67 WALL STREET, New York - January 24, 2012 - The Wall Street Transcript has just published its Equipment Rental & Leasing Services Report offering a timely review of the sector to serious investors and industry executives. This special feature contains expert industry commentary through in-depth interviews with public company CEOs, Equity Analysts and Money Managers. The full issue is available by calling (212) 952-7433 or via The Wall Street Transcript Online.
Topics covered: Cost Structure Variabilization - Consolidation Potential in Fragmented Industry - Commercial Rental Pricing Gains - Growth in Equipment Leasing Adoption Rates
Companies include: Ashtead Group (AHT.L); Caterpillar (CAT); Ford (F); H&E Equipment Services (HEES); Hertz (HTZ); and many more.
In the following brief excerpt from the Equipment Rental & Leasing Services Report, expert analysts discuss the outlook for the sector and for investors.
Peter Blake, CFA, became Chief Executive Officer of Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers in 2004. He is also a Director on the company's board. Mr. Blake joined Ritchie Bros. as a Controller in 1991, having worked previously with predecessor firms of KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers. In 1994, he was appointed Vice President, Finance, and in 1997 was appointed Chief Financial Officer and elected to the board of directors. In 2002, he was promoted to Senior Vice President and became a Member of the Executive Council. Mr. Blake has a diploma of technology from the British Columbia Institute of Technology and a bachelor of commerce degree from the University of Alberta.
TWST: Please let's start with a corporate profile of Ritchie Bros., the world's largest industrial auctioneer.
Mr. Blake: Ritchie Bros. was formed in 1958 in British Columbia in the small town of Kelowna, and sort of grew in a very methodical and purposeful manner one auction at a time. The foundation of the company has always been and will be "unreserved auctions," and everything that is sold at our auction sites is sold in an unreserved basis, meaning everything sells to the highest bidder and the owner doesn't bid, the auctioneer doesn't bid. It's a very open market. That was the premise of the company's founding three brothers: Dave, Ken and John.
The company started in Canada and grew from there expanding into the United States and beyond. Today, we're in 25 countries, and I just announced this morning, in fact, that in 2011 Ritchie Bros. generated US$3.7 billion in gross auction proceeds. This is the value of everything that sold in all our auctions for the year. We went public in 1998, and became listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and then a few years after that colisted on the Toronto Stock Exchange and are a publicly traded company now.
TWST: The past year appears to have been the year of Ritchie Bros. at least in the auctioneering space with a record US$3.7 billion in gross auction proceeds, including US$1.1 billion worth of equipment sold to online bidders. What's on the agenda for the next 12 to 24 months? What specific accomplishments would make that time frame a success?
Mr. Blake: We're more around execution than we are around change. We went through some fairly significant internal changes in terms of what we were doing last year, including rolling out a new Web site in 2010 that allowed us to communicate in 21 languages, and we've seen corresponding traffic and support through recent online customer interactivity, which has really been soaring and is great. It sort of meets the needs, and creates or satisfies the needs that people might not even know they had around providing them more transparency and more information around what is available. We also rolled out detailed equipment information last year to encourage people to get more information and data around what the equipment is in the yard. One of the features includes zoomable high-res photos that they can go and zero in on.
We've crisped up our online environment in terms of online bidding to allow people to register more easily, and more effectively facilitate information flow from that channel from what things were sold for and the ability to get warranty. And Ritchie Bros. Financial Services rolled out this year, which is just a conduit to help and enable our customers to get financing through various sources that we facilitate through this common process that we've created with partners like GE in the United States and other groups we will be rolling out in Europe in the next year. So for us, all these changes that have occurred in the last year or two have been very significant for next year and the year after.
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