Armac Locação, Logística e Serviços S.A. (ARML3) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for standing by. Welcome to Armac's conference call to discuss the results of the first quarter of 2025. [Operator Instructions] We would like to inform you that this video conference is being recorded and will be made available at the company's IR website, ri.armac.com.br, where the complete material of your earnings release is available. [Operator Instructions] Before proceeding, we would like to clarify that any statements that may be made during this conference call regarding the company's business prospects, projections or operational and financial goals constitute beliefs and assumptions of Armac's management as well as information currently available to the company. Forward-looking statements are no guarantee of performance as they involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions, and therefore, depend on circumstances that may or may not occur. Investors should understand that general economic conditions, industry conditions and other operating factors could affect the company's future results and could lead to results that differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements. Joining us today are Mr. Fernando Aragao, CEO of Armac; and Mr. Marcos Pinheiro, CFO and Investor Relations Officer of Armac. Now I would like to give the floor to Mr. Fernando Aragao, Armac's CEO. You may proceed.

Good morning. Thank you very much for joining the earnings conference call. I would like to start saying that the results of the first quarter reflect a quarter of hard work done by the company in the execution of the plan that we established back in 2024. At the end of the year, we said that this year would be a year focused on recovering margins and demobilization of capital that is not generating adequate return considering the capital cost in Brazil. The company decided not to wait for a better scenario to make this adjustment. We believe that the right thing to do for a company that has been operating in the market with a lot of market share to capture a lot of possibility to grow in the segments we operate and this is something that will happen in the years to come. But for this to materialize, we have to have a light, efficient, profitable company that can generate high cash and the generation of the cash would allow the company to grow as it always has. And as a result, we are following this efficiency agenda for this year as we've mentioned in the message from the management. This is only possible considering the competence in doing maintenance that we have, and the competition does not have it. And we maintain asset in such a condition that has prompt liquidity or they can evenly move to different kinds of agreements, different kinds of contracts. And this is something that is happening in the quarter in such a way that the assets will be rented or sold to the market, and it's a new competence that the company has developed that will allow the company to recycle capital operations more solid and more profitable. In this quarter, we have always worked in restructuring the sales channels for short-term rentals focused on infrastructure segment. And this has already borne some fruits. And of course, we are having some problems since the interest rate reaches 15%. Nevertheless, it's a segment which is very large, very solid with a need for the maintenance -- even for the maintenance, and we lost some share in the past few years. And we are resuming this gaining share based on the work that our team has been doing. Considering the net result and considering the headwinds, we believe that in the next quarters, we are going to gain share in our revenues, and the contribution margin is very important, which is a very high level of margins. And lastly, I would like to mention that we have a very solid capital structure. The first quarter of 2025, we end at a debt profile, which is very positive, and there is no need to access capital from the market. We are able to continue this efficient journey and resume growth with our own cash generation. And all of those initiatives that we are making at the moment will generate even more cash. And this is likely to improve our cash structure in the next quarters. After this introduction, I would like to turn the floor to Marcos, our CFO, so that he can share with us the results for the period, and then I'll come back for the Q&A session. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Fernando. Good morning, everyone. Let's begin on Slide #3. I'll highlight some key points from the first quarter of 2025. We closed the period with more than 11,500 machines and equipment in our rental fleet, representing an acquisition value of over BRL 3.1 billion. CapEx for the quarter was BRL 130 million, with approximately BRL 50 million allocated to the acquisition of machines equipment for new rental contracts, BRL 42 million in maintenance CapEx and BRL 24 million in renewal CapEx, which refer to acquiring machines and equipments to make adjustment to our rental portfolio. Gross revenue grew 12% year-over-year, totaling BRL 482 million. Rental revenue remained stable compared to the previous year totaled BRL 404 million. Our used equipment stores had a very positive sales, reaching total volume sales of BRL 64 million. This quarter is related to the operational cash flow. It reached BRL 346 million for the period. Since the beginning of the year, we have been actively working on the payment terms with our suppliers as well as the collection terms with our clients. With the suppliers, we managed to extend the average payment term by 29 days. For clients, on the other hand, we achieved an average collection period of 90 days this quarter, a reduction of approximately 25 days when compared to the average receiving term of the fourth quarter of 2024. Even with a strong performance this quarter, I want to emphasize that there is no silver bullet in this area. Our team remain focused on exploring all possible ways to improve Armac's working capital. Moving on to Slide 4, I bring a new feature to our presentation. In this slide, we present scatter plot showing the resale value, acquisition value and the age of our used equipment. The chart plots sales from January 2024 to March 31, 2025. Overall, 540 machines were sold during this period with an average age of 43 months and an average resale price of approximately 108% of their original acquisition cost. We plotted a curve representing the book depreciation of our fleet. We can clearly observe that our selling prices validate our ability to efficiently and profitably optimize our fleet portfolio as planned throughout this year. At the same time, we see that our own store network as a competitive lever within our business model with strong potential to support our growth resumption in the upcoming cycles. On Slide 5, our total fleet ended the quarter with 11,525 units, 2% higher than in December. CapEx in the quarter remained at BRL 130 million. As I mentioned before, with BRL 50 million for new contracts, BRL 42 million for maintenance purposes and BRL 24 million for adjusting our rental portfolio. Moving on to Slide 6. Typically, we show the evolution of the utilization and productivity rates of our assets. This quarter was again impacted by heavy rains and the postponement of infrastructure works. We saw the lowest rates in the last 5 quarters for both utilization and productivity. However, we expect improvement will start as of the second quarter of this year. We ended the first quarter with 71% utilization rate and 53.4% in productivity. Breaking down the monthly utilization. We already see recovery. March reached 73%. On Slide 7, we show our revenue breakdown. Rental revenue remained in line year-over-year and the revenue mix, our continuous operations represented 80% of Armac's total rental revenue at the end of the quarter. In the next 2 slides, we present Armac's rental EBITDA. Adjusted rental EBITDA was BRL 152.3 million in the first quarter. The drop in productivity compared to the fourth quarter was partially offset by reduced costs and expenses. We ended the quarter with adjusted margin of 42%, a slight improvement from the fourth quarter of 2024. Additionally, there were BRL 11.4 million related to nonrecurring events. Of this amount, approximately BRL 6 million related to a bad debt provision for a single client. The rest is covered by employee termination costs of returning 1 floor of our Alphaville office and other restructuring-related expenses. Total EBITDA was BRL 140 million for the quarter, a BRL 25 million reduction compared to the fourth quarter of 2024. Finally, I'd like to remind you that in these early months, along with our internal restructuring, we renegotiated prices in relevant contracts whenever we detected a project with a return low or cost of capital. We choose to demobilize it. In other words, we are trading short-term accounting profit for long-term economic value. As we stated in our management message, this process will create temporary noise in our 2025 results as the demobilized fleet must undergo maintenance before being sold or rented in a new project. If on the one hand, we expect short-term impacts like temporary revenue drops, the one-off loss of contract contributions and a temporary increase in idle fleet. On the other hand, we anticipate long-term structural benefits such as lower SG&A, reduced working capital needs and improved cash generation capacity. On Slide 10, we present net cash income and operational cash flow. Net cash income was BRL 30.7 million. It was directly impacted by lower EBITDA, higher financial and depreciation expenses when compared to the first quarter of 2024. On the other hand, operational cash flow was BRL 345 million in the first quarter, a positive result, as I mentioned earlier driven by significant improvements in working capital management. Moving on to the next slide, we have ROIC. Armac's ROIC for the quarter was 16.3%, a healthy 7.7 percentage point spread over our cost of debt. On Slide 12, and our final slide of this presentation, we present the evolution of our debt. We closed the quarter with BRL 1 billion (sic) [ BRL 1.656 billion ] in net debt. The net debt-to-EBITDA ratio was 2.34x, a 0.02x reduction compared to the previous quarter. With this slide, I conclude my presentation and would like to invite you to our Q&A session. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is sell-side analyst, Andre Ferreira with Bradesco.

I have 2 questions on my side. The first one, do you -- have you mapped out the contract, you are likely to demobilize for -- in the second quarter and in the rest of the year? And what has been mapped in terms of value of the fleet that can be demobilized? And the second question, could you talk about the provision for bad debt? And what happened to the client? And what we expect about those provisions?

Andre, thank you very much for the question. So here we go. I'm going to talk about the demobilization map. Yes, we have already -- the operations are mapped out all those who are going to be demobilized. We are talking about BRL 150 million of assets related to those agreements, not all agreements have been demobilized in March, but to give you some color. If I consider all those contracts that we reviewed and was led to a mobilization, altogether, they would amount to a revenue value BRL 120 million on an annual basis. So this is an order of magnitude, which is very important to be kept in your radar. The second question in relation to provisions for bad debt. We have an impact that was basically limited to a single client. We tend to be very conservative in the way we manage the financial dimension. Even though we have material collateral provided by this client, the way we see it is that until we see a very clear visibility, even considering the collateral that was presented, we prefer to be conservative and have the total amount provisioned. But we do not identify any other client that would pose a risk to our portfolio. So the level of default rate is very low.

Our next question comes from Fernanda [ Hagen ] sell-side analyst with BTG.

I have 2 questions on our side as well. One is related to the margin. In the message from the management, you provide a guidance of, saying, 51% at the end of the cycle. So I would like to understand if the first quarter is the bottom in terms of margin and looking into the future, we're likely to see a sequential improvement? And if is the idea to get to the end of the year or at the end of the cycle at that level? And the other one is in relation to the marginal yield. When we analyze your yield, you understand it was stable when we compare year-on-year. And it dropped a little when we compare quarter-on-quarter. Even with interest rates raising year-on-year, was there a mix effect? What can we expect for the future in terms of the yield? These are my 2 questions.

Yes, I'm going to start and Fernando, feel free to add anything you would like. In relation to the margin, the first quarter is the first step in our journey to recompose the profitability of the company as we wrote in the message from the management. And this is something that has been said now and again. It may not be the bottom, as you said. We have many adjustments to be made at the company as we did in March and in April. So the second quarter is likely to be a bit polluted considering the one-off expenses associated with the adjustments and when the demobilization are going to start to be reflected in the results, maintenance and everything else. We continue in search of the 50% as our soft guidance, as you mentioned. Our attitude in company is not that soft. My expectation is that along the year, we are going to surpass this mark. Many things have been done in the company. If you will look at the payroll of the month, April decreased to BRL 43 million per month. So in payroll, we -- payroll results, we recovered EBITDA margins. And this is going to be reflected in the months to come. There is a mix of revenues that impact the results, mix and spot without a doubt, it's consolidated margin detractor. So we have a challenge that is being faced with a commercial structure, very well-focused, CRM-focused and different channels of distribution, which are being restructured along this first half of the year so that we can reflect on the results. So I believe it's a mix of the homework to do the rightsizing of the company as we have done in terms of cost and expenses and working actively in the mix of revenue so that we can reach this target of 50% of EBITDA margin as soon as possible.

Could I add some information? As Marcos said, we are not being soft in this internal commitment of reaching a company that would make 50% in EBITDA margin as we did in the past for so many years, and we are moving fast. And it's just natural that when we move fast, we have to make tough decisions, and we have to make quick changes. And as a result, we have some quarters with some noise. Nobody likes that, but it's better to do things as soon as possible so that we can reach our objective namely to reach the 50%. It's possible to do this within this year, but the actions are being taken. And that means we are going to move fast. And we have to make all the movements that are necessary. We have to pay all the things we have to do in order to pay for all the demobilization actions and we hope in the third quarter, we'll have a different situation. And the idea is to do this without stop growing. Of course, this growth is not reflected in numbers at first because the company is demobilizing some contracts, and this generates some noise in the results, but the focus is to continue acquiring new market to rain and increasing our efficiency and using the capital that is going to be released in different opportunities.

Our next question comes from Filipe Nielsen, sell-side analyst with Citi.

My question is more related to semi-new product. We understand you want to ramp up this initiative as one of the avenues for growth and accelerate this restructuring. I would like to understand how you see the sales conditions. Have you seen any pressure related to high interest rates, loans or drop in the intentions of investments? You mentioned something about agreements, but how is this going to affect the asset sales? We see sales above the depreciation line and some sales below that line. We would like to understand where we could be positioned if there are other points below the line and some points of last year above the line, how has this been developing in comparison to the image that you shared with us?

Well, this structure for asset sales was something that started 1 year after we went public when we observed the -- considering the scale of the company, the company had an opportunity to meet an actual demand of clients, create value in a niche of the market, which is not served with the rental activities. And this is when we started the journey, and it's becoming ever more mature and more apparent as a result of the stores that we have. And this is so important in moments such as now where the capital cost requires us to have a turnover in the capital. But it also can be used for growth. We can have more scale when we purchase new assets, and we can also increase the level of discount a long time and the sequence that we are going to use to purchase new assets in the market. And this is a segment that brings capillarity in our market. So the stores are positioned close to highways. And this is a business that we've placed in our bets as an option for our business, a valuable option in the long term for our growth. In relation to sales conditions, we have a differentiator. It's the only network of asset sales where we can guarantee the origin and items belong to a single owner. So this is an item that has a lot of value when somebody is purchasing our assets. Machines have millions of components. It's a very complex unit. And the client can have the assurance that we ensure all the origin. And this generates a lot of value. We can see this value being recognized by the clients. In spite we are facing a moment where there is less investment, Brazil has a demand for new and semi-new machines million times than the size of our structure that we have today if you consider the demand. So during the structure of our asset sales, we were managed to capture clients that were not served by the other options in the market. So we don't see any difficulties in the demobilization of the assets in spite of all the pressures that the market is posing on us. So we were very clear when we presented the curve less than usual. So this is as far as I would go in terms of transparency where the sales occur and everything else. What we can say is that we are very confident that the structure will preserve the value of the assets. The maintenance activity done in our workshops, we extend the value of the assets, and that would allow for a lower depreciation in comparison to the companies that do not have this structure. So when we do those demobilization, we see no direct impact in the levels of depreciation, and this is excellent news.

Our next question comes from Pedro, sell-side analyst with Itau.

I have one question in relation, especially on the CapEx mix. You started to break down what is expansion, maintenance CapEx and now that we are going to have a higher level of demobilization, what can we think in terms of CapEx of expansion and CapEx for maintenance and expansion? And how can we expect in terms of necessary maintenance for the demobilization initiative that you want to have? So that would be the first question. I have one question exclusively about margin level for asset sales? And also thinking about the graph that you showed above related to the distribution. The machines that you have for sale that is related to the short, medium and long-term demobilization. How can we place them in that curve that you showed?

Thank you very much for the questions. So here we go. From the viewpoint of CapEx, I hope that the new information provided is useful for you. I make it a point to listen to what you and your colleagues have to say in terms of suggestions for us to improve our disclosures and being very objective, you can expect when you consolidate expansion and renovation. So these are the 2 items of our breakdown and net zero for the year. Of course, there may be projects -- interesting projects, and the company continues to have a very robust financial position. But it's a year when we want to continue to be very conservative. If you think of net zero expansion, when you take into consideration that we are selling assets, this is a good base case for you to consider. The BRL 42 million in related to maintenance CapEx is the regular speed that we're going to continue. I do not expect the company to be reduced in this term in a significant level. So the maintenance aspect in the case that we see is something that you can consider in your modeling activities. In relation to the asset sales margin, this is something that will make -- will probably make you upset. But disclosure specific for asset sales doesn't seem to be very adequate at this moment. As we mentioned in the message and also based on what Fernando said, this is very important for us to leverage our business model, capital recycling, et cetera. We are going to be closer to a client. And it also makes the company able to make the adjustments to the balance in a very quick way, and this is what we have seen in the beginning of the year. So I think this is what I had to say.

Our next question comes from Gabriel Frazao with Bank of America.

Thank you very much for the results call. I have a question about the simple rental contract. Why did you feel more comfortable to be more exposed to those kinds of contracts that we read in the release and what would explain the more favorable competitive environment? Did some competitors leave or there's a higher demand for rentals in the sector, maybe an increase of infrastructure project?

Thank you, Gabriel, for the questions. Well, in relation to the comfort that we feel to resume revenue growth in this segment is related to the work that we did of restructuring the sales channels. We made a great effort to segment the market and to understand the lifetime value of the client of each market segment, the attractiveness of the company in each of those different segments. And based on the work, the reflection that we did along the half of the year, we identified resilient market segment. Even though they do not have long-term agreements, they are resilient. They are involved in essential activities in the economy, basic structure that would not have so many different cycles, different from expansion works, for example. And when we did this market segment led to the identification of areas where the company would feel comfortable to operate and grow with an interesting margin. And this is what we have been doing. In relation to your second question in relation to competition. After our IPO, important volume of capital was always with us. We call the attention of the market to yellow line, which was something that was not very well observed. There was no rental for yellow lines. So we -- some capital entered in the sector. And it was not as careful as it should be. Our procurement skills take years to be used. And the capital that access the sector was used without this caution. And without this protection, the business is not very successful because the assets deteriorate very quickly. You have to have the capacity for maintenance. So some players that had captured some equity and some others that acquired capital through debt, they have not left the market yet, but they are in a financial situation because they didn't have the capacity to use the assets correctly. They are now in a difficult situation, and they are in a fragile situation. Not only one company faced this, but a number of companies have the same problem. We do not think this is good. I think that, in my opinion, an entrepreneur can understand how hard it is, everybody is subject to downturns. So the point is that the competitive environment became much more favorable in terms of infrastructure operation. For service, long-term agreement has always been a more favorable environment, considering all the entry barriers, which are very high and very complex. So it's not just purchasing the machine, but we already had some favorable moments. And it's easy to enter at a spot, but it's difficult to remain. So this is the difficulty that the competition has faced. Thank you very much for the questions.

Our next question comes in written form. [indiscernible] asks the following: What's the perspective to operate in agribusiness considering the crop expected for 2025, 2026? And a second question, in relation to competition and profitability, how do you see the year?

Thank you very much for the question. In relation to agribusiness, well, it's vast market. We are already present in this market. We have a long-term branch based in Mato Grosso. We also have another in Mato Grosso -- in Paraná. We have a new branch in [indiscernible]. It's a very nice unit with a good stock of machines to meet the demands of the agribusiness in Paraná. So we look at this market with a lot of optimism because we are very strong from the gate out in the port terminals, in the sugar and water mills, we are very strong. But we didn't have a channel from the gate inside. And we are now investing a lot of energy to create a channel. It's a vast market. Farmers have a lot of needs to maintain the machines, they need to prepare tank or they need to prepare a dam. And they have the need for yellow line machines. And this is a segment that we do not operate yet because we didn't have an organized sales channel yet. We are investing a lot of energy in this new segment, in this new channel, which is a segment that is likely to grow in the years to come. So I'm very optimistic in this regard. In relation to competition and profitability, as we said so far, it's a year where the company is making a turnaround of assets, considering all the agreements that did not present a good return in comparison to the others. And of course, you cannot have this turnaround without paying the bill and some quarters will be polluted. So as to say, it's not a year of profitability as we expected. But internally, we are very optimistic because we are doing what we must do. We are doing what we would do if we were not a public company, we are doing what we must. And after this period, we are going to resume growth. It's a market that amounts to nearly 100,000 equipment. And there is a lot to do. Thank you very much for the question.

The Q&A session has come to an end. We will turn the floor for the final remarks by the company.

Thank you very much, everyone. As we have said, time and time again, we're doing what we must to bring the profitability of the company to a different level. All we're doing are actions to generate cash. So when we are demobilizing contracts, the receivables are being returned as well as the machines. And the good news is that they're going to be returned. We are going to put them in conditions to recycle this capital, and we are going to operate where the returns are aligned with 50% a year. So this is my last message. We are very optimistic internally. And at the end of this phase, we are going to reaccelerate the growth and without providing any noise to the numbers and going back to our quarters as we used to have.

The earnings conference call related to the first quarter of 2025 of Armac has ended. The Investor Relations department is at your disposal should you have any questions. Thank you very much for attending. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]