The Greenbrier Companies, Inc. (GBX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay. Awesome. It's good to get started here. We have Greenbrier to kick off the railcar manufacturing and leasing portion of the Industrials Conference this year. My name is Andrzej Tomczyk, and I'm pleased to introduce CEO, Lorie Tekorius; CFO, Michael Donfris; as well as Justin Roberts, VP of Financial Operations. Thanks for being here.

Thank you for having us.

Maybe just to kick off before we get too much into Q&A, are you guys able to provide an overview of Greenbrier to the audience? And maybe just for those less familiar, how the business works and a little bit about your story.

Sure. So I'll start out. So Greenbrier is a manufacturer of freight railcars. We serve the North American market, the Europe market and the Brazilian market. We have manufacturing facilities in each of those areas. So our manufacturing in Arkansas and Mexico serves North America, while we have three plants in Poland and Romania and then a facility in Brazil for that market. We are -- our strategy is to continue to our journey of manufacturing excellence, where we've done a really great job over the last few years, generating some really nice margins in a moderate demand period. At the same time, we have a fleet -- a lease fleet of freight railcars for the North American market that we've been growing over the last couple of years, we've got a stated goal to double our recurring revenue over the next 5 years. We're about halfway there, a couple of years into that goal. Because as we look at it, the manufacturing side of our business, particularly North America, can have some cyclicality to it. So in addition to focusing on manufacturing excellence where we continue to have higher financial performance even during low periods, we're growing that lease fleet to generate that recurring revenue and predictability that seems to be loved so much by Wall Street to have that predictability.

Yes. No, absolutely. And So maybe just to touch on the leasing fleet. You've successfully grown that pretty fast to 17,000 cars at this point. And the general guide is $300 million of investment into the lease fleet year in and year out. Can you talk a little bit about where the ultimate composition of that fleet can get to? Or if you have sort of thoughts around the long term?

Sure. So the one thing that we focused on, on this journey is having disciplined growth, right? We don't want to just build railcars through our facilities and put them on our balance sheet in a way that you have end up with a portfolio that is overweighted in one product or credit or customer. So we've got really strong commercial capabilities. So we're able to generate those leases and then keep some of those cars on our books. The long-term goal is to have the composition of our fleet be very similar to the broader North American fleet of 1.6 million railcars, excluding coal. I don't see us put any coal in there, but a combination of cars that we originate and build as well as we're active in the secondary market. So the focus is on discipline and keeping that we've had now two or three ABS offerings that have two, and been very, very well received from a credit perspective.

And is that $300 million investment, can you share like what that translates into for cars per year that might be added to your fleet?

Yes. Yes. When you look at it, it depends on the types of cars that are added. And as we look at the North American fleet, some cars are less costly than other ones. We'd like to talk to up to $300 million a year. But in round terms, it's probably 2,000 railcars a year. It's probably in that ballpark, but it can go up and down based on the types of cars that we add to the fleet.

Got it. And so this is a little bit of a change from your strategy before. I mean, you're pushing more into leasing. How does this change sort of your capital allocation strategy versus prior to sort of pushing into leasing?

Sure, sure. And I love to talk about capital allocation being in this role. One of the advantages that Greenbrier really has is that customers can come to us and determine, do they want to buy a car or do they want to lease a car. And then once they lease the car, do they want to maintain it through our network. And so we're really unique that way. So as you think about capital allocation and you really think about how are we going to deploy cash, we like to look at the ones that give us the best returns for our shareholders. And so right away, looking at quick paybacks in our business, we look at investing first in areas where I know I can get a strong payback, and I know that I have a strong return, so that's always going to be first. The second that's really pretty exciting for us is the leasing fleet. And so we target mid-teen returns on that fleet. And so those kinds of investments have done very well for us. We continue to grow that. Also, as we look at opportunistically look at acquisitions, we try to bounce them against our framework. So as Lorie mentioned, we have recurring revenue as a strategy for us. We want to grow returning revenue. We want to increase our aggregate gross margin, and we want strong returns for our investors. So as I think about capital allocation, if I bounce it up against those criteria and it fits that criteria and it first fits the strategy for the company, I want to make sure I have capital available for that. And then from a dividend standpoint, we continue to think about our business bullish in a bullish way, and we're really excited about our strategy and how it's moved forward. So we're going to continue to do that every year. And then lastly, our Board approved $100 million of share repurchase, and we did just over $22 million in this last fiscal year. And so we have $78 million to do this fiscal year. And we're going to opportunistically look at that, too. So leasing has become a bigger part of our capital allocation, to answer your question, but there's other considerations as well.

Got it. Super -- it's an interesting strategy to push more into leasing. And the last thing I sort of want to touch on there is what has really driven the -- like what's driven the change to push more into leasing from your perspective? Being more of a manufacturer historically. What is -- from a market standpoint is sort of driving that change from your perspective?

So I'll start and you can add in. But I would say that if you look back at Greenbrier's origin under our founder, Bill Furman, we actually started out in leasing. We just never were particularly disciplined about it and really got after it because we were on an acquisition strategy and expanding our manufacturing portfolio. So as we completed the acquisition of the ARI facilities in Arkansas back in 2019?

2019.

It was like, okay, so now what are we going to do? Our industry does have peaks and troughs. Again, we focus on how can we improve our manufacturing excellence and generating better gross margins, which helps those troughs to be higher. But in studying feedback from Wall Street and talking to some of our shareholders, having some of that predictability, that steady revenue stream, cash flow, it's tax advantaged. We thought, you know what, we're originating these lease transactions that we're building? Why not keep some for us? People really love buying them. Why don't we keep some for ourselves because this is where we can deploy our capital and get that return. So we look at the forward P/Es on some of the other folks who are in more of leasing, and it generates a higher P/E. So that's what we're focused on. Again, not ignoring our history of manufacturing and continuing to grow that.

Of course. And maybe just to shift gears a little bit to manufacturing. You touched on ARI as well. So your aggregate gross margins exited sort of, I guess, FY '25 around 19%, which is above your mid-teens target. And I think some of that's come from the in-sourcing initiatives from ARI. So could you just sort of talk about that for what's structurally sort of taken out of the business? And I know that 19% is going to sort of moderate into the 2026 as well given the delivery environment, but maybe just talk about that as well.

Sure, sure. I'll take that. ARI was really kind of the proof of concept for us, to prove to ourselves that we could successfully do in-sourcing. It's one of those strategies that you look at it initially and you say, what's the return? How can I be successful at it? And it worked really well with some of the locations around the Arkansas footprint. And so then we looked across the rest of the company and said, we could lower landed cost. We've got a competitively advantaged workforce that's really good at making things, and I can reduce working capital. And so the concept of I can use the workforce to make what I need. I can design the bill of materials that I can basically bring them in-house and be more successful than someone else doing it. It really made a difference in our North American business, and we're continuing to kind of look at it and say, now that we have the capability to do it, now that we have control over and not that we didn't on our bill of materials, but we have better visibility and can do design engineering for the kinds of parts that we can make inside, it just -- it fits really well. And so it started with ARI, and it's really worked out well for the North American footprint.

And what about -- so are there more -- is there more that you can do sort of based on what you've already done in sourcing and ARI that you can apply sort of across the business?

Yes. And mostly, this is across the footprint looking across -- it started in ARI, but it's across the whole footprint. And what you find is our workforce is also always thinking about how can they help the delivered cost situation? How can we continue to maximize and utilize the equipment we have at our plant. So it started, but it's one of those things where then it's like, hey, we're getting a delay on this part. It's not coming in as fast as we wanted to. Why don't we try to bring it inside, what would it take to do that? And so the team is very entrepreneurial, looking across the ecosphere parts and saying, what else can I bring in that I wasn't bringing in? And then what else is out there that I could do this for customers as well. So I mean, it's kind of an exciting -- it's an exciting idea that is kind of built.

And I would just add to that, just in case it wasn't clear. So we did make a significant investment in our Central Mexico facility to in-source. And what we're seeing is that we were having to go quite a ways away from our Central Mexico facilities to source certain products. It was a time suck, it was expensive, and we weren't as in control of some of the quality. So by bringing that in-house, we could utilize steel more efficiently. We could manage that workflow and getting the products into our production lines in a more effective manner. Now there's always opportunities to look at some of the parts for secondary -- not secondary market, aftermarket parts.

So maybe thinking about when volumes sort of -- we're on a variable environment. So when volumes do come back, how much of that cost does come back? And like how do we think about incremental margins in the recoveries scenario?

That's a really good question. It's one that our FP&A team and our leadership team think about quite a bit. When you think about how we've looked at how we manufacture and how we go to market, we've had footprint reductions. So we started with Gunderson, we started with Southwest Steel, and that gave us certainly a carryforward in reducing fixed costs and improving our overall margins with some SG&A and so forth. We've also looked across our European footprint and said, we don't want to reduce capacity. What we want to do is take out excess capacity. And so we've had 6 cost reductions there and really overhead reductions. And so the part that's really kind of come down and continues to come down, is that overhead, that fixed cost part, we believe as we continue to see strength in the back half of '26 and in '27, the variable part of the cost is going to come back up. But with the in-sourcing with some of the things we've done with footprint reductions, we don't expect it to come back up as much as it was before.

Is there sort of -- what's the rule of thumb for planning for like labor ahead of an upturn? Like if you're expecting sort of back half recovery this year, how are you thinking about that now in planning for the back half? And is that -- what's the visibility on that sort of uptick in the back half?

Well, and that's a really good question, too. As we think about where we're manufacturing, our facilities have become part of the community. And so we have a history of where employees want to come back and work with us. And we have a lot of success with that. And we have a leadership team that understands that really well. As we look back, there's not one rule of thumb, but it's typically in that 3- to 6-month range. We really want to be careful with safety. We want to make sure that we have the team members remember and work through and continue to think about safety every day. And then it's just the efficiency of if they've done something else in that short period of time, come back in and learn how to do it the Greenbrier way.

And I'd just add in, Andrzej, I think the other thing that we've done as part of this process is saying, so what else could we be doing in our footprint that serves the market. So in Arkansas where it is more difficult to get the workforce back or even to attract workers because it's tough work. This is not easy stuff that we're asking people to do. So we've been able to work with our customers where there's significant kinds of program work. So tank cars have to go through a requalification or sometimes covered hoppers have to be relined. And we've had customers who can send us a steady volume and that can have work that's going through what would traditionally be a new car facility, but it's keeping the workforce engaged. It's a nice return. That's where I would say, I should have said this at the beginning, for FY '25, we had record financial performance on 2,000 fewer railcars delivered. So this is where we are changing over time that it's not just about how many railcars do we build, but what are we doing where we've made our investments.

Yes. No. That's a great point. Maybe just shifting a little bit to tariffs. I'm curious on sort of the impacts that you've seen in your business? If that's -- I know it's more on the sort of customer ordering front and it's impacting that side of the business. But have you seen any of your input costs sort of rise as a sort of...

As you can appreciate, right, steel and steel components are a big part of any freight railcar. There's been a lot of focus on what are called 232 tariffs on steel derivatives. You're right that our contracts provide for a pass-through of any sort of tariffs or things like that as they come into play. Right now, railcars that we're building in Mexico, they're USMCA compliant. So we're bringing those cars into the North American market without tariffs. And if you step back and think about history, the rail system is like the circulatory system of the U.S. economy. We have been for decades moving all of the stuff that's in this room in some early form was probably in a railcar and circulating around the North American content. So this is what's been happening for so long, and we would hope that the administration is paying attention to as we want the economy to thrive, we need to keep moving railcars and moving stuff in freight rail cars because you don't want that on the highway. That being said, early in this calendar year, we did have the steel companies come out looking to put 232 steel derivatives on finished railcars. When we went in and explained to our suppliers, the steel companies that we're sourcing steel from their U.S. facilities to take down into Mexico to build these cars, and tariffs and uncertainty and higher cost is a headwind to demand. And so yes, you may get a tariff, but it's going to mean demand is going to go down and we're going to end up buying the industry, not just Greenbrier, the industry will be buying less steel. So they thought through that, and they pulled back their request for those tariffs. So it's one of those things where I think one of our things that's in our DNA at Greenbrier is working with our customers and our suppliers to say, "So what's the problem you're trying to solve?" I think there are a number of companies right now that are weaponizing some of these tariff opportunities to just try to get a leg up and I try not to get a little bit too bitter. I would say we'd just focus on running their companies as opposed to trying to use something crafty like a tariff, so that I didn't have to spend my time in D.C. educating our policymakers on the value or lack of value thereof. And I'm not passionate at all.

I can't tell. So I mean, has it actually increased the cost of a new railcar already?

Yes, I should have started that out, right? Steel is a global commodity, right? So to the extent that there are tariffs on foreign steel, it gives the opportunity for U.S. steel manufacturers to have higher prices as well because that's who they're competing with. So yes, I would say the cost of railcars has gone up because the cost of steel has gone up. And that's what -- that combined with uncertainty, overall economic uncertainty is what's been driving this headwind to demand. Now in talking with our customers, they're getting comfortable with living in this world of uncertainty that we're just going to have to get comfortable living in, right? Things are going to change from week to week, month to month. And we're hearing from our customers that they're just going to figure out how to run their business in a time where there's not as much certainty. And that's where we think second half, we're going to see this pick back up in demand.

Does that help leasing at all in terms of the cost of a new car is going higher? Is there more impetus for customers to push into leasing in terms of let's lease a car instead of buying new one?

Sure. And our customers are typically very, very knowledgeable. They'll do a lease versus buy, which, as I mentioned, is kind of a competitive advantage for us because we want to buy it -- we can sell it or we can go to the lease. I do think, though, as you look at -- and some of the companies talk about forward lease rates, some of the reason why rates are rising in leasing is there's not a lot of cars available. So that's one of the things. And railcars are kind of sticky. So once you get in, you want to stay in. But because the new prices have risen a little bit the rates have been able to go up as well. And so if you kind of broke out why is the forward lease rate -- why are the forward lease rates rising, some of it is the fact that new cars are more expensive.

Makes sense. Just while we're on manufacturing on the backlog, are you able to just provide a breakdown for sort of where your railcar orders are coming from? And then just framing sort of where the backlog sits today relative to where you would see as like a normal backlog?

Sure, sure. And backlog is something we watch very closely. Our investors watch it closely as well. Our -- as it kind of breaks out across the -- our international business, about 1/3 of our backlog is related to Brazil and mostly Europe. So you can kind of think about it that way. As we think about what's the right size backlog, obviously, we'd like a huge backlog. It really helps us with visibility. It helps reduce our cost structure and so forth. But as we look back and kind of think about it, about a 20,000 car backlog is probably pretty normal, and we're like just under 17,000 right now. And so we'd like to see that bump up a bit, book-to-bill, I'm sure everyone's watching that, too. We are too. And so we'll continue to kind of look forward for that to get back to that level.

And you did mention the Brazilian business. I'm curious, and even in your '26 guidance, you mentioned that Brazil's continued success sort of story there. Can you talk about what's contributing from Brazil in 2026 and then maybe longer-term thoughts on what's driving demand there?

Well, so I would say that there's been a big focus in Brazil about trying to -- by the government to shift movement of product off of the highways and onto the rail. If anyone's ever been to Brazil, it can take you an hour to go 5 miles. It's worse than New York. But what's really improving the impact to Greenbrier is the fact that our leadership team down there started embracing how can they get more efficient in what they're doing to produce railcars. They had really just kind of kept building cars without really focusing on costs. So it's really that team down there digging in and figuring out how can they get more efficient, how can they take care of their customers. And so we've been getting really good market share in Brazil, and we expect that to continue for the next several years.

And just adding to that, you hear about on the infrastructure investment that's going on in Brazil. There's a huge need to move products, large products in what rail can provide. And so as you think about a growth avenue for us as a company, we're really excited about the market and really what it can be.

So Brazil is going to be a big long-term story for you guys in terms of -- it will always be part of your business in your mind. It's going to be a big part of your business or a sizable part, I should say, for the foreseeable future.

Yes. I don't know if it's a big, big part of our business, but it certainly is one of those ones where we're excited about what they've been able to deliver. We're excited about the progress they've made in cost and we like how they're connected into where the growth could be. So it's a very good bet and a very strong return for us is how I would think...

Including cash returns, right? So they are paying dividends out. So it's not just income on the P&L.

Maybe just while we're on other geographies, touching on Europe a little bit as well. What is that contributing to 2026? And then I know it's been a little bit of a weak demand environment in Europe. Can you talk about sort of dynamics over there. Maybe if there's any expectation for a recovery at some point and what that looks like for you guys?

Yes. We are -- it has been a tough time in the European market, right? Economic and geopolitical uncertainty have been headwinds, which make lemonade out of lemons, and this is where we started accelerating what we knew that we needed to do around optimizing our footprint. So we've exited our Arad, Romania facility. We're exiting two other facilities in Poland. And really, as Michael was saying earlier, concentrating our administrative and overhead costs into a smaller footprint while still maintaining the same production capacity. So it's just continuing that same journey that we've done here in North America. We are seeing some green shoots. I was talking to our President of the European operations yesterday, there is a lot of this focus on movement of particularly military sort of equipment and thinking about that. They're talking about some corridors where for it being the European Union, crossing borders between countries can still be difficult. So this is where they're looking at how do they define some particular corridors that will make freight or transportation via freight, rail, more efficient. So...

Maybe shifting a little bit to your syndication dynamics in your model. It's a little bit unique to your business. Curious if you could just share for the audience what that is. You've talked about in the past. And then do you expect -- that's had a strong sort of investor appetite post-COVID, especially, I'm wondering if you see that appetite continuing in syndication market and what's driving that going forward or so?

Sure. Sure. Syndications, for us, it's a word, we talk about, we think everyone understands it. And really, all it really is, is it's kind of another channel. We think about it as another channel for sale to drive revenue. And it's basically a group of railcars that have leases on them that we bundle and give an investor group an opportunity to participate in that flow or that benefit over a period of time. And as you mentioned, I mean, the appetite for this has been really, really high. We can manage it over the period of time because we have a lease fleet and we have a fleet management business as well. And so for us, we get the revenue from the sale, which is just like a direct sale, and then we get the long-term revenue and earnings as well as the earnings upfront for managing it. For us, it continues to be a really nice strategic way to, as Lorie mentioned, manage the fleet for us from a concentration standpoint because we want to basically make the cars that our customers want to buy. And so -- and it allows us to take orders that maybe I don't want to put in my lease fleet because I might have -- I may have more tank cars than I need in my lease fleet, for example. So it gives me another avenue to build the car that will have a lease on it, put it together and then sell it to someone else basically and then manage it for the long haul. So I think it's been really, really positive for us.

And I think it just emphasizes the fact that the transactions that we originate those leases are money good deals. Otherwise, someone wouldn't be interested in buying them from us, getting a long-live car on the stream of cash flow.

Maybe just shifting to like broader industry trends and I'm curious on green shoots, if there are any specific car types, if you can share that, what's challenging in terms of car types that may remain under pressure for medium term, near term?

I think, we can bring in Justin...

Yes, come on, Justin.

Thank you. Yes, I would say that what we're seeing upside in right now is around more of the specialty cars. The more general commoditized cars that anyone can build continue to have a little more pressure. But broadly, tank cars are performing well. And cars that really not everyone can build is where we see more strength. And we've definitely seen that over the last 2 months, and I think we're cautiously optimistic that our back half expectations are kind of being realized as we expected.

On the tank car and sort of the specialty car, mix in your business and that's sort of -- that was improved, obviously, as part of your margin structure in the most recent years in addition to your own in-sourcing and facility rationalization efforts. I'm curious if you could share -- you touched on the tank cars and specialty, how much of the margin gains recently in manufacturing were sort of mix related? And if that sort of tapers off? Or is that supposed to sort of maintain in the business, given those are sort of higher complex cars that demand higher payment?

That's a great question. And I think the way that we've thought about it and talked about it is that we have probably a couple of hundred basis points of benefit, say, like a year ago, and even Q4 of our fiscal '24. And you saw this big kind of run up and we had 17% manufacturing margins and I think 20% aggregate gross margins in earlier in fiscal '25. But then as the year progressed and margin in manufacturing kind of moved back down, that to us is a little more of a more normalized margin profile for us, where we're building a more diversified, less specialized kind of car mix at that point. And so kind of what we see going forward is not a big shift from where we're at right now. But we will be ready when these cars are needed, they will age out and there will be growth in this area. So we'll be ready to go.

I know we have a couple of minutes because I wanted to touch on this topic of sort of rail modal shift, taking share from trucks is a topic, if these railroads can sort of undergo these mergers, that's Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern 2027 time frame. There's two sides to this argument. You could make the railroads more efficient by eliminating interchanges and that may increase the cycle times for every car across the network. And that's one aspect of it, and we get questions on, does that potentially mean you need fewer cars across the network in the longer term if the rails can become more efficient. On the other hand, if the rail become more efficient, you can take share. So I'm curious...

You just answered your question.

Well, I'm curious, what's your perspective on sort of what wins out in those scenarios? And what's more impactful to your business?

I think you captured it just right, right, that on one hand, if the railroads get more efficient, are they going to need more cars. I've been in this business now for a long time. So I've seen some very interesting mergers. I've seen some interesting bizarre things that happen. Hopefully, the railroads if they do go forward with a merger, they figured out ways for it to not create the congestion that we've seen in the past. And a perverse thing that happened when there was congestion is they order even more cars. So hopefully, we've learned, I focus on going back to my point that I made earlier about the rails being the circulatory system of the U.S. economy is whatever it takes to make the rails more efficient to transport these products should be good for the overall industry, right? And if it's good for the industry, it will be good for Greenbrier because we'll be able to serve our customers. So we've gone through a lot of different markets. I'm not particularly worried about it in one way, shape or another.

All right. Well, thanks for that perspective. And maybe a few, I guess, 30 seconds left here. Do you guys want to have any parting thoughts that you'd like to share?

No, I just appreciate everyone's interest in Greenbrier. I do think it's a -- we are on a very great journey with what we've done over the last couple of years of -- really, again, driving great financial performance more through to the bottom line on less top line, less deliveries. We are transforming. I feel like at times, we constantly are in this prove it or show me situation of "Oh, yes, yes, yes, you guys say that you're going to do this." I think we've done it, and we're going to keep doing it. So we've got a great team, and I look forward to the future.

Absolutely. Thanks for coming out.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks, Andrzej.

Appreciate it.