s a lot of factors going to that price as part of it. Normally, we’re going to have to be competitive on pricing and that’s just how it is. A lot lot of of this has to do with utilization, which has to do with kind of where you have positioned the equipment and how extensive is your distribution. So we have a very extensive distribution network compared to our competitors.

And that gives us access to customers that de facto is not economical for them to access just because of distance. The customer has to travel too far to obtain the product and so it effectively raises their rate even if their rate isn’t up. I don’t have a I wish I had a clear answer to your question. I don’t. There’s a lot of constantly moving parts and it varies whether it’s an in town transaction or one way transaction.

But on one way is we’re in a position to benefit with any increase in consumer activity. We’ve got the fleet out there. We’ve got the locations out there. We’re priced in the acceptable range. We should see we should if that comes, we should pick up.

Stephen Ramsey, Analyst, Thompson Research Group: Okay. That’s helpful. And then on the moving business, again, good to see fleet repair and maintenance costs continuing to show year over year declines. Can you share how much of that is attributed to newer fleet coming in? How much of that is doing more of that work in house?

And do you see a continued runway where you could show year over year declines in these costs going forward?

Joe Schoen, Chairman, U Haul Holding Company: I think we can see some more cost decreases, yes. I don’t have a good answer on how much of it is due to doing more work in house versus taking it to third parties. But third parties just, as you might expect, just cost more. That’s all.

Jason Schoen, Financial Executive, U Haul Holding Company: Steve, this is Jason. I’ll give kind of some ballpark estimates. Part of what we’ve done is we’ve this year is we’ve decreased the size of our pickup fleet and to a lesser extent the cargo van fleet and increased the size of the box truck fleet. So the repair of the box trucks would be more along the lines of your comments about repair costs going down due to rotation of newer equipment and the reduction of the pickup in the cargo van fleet would have more to do with outside vendor repair. And I would say that it’s probably roughly a third at least for the truck repair, maybe a third due to less outside work and two thirds from rotation of the fleet.

Stephen Ramsey, Analyst, Thompson Research Group: Okay. Okay. That’s helpful color. Wanted to ask a question on U Box. Maybe you can clarify again the pipeline of the build out on warehouses that you have coming in the next twelve months and maybe where you see it going over the long term.

I know in prior years this was a constraint to growth. Would you say warehouses are a constraint at this point to U Box growth?

Sam Schoen, Executive, U Haul Holding Company: This is Sam Schone speaking. No, we’ve got a very robust pipeline for U Box warehouse growth. We’ve had some good progress in the last year. Certainly, it’s no longer on my list of excuses. It’s putting tremendous pressure on the competition and again freeing us up to run.

U Box is a part of our product line that wants to run and so we’re on it.

Stephen Ramsey, Analyst, Thompson Research Group: Okay. That’s helpful. And then last one for me, storage occupancy, it looks like in the last few years Q3 shows a sequential dip from the second quarter on both the same store and non same store basis. But notice that in this report, the sequential dip was less than the prior years. I’m curious if there’s anything to read into that, if it’s the environment improving or core outperformance, just if there’s anything to read into kind of the sequential trends and if maybe there’s stabilization kind of in the market broadly that you’re benefiting from?

Joe Schoen, Chairman, U Haul Holding Company: Well, this is Joe. I don’t think there’s a broad stabilization in the industry. But you probably see my competitors numbers as well or better than I do, but there’s been a lot of erosion of both price and occupancy in the industry, and we’re swimming against that tide successfully so far.

Conference Operator: Thank you. And the next question comes from Jamie Wilen at Wilen Management. Please go ahead.

Jamie Wilen, Analyst, Wilen Management: Thanks, fellas. As you see within the industry, the level of additions that people are building other than yourselves, is that a declining rate from where it has been over the last two years? And does that create a little bit of opportunity for rate as you look forward?

Joe Schoen, Chairman, U Haul Holding Company: It’s very market specific, Jamie. I don’t think I can give you a generalization.

Jamie Wilen, Analyst, Wilen Management: Okay.

Sam Schoen, Executive, U Haul Holding Company: But when I travel, it looks

Joe Schoen, Chairman, U Haul Holding Company: like they’re building new stuff every place.

Sam Schoen, Executive, U Haul Holding Company: Okay. Right.

Jamie Wilen, Analyst, Wilen Management: On the Yubox side, a few other questions about the dynamics of the business. The rates for storage, how do they compare for a self storage rental rate per square foot? And I assume the margins on that unit in storage are rather high since we don’t have much cost against it and if you could tell us about the dynamics of somebody does a u box how long is it normally in storage for And are there any changes in those dynamics over time?

Joe Schoen, Chairman, U Haul Holding Company: Or have you been

Sam Schoen, Executive, U Haul Holding Company: That’s a great question, Jamie. This is Sam, Sean. Right now today, almost all of those metrics that you just brought up are very similar to our traditional self storage product. But in my mind, there’s no reason why every single one of them could exceed and should exceed. So just for as an example, you brought up per square foot basis, if the product adds more convenience to the customer, there’s the flexibility to ship it, there’s the flexibility to limit to their door.

Some customers in the industry sometimes refers to it as valet storage. Well, of course, we need to work towards getting a premium for that. And right now, we’ve gone from kind of famine to feast on warehouse capacity. And I’d say my first priority is let’s get some occupancy. And as I think we’ve demonstrated in U Haul, historically, once we’ve got the storage occupancy, I think we’ve done a decent job in maximizing that the rate.

And so that’s the game plan, that’s the trajectory we’re on. And I’m embracing all of those issues that you brought up. It’s a good question.

Jamie Wilen, Analyst, Wilen Management: As we are gaining market share, is it a function of we’ve got much more indoor storage for this for the U Box. I can’t imagine how someone would want to store it outside for an extended period of time. But is that a competitive advantage that’s the one thing that’s allowing us to or the major thing that’s allowing us to gain market share and that’s why we’re focusing on that in the future as well?

Sam Schoen, Executive, U Haul Holding Company: Well, Jamie, I was hoping you’d ask me that kind of softball question. I was itching for somebody to ask me that question. The short answer to it is no, the competition has indoor storage as well. But despite that, we’ve got them in a real headlock. Our advantages, I would argue, are the fact that we’re lower cost.

We can deliver multiple containers at one time. We have the most locations available in every state and every province. We have self delivery options. These are all things the competition cannot and won’t match. And so of course, that’s why we’re on the way up and they’re on the way down.

And so of course, I’m it’s inevitable that we we’re going to dominate this industry and in the same manner we do the truck rental industry.

Joe Schoen, Chairman, U Haul Holding Company: This is again, I’m happy it’s inevitable. I just hope it happens. While I’m still

Jamie Wilen, Analyst, Wilen Management: alive. One last thing on self storage. As we are acquiring existing units, I assume everything we are acquiring are to stabilize base and they are immediately accretive as opposed to the new units that we build?

Jason Schoen, Financial Executive, U Haul Holding Company: Jamie, this is Jason. That’s an interesting question and it brings up some interesting commentary on some of our competition in that industry. So, several of the properties that we’ve purchased have been what you call a CFO deal. So, they’re essentially 0% occupancy when we buy them. There are some that are close to stabilization as you have.

I think our average for everything that we took on the last nine months has been somewhere around 70% occupancy day one. But what’s happening is some of these are managed by national REIT competitors. And what they’ve the way that they manage rates and how they handle the customers, you end up dropping a significant amount of occupancy the first month that you’re in there and you start working with the customers and figuring out the rates. So, we’re not going out and financing these immediately. There’s a little bit of cleanup that we have to do to the rent rolls.

So, it probably adds an extra three to six months on, I call it, the seasoning process, but before I can set my ATs loose and have them do the financing on these.

Jamie Wilen, Analyst, Wilen Management: But why do you lose occupancy as soon as you acquire these things?

Jason Schoen, Financial Executive, U Haul Holding Company: Because a lot of the occupancy figures, when someone is getting ready to sell, sometimes the manager will increase occupancy at the cost of lowering the rates significantly in order to get people in. And then when we get in and straighten out the rates to where we think they should be, you end up losing quite a few people.

Jamie Wilen, Analyst, Wilen Management: Got you. And last question. Joe, you mentioned the electrical vehicle impact on your business. That’s not going to be there possibly in the future. Could you go a little bit more in-depth as to what you’re talking about and how that impacted our business?

Joe Schoen, Chairman, U Haul Holding Company: Well, there’s significant electric vehicle mandates that are driven largely by California And they’re variously reported and but the simple fact is California has been driving that for more than ten years. And the all this talk of zero emissions, all electric, there just is no mechanical solution out there in the size trucks that we rent. And so, it’s kind of someone’s dream. But in our case, if there’s a mandate, we’re supposed to meet the mandate, you see. And if there’s not inventory, well, now you got a real problem.

It’s been an unsolvable dilemma. We worry about a lot, but there’s nothing we can do. Now we’ve been modest on bringing in test fleets or exemplary fleets because we can pretty much detail by working one up that it’s a no go and doing the buying 500 of them is just simply virtue signaling to the green people, but not to the shareholders, have a shareholder. So I’d rather we signal the shareholders with a good economic proposition. So there has not been one.

And certainly, there’s a demand for a place for electric vehicles certainly. But we’re a long ways from having that be a solution for anybody who’s in the daily rental business like we are. They’re just there isn’t a solution and we’ve been just heading towards constantly when does the squeeze start. So far, the squeeze that you’re seeing is goes back a little over thirty six months now, which is increased cost of internal combustion engine trucks. The manufacturers because of the dilemma they’re in have pushed as much of the development cost of electric vehicles as they can onto the people buying the gasoline vehicles.

So, we’ve had more than one truck model that went up over 40% in eighteen months. Those are for us historically huge costs and you’re seeing that process through now with the reduced gain on sale that Jason referenced earlier. So, of course, I’d much rather the old system was working good for me, but that’s just it. So basically, the same vehicle is costing us a considerable amount more and we’re having to deal with that reality. But if you go with the electric, you’ll dream you could get the same vehicle for more money because the electric vehicle just simply isn’t available.

The ones that are available simply don’t perform. So you’re in a device that there’s no solution to. So I’m hoping that what comes out of this review, they’re doing a review and they’ll probably do more at the EPA level. I’m hoping they come out with a solution that is something like what I heard one of the administration people say is, so that people can buy the kind of vehicle they want. So there are people who want electric vehicles.

There’s a place for when those people can buy them. And there’s a place for internal combustion engine vehicles and people can buy them. Always, if you if there’s only a black

Sam Schoen, Executive, U Haul Holding Company: and

Joe Schoen, Chairman, U Haul Holding Company: white choice, you’re really a sub optimizing. We need a lot of gray in this. And I think that there’s some more common sense to make percolate through this and it will be at least for the medium duty truck business. It’s a it will be a welcome opportunity. We’re in a dilemma on this constantly.

It impacts sand with forklift trucks. They’ve got initiatives on forklift trucks that are causing us to have to reposition trucks. And It’s all over electric versus propane. Propane is now, I guess, Sam, I don’t want the words in your mouth, propane bad, electric good.

Sam Schoen, Executive, U Haul Holding Company: That’s the idea. And of course, in reality, it’s the exact opposite. And certainly in my lifetime, there would be a day when there’s an electric forklift that’s superior to a propane forklift. And when that day happens, that’s what we’ll buy. Just like when our customers want electric trucks, we’ll buy electric trucks.

But right now, they’re not the best truck and our customers don’t want them and they’re not part of our plan.

Jamie Wilen, Analyst, Wilen Management: Appreciate the insights also. Thanks for the additional color in the presentations with the quarterly numbers.

Jason Schoen, Financial Executive, U Haul Holding Company: You’re welcome. Thanks, Jamie.

Conference Operator: Thank you. That concludes today’s Q and A. I will turn the call back over to management for closing comments.

Sebastian Reyes, Investor Relations, U Haul Holding Company: Well, thanks everyone for the support. We look forward to speaking with you after our year end filing in May. Thank you.

Conference Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and we ask that you please disconnect your lines.

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