Ryder System, Inc. (NYSE:R) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Jeff Kauffman : Thank you very much, and congratulations, just terrific results. Could you explain to me please a little more about this cumulative currency translation expense that we’ll be seeing in ’23. Just to better understand what it’s related to. Do you have any predictability as to when that’s going to happen, and I’m guessing your point is its non-cash and we should look through it, but I just want to understand it a little better.

A – John Diez: Yeah Jeff, John here. You’re absolutely correct. It is a non-cash item that we’re going to need to €“ under the accounting rules we’re going to need to take the cumulative translation losses that sit today in equity. Sometime next year when we fully exit out of the UK, it will probably be midyear. It’s tough to call whether it will be second or third quarter, but we’re expecting midyear next year to complete that exercise, and then all the accounting rules ask you to do is to take that through earnings. So there is no impact on equity. It’s not a cash flow related impact either and it represents the cumulative translation losses since we’ve been operating in the UK to today.

Robert Sanchez: Yeah, by the way that’s this year, not next year.

John Diez: This year, 2022 this year.

Jeff Kauffman : This year? Yeah, we’re in ’23 now. Got you, got you. That’s my one. I’ll get back in queue, thank you.

A – Robert Sanchez: Thanks, Jeff.

Operator: And our next question is going to come from Scott Group with Wolfe Research.

Scott Group: Hey, thanks. Good morning, guys. Can you just talk about how much are you assuming used prices fall from current levels within the guide, and if there’s any depreciation headwind or tailwind this year? And then just separately, if I look right, you’ve got leasing free growth. IT sounds like maybe just a little bit more to go on the leasing pricing. Why aren’t contractual FMS earnings growing this year?

Robert Sanchez: Okay, thanks Scott. A couple of comments. First of all, how much were UBS’s driving? We don’t like to give that, because we don’t want to leave the market with where we’re going, but we certainly are assuming a pretty significant drop from where we ended the year as you would expect in the cycle and where we’re coming from. So we have certainly taken that into consideration. We do expect more vehicles to be sold though, so that’s why when you look at our overall on the cash flow, we’re kind of expecting about the same proceeds. Around depreciation, we do have a benefit around lease, it’s about $40 million. But that’s been primarily offset by variable interest expenses. You know we €“ there’s a portion of our debt that we fund through variable interest, and as that’s gone up over the year, we’ve seen an increase in our variable interest, which is impacting FMS.

So then why we’re not seeing more juice on the €“ firstly, you have to remember, the margins on FMS are going to be certainly within our target ranges, even though rental and UVS are going to much more normalized levels. So you are seeing the benefit of all those changes that we made around pricing and beginning to see those changes and also on the maintenance cost side. The issue we’re having as we go into this year is the uncertainty around the deliveries from the OEMs. We are expecting our fleet to grow 3,000 or 4,000 vehicles, but it’s probably going to be more pushed out towards the tail end of the year, based on the allocation that we have today. If we are able to get more allocation sooner, you’re going to see that growth come in more and it’ll produce more benefit in 2023.