Alta Equipment, a distributor with one of the biggest and fastest growing rental programs among distributors, posted $441.6 million in first quarter 2024 revenues, compared with $420.7 million in the first quarter of 2023, a 5-percent revenue gain. The best increase was in rental revenue with $48.5 million in the first quarter of 2024 compared to $43.5 million in the first quarter of 2023, an 11.5-percent revenue increase. New and used equipment sales totaled $228.6 million compared to $219.6 million in the year-ago quarter, an incline of 4.1 percent. Parts sales and service revenues increased 6.6 percent and 6.3 percent respectively.
“Our first quarter results, in line with history and expectations, once again reflected the seasonal nature of our business as the winter weather impacted the Construction Equipment segment in our northern regions,” said Ryan Greenawalt, CEO of Alta Equipment. “Despite the seasonality, we were able to achieve $441.6 million of revenues for the quarter, up $20.9 million from the same period last year. Additionally, activity-related key performance indicators presented well for the quarter and our combined product support and rental revenues grew $6.3 million, or 3.7 percent, on an organic basis when compared to Q1 2023, reflecting the resilience of our end markets and continued elevated levels of activity and equipment utilization in our customer base. While new and used equipment sales in our core lift truck and construction segments increased $29.3 million from a year ago, equipment revenue mix negatively impacted equipment sales margins overall. Specifically, Ecoverse’s high-margin equipment sales were down $14.4 million versus the first quarter of last year on a record sales comparison, as Ecoverse was replenishing its sub-dealers’ inventories in the first quarter of 2023 amidst OEM equipment supply chain normalization.
“Additionally, within our Material Handling segment, our Peaklogix subsidiary, which sells high-margin automated warehouse system solutions, was down $8.7 million when compared to last year as its customer base has been impacted by the elevated level of interest rates leading to elongated capex decision making. While we believe the Peaklogix business will continue to be impacted by 'higher for longer' interest rates, we are confident that the Ecoverse variance in the first quarter is isolated as its customer base, which is focused on waste management, organics processing and composting, continues to realize solid annualized growth and equipment utilization remains strong."
Warming with the weather
Greenawalt is optimistic that emerging from the cold winter weather in the northern regions of the company’s business will lead to better business opportunities.
“As we emerge from the weather-impacted first quarter and into construction season in the north, we remain bullish about the backlog of work and general activity levels at our customers for the remainder of 2024, which we believe will bode well for our product support and rental business lines, both of which experienced their natural seasonal increase in April. That said, we believe new equipment sales and sales profit margins, which have ebbed and flowed quarter to quarter historically, could be impacted over the remainder of the year by the increase of new equipment supply on the market and competitive pricing pressures. Nevertheless, we intend to continue to win our share of equipment deals by selling our overall dealership capabilities and what we believe to be an industry-leading value proposition.”
“Despite the potential for choppiness in new equipment sales, we remain positive regarding our opportunities this year and will continue to focus on customer equipment ‘uptime’ relative to our product support business lines as well as our absorption ratio and cost optimization. Industry indicators continue to be supportive of medium and long-term growth in our end-user markets. We have a solid equipment backlog in our Material Handing segment and our Construction Equipment business will benefit from strong non-residential construction activity, increased state DOT budgets and accelerated spending on federal infrastructure programs for years to come.”
Alta Equipment, headquartered in Livonia, Mich., is No. 21 on the RER 100. Alta had 2023 rental volume of $202.4, total revenue of $1,876.8 million. Alta has 85 branches.
