Ahern Rentals received an increase of $100 million to its revolving line of credit, CEO Don Ahern told RER. With the increase to its existing line, Ahern Rentals now has $425 million in its credit facility. The lead bank on the credit facility is Bank of America, and JP Morgan is playing a substantial role as well.
“We already had a substantial amount of liquidity available anyhow, but this gives us tremendous liquidity to run the company and take care of opportunities going forward,” Ahern said in an exclusive interview with RER in Las Vegas recently. Ahern, who added to the Ahern Rentals fleet with the purchase of about 5,000 scissorlifts, boomlifts and forklifts this year, said the company will spend as much as it can while keeping the company’s EBITDA-to-debt ratio at about four to one.
Ahern said the company this year purchased about 2,500 Skyjack scissorlifts, around 900 JLG and Genie boomlifts, a lot of Hyster forklifts and other pieces.
Ahern said he expects Ahern Rentals to gross between $445 million and $450 million in revenue this year, compared to $412.3 million in 2013. He added that two sister companies of Ahern Rentals, manufacturers of Snorkel and Xtreme, will each gross close to $100 million in revenue this year, and that Snorkel on its own should bring in about $150 million in 2015. Ahern said Snorkel, when combined with Xtreme will be profitable in 2014, and he expects the aerial equipment manufacturer to be profitable on its own in 2015.
Ahern said he was particularly happy with Snorkel’s parts business. “One of the big problems that Snorkel was plagued with was that they didn’t have enough parts on the shelf,” Ahern said. “Now we are supplying parts for our entire catalog, we have millions of dollars in parts on the shelf. That’s the first thing we fixed. Our parts business is going straight up. We filled every part order and we’re now 100 percent covering parts.” Snorkel now has two large parts depot, in Kansas and the U.K.
Snorkel is redesigning its catalog of equipment. Ahern said the company has redesigned its 40- and 66-foot booms as well as its electric scissorlifts “from the small narrow ones up to the 40-foot electric,” he said. “All the electric slab scissors have been redesigned and they will all be out by the end of the year.”
Snorkel also is doing extensive rebuilding of machines. “We’ve got 200,000 square feet dedicated to rebuild in Kansas and another 200,000 square feet of manufacturing there.”
Ahern told RER Ahern Rentals recently opened several branches: South Atlanta, the Bronx, Chicago and Hobbs, N.M.
“We’re also updating some of our facilities this year,” he said. “We’re spending millions of dollars on re-modeling existing stores, something we hadn’t been doing during the downturn.”
The successful Xtreme forklift business recently received an award from Lift & Access in the material handling category for its 7038, a 70,000-pound-capacity telehandler.
Ahern Rentals is No. 7 on the RER 100.
