Essex Crane Rental Corp. posted equipment rental revenue of $13.6 million in the third quarter, an increase of $1.1 million or 9 percent compared to the second quarter. It was an increase of $1.8 million or 15.6 percent compared to the third quarter of 2013. The equipment rentals segment revenues totaled $21.7 million for the quarter compared to $14.4 million for the same period in 2013, including rental, transportation and used rental equipment sales.
The 50.6-percent increase was the result of a $4.8 million jump in used rental equipment sales and a $700,000 increase in transportation revenue, in addition to the $1.8 million increase in rental revenue.
Total third quarter revenue was $29.6 million, compared to $22.8 million a year ago, a 29.8-percent hike. Adjusted EBITDA was $5.3 million for the third quarter compared to $4.5 million in the year-ago quarter, a 17.8-percent jump.
“As anticipated in the original guidance given for 2014, we’ve experienced sequential improvement in adjusted EBITDA throughout the first three quarters of 2014 and are now experiencing year-over-year improvement,” said Nick Matthews, president and CEO of Essex. “We have been successful in increasing demand for our rental offerings based on the effectiveness of our customer-focused initiatives as well as improved economic environment. Additionally, we have increased the pace of selling excess rental fleet, particularly our traditional crawler cranes. We are continuing to experience utilization and rental revenue improvement from the hydraulic crawler, rough-terrain and tower crane fleets, which make up over 70 percent of the orderly liquidation value of our rental fleet, and we believe that there remains significant potential to increase earnings and cash flow.”
Hydraulic crawler crane utilization increased to 79.6 percent for the third quarter compared to 65 percent for the second quarter and 70.9 percent for the third quarter of 2013.
Essex Crane Rental Corp., based in Buffalo Grove, Ill., is No. 45 on the RER 100.
