Sunbelt Rentals Holdings, Inc. (AHT.L) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Presentation] Good afternoon again. And welcome for those joining via webcast. We've just played a video for you -- or 2, rather. And why we did that was to sort of fill you in a bit on what we've been hosting in Atlanta, Georgia over the last 2 days; and it's something that we've called Powerhouse. And Powerhouse was a place where we brought about 6,000 of our team members together from throughout the business in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. For the most part, it was our managers of our branch locations and the entirety of our sales force. And part of the purpose for that was this town that you will have just heard referenced in the video, which was expressing to all of our team, considered another level of development of putting in place and showing them in such a dynamic manner how much opportunity there is for rental, for our products and our services to serve even broader end markets and therefore proliferate rental penetration even further in the markets in which we serve. And we did that by building this Anytown. Furthermore, when together, today marks the end of Sunbelt 3.0, which I think, when we go through a few slides in a moment, we'll agree it's been a successful growth campaign. And it begins Sunbelt 4.0, so also what we brought that team together for was to launch Sunbelt 4.0, which we did this morning. And our intention now is to launch it for all of you this afternoon. With me today -- Michael and I, I should say, today is a team of very capable and seriously passionate leaders who not only put on Powerhouse but lead our organization in so many ways. So you'll be glad to know that you'll be hearing from far more than just me throughout this afternoon's slides. We're going to get right to it here in terms of what is our aim for today. We're setting out to demonstrate to all of you how we are poised to advance and leverage the very tangible structural progression that we've experienced in this industry and therefore in our company. And our plan is built to deliver strong growth and performance through volume, through pricing, through margins, all amounting to improved returns; and finally, positioning us in an ever stronger way when it comes to our overall financial strength built to improve through earnings growth, strong free cash flow and great optionality to address markets that are stronger or less strong whatever they may be. So with that, let's get on with it. We're going to first take a look back at 3.0. And for those of you that remember back to or have reviewed the materials from April of 2021, this slide will look familiar. And what we set out with this slide was -- to do was really to put across to all of you just how this organization has a history of building, executing on and delivering our strategic growth plans, so you see how it's gone through 3.0. And of course, today, we add 4.0 to that. And I think what you'll find is that -- in building this, you're going to find it is one big helping of more of the same. However, we're building off of the strength and the platform that we so much improved throughout 3.0. So to do a proper look back at 3.0, which I will do quite quickly because today is far more about looking forward than looking back. You'll recall we put out a plan we dubbed the "ambition with purpose," 5 strategic growth -- 5 strategic actionable components, as you see on the slide, underpinned by 3 cultural elements. Let's just go by these group by group. If we combine one and two, grow General Tool and amplify Specialty, what did we deliver over the 3 years? Well, we grew General Tool at an 18% CAGR. We grew Specialty faster than that. It's what we anticipated, a 25% CAGR, essentially doubling the business over 3 years time. We expanded our business both in geographic reach but also in density of our clusters. And if you look at the total output of greenfields and our bolt-ons of 394 location, I want to just put that in perspective in terms of pace. Over the course of 3.0, that's averaging [ 2.75 locations ] new per week. It was biased to greenfields, but it was significant nonetheless in bolt-on M&A. And last but not least was amplifying really our cross-selling capabilities, as you'll see in the slides today. In terms of technology, I would put it, put this in 2 compartments. First, as you know, we rolled out very early on in 3.0 what we called Chronos, which was an order capture system that sort of was interwoven with the rest of the systems that we had, in essence putting us in a better position to say yes to our customers. And second, very early on in 3.0, we rolled out our dynamic pricing system. So make no mistake: We extracted return from both of those technology platforms throughout 3.0. And then through, in terms of advancing technology, what we did was we built an ecosystem. We built a new technology ecosystem some of you would have experienced today and you'll see from Brad in just a few minutes that we believe will further power and propel this business for the next decade and more. When it comes to lead by way of ESG, we certainly doubled what we set out to and achieve in terms of our carbon intensity reduction. And really I think what I would highlight on this slide more than anything, we doubled down when it came to our culture, our people and our connectivity with our people. Hopefully, you can appreciate, increasingly so when it comes to this business, we are a service sector business. We're a business services company. And why we have to lean into this so much is, for us to deliver the level of service we need to, to our customers, we have to have an engaged and inspired workforce that is not only positive but also has the tools to deliver what we need to for our customers; and is inspired to do so through development, training, career pathing and opportunity. And I'd like to say very proudly that we came through in full color as it relates to leaning into our people over this period of time. And then finally, from a capital allocation standpoint, I think you'll see it's quite clear. We have very straightforward capital allocation priorities. What you'll find, when compared to the plan that we would have outlined in April of 2021 -- Michael really would have done it so clearly. We ended up confronting an end market that was busier than we anticipated it would be in April of 2021. And therefore, we used that optionality and that flexibility inherent in our business model to invest even more and grow our business even more over that period of time. So we did that through investment in CapEx. We did that through investment in new locations, but we were also able to have meaningful returns to our shareholders throughout 3.0. And it's also worth mentioning that, through 3.0, our average leverage was just at 1.6x net debt-to-EBITDA. So if you had to put our performance on a single scorecard. We've really just lifted this from what we would have put out there in terms of illustrative deliverables if we were able to execute on our plan for 3.0, so you can see there where we were in fiscal year '21, what our range was at the onset of 3.0 and what we ultimately performed or delivered on. And we have there the checks in terms of significantly doing so and then a couple of hashes there, but as you can see, we grew our revenue by $4 billion in 3 years, a 19% CAGR. We grew our EBITDA at an 18% CAGR. And our operating profit margin improved by 2 -- over 2 percentage points, delivering EPS growth from what was $2.19 to $3.92. And that leaves me to talk about the 2 hashes there, both of which are related to EBITDA margin. So we had an EBITDA margin that was essentially flat over the period of time. And in essence, we would have come up short on what we would have set our sights out for when it comes to fall-through in the U.S. business being in the mid-50s. And we ended up, as you see there, throughout 4.0 at 49%. Think back to when I said we opened, on average, [ 2.75 locations ] per week over the course of 3.0, delivering far more than what we would have set out to but also grew significantly more. And we did it during a period of significant inflation. So I think, in general, if I had to pick one or the other over the course of the last 3 years, growing more than what we would have anticipated or having had the 55% fall-through, I would take the EPS that was driven as a result of our growth over the 3-year period. So that summed up 3.0 on a scorecard. What does it look like on a map? You can see we increased our reach quite significantly over that period of time, but as we talk so much about, we really advanced our clusters. And where we hone in is on that top 100 markets you'll hear from John a bit later this afternoon. And we advanced that from what was 31 to 55 of the top 100 U.S. markets reaching our level of cluster for the U.S. And then in Canada we went from 3 of the markets, top markets, to 5 of the top markets achieving a cluster status. Also worth noting was the addition of 3 specialty business lines over that period of time. So as we move on to what's ahead of us and if I were to have to pick a most important slide perhaps in this entire deck, despite how simple this slide may just look, this would get a strong vote, structural progression that we continue to see in this industry that we think has gone from what was sort of theory, if you will, to absolutely factual and, we believe, permanent. So appreciate we all understand this, but I'm nonetheless going to go through piece by piece of the left-hand side of this. Rental continues to take share from ownership. Every single year in this business, that happens. That's been happening now for decades and there's every reason to believe that will continue to happen. Second, which is relatively new in terms of how this is expressed or talk about, our customers have built their business around relying on in an essential way rental to actually finish, complete, deliver on what they do in their business. Rental has become essential to our customers. And then finally, said shortly, the big are getting bigger. Well, we know in factual -- in fact, the big have been getting bigger, but we know now and it's so clear to see that, given the positioning; given the requirements; given the breadth of products that our customers are looking for; the capabilities around investing at levels that they need them to invest, the technology, the people, the training; literally having the skilled trade when skilled trade is so scarce -- the bigger position to get even bigger as we move forward. The outputs of these, as you see: Rental is now core. The big will continue to get bigger. There is indeed pricing discipline because of the organization of the industry, and therefore, we believe that pricing progression is a real permanent fixture of our growth as we move forward. And of course, this all amounts to a more secular business than what it has been in the past. It doesn't mean there's no cyclicality, but it means it's far less cyclical than it would have been before. So how do we evidence all of that? Let's look first things first. Look at how much the North American rental market has grown and compare that to the end markets in which we serve. This has grown more. That in essence proves how rental penetration is advancing. The center pie there, of course, shows the market share by the rental participants in North America. I'll remind you, in 2008, 2009 time frame, the top 3 rental companies in North America had less than 10% market share. The top 3 have 30% today and, as we all see, are growing at a pace further than the rest that are in that pie chart. And then if we look to the right, we continue to believe that 2 or 3 rental companies will have greater than 50% market share in the future. The next one, which even though it has been so far removed from 2008, 2009, if there is a question when we're around seeing any of you or seeing, well -- so whether it's the buy side, it's the sell side, we're always asked about rate. And there continues to be this concern it -- will this rate discipline really come through, so what we've set out here to do is really detail these 4 very particular periods. The concern, of course, is the first on the left. What happened during the great financial crisis? And the drivers of that. What happened to the end market? We saw nonres, nonbuilding fall significantly. We saw industry time utilization go backward significantly. We saw secondhand values go backward as well. And what happened? Rates fell precipitously; might I remind you, something like 20% in 6 months. I've taken full responsibility for that many times on record, and I will do so again today, but we as an industry weren't structurally advanced enough yet at the time, nor do we have the systems to actually do anything different. And we were all scared to death because we weren't financially positioned the way that we are today. If we move forward to the oil and gas crisis in 2014, '15 time frame. What we saw were 2 of the markers when it came to time utilization and pricing that led everyone to believe that rental rates were going to go backward. Instead, what we saw was discipline in the industry, and we saw rental rates remain benign. Then we go forward to 2020, the pandemic. And what happened? We saw end markets close. We saw end markets drastically reduce. We saw time utilization fall far worse than time utilization fell during '08, '09. And we saw secondhand values fall. What did we see happen to pricing? It remained flat from March of 2020 through December of 2020. And then we saw pricing return to growth or improvement immediately thereafter. Now the last 4 or 6 quarters in the industry, we've actually seen time utilization been 3% to 5% below where it was in its comparable quarter. And what have we seen happen with pricing? Pricing has progressed. So this is kind of -- as opposed to plan on a page that we use for our strategic growth plan, this is evidenced on a page that rental rate discipline is indeed instilled in this industry and in our company; and we expect that to continue. And I think we can all understand the importance of that. As we move on here, I'm just going to give you just a rather brief overview of our end markets. No surprise to all of you that, if we put them in 2 very simple buckets, that which is nonconstruction and that which is construction, we have a larger -- greater than 50% of our business nonconstruction and the balance there for construction. This nonconstruction market, as I oftentimes say, is impossibly large and very difficult to express in terms of dollars and cents in any way that you can put into a spreadsheet. We know -- through our experience in construction, as an example, that if someone is building a strip mall or someone is building a data center, we kind of know what percentage of the costs of that project flows through to rental. What we're not as good at is trying to explain what happens to the $575 billion of MRO and what percentage of that falls into rental, so I'm here today to tell you we still don't know, but what I want to talk about is just the overall scale of this nonconstruction end market. And the very reason we build Anytown was to demonstrate again how capable our products and services are of finding other segments in which to be used, other applications in which to be used, so I want to give a few examples here of each of these MRO, from the big to the small. And I will apologize in advance to all of you that would have heard this, this morning or yesterday in front of our teams. So let's take the large with MRO, large facilities just like the hotel that we're in now. Oftentimes -- always in the life of a building, 1 of 2 things happens with their HVAC. They have to bring it offline to maintain it, or it breaks and they have to replace it. As sure as we're all in the room, that always happens. And when that happens, someone like Sunbelt brings in both the power and the HVAC to handle that which is being maintained or which is being replaced. That happens every single day in our markets. Those are the big. Some of the small would be, as I've said, cleaning windows in the 100 billion square feet of commercial space under roof in the U.S. alone and all that is required in order to do that because those, by themselves, are very small jobs, but rental has products in order to take care of that. Then if we look at live events, from the big to the small. Big live events examples are Ultra fest in Miami, F1 on the strip in Vegas, to Disney marathon. In each of these, there's material handling, power, HVAC, lighting et cera, et cetera, you get it, to the small. And the small would be things like -- I often talk about is the chili cook-off or any fair in Anytown, North America that happens on a periodic basis. These don't need the level of equipment that some of the larger examples might, but they need a few pieces here and there and it's all okay. The key to this really is that these live events happen the same week the same month, year in and year out. And increasingly so, we're there to service them. And once the power of Sunbelt, once our team gets an opportunity to service one of these, very rarely do we lose that the following year. Then we move on to emergency response, same thing, the big and the small: big, wildfires, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes; but not so big, a grease fire in a local restaurant kitchen that requires some abatement and hot-pressure washer, of which we have thousands and thousands of them. Then we move on to municipalities or, as we call here, state and local government, countless miles of overpasses and bridges that on a periodic basis have to be sandblasted and refinished. What do we deliver for that? Large air compressors, sandblasters, aerial work platform, loads of things that go into each and every one of those. And if you've spent any time on our bridges or overpasses, we would all probably agree they're behind, so that will continue to keep going, down to the very small things like the sidewalk repair or pothole repair. I'm not going to touch on agricultural, natural defense. These are just things that are trying to get across how many segments and opportunities they are. And one of the common denominators in all of these: Rental penetration hasn't progressed anywhere near as much as it has with construction, but in so many ways, there's no reason why it won't over time. But this doesn't happen overnight. This happens over years and years, which is really just fine. I've left in the slide deck here for you or for those that are on the web to actually peruse on their -- at their own time 4 very specific case studies that we've come up with here. And those, these are things, I think, going forward that would be really nice to have on the web, just good case studies of these sort of examples, but I'll leave those for you simply to read through. So as we move on to construction, again something that we're more familiar with. This is still a remarkably broad -- it is a dynamic end market. And there is fluctuation in terms of what's being built where or what type of work is going on from 1 year to the next or really from one cycle to the next, but let's look at a slide that we're all so familiar with. If we start with the top left, this is Dodge starts, of course. We saw Dodge starts make a very, very healthy jump from the sort of pandemic to post pandemic. And as the forecasts are -- these are not our forecasts. These are Dodge forecasts. That forecast continues to climb, moderate to aggressively, over the next several years. Dodge momentum, it bumps up 1 quarter, bumps down another quarter. We're all used to that, but overall it's at a very healthy level. But if I draw your attention to "put in place" in the top, I want to highlight 2 things, how much our nonres and nonbuilding end market grew between '21 and '23. That's 35% growth and $290 billion. We've never had such a large growth in nonres and nonbuilding as we experienced over those 2 years. So of course, that's 3.0, and we're talking about 4.0 today. So with 4.0, if you look at that out to 2028 from that 2023 point, that is, I'll say this gently, only a 25% growth forecasted over 5 years. In most ordinary speak, 5% CAGRs isn't the worst thing in the whole wide world, but if we look at an absolute, it is very close to it's $285 billion in growth over those 5 years, so still a very healthy trajectory as it relates to construction as it is prescribed from a forecast standpoint. What else has happened in construction? A couple of things. One, we've seen, of course, the federal legislative acts, infrastructure, CHIPS and science and IRA. I think we're seeing more and more evidence of this every day that's actually getting put into the marketplace where we can see where these projects are being impacted by these acts. And then the other phenomenon, part of which could be encouraged by these acts but -- in reality is probably more a result of the global supply chain challenges and geopolitical circumstances that are leading to the deglobalization and the reshoring or onshoring of U.S. manufacturing and production that we believe is significant in terms of this is a long era of this. You can't undo generations worth of globalization in 3 years or 6 years time. And of course, we have the projects to support that. These are all equaling or leading to this era, another long era of the reality of mega projects, so for the first time today, we're taking a further look out in mega projects. Of course, you're used to seeing this slide. And you're used to seeing that left-hand bar there, which is the $565 billion or 442 projects that have started from May 1, 2021, through April 30, 2024. And I think there were quite a few people that thought that was going to be really the large spike, those 3 years of mega projects, given all the discussion around them et cetera, but as a matter of fact, what we've been saying -- and now we have the evidence, if you will, to support that. We have a very robust forecasted next 3 years of mega projects. And as you can see, that's $759 billion. Now will all of these happen? No. Will all of these happen on time? No. Will most of these take longer than planned? Yes. Will most of these take or cost more than what was planned? Yes. However, the key theme here to understand is this: This is once again demonstrating this era of mega projects for the drivers that I've previously talked about; and how significant these projects are in terms of the essential aspect of rental delivering on these projects; and a perfect example of areas whereas one may think what a great opportunity for ownership, as opposed to rental, but these are projects that actually have deeper rental penetration than other run-of-the-mill projects, which we fully expect to continue as we move forward. So I think, more than anything, this is just illustrating a healthy pipeline of mega projects. And when it comes Q&A time or perhaps after, we have the resident experts that do all this all the time between Jenelle and John, who I'm sure will be happy to give you a bit more color. One thing that you would have actually heard Jenelle speak about on the stage this morning was what happens after these mega projects, which I appreciate is intuitive to you, I'm sure, but what you see is the buildout. This is just an example of a mega project in the state that we're in, hence the reason that we picked it, of a auto manufacturer who is building a big EV plant. And all the Tier 1 impact alone that is coming in behind that, that's creating projects. And of course, all of these projects will have workers ultimately, and all of those workers will create population growth in that geography. And all the population growth in that geography will lead to all of the follow-on building, whether it be infrastructure, housing, retail, commercial et cetera, et cetera, so this is something that we expect to see for years to come as these mega projects complete. So that's a bit of backdrop on our end markets. And I'm happy to finally get around to introducing to you what we call our next level of ambition with purpose, Sunbelt 4.0, our runway for success, something that you'll be used to seeing in terms of the way that we organize it even though I have a real allergic reaction to anything that looks like a pillar because that sounds like consultancy speak. However, we've raised them on the slide this way just to outline them and best fit the plan on a page, so our strategic actionable components for Sunbelt 4.0 are as you see them. Customer. We've made customer our first strategic actionable component, and when Jenelle comes up in just a moment, she's going to explain to you exactly why. Second, of course, is growth; followed by performance; then sustainability. And of course, with all of that, there is investment. I want to touch on the foundational elements, though, before I turn this over to the next presenter; and as we've talked about earlier, how important really people are in a business services company. So once again, we're leaning into our strengths and highlighting that, which you'll hear a bit on. The platform part, of course, is extracting the value and the power of this platform that we've built for years. That is, in the title, we believe, has significant runway for success. And then finally, innovation. And really that's just the spirit of and the sense of ongoing innovation, taking our platform from where it is today to its next level. So with that, if you could please welcome Jenelle Strawbridge to the stage. There we go. [indiscernible].

Thank you, Brendan. Today, on main stage, you guys all heard our inspiration to be customer obsessed as an organization. Let's review why this is our first actionable component. It's common to find customer-obsessed organizations in the consumer world. It is far more complicated in the business services world to become customer obsessed as we touch our customers thousands of times a day. You met our team here at Powerhouse, and you can tell that they're taking it to the next level. You know we are a very customer-focused organization. We wouldn't be if we weren't willing to get out of the bed at 2 a.m. to help our customers when they have a power outage or an emergency. We are looking to elevate our culture even more to ensure our 22,000 teammates know how they can contribute to being customer obsessed. It's very easy for our branch managers and our sales force to embody customer obsession. We now are going to take it to our technicians, our ERSes and even our credit teams. We have an opportunity, every single time we touch these customers, to provide them an exceptional experience. Remember Slide 33 from today. This perhaps may be the most important slide here today. Never before have we shared this level of detail about our customers. I'm very excited to be able to share this with you. On your left, you can see the account customers that we did business with over the last 12 months, broken by revenue into 10 even slices. We are set up to win at the base, the middle and the top, providing our services the way they want to be served. Let's begin at our base. This is our bread and butter, our roots. This is our largest group of account customers. Our 1,350 branches that we have matter. Local relationships are very critical to this customer. Some of these customers only transact with us once or twice a year because that's the only opportunity we have with them, and that's okay, but we do have an opportunity here to broaden our solutions and services, as today they only transact with us on average with 1.3 lines of business. There are 3,600 rental companies that are in this space serving these customers. It's very fragmented. These branches are -- or these companies have 5 or less branches, [ in these 3,600 ]. And Mike will get into this further later. As we have grown and expanded our footprint and offerings, we have been able to serve our customers in this middle decile. These are what we consider our regional customers. They interact with our teammates across one or more regions, and we are able to unlock value with them through cross-selling and providing them all our offerings. As you can see, we are on average doing 4 lines of business with these customers. This is why we cluster. There are only 50 rental companies in this space that can serve these customers, and they are what we call the regional players. Now let's move up to the top decile. These are the largest customers we serve, our national customers. They have a need for business service companies that can provide them a footprint and a diverse fleet. Anywhere they win a project, they need to have a partner there that can help service them. There are maybe 5 companies out there that can serve these customers at the level they demand, but we really argue there's 2 or 3. We are nowhere near done with this ecosystem. Let's take it to the right over here. There are 1 million customers that we have done business with over the last 3 years that currently don't have accounts with us. All they have to do is go online, fill out our credit application, which is just as easy as going to Rocket Mortgage. And then we can move them to the left and start working them up our ecosystem. Now let's take our customers and let's bucket them into 2 buckets: first, our existing customers that were with us when we began 3.0. That's what you see on the left-hand side. That first bucket is customers that we served in fiscal year '21. This same group of customers, in fiscal '24, spent $6.2 billion with us. We were able to increase our revenue by 36% over this time frame. This is the definition of sticky, to me, as we are creating value with them and growing their businesses with these customers. Some of you may believe that we've hit a plateau, so let's look to the right-hand side. These are customers that opened new accounts with us, starting in 3.0. There was 108,000 customers that opened accounts. That is at a rate of 100 customers every single day, including Saturdays and Sundays. These customers, in the last 12 months, delivered $1.4 billion in revenue. We have proven that we can grow both existing customers and bring in new customers into our business, as rental is essential for this customer base. We will continue to see the growth moving forward. Customer obsession will be a hallmark of our success during 4.0. We are diving deep into our customers and moving our relationships from a provider to partnership. We are doing this through increasing our capabilities, our product ranges with our customers, as we have discussed. And you know that we are essential for their success and we do not take that for granted. This will create value for our customers, which will allow us to progress our rates. And through customer obsession, we'll distinguish ourselves in the rental industry, fueling our growth. So now let me welcome John and Kyle to discuss actionable item number two, growth.

Thanks, Jenelle. So the second actionable component, as we've learned over the last half an hour, is growth. And here we're essentially taking the first 2 actionable components from our 3.0 plan and melding them together as we go into 4.0. Our runway for growth during 4.0 will be driven through 3 primary pathways. First, we expect to capitalize on the latent capacity residing in our existing locations. Listen. We've had enormous growth over the last decade or so. And we're really excited to leverage the scale and efficiencies throughout our expanded platform. We will do all of this while continuing to open new locations, bringing our solutions even closer to our ever-growing customer base. Secondly, we'll grow our General Tool and Specialty businesses by progressing our cluster strategy, which broadens our total addressable markets, thus deepening rental penetration in all the markets that we serve. And lastly, we'll do all this while we balance volume growth and continued rate progression. In my nearly 30 years in the industry, there has never been a time or more of an opportunity of a time to do exactly this. So in terms of greenfield expansion, both General Tool and Specialty have opportunities to expand, expand into [ new ] markets and also deepening rental penetration in the markets which we serve today. We've identified 400 greenfield sites that we'll open over the course of this plan. We'll likely land somewhere between 300 and 400 new greenfield openings over the next 5 years. We really, really like this pace, this rhythm of 1 to 1.5 locations opened per week. Listen. We've demonstrated very clearly the ability to execute at this pace for the last 8 or 10 years, so you can see we expect our greenfields to account for about 20% to 30% of growth over the 4.0 plan. Brendan opened by saying, hey, 4.0, it's a lot like 3.0. This would be an example of that. This is a slide here that I think looks very familiar to most in the room. When it comes to advancing our clusters, we intend to continue to keep score in a consistent fashion as we've done. We start with bucketizing, if you will, the 210 DMAs in the U.S. and the 55 in Canada. And as you can see very clearly, 92% of the opportunity in the U.S. resides within the top 100 markets. And 2/3 of that in Canada resides in the top 10 markets. This will be our primary focus as we move forward in 4.0. In the middle there you see our track record of progressing our clusters throughout 3.0 as we significantly accomplished this over the last 3 years. In 4.0, our plan is to do just the same. We'll look to advance our clusters in the top 100 markets, somewhere in the range of 67 to 72, depending on how many of the 300 or 400 locations we open over this time period. And in Canada, we'll advance it from 5 to somewhere between 7 and 10. Most importantly, cluster economics, a term that we would have brought forward during 3.0, is alive and well. And the benefits of cluster economics is really clear. As we continue to deepen our clusters across our markets, we increase our TAMs. We become less cyclical as we go forward. And importantly, we realized increased utilization, increased rate and margins as a result. That's really why we do it. That's why we look to cluster the markets. Let's talk about density. This is something that we teased out a little bit, that we really haven't shared a lot of detail on before with this group, but we do see an opportunity to create and increase market density as we move forward. And here on this map, we're really representing density by OEC per capita. Pretty simple, the darker the shading, the more fleet we have committed to a state. And as you look at the map, one thing that will probably jump off the page at you there a little bit, we are named the Sunbelt, after all, right? So if you look at that geographical region from Virginia to Texas and into Florida, you see quite dark shades there. So what we found is the main ingredient to increasing market density is really time. It's really time. Look at Florida. It's a wonderful example of that. Here's a market that we've been developing for over 3 decades, and we continue to grow the density year after year after year. There's a couple of things we've learned over time when it comes to market density. One is we found out that we can progress density a little quicker now than we have been able to in the past. So a great example of that is California. Obviously it's a huge state and represents massive opportunity for us, but just look how fast we were able to grow our density in the State of California. We also understand a main catalyst to growing density is a deep commitment to collaboration, collaboration across the Power of Sunbelt, when our General Tool peers and Specialty peers really join up and collaborate. That said, I'd like to introduce my friend Kyle here to share some insight on Specialty growth over 4.0.

Thanks, John. Good afternoon, everybody. So I'll cover just a couple of slides on Specialty, starting with Slide 42, which is a look at market size, rental penetration and share; and our view of the continued runway for growth within Specialty. So those who recall the Capital Markets Day deck from 2021: This is essentially a look back at Slide 44 or an update to it, which was a pretty meaningful slide at the time. And it remains so, so with no disrespect to Slide 33, I would offer up that this might be the most important slide of the day. So let me take a walk through. We have a unified Specialty business, but here is how it breaks down into the individual lines. These are the 12 lines that make up Specialty at Sunbelt, starting at the top with our largest, power and HVAC, where we have a plan for scale growth approaching 1.9 billion -- to a scale approaching $1.9 billion at the end of 4.0; all the way down to our newest line, temporary walls, where we have a plan reaching roughly $50 million in scale over the same period at the end of fiscal year '29. If you sum all of these up, we have a plan that could add $2 billion over the 4.0 period, resulting in a Specialty business that reaches $5 billion through the end of the period. And then lastly on the bar chart, the gray, which we call the incremental potential growth by way of advancement in rental penetration and continued market share gains. The data points reached here, rental penetration and market share, we come to by way of some intense research and modeling, supported by third parties, as well as some degree of assumptions, especially in our lesser-developed lines, but what we know is this: Rental penetration in this space is still comparatively low versus the broader general tool and equipment landscape. And we both believe and have demonstrated that this continues to advance as a reliable alternative to ownership is presented via rental. So when you combine all of these things, we know the runway for growth in Specialty is very long. We see a realistic pathway whereas Specialty reaches a scale in excess of $10 billion over time by continued advancement in these key areas. Moving on. This is our pathway for expanded offerings within Specialty. As previously noted, we added 3 distinctly new lines over the 3.0 period, temporary structures, temporary fencing and temporary walls. All are essentially in their infancy, with lots of growth ahead. We know there's opportunity for more and that we'll continue down this path. Let me start with an explanation of our Specialty charter, which is a product and service which intuitively lends itself to a degree of rental penetration when a reliable alternative to ownership is presented via rental. We focus on products with comparably low market share, low rental penetration and predominantly nonconstruction-facing markets. So with this backdrop, we break these into 2 categories: gray space and white space. Starting with the gray space, these are existing opportunities or adjacencies. And our decision here is whether we enter by way of acquisition and then scale organically or whether we essentially start from scratch. Moving over to the white space, these are the undiscovered opportunities or what we view as sort of the art of the possible, rental categories that really do not exist yet where we see a scalable opportunity as well as connectivity to other products or services that we may already offer. A good example here is our flooring solutions business which we launched organically in 2016 and which has been both successful and rather well documented. And then a more recent example is our newest line, temporary walls. Here, this is brand new. We know it's a viable rental product. We're really the only company of any scale introducing it. And we're not only introducing here rental as an option, but we're also replacing drywall in what are known to be temporary applications. Think concealing renovations inside of hospital or airports, where the known end game is the drywall in the dumpster. We know that a rental solution makes sense here. We have several products in the pipeline in both of these 2 categories. And our process is to, first, vet out the overall viability; the scalability; and then ultimately the fit, meaning whether they fold into an existing line or whether they support a more robust stand-alone approach. So the key takeaway here is much more to come. And with that, I'll turn it back over to John.

Thanks, Kyle. Before we move on to Slide 44, which is important, I need a little help from you all, if you'll just watch my back because my peer here just said he had the most important slide in the deck. And indeed this is the most important slide in the deck, on rate, so if he advances on me to throw me off the stage, will you please give me a warning? Rate. Listen. When it comes to rate, there's no doubt we've experienced significant rate movement over our 3.0 campaign. And we did so in the face of market conditions where we experienced inflation unlike anything any of us have ever experienced in our careers, so it was necessary for us and, frankly, the rest of the industry as well to do just that, to advance rate. And while we were constructing the 4.0 plan, obviously it was abundantly clear that rate was something that we couldn't leave behind. We have to continue to progress rate as inflation still remains present in our business, so I'm going to highlight the why, sort of the how and why we know we have ability to do just that over the next 5 years. Let's start first with the formula here that you see. We have a formula and really a mechanism of delivery to do just this. And that mechanism is our dynamic pricing system that we've evolved, really created and evolved, over the last couple of plans. And we're really glad we did so because it came in handy, for sure, over the last 3 years. So whether it's wages, which we expect to outpace general inflation for the next several years; or our assets, the gear that we're landing today that's replacing an 8-year-old asset that's costing us 18%, 20%, 22% more than the one it's replacing; or just general inflation, listen. Even if we experience an inflationary pause from year to year, we still have this inflation impact in our business. There's a tail created because we buy an asset and keep it for 8 years, so we still have something that we need to overcome over the next several years. So what elements of this inflationary nature do we think we can pass on, what we think we can across the board here? Let's look at wages for an example of how this plays out into our annual targeted rate increase. So wages are about 1/3 of our overall cost as a business. And if we experience a 5% raise [ year ] to our teammates, we will need to earn back about 1.5% in rate to offset this for the year. And that same calculation can hold true for the other elements that we see here with assets and general inflation, so we're going to continually evaluate any major changes to the market, up or down, and how they relate to our cost base. We'll run them through our model. We will then pipe them through our dynamic pricing tool right to our customers that are online; right to our teammates that are in the field, with an iPhone in their hand, or at our counters in our depots across North America. We also see a very unique opportunity to earn a little bit of value-add premium from our customers along the way. Listen: What we do for them, it's complex. We try to make the hard things very easy for them. If rental was 2% or 3% of a cost of a project, it should not take any more than 2% or 3% of their time. It could come -- become very, very costly for our customers if we don't execute on this time and time again and if it doesn't go well. So there you have it for rate as it comes to 4.0. The why, it's inflation. The how, it's about our ability to mechanize this, so it's much more mechanical than it's been in the past. We really grew rate with the hearts and minds of our sales force over the last 3 years. We're going to swing the pendulum for it to be much more mechanical in this next chapter of our plan. Bottom line, we have the confidence to deliver sustained rate progression over the 4.0 campaign. So kind of bringing growth to a close here, what does all this stack up to be? Well, we see a pathway of growth to $14 billion and a bit more of revenue over this time. It's demonstrated in the bridge in the left. And we got there by taking the midpoint of our range, 6% to 9% in the U.S. and 9% to 12% in Canada. And we move it through our plan model, which -- market data, put in place, starts, time [ and locations that have been opened ] et cetera. We get a little bit more than $14 billion. We have a plan. We have a pathway to get there. It's truly a when, not if, that we reach this level of growth. And we plan for this growth to be experienced throughout every location in our platform. 75% of our growth will come from our existing locations today. When you look closer at that growth across our cohort, which we're trying to also represent in the bridge there, we take our cohorts of locations and put them into 3 little buckets there. The first one is not a little bucket actually. It's very, very big. It's the largest bucket we have. It's our legacy locations. Some of these locations have been open 30 years or more. And some are just a little over 3 years, but they're going to grow. In the middle of there, you have our locations that we opened during 3.0. Two words really sum that up [ as ] how we started, latent capacity. We really, really expect them to grow and take advantage of scale and efficiencies that we're going to bring forward. And the last bucket there, these are locations we haven't opened yet. We definitely expect them to grow. So that's the second actionable component, which is growth. I'd like to welcome Brad to the stage to share with you how we plan to advance our margin through increased performance during 4.0.

All right, thanks, gentlemen. Well, good afternoon, everyone. So just a few minutes ago, John and Kyle would have laid out for everyone in the room and everybody watching with us our plan for growth during Sunbelt 4.0. And the way that I would really sum up that plan for growth is it will come from a few key areas: our legacy locations which John just spoke about; those which we would have added to our network during the course of 3.0; and then of course, the ones that we will add through our 4.0 greenfield plan. We're building from a foundation today that is significantly larger than it was just 3 short years ago. And we're at a point in time where our focus really needs to shift to being in the mindset about a level of performance we've not yet seen before in our business, so that brings us to actionable component number three, performance. And the way that I think about this and I would like to share with you is that our plan sets up quite simply. We're going to work from the core of the business and extend outwards to the very markets where we operate from and our locations are present to serve the customers that Jenelle just described so well for you here as we started off. The way we're going to do that is we're going to leverage our SG&A investment, which positions us to do such great things when it comes to driving and leading and supporting our growing business. Second, we're going to benefit from the maturing of these locations that we just added. Mind you, there's 400 during the course of 3.0. And then ultimately we're going to lean into some operational improvements from a market-based approach that are all about how we can enhance the delivery to our customers, coupled with some technology. So let's begin with SG&A. And let's talk about, over the course of 3.0, the investments we made when it came to our central and our field support teams. Now when I say central support, I'd ask you to think about it this way. These are the team members that come to work every day at our support office in Fort Mill, South Carolina. And over the course of 3.0, we intentionally invested in a few key areas, technology, health and safety and sustainability. And we did all of that in order to deliver on new capabilities and a foundation that we can further build upon in 4.0, but this foundation now is well established and positioned to really deliver results over the course of the next 5 years without any significant level of further investment. We're going to highlight for you here during our short time together some of the results of this technology gain in a course of a video, but I want to set it up a little bit for you, first, before we go there, so let me shift to the right side of the slide for you and talk a little bit about the investment we made in 3.0 in our field support. Another way that you might think about this would be the district and regional leadership team from all across North America. And as we expanded our -- into our new geographies and increased our General Tool and Specialty business, we grew this team in accordance to supporting the increasing number of locations. You heard Kyle just mention we also added 3 lines of business. And in order to build a proper runway, we had to invest in the infrastructure. Hence, this team grew. Now we have reached a point where we have that field leadership team largely in place to support the additional 400 locations you just heard John and Kyle talk about, so as you're thinking about what will be required from us to hit these goals of 4.0, we don't see any reason to have significant levels of investment in order to deliver on them. And that's an important takeaway. So let's talk about our footprint of locations. When you look at all the rental locations in operation today, you can very simply segment them into the years of operation, and when you do that, there are obvious opportunities that are presented. First of all, once our locations hit that 5-year mark, they are really humming along. And we have reached a milestone of EBITDA margin and we hold that line. And if I think about all the locations that we've just added during 3.0, this sets up for a massive wave of opportunity. And it also creates this unique ongoing annuity effect for all of us given our continued plan that we're demonstrating here today to continue to grow over the next 5 years. So that said, we are also confident that, even in these legacy locations that are present today, opportunity still remains. And we're going to talk about how we're going to tackle that through some really exciting operational excellence opportunities that are within the business. So that's how we're going to create some additional impact, so let's come on to that. John shared with you our clustered economics update, right? That is something core to our strategy here at Sunbelt. We believe in clustering the marketplace for so many reasons, and we're going to continue to do that, but when you think about the significant scale and size of our operation in markets like we are right here in Atlanta, celebrating with our team in Powerhouse, we set up so well to really set apart from all the competition a way in which our collective unit of -- units of locations can operate together better and better serve the customer. And we leverage that scale. We can change some trajectories. And look. We're in an asset-rich business, which means if you want to be successful from an operational perspective, you've got to be excellent at 2 things. That's logistics and that's service, so we've established an operational plan to look at these critical needs at a market level. And these are opportunities for it to affect the margin profile, so I'm going to walk you through 3 examples here on the screen. I'm going to start on the left-hand side. It's what we call our market logistics operation. The way I'd ask you to think about this is this effectively is where we can approach a market level; and combine all the resources of our drivers, our trucks and our dispatchers to fulfill the needs for our customers and the resource and demand planning at a market level. And we do that at a collective size and scale rather than each individual branch having to work on what is a finite number of opportunities and resources at the same time. And when we do this, it's a game changer. And it creates better margin profile and it creates opportunity for growth. In the middle, you'll see something we call market field service. This is actually not very new. We've been doing this for about 15 years. Here's a very simple way to think about it. If you go to one of our rental branches today and you walk through the doors to the shop, we've got technicians in the bays. Their job is to take care of the assets that are coming through those shops day in and day out, but once they leave our facilities and they go on rent to our customers, we do have to maintain things in the field. We do have machines that can break down. This group of folks are designed to do only that work. Therefore, we allow opportunity to reside in the branch and to be more efficient and more effective. The last side of this slide is something net new called market repair center. Now in our business, the majority of the time when an asset comes back from rental from a customer, it needs a very simple routine check-in, cleaning. And it's right back on the ready-to-rent line. That's -- 80-plus percent of the time, that's what happens. A small portion and a small fraction of the time, machines break. They need to have more complex or time-consuming repair, so we have designated within our existing footprint, nothing net new, dedicated bays to tackle those problems with dedicated technicians. That way, what's a small thing doesn't get in the way of what's a bigger opportunity. And we can shift our mode of operating. And there's opportunity to also grow and invest in our business without the same base-level investment being necessary and being present. So it seems we're in some bit of competition here for the best slide of the morning -- or the afternoon, I should say, so I'm going to give my best shot. When you take all of this into consideration, we are confident it supports our path to deliver a 3% to 5% EBITDA margin improvement at the end of 4.0. Here's why. Leveraging SG&A, that's fully under our control here at Sunbelt. Second, location progression. We shared with you the slide of what happens, if you will, in our cohort of our businesses that range from those which were recently added to those who have been around a long time. We refer to them as legacy. We've proven that to be a fact. And last, when we think about operational excellence, we are early on in some of these, but we're further along in many others and they're already showing impact to the business. And we're going to continue down this road map to expand this across our entire network, and as we continue to grow, we bring these things forward. So what does this mean? Well, if I think about the revenue trajectory that John would have just laid out and a 3% to 5% improvement in that by the end of FY '29, it's a really big deal. It's a really significantly big deal, so that's where our minds are headed when we think about the future, but let me do this. I mentioned to you a short video on our technology gains. I think it's probably the best time to share this for you before we pass along the microphone here, so if we could queue that up, please, we'll have a go. [Presentation]

Great. Thanks. So I think that video does a really nice job laying things out, but I just want to touch on a few things before I hand it over and come on to the next one here. Some of these tools that you might have picked up on during that video are available to anyone, either in our industry or an adjacent one, right off the shelf. That's a fact, but here is the difference. We have taken here at Sunbelt all of these tools and put them together in a platform where we can start to draw synergies and bring the elements together. They've been designed for us with our rental IQ, as we call it. That's why we call it connect 360. And when you do that, you can have a unique impact on your customer and your people and your business. One way that I would ask you to think about it that I'll give you an example is logistics. There are so many great logistics businesses on this planet and lots and lots of software that can really harness the horsepower to make those things happen, but what we do here is different. We are not sending packages from a distribution center or a warehouse to your front door or mine or the loading dock of this hotel. It's far more complex. We have a whole web of assets and resources and environments and situations and circumstances that change every hour of every day, so it's not simple. We've designed it to work for us. And when it comes to service, we've moved and are moving far beyond just knowing was the oil changed and is the tire pressure right and is the battery full. We're harnessing all of that technology to really make a difference in our business. Again we are asset rich and asset focused when it comes to operations. You have to know what's going on. Up until this point, a technician puts their head inside of an engine compartment and checks the health. Here we take all of the inputs and all the data and we know where we are before that moment ever arrives. So that's where we are and that's what we're going to continue to lean into. Brendan mentioned earlier, when it comes to Chronos and it comes to dynamic pricing, have we delivered in the past? We absolutely have. Our plan in FY '25, which begins tomorrow, is to take all of these tools to the business and implement them and adopt them. In year 2, we will begin to see the impact of these things to the business, and we're going to keep going from there. So with that, I'm going to hand it over to Karen and to Monica to take us on to sustainability.

Good afternoon, everyone. All right, now on to actionable component number four, sustainability. All right. So we're defining what sustainability means for Sunbelt. We're thinking broadly and about the long term, advancing our position as a growing, thriving organization to deliver sustainable value for all of our stakeholders. We believe that sustainability will create a tailwind for delivering our 4.0 strategy, reinforcing our customer obsession while also strengthening our operational focus and targeting Sunbelt's key impacts and opportunities from strengthening our GHG targets and our approach to wastewater and supply chain sustainability to driving the sustainability benefits of rental inherent for our customers and, of course, investing in our people and communities. Look. We've been doing sustainability well in many respects, and we've evolved our thinking. And as the external landscape and dynamics have advanced, so too have the expectations of our customers, our people and our investors, all right? And we're responding to that. As it relates to our direct operational impacts, an important advancement for 4.0 will be a new set of scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions intensity targets, which is, as you know, primarily the fuel burn from our own transport fleet, scope 1; and our purchased electricity, scope 2. We're on track to meet our 3.0 target of 35% reduction in GHG emissions intensity for scope 1 and 2 by 2030. We'll meet that target by the end of fiscal '25 and possibly sooner, so we'll re-baseline from our original baseline of 2018 to 2024 to better reflect the growth over 3.0 and the current state of our business. We'll adopt another set of scope 1 and 2 emissions intensity targets of 50% by 2034 from the 2024 baseline, so that's a 10-year target from 2024 baseline to 2034. And we're very pleased to share that we'll also introduce a commitment to net 0 by 2050 for our scope 1 and 2 emissions. First, for that net 0 commitment, the emphasis will be on the pathway that we've set, and I'll talk more about that. We may adjust the year down as we reach various milestones and as low-carbon technology evolves. As it relates to scope 3, as you know, this is our -- this represents our indirect value chain emissions, including our customers' use of rental equipment. We'll engage with our OEMs on the targets that they've set. And we'll also evaluate a scope 3 target for ourselves during the course of 4.0. All right. So this is a really important step that we've taken. And actually this may be the most important slide of the day. We're developing a tangible scope 1 and 2 pathway to 2050 that we believe in. And as you know, there are a number of companies that have set net 0 targets without a tangible pathway to get there. It was really important to us that we model potential pathways and develop a path with a line of sight to how we could reach net 0 by 2050. Our pathway is informed by the macro outlook and a range of key sources, from OEM-announced targets to governmental commitments, expert forecasts like those from the International Energy Agency, as well as our own proprietary insights developed through our relationships with our OEMs and fuel providers, for example. We know that the pathway relies on innovation and advancements and refinements in technology and infrastructure to come to fruition. We'll start with light-duty EVs and a light to moderate level of renewable diesel or HVO and we'll -- then we'll move on to electrification of medium duty. And then for heavy duty, we'll adopt EVs where it makes sense in the earlier stages; and we believe hydrogen will develop in the out-years. We're power agnostic. So what does that mean? It means that we're going to pivot as technology scales and becomes more effective and economic, so whether for certain categories, that's EV, hydrogen, renewable liquid fuel, fusion or any other technology that emerges and takes the stage. Our pathway is based on the best available information right now; and it will be a living, breathing plan evolving as needed over time. All right. So moving on to our customer focus. We're driving sustainability through the power of rental. Now what do we mean by the power of rental? We see sustainability as an opportunity. It's a tailwind for us. Not many companies have that opportunity. It reinforces the structural progression that Brendan talked about. There is power in our scale, access to the latest sustainable technology, newer equipment and the built-in efficiencies associated with rental. The inherent benefits of the sharing economy mean that we're better equipped to reduce the GHG impact of ownership, operations and dispositions. When it comes to low-emitting product, we have very demonstrable benefits there. And for categories where the technology is already there, there's a ton of room to grow. And we'll continue to be thoughtful about what this means from a fleet perspective. Over time, demand has to scale. And that will take some advancement in terms of the energy transition and broader investments in low-carbon technology, and that includes incentives and mandates from policymakers, as you all well know. We also see -- we continue to see demand for sustainability data, especially around GHG emissions, for -- from our customers. And we're well positioned to meet the requests we're currently seeing, and it's a standout feature for those customers who value this data. Like our customers are seeing the sustainability value in rental. And this is the case for mega projects, through to national accounts, down to that -- reaching down to that 50% decile that Jenelle talked about. Now moving on to our people, I'd like to pass over to Monica.

Thank you, Karen. So when it comes to the social aspect of sustainability, our people strategies are our top priority; and driven by our leaders centered around attracting, developing and retaining our team members; also driven by the [ Sunbelt 6 ], the values and beliefs that are alongside our team members throughout their entire careers with us. Regarding inclusion, which is also a key element of our sustainability journey, I'm pleased to share that we now have launched 9 ERGs, employee resource groups, across North America and the U.K. We also continue to make meaningful investments in our team's safety and their personal and professional growth, advancing our compensation and our reward structure and unlocking efficiencies and capabilities that are driving these advancements. And when you look at our engagement scores, you can see these are the right investments. We continue to have best-in-class scores in both participation and in score. And when you think about the complexities of our service sector business, these are very good results. You think about all the personas that Jenelle mentioned, the fact that we're in 1,550 locations. We are still driving very strong and consistent engagement across the entire Sunbelt family, and it's paying off. The evolution in our people strategy is driving synergies and performance that shows up not only in our engagement scores but also in our retention metrics and the success and health of our business. In 4.0, we'll drive greater impact to enable a higher level of community investment than we've ever had, something our people are passionate about and a driver of our employee engagement. Our focus on community is also another opportunity to align with our customers in areas of common interest. I'm excited to share that, over the course of 4.0, we have a goal to reach 1% of after-tax profit annually in charitable contributions. We'll advance more strategic partnerships like the Gary Sinise Foundation and other veteran causes as well as new signature partnerships with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Additionally, we're amplifying our employee engagement in the community. One is through a company matching gifts program for charities. And second is a dollar-for-doers program where our team members can earn money for organizations they volunteer with, overall just being even more deliberate in our goals around investing and retaining our people and investing and supporting our communities. And with that, I will turn it over to Michael Pratt with investment.

Thanks, Monica. And good afternoon to everyone here and, I guess, good evening to those watching from Europe. I think we'll now move on to the bit that you've all really been waiting for. You've heard from everyone else about our plans for the business over 4.0; how it affects our people, our customers and our communities. I'm now going to try and explain to you what that means for us financially. Earlier on, Brendan looked back at Sunbelt 3.0, but he also looked back at the development of the group and the industry since the -- effectively since the financial crisis. That's a period that's seen significant structural change in the industry through increased rental penetration, whereby rental today is far more essential and core, whereas back then it was somewhat top-up. The big have got bigger in an increasing market, but it still remains very fragmented. We've taken the opportunity from that structural change over the last 15 years to significantly change the scale and capability of this business both operationally and financially, so as we sit here today, we've never been in such a strong financial position to be able to launch the ambitious plans that we've talked about today. We're looking to get strong revenue growth, margin improvement, double-digit EPS growth; and generate strong free cash flow. That strong free cash flow, combined with our amended target leverage range of 1x to 2x net debt-to-EBITDA, gives us significant opportunity to enhance value further, whether that be through further organic growth, bolt-ons or additional returns to shareholders, but as we stand here today, these are just plans. There are a lot of moving parts, and a lot of things have to align for us to deliver on those plans. So if we look forward to what we might expect over the next 5 years, it appears that -- certainly as we stand here today, that the economic backdrop will be reasonably supportive. You've heard about the construction side of things whereby the forecasts are somewhat underpinned by the onshoring that's continuing; by technology advancing; and also by the legislative acts, whether it be the infrastructure act, CHIPS and science or IRA, all providing an underpin to those forecasts. Demand for rental is as much a function of GDP and population. We -- the forecasts for GDP are broadly in line -- in the U.S. market broadly in line with historical averages, so sort of 2% to 3%. When you talk about population: You heard a little bit earlier from John, when he talked about fleet density, the difference between take a Florida where we've been well established and California where we've been less established. Actually, those things have changed quite rapidly over time. When we first started quoting those numbers, it was $50 in Florida and it was $20 in California. Florida has grown to $69. Yes, there's a bit of inflation there, but California is growing more rapidly to $35. There's no reason why California shouldn't be at a Florida level, and both should not be higher. Against that backdrop, we believe we will be able to grow rental revenues in the U.S. and for the group by 6% to 9% a year over the next 5 years. From a U.S. perspective, that's about 1.5x to 2x the forecast rental market growth, with 75% of that growth coming from our existing locations, with the balance coming from greenfields. It also assumes that those construction forecasts that you saw earlier broadly play out. Now as we stand here today, I suspect that there's a risk to those. That risk is to the downside rather than to the upside, if you think about what we've talked about from availability of labor et cetera. If I now turn to Canada. We think, taking advantage of the opportunities that exist in the Canadian market, we can grow rental revenue at somewhere between 9% and 12% over the 5-year period. That's leveraging our existing locations by deploying additional capital, opening greenfields to grow our General Tool business but also grow our Specialty business. In the first year of 4.0, revenues will grow slightly more quickly as the film and TV business comes back from last year's actors' and writers' strikes. Turning now to the U.K. Their 4.0 plan broadly mirrors the North American plan, but there'll be slight different emphasis when you come to growth and to performance. From a growth perspective, it's far more about a -- growing the total addressable markets in which we operate, whether that be facilities maintenance, janitorial, events et cetera. When it comes to performance, it's more about margin -- or, I guess, similar, margin improvement through operational efficiency but rate progression. We do not get the rate in the U.K. market for the service we deliver. That has to change and we will look to change it. So those factors are reflected in a somewhat more moderate growth rate that we expect in the U.K. market in that 2% to 5% range over the next 5 years. Turning now to drop-through and margins. We're expecting drop-through in the mid-50s in the U.S., which should enable us to be able to deliver group EBITDA margins in the high 40s. So let's say 47% to 50% as an EBITDA margin, which would translate into 26% to 29% from an operating profit margin. Brad talked to you a little bit earlier about how we're going to achieve that. In the first -- in some ways, it's a lot of self-help, leveraging the SG&A that we have in the business that we've invested over the last -- particularly through 3.0, leveraging that and reaping the benefits of it. It's store progression. We've opened a lot of stores through 3.0. We opened a lot of stores in Project 2021, particularly towards the end of that period. Those will mature and grow. We'll deploy extra fleet. And as you saw from the slides earlier, margins will improve on those over time. And then finally, operational improvement as we harness the benefits of the digital investment that we've made during 3.0 to help improve the operating efficiencies within the business, but as Brad laid out, we're in the process of rolling that out and adopting it, so it's less likely to impact our performance in the coming year but will increasingly do so thereafter. Many will have heard me talk about it in the past, our smooth fleet profile. Now I guess the last 2, 3 years have challenged that somewhat with supply chain constraints, but we still have a reasonably smooth fleet profile, with a predictable replacement need. That replacement need will increase as we go through Sunbelt 4.0. Unfortunately, that's one of the downsides of growing as rapidly as we have done over the last 5 to 10 years, so with that known replacement need and the growth plans that we have for 4.0, then we think we'll be spending around about $20 billion on capital expenditure. That's rental fleet, delivery vehicles, IT, infrastructure et cetera. So now with all due respect to my colleagues, if there is one important slide, it's this one. And I won't embarrass you by asking which of you the first thing you did when you got the deck was turn to the back. I had a number of questions already, so I think I know the answer. Anyway, this slide illustrates what we think it would look like if you applied the assumptions that we've just talked about in terms of financial performance, cash flow et cetera, but let's be clear. It's a direction of travel for organic growth. This is not a forecast. We will continue to guide the market on an annual basis and give quarterly updates. That won't change. This is just a direction of travel. I know it says it on the slide but also just remind it's organic growth. It doesn't take -- we're not assuming we do bolt-ons et cetera in all of this. On that basis, this would result in on -- what we are looking at, at the moment will result in rental revenue of somewhere between $13 billion and $15 billion by the time -- we hit $15 billion by the time we get to 2029. EBITDA would be somewhere between $7 billion and $8 billion; and profit, operating profit, $4 billion to $5 billion. This strong growth in revenue and profits would result in an EPS growth of around about 10% a year over that time period at current tax rates; and resulting ROI returning to previous peaks and, hopefully, above them. So if we take that and just take the middle of that performance range, then using our updated leverage range, at the lower end of that, we'd expect to have around about -- we assume to have around about $2 billion of extra capital to deploy. At the top end of the range, 2x, that will be close to $9 billion to deploy to enhance value further, whether that be further organic growth, whether it be bolt-ons or whether it be further returns to shareholders. Our capital allocation policies have remained and continue to remain consistent, and we apply them consistently. We flexed all elements of that policy throughout 3.0. We spent just over $9 billion on CapEx. We spent just over $3 billion on bolt-ons. And we returned $700 million to shareholders over and above the $1 billion we paid out in dividends. We did all that whilst remaining within our leverage range of 1.5x to 2x and, on average, towards the lower end of that range throughout that time period. So taking that in account. And that's how we like to run the business. And also actually, talking to a lot of shareholders over the last 6 to 12 months, we're amending our -- to be fair, we're amending our leverage range such that we'll leave the upper end where it was at 2x, but we're going to lower the bottom end down to 1x net debt-to-EBITDA. Now I know there are some out -- of you out there who will think that's defensive. Unsurprisingly, I disagree with you. It's offensive. It gives us plenty of optionality and flexibility to take advantage of whatever is in front of us, so that's taking advantage of opportunity [ in the market ]. Or it may be just reacting to an unexpected event et cetera, so it's that flexibility and optionality that's important. Over time, I think we'll tend to operate towards the middle of that range, but take the example whereby, let's say, you've got 3 or 4 -- the chance to do 3 or 4 larger bolt-ons. So let's say 3 or 4 deals, $300 million, $400 million each. Well, you can do those without having to worry about what it's doing to your balance sheet. If there's a share price overreaction, the share price dropped significantly, we can buy back a significant amount of shares, again without worrying, so it's a leverage range that we think works for the business and gives us that flexibility and optionality as we go forwards. Finally, on the dividend policy. We're not -- our dividend policy will remain unchanged, so we'd look to pay a progressive dividend. And what's that mean, it means we'd look to grow it in line with earnings, but if earnings go backwards, we'd look to maintain it given the cash-generative capabilities of this business. However, there is one thing that we will change. We have a sort of disproportionate or an imbalance between interim and final dividend, which the interim is disproportionately small. The final is disproportionately large. And frankly, that's a bit of a legacy of history. It reflects the pace we've grown at. So when we're growing very rapidly, we're always cautious with the interim and we'd put a lot more into the final. So we'll more -- move to a more traditional split, so that's likely we'll move towards 1/3 interim, 2/3 final. And we'll do that for the first time with the interim in FY '25. So our growth algorithm is very simple, very clear. It's organic growth, so same-store and greenfields, supplemented by bolt-ons. Slide 67 summarizes what we've done on bolt-ons since May 2011, so basis since the financial crisis. In North America, we've bought over 200 businesses for around about $6 billion at an average multiple of around about 6x EBITDA. The majority of those are not in a process. Invariably, it's a shoulder tap by our team. We know where we want to be. We know the zip code we're going to. If there's a good business, we'll tap them on the shoulder and have a conversation that may or may not sell. Alternative is quite often a seller will come to us with a business that they want to exit and are we interested in buying them. The reality is, in deals of this size, we're the acquirer of choice. Given the importance or the -- that bolt-ons have played to our growth in the past, I guess the question is what is the pipeline like. And the answer is, pretty good. You heard about it a little bit earlier. There are over 3,500 rental companies in the U.S. with 5 or fewer locations. 3,000 of those have only 1 location. As Brendan would say, there's a career's worth of bolt-ons [ ahead of us ]. And he's not that old. As you would expect given our disciplined and rigorous approach to capital allocation, it should be no surprise as to what we would do with that additional capital that we have, so let's just, for example, take a scenario. Let's assume we're going [ to ] stay at the middle of our leverage range, 1.5 to -- 1.5x net debt-to-EBITDA. On that basis, based on the figures I stuck out on the slide earlier, then we have about $5.5 billion to deploy. Now -- and I -- if the growth is there, if the opportunity is there, we'll spend it on CapEx, but let's just assume for a moment it's not. Let's consider 2 extremes. On the one hand, we spend it all on bolt-ons. So if you look at the multiples we had on the previous slide, let's assume we can buy businesses for 2.5x revenue, 6x EBITDA, 8x EBITA. That would result in additional $2.2 billion of revenue for us, over $900 million of EBITDA and almost $700 million of operating profit, which in turn would translate into incremental EPS growth per year of around about 2%, but that's only one aspect of it. We don't buy fixer-uppers. We buy businesses looking to grow those businesses. Invariably, the businesses that we buy are underinvested from a capital perspective, so we'll put more capital into those businesses. We can deploy all the tools you've heard about already from Brad. And we add the Power of Sunbelt, cross-selling, so although we'll have bought $2.2 billion of revenue, you'd expect to grow that significantly in the short term. An alternative way to look at value creation is we're buying businesses at 6x and, let's say, were valued at 10x EBITDA. That's a significant value creation immediately. Alternatively, we spend [ it all ] on buybacks. If I assume an average purchase price, over 4.0, of GBP 70 a share, then you can buy back 62 million shares. And that's 14% of your share capital. And that [ would, sure ], enhance EPS by around about 1% a year over that 5-year term. So in the near term, it's more likely to be bolt-ons and deleveraging as we look to move more to the middle of our leverage range, but we have flexibility and optionality. So that's my key message. What I want to leave you with is we have a strong financial position. The balance sheet has never been stronger, so with the opportunities we have with Sunbelt 4.0, we have flexibility and optionality in how we deploy that capital that is generated from that. And with that, I'll hand over to Brendan.

To wrap things up, I'll replay a few slides here. The structural progression in this industry is clear; we believe, permanent; and therefore has runway to advance our business. Our industry will grow. The big will get bigger, and ultimately the share of 2 or 3 will be significantly more than it is today. The structural progression has positioned us and this industry to price more disciplined like you would see business services companies do on a go-forward basis. When we put it all together, we are positioned to execute like never before, utilizing the structural progression that I've just talked about. Our plan as we move to execute on it will deliver performance improvement in the form of improving margins, free cash flow and growth and returns; and finally, put us in a position that you've just heard from Michael, significantly enhances our overall financial position. And I'll report -- repeat a word he said more than one time: giving us optionality, optionality, optionality. So in conclusion, we believe we have a compelling investment case for all of our stakeholders, Sunbelt 4.0, our runway for success. And with that, we're going to move to Q&A. Thank you. Michael, could I have you? We've got a few microphones. Who -- where is our microphone gang? Okay, be ready. If you could, please, introduce yourself, name and company, that would be helpful. There we go. Thank you. Well, can we start up here, Annelies, please? Up here, front row.

I'm sorry. [ I can't see ]...

Annelies Vermeulen from Morgan Stanley. I have 3, please. And so firstly, on rates. And you've talked a lot more a lot about the industry being more disciplined around rates and your confidence in rate progression. And do you have a sense of how you think industry rates will progress relative to your target that you've given for the next 5 years? And then I suppose the question is does it matter. Or are you very confident in that delivery regardless of what happens in -- across the rest of the industry?

Yes. I think, well, first of all, in terms of the level we've given. So I want to be clear. The level that you would have heard John talk about this morning, an inspiring 2,000 sellers, is not the indication that we're giving to all of you. We gave some guidance or early guidance with our Q3's in terms of next year's growth, 7%, 7.5% revenue growth in the U.S. And we got to that in the -- whether it's 4% volume, 3% rate, somewhere in that arena. That's what we're talking about for now. We'll give you an update in June as we see that materialize over the next couple of months. I think, your second one question-wise, it doesn't really matter. And I'll say it doesn't really matter and answer it this way. The larger, more disciplined, more sophisticated businesses who realize the intrinsic inflation that is in our business, particularly today when it comes to skilled trade wages, they will do precisely that. When it comes to the fragmented tail you heard Jenelle talk about -- which that slide may just be the best, 33. When you hear, when you look at -- listened to what Jenelle talked about in that, those lower deciles. Those are the 3,300, 3,500 rental companies out there. As sure as we're all in this room, some of them will not be disciplined. Do you know what we'll do? We'll lose a bit of share for a little bit of time, and it won't matter, but what we won't let happen is for that rate to degradate [ it ] any further than some small market.

And then the second question was on you've talked about the additional customers that you gained during 3.0 and you're confident in converting those into credit customers. Given -- or I don't know if you have a sense of how much of those customers came through because of capacity constraints and unavailability of equipment elsewhere. As availability of equipment has normalized, how confident are you in the stickiness of those customers staying with you? And -- or is it a case of, as you showcased, the ease of the rental model? And similarly, for the mega projects, I think Jenelle talked about the rental penetration being higher on mega projects. Again, how confident are you in that continuing to be the case?

I'll answer the second, first: remarkably confident. If you just -- and I say that because I've talked to so many of those customers. A matter of fact, some of those customers will be here tonight at our event. And those customers -- I mean just think about the order of magnitude or level of magnitude of the amount of fleet required for these projects. It's not the owner who would be buying the fleet. It would be the contractors who would be buying the fleet, and it's just something they have 0 interest in. Furthermore, it's a bit like you heard the whole team talk about in terms of how much more difficult fleet, maintenance fleet, logistics fleet, movement is than just buying. It's that thing that you hear from time to time. The 2 best days of boat ownership is the day you buy it and the day you sell it. I can attest to that, but however, that is becoming abundantly clear. When it comes to OEMs getting more ordinary or normalized, it's a great question. Here is what you're going to see happen. We are going to leverage like we have historically the dial, so does it mean that we're going to see some middles and littles et cetera, as we're showing here on this slide, 33, that will get a bit more equipment? Of course, they will, but remember the vast majority of what they're buying today, if not exclusively what they're buying today, is replacement. There's very little growth CapEx going in. The dollars are larger, but they're finally getting to the point of replacing the significantly inflation-impacted new assets. So again, will we see some independents getting a bit more in terms of assets? Yes, we will. Have we seen that? Yes, we have. Has that had something to do with the level of time utilization being a bit lower than it was during extraordinary times? Of course, it has, but there's a normalization period here. It's debatable, what we like better. Do we like the times when it was really difficult, super constrained? We got our unfair share and no one else could get it. Or do we like it where we can actually be a bit more prescriptive? I think Michael would answer you like the dial rather than light switch.

Yes.

So anyway, I think that's where we are.

And then just one more, if that's all right, on -- just a quick one on nonconstruction. I think, most of the categories you've outlined, you've got relatively good visibility. As you say, it's events that happen every year and so on. I think the bit that, as we've seen, is more difficult is the emergency response, as we saw last year, so what do you assume in your guidance in terms of emergency response given the difficulty of predicting natural disasters et cetera?

We don't -- we have the day-to-day because it's run rate.

Yes.

But what we don't have, well, we don't have any [ year that we're out of that we're ] the extraordinary, so there's none. I want to touch on that. Remember, historically, we have always actually called out the revenue impacts during the periods of more extreme events; and we will continue to do that. And if there's a need then to adjust our guidance for the year based on a strong Q2 or Q3 as a result of storms, then we would. Can we just -- we can keep a few up front? Why don't we do that? There you go. Come on, yes, Arnaud.

2.5. Is that okay -- Arnaud Lehmann from Bank of America. The first one may be a little bit unfair, but you give us relatively wide range. I appreciate it's in 5 years. As things stand today, very bullish on your business, a few question marks on the macro, rates et cetera, do you see, what's more likely in your heart, the upper end, the middle, the lower end?

Well, if that's -- I'll take it straight down the middle, would you say? I mean that's where we ran all the numbers.

That's [indiscernible].

Yes, but again reiterate what Michael said. Again, we have to take all this onboard. I said to our team this morning we have a track record of putting up a plan. They knock it down and make it look easy. They won't always be that way, but it's part of really the structural progression of what we've experienced. And it's a bit like I said to the team over the last couple of days: Percentages are difficult to deposit. Dollars and cents are what lead to EPS growth, so I think we have to just think more in terms of what that all amounts to. So whether it's the 6% or it's the 9% or it's [ 5 ] or it's [ 10 ], in the end, I think what we are remarkably confident in is that it is the when, not the if.

I'll take that. The second question, on your 3% to 5% margin improvement, do -- can you give us a bit of color what is a natural effect from slowing the pace of greenfield, compared to 3.0, relative to SG&A and higher rental rates?

I think it's less about a slower rate on greenfields. And so -- but what you do, you leverage your fixed cost base, so in terms -- probably getting towards the lower end of that range. You're talking more about leveraging the fixed cost base and you're talking about the margin progression with our existing locations. So the 3.0 additions and the ones from the last part of FY '21. And then as you progress through to get up to the higher end of that range, you're adding on the operational improvements and efficiencies that should come as we deploy the tech.

And the last one. We had the chance to talk to some of your employees yesterday; all very positive, obviously, on Sunbelt. One of the few pushbacks we heard is that they don't -- they can't get -- they don't have a U.S.-listed share to get options or...

That's a creative way to ask that question.

And it's a topic that has come up with a few investors as well, if I may say, so are you -- consider the U.S. relisting? Is that still on the card maybe for the medium term?

I've said consistently that we as a Board take this under review periodically. And if we make any change whatsoever, you'll be the first to know. Can we -- there you go. Then we'll do Rory next. [ Crystal ], can you -- or whoever has one here -- yes.

Suhasini from Goldman Sachs. A couple from me, please. If I had to break down the 6% to 9% organic growth -- and probably around 2% is from greenfields, right? And I know that you haven't mentioned the rates part being -- but I think on Slide 44, when the commentary was said, there was roughly 1.5% each from wages, asset life cycle, generally inflation, getting it close to the mid-single digit just from rates, which means that, excluding greenfields, you're probably looking at rates close to mid-single digits, volumes at low single digits. That feels a bit low given the tailwinds from mega projects, the penetration from specialties et cetera, so just some color on that, please.

Well, we haven't put a number on rate.

Yes.

It's a formula, so the formula will depend on what inflation is. So if inflation goes back to 10%, then we'll -- our rate will be a very different number and you'd be looking for a different revenue growth. So I don't think -- you can't look into it in that sort of manner. So the volume growth is it will be a combination of the greenfields, some same-store growth, but let's -- there's a tendency I often think that people say, well, there's this construction market and then there's mega projects. That's not the case. Mega projects are just an increasing feature of a construction market. And yes, you've got strong construction et cetera, but also it's true. If you go back in time, we'd have said -- when you're talking more traditional nonresi, for want of a better word, we said about 4% or 5% of that drops through to rental. Take a semiconductor plant which is -- let's say it's $10 billion. Actually we start off by estimating -- what, less than 1%?

Yes.

We think it's probably slightly more than that now, but it's a different dynamic, so there's a different [ balance there ]. So all that is sort of playing into how you come up of where you think the -- where the market will be. [ I'd ] say U.S. rental market forecasts are -- we're sort of 1.5x to 2x that. What have -- you have to remember that this is not -- as I said clearly, it is not a forecast. It's a direction of travel. I think what you have to do is look at people around you, what you've heard over the last couple of days. Whatever is there, we'll take advantage of. We had a similar -- a very different environment, [ except ] we had a very similar range for 3.0 based on a set of market conditions. Market conditions were very, very different, so we then took advantage [ investing CapEx, did more and more capital ] et cetera.

Second question is on the connected assets, please. How do you ensure that the assets are actually able to send the data correctly, especially if the construction is in a remote site...

Don't look at me.

Go ahead. I'm sorry. Keep going.

And what percentage of your vehicles are connected with telematics today? And is your target to reach 100% connectivity by August '24? Was that...

We're effectively 100% today. There'll be "a bit around the edges" of assets that we will dispose of in the next 12 months that we didn't think it was -- made sense from a dollars and cents standpoint to telematically equip, but we are essentially 100% complete. What was the -- your first question?

How are you ensuring that the assets are actually able to send the data? Maybe it's a techy question, but often construction...

I'm just assuming that device that we put on it, with the 3 prongs, and the data that we connect is working. And it is working. How we ensure that, that's -- we have our Chairman of the Audit Committee here. I think he's going to add that to the assurance list if you keep it up, but yes, it's something running and it works really well. Rory?

It's Rory McKenzie from UBS. I'd like to vote for Slide 41 as my favorite. I think, great illustration of the space to expand into, but can you also talk about the growth budgets for the core markets like Florida? How much darker green are they going to try and turn over the next 5-year plan? And how much of that is from build-out of the new specialty markets in those core regions? Just to get a sense of the maturity that's in the business today.

None of it would be new specialty business lines that Kyle would have gone through white space or gray space. It would only be those lines that would have been on Slide 42 that would have related to that. And the short answer is all of those markets, even they're the most dense, continue to get higher fleet per capita. Obviously those, like, that we have focused on significantly around really those top 100 markets that are going to be the deep green are going to be those that are probably going to advance the most. That's what's in the modeling for that, but it just depends on what the market is, as you would have heard Brad talk about -- or John talked about, rather. It's what are the inputs in those markets. If Orlando -- which you heard John talk about this morning on the stage. If Orlando has a "put in place" increase of 10% in 2025 or 2026, then that's part of the algorithm in terms of the fleet investment in that market, so again a bit back to Michael's point that he's made. All of this is driven off of very specific assumptions with these inputs, and it drives it that way. The other thing I want to answer even though you didn't quite ask it: We've not found the ceiling, so we just don't know yet. Michael said it. When we started tracking this with Florida, Florida was $40. When we started tracking California, California was $19, I remember, or $18...

$15, $20.

$15, $20. I remember $19. Nonetheless, that continues to advance.

And secondly, on CapEx plans, where you're expecting $4 billion [ a year ] on average over the plan. Obviously, for FY '25, you're guiding to a much lower kind of run rate than that. Can you just talk about the challenges with trying to set up your very energized workforce for that big growth plan while having to temper and kind of moderate the near term given where the market is today?

Well, first of all, what we're really feeding them is about what they're asking for, so we have a very bottom-up, which of course has all of the refining et cetera from a [ top-to-me ] standpoint, but we're fulfilling the request. Would it be a bit higher than what we've put out there from a growth standpoint? Sure, it would be. And that would be an individual branch looking at their own time utilization statistics, their own growth prospects from a market -- or territory standpoint but not looking yet at the market level, so when the district manager gets involved and looks at the growth, to calibrate the whole thing, it comes down slightly. There have been years, in fairness, more when it was the [ older dial ] years, where if we just went with what the field said back in the years where we spent $1.6 billion, $1.7 billion in CapEx, it may have been [ 3.5 ]. So it does seem a bit more realistic right now in terms of the difference between what the field would be asking for and what we've put in our figures.

Can you hear...

Yes.

Is it on?

Yes.

So name is Nadim Rizk, at PineStone Asset Management. I have a few long-term questions and one sort of more shorter term, but first, I want to say thank you for inviting us to this big event. I do concur. As you said, this is much more interesting than doing a regular capital markets. It's really good to get a sense -- it helps us to get a sense of the business and what it is like to kind of live with Ashtead or Sunbelt. So 2 quick questions on long term: One is I'm not looking for a number. And I understand this is not an exact forecast, but going forward, you're guiding for a slower revenue growth than what you've done historically. And again, not looking for a number, I just want to understand. Is this because you want to be conservative and nobody knows? Or is it, b, just the business is different than what it was before? Or just the nature of the company is much bigger today, so it's kind of hard to keep; or a combination of [ all ] of these things.

First and foremost, it is the inputs from an end market standpoint. If the -- let's start construction, first. Then I'll go into a few nonconstruction examples. If the construction end market grows over the next 2 years at a 35% CAGR, we will grow far more than what we prescribed today. If you take then, for instance, some of the -- so rest assured, if the market grows more than that -- as I said before, we're going from a 18%, 16% CAGR growth in nonres, nonbuilding to a 5%. So that's going to be part of it if that's just less than half of your business. If you look at some of the specialty lines, one thing perhaps we haven't gotten across very well: When we went through the period of such restrained -- supply constraints, rather, such significant supply constraints, we were so well positioned that we literally bought some share from ownership. So if we take, for instance, flooring. It's a good example. Flooring went through a period of 2 years growth in the 40% to 50% CAGR range. And what literally was happening was our primary supplier for flooring -- this is not a vast space from an OEM standpoint. We were buying so disproportionate amount of their production that we were therefore getting that extra rental penetration. That rental penetration will actually do more like what General Tool did once upon a time in the early days, so it will oscillate a bit, which is totally fine. So it will go from growing at 45%, 50% to maybe a couple of years of growing at a ho-hum 7%, but nonetheless, that's what -- all what goes into that, so it's not that we're any less bullish. It's purely a matter of what the end markets will show us.

Okay. And would that be related to why you're sort of deleveraging a little bit? Because, a, you're -- you don't need as much capital, but also maybe it's going to be a lot more unknowns in the industry and you want to be sort of ready. Or are you just simply being very conservative? And less leverage means maybe a higher multiple on the stock, and you don't need as much leverage to grow in the future.

Well, I mean, first of all, I don't think -- this may feel conservative to some. I don't think that growing the business by $4 billion to $5 billion over the course of 5 years is really all that conservative. I think it -- a lot of it is just math. And if you look at our business, at its current level of scale, our business can grow 10%, 11%, 12% organic growth through volume before you even bring in pricing, so just as a result of that, it's going to be inherently more free cash flow generative. And therefore, unless you have other paths to deploy that, which I appreciate this is elementary, the way that I'm answering this question, you're going to delever. Furthermore, we're toward the higher end of our range right now and we like a bit more optionality than we have at this very moment. So I hope that answers.

Maybe just one last quick one, and it's more short term in nature. There's another large rental, publicly listed, company that didn't seem to have the same sort of short-term hiccups that you've gone through in the last couple quarters. Is that just pure sort of randomness? Is there something to read into it? Or is it just really very different end markets and exposure? And it happens from year to year. And we're going to look back in 5 years and consider that to be noise.

Yes. I mean I don't think it's a -- I think we will look back in 5 years and consider it to be noise. It's a very, very different growth profile between the 2 companies you're referencing, and I think it's simply just that. Can we go back here? Who else has a mic?

It's Karl Green from RBC. Just one question from me on the rate methodology formula. I appreciate that, the sort of 3 buckets of external inflation, that will be what it will be. The one thing that's going to be in your control is going to be that customer value-add premium that you talked about. And there are some numbers bandied around this morning, [ fine, that's got a -- sort of ] stretched targets. Is it right to think of that in terms of very high drop-through on profitability in terms of how that impacts your margin? Or does that reflect the fact that actually you're doing more sophisticated, complex servicing for your customers, so the drop-through is maybe not as high as I might imagine...

The way John would have described that, that would take into account all of the inflation. And that slight margin would be -- that would be 100% fall-through.

But it will be 100%, okay.

Yes, yes [indiscernible].

But I -- well, I suppose, following on from that. I mean there were some numbers bandied around this morning. I mean, if you were to compound those over 5 years, that's potentially a big chunk of the margin expansion. Again, is it sort of fair to think of it that way?

Well -- but again the premium is not a big chunk of the margin expansion. So the formula that John covered, really the first 3 buckets is purely just covering the inflation; and therefore, we're passing it through. That premium is some small [ 0.3 ] you saw, I think, this morning, not that this morning is gospel. However -- so that [ won't be ]. What Brad talked about, SG&A, the maturation of the businesses that are still so new in our company. Those -- that's where you really get the leverage. I mean the leverage of SG&A, which to the earlier question about others in the industry -- we have so much built this business over the last 3 years. We've added these new specialty business lines. We've significantly grown the regions. We've added districts. We've added central capabilities. We have increased our SG&A disproportionate to what is normal, and therefore, we have a lot of leverage to extract from that. Can we go front center here, [ Crystal ], please?

It's Allen Wells from Jefferies. And three for me, please. Just on the greenfield expansion plan, obviously the 3.0 targets were blown away. I mean partly that is market-driven, but is there anything kind of structural now, given your footprint, that might inhibit greenfield growth beyond that target? I'm just thinking about the amount of available white space you see -- and also in the context of the fact that mega project is a bigger theme. You're doing a lot of on site. You're looking at periphery that comes on and the Tier 1 suppliers. That can drive a location being established from that mega project. So just trying to understand how you think about the opportunity there to go beyond the target.

Yes. I mean I think actually the range is just fine. So if the -- let's call it -- if 300 to 400 is the range, let's call the target 350 for conversation's sake. So 400 would be outpacing that, sure. We accelerated overall our plan, but if you really look at our 3.0 plan, what we said we would do is -- we had 936 locations. We would add 298 for [ 1, 2, 3, 4 ]. The 298 was planned to be purely greenfield. We -- I say only. We only open 274 -- does that sound about right? I should know that. But 274 greenfields over the course of 3 years, so we didn't even open 298. I think the bigger question that you're asking is are we reaching some level of plateau. And I think that you heard Kyle cover that this morning, when it comes to if -- the big number is too big a number because it's not looking at gen-rents alone. It's looking at gen-rents plus Specialty. Gen-rents, I'll now say this firmly, only has 750 locations from a brick-and-mortar standpoint, so when you think about that and that compare and contrast that Kyle would have sort of gone through this morning, there's ample room for expansion there. We didn't struggle to find 400.

And then 2 questions on mega projects. Just first of all, I guess, how do you guys, under this current plan, see the peak of mega project activity, under those numbers that you talked about? And then could you just remind us, exactly what percentage of your construction exposure is to mega projects in infrastructure? And under that kind of $700 billion 2027 number you talked about, what percentage of the business it could be at peak as well.

Yes. I'll answer the first and defer to Michael for the second. The first, I think, part of the confusion in this is these figures are starts. They're not put in place. So take the $565 billion. And we all know the vast majority -- that is weighted toward the end of 3.0, not the beginning of, right? And then we introduced the $759 billion. What do I think really happens with $759 billion? As we sit here today, we see probably the propensity of more going into 2026, 2027 being introduced, just based on the feeds that we're seeing every single day, but it takes quite a bit of time to see that translate into put in place. So overall, today, it's a smaller portion of the overall put-in-place construction than you might think. Going forward 2, 3 years from now is when it's going to get to the level you probably think it is today. So that puts us -- that turns into -- so I guess the short question is, Michael, what percentage of our revenue is it today. And what's it look like 2, 3 years down the road?

Yes. Well, at the moment, it's -- well, in terms of fleet on rent, anyway, it's around about high single digits to 10% of our fleet on rent today. As that progresses through, do we see it progressing into sort of maybe mid and upper teens? I suspect it could go in that direction. Time will tell, but that's a direction of travel.

Can you just pass right behind you, [ around ]? Thank you.

I just have one question, but it's one around past and future of margin. And on Slide 50, you gave a nice breakdown of the maturation of the different margin profiles [ of different ] age stores. And maybe I can go home and do some arithmetic on that, but you probably know it off the top of your head. When you look at 3.0 and the margin that you gave up by growing faster, how much of that margin "miss" was because of less-matured stores that you opened up? How much was maybe SG&A and the investment that you've made? And was there anything in your mind there on just you grew so fast? You outgrew your systems or your training ability and all the opportunity you have to cross-sell specialty and everything else. And the future look is -- do we wait on some of these systems to turn on to really fix any issues if there were any issues. Or is it -- or is there no issues and there's really just opportunity, if you understand the question.

Yes, totally. I'll answer the first one simply by saying 50-50. It is -- and by adamantly saying it wasn't a matter of something going wrong. I fundamentally have this belief. And any of you could challenge me on this if you'd like to, but when you have a business that has capabilities like our business has and you're confronted with a really hot market, you should go. I think there are way too many businesses out there that say, "Well, let's get ready, and then we'll go." And I'm not suggesting that we were ready, fire, aim, but we were ready and fire. And doing so, we grew this business significantly. The leverage that we will get will significantly come from SG&A. We did intentionally invest in that level of our organization, whether it be leadership or be strategic selling, to actually exploit all of these areas of opportunity. And then it will be that store progressions because we did expand further. And again I'll say we didn't expand greenfield faster than we had set out to do, but I'm not so sure, when we were planning in April '21, we would have anticipated the level of independent businesses seeking to be sold over the course of 3 years. So we definitely did more M&A than I think we probably [ thought ] we would have done in April of 2021 when we planned this. As it relates to the technology platform. This is something that, as you will have heard from Brad, it's implementation this year. It's adoption this year, and then we will begin to extract the benefits. Look. We are a efficient organization, but when you really think about the type of work that we do and how Brad explained it so well, we are really -- there are a lot of opportunities to increase efficiencies in this industry and in particular therefore, from a larger standpoint, in our organization. Can we pass back a couple there?

It's James Rose from Barclays. I've got 2, please. If I look at the power and HVAC market share, that's gone up really rapidly, over 3.0, to about 20%, I think. What's been the key to success in that business?

It's like, when you look at some of these other specialties, you'll see the same thing. When they get to a certain size -- it's a bit like us overall. When you get to a certain size, that's when really both the cross-selling has the largest impact; and just from a capability standpoint, your ability to win some things you weren't in the past. And it's quite remarkable if you just go -- if you go to just before 3.0, if you go -- if during Project 2021. I mean some of the events and some of the applications where we find our power and HVAC business today is what we dreamt of 10 years ago. I'm not even so sure we dreamt that we will be capable of doing that. So it's that very scale. And I -- and that team in particular, if I say so, for power and HVAC, they added -- well, they both matured our existing talent and our sort of skills in that arena. And they also attracted quite a bit of talent as well who brought with them really significant experience and customer relationships.

And then secondly, on free cash flow margin as a percentage of sales, what do you think, as we get towards the end of 4.0, the direction of travel for a free cash flow margin could be?

Well, I guess, I mean, simple answer would be it would increase. And the reason -- my reluctance to go there is it all -- free cash flow is different in rental because it's all after CapEx, so it really depends on what our growth CapEx -- so we have a -- there's a model out there et cetera, so it will -- you can mathematically calculate it, but it's a meaningless number. It's free cash flow for the business as a whole and it will depend on what we spend on CapEx, so we're not targeting a percentage of free cash flow, as we will do whatever is right for the business at the time.

Can we come over here, please?

It's Lush Mahendrarajah from JPMorgan. The first is on Specialty obviously growing quite a bit in the last 3 years and sort of forecast to grow quite a lot again in the next 5. Have you seen any sort of changes in the competitive landscape there? Is it different kind of entrants potentially into there? Because a lot of these markets are quite embryonic, I guess. So is there any changes you're seeing in terms of people trying to take advantage of that growth?

Yes. I think, that slide that Kyle shared, the old 44 and this year's 42, we will only share that at capital markets events going forward. A matter of fact, we are likely to stop reporting our growth between Specialty and General Tool. We were very intentional in the level of detail we shared, particularly with some of our newer specialty business lines. And part of that was to actually, in a way, attract some others to that space because, fundamentally when it comes to advancing rental penetration, above all things, that is our North Star. If we can, as a business, influence and, as an industry, deliver on advancing rental penetration, we will disproportionately win. So when we did that to the degree in which we did with quite extensive playbooks, videos, we were like a resource library. We did find some others out there that were following along. And they'd done reasonably well at that, not -- we have won our unfair share in that regard as well, but yes. So to answer your question: There are some others. We needed that, but this -- from this point going forward, we might be a bit more guarded when it comes to our precision of our playbook.

Okay. And then sort of following on from that, I guess, and just in terms of some of those white space opportunities in Specialty, I guess. Is there any reason apart from, I guess, just availability of constraints that you haven't cracked them already? Are they more difficult? The ones that are still to come, is there really an opportunity or market for them? Just to get an idea of why you say...

I mean there's some of the incubator now and there will always be. You'll never hear about them until they're actually something that we're going to go forward with. So the reason is just, I suppose, you can only get to so many things over a certain period of time, but we do have -- part of what we do is think through, do studies, analyze what could be new white space areas.

And so just last one on Specialty. You sort of talked about bigger bolt-on deals of 300 to sort of 400. Are there bigger deals you could do in Specialty in particular, I guess, [ and sort of accelerate into a new segment ]?

Michael talked about that. And I think it was more just illustrative in terms of firepower. So the 300 to 400 references that he made, in no way, shape or form, are in any connection to any deals that we're talking about or working on at the moment. He's -- you're always the one giving me a hard time.

Colin Temple from Westwood Global. Just wanted to ask about these elements of operational excellence here, the market logistics, field -- market field services and the repair centers. And just could you guys help us understand to what extent they've been rolled out today across North America? And when do we expect to see tangible benefits from these flow through the P&L?

Yes. I'm going to let Brad answer that. And we have to give him a microphone -- you're plugged. So can we [ make Brad hot ]?

Good. That was classic. So really I'd say think about it in 3 separate ways as we would have shared it with you here. So in the middle, that market field service, we're in 50 markets in the U.S. and Canada today with market field service. So our top 50 markets where we're gaining that scale, so there's benefit there. Our market logistics operations, we currently are in the completion stage of 4 pilots. We will be fully rolled out 1 year from today in the top 50 markets, pretty much the same markets, if you will. And then our market repair centers, we're early on. So really, by the end of, I would call it, FY '26, I would see the completion across again the top 50 markets. And then we've got secondary and tertiary markets which will bring those elements together from an opportunity, but that technology piece, primarily that VDOS element, is the one that will be universal in every branch.

Clear?

Yes.

I'm not seeing -- do you see [ very well ]?

[indiscernible].

You can, yes.

Andrew Hollingworth from Holland Advisors. Just echoing what someone else said earlier on: Thank you so much for having us along. I think seeing the sort of breadths of the business and the culture has been fantastic and just as useful as the Capital Markets Day, so thank you for that. Just a quick question on the sort of historic growth versus future growth. Unless I'm mistaken, it looks to me like you've grown about twice the rate of the industry, when I look back over sort of various periods in time. And your future growth, it's got you're growing more like 1.5x the rate. It didn't feel like that today and yesterday. And I think with certainly the reference to the points you've made and the commentary on customer obsession. And I -- that's not something I'm hearing from other people in this sphere. I would expect that to have real resonance with the customers, so just talk to me about why, with that being the prospects of the business, you'd be growing at a slower rate versus the industry than you have in the past.

Yes. Well, our plan is not setting ourselves to grow at a slower rate. You would be referencing ARA's data on industry growth. And you're probably -- I assume that's where you're getting that from...

I'm actually looking at your [indiscernible] I'm looking at your information...

Yes, the quarterly results, not the deck that we shared today.

Well, if you look at the growth rates you've got there for construction and you look at that over the 3.0 period -- what have you compounded at, 11% for the construction industry? You've grown at 19%.

I'm sorry. I thought you were referencing that we were growing at 1.5x to 2x the rental industry.

Yes, but in your projections, you've given that how -- one of the reference points of those projections is you're growing at 1.5x industry...

1.5x. I'm sorry. Yes, yes...

So my point is that you've grown historically at a rate closer to twice that. And the culture I'm seeing is a culture that's better, not worse than the past.

No, I don't disagree with you. We've always -- our plans, as we put them out, has -- have always been to grow at 1.5x...

And what we said was 1.5x to 2x the U.S. rental industry. This is construction. This is not rental.

Well, he knows that, but he's -- there's another slide that does say...

That is on our quarterlies. That's why we've said disconnect from that.

So to get to my point is you have grown at a faster rate than you are projecting in that sort of reference to the industry. And the culture of customer experience is something you would hope would keep you growing at a good rate. Let's just put it like that.

We would agree. Any others? [ Will ], do you see any?

[ There's no questions ]...

Well, excellent. Thank you all so much for your time today, yesterday. And Anytown is open, if you'd like to go any longer. And for those of you that will be joining us this evening, we'll see you then. Thank you very much.