Q4 2024 RB Global Inc Earnings Call
Speaker Change: Hello and welcome to the RB Global 4th Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks there will be a question and answer session and if you would like to ask a question during this time please press star 1 on your telephone keypad.
Speaker Change: I would now like to turn the conference over to Sameer Rathod, Vice President of Investor Relations and Market Intelligence. You may begin. Thank you.
Speaker Change: Hello and good afternoon. Thank you for joining us today to discuss our fourth quarter results. Jim Kessler, our Chief Executive Officer, and Eric Guerin, our Chief Financial Officer, are with me on the call today.
Speaker Change: The following discussions will include forward-looking statements, including projections of future earnings, business, and market trends. These statements should be considered in conjunction with our cautionary statements contained in our earnings release and in our periodic FTC reports.
Speaker Change: On this call, we will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. For the identification of non-GAAP financial measures, the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures, and the applicable reconciliation of the two, see our earnings release and periodic SEC reports.
Speaker Change: At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Jim Kessler. Jim?
Jim Kessler: Thanks, Sameer, and good afternoon to everyone joining the call. I want to start by thanking our teammates for their hard work and dedication as we continue over deliverance for our partners and customers.
Jim Kessler: RB Global's fourth quarter highlights our commitment to discipline execution and we finished the year strong with fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA increase in 13% on a 2% increase in gross transactional value.
Jim Kessler: I want to provide an update on the strategic review we conducted in 2024 and share how the new leadership team is shaping the vision for RB Global's future.
Jim Kessler: At the heart of our company, we are defined by our commitments to our partners and customers and, more importantly, our ability to execute those commitments.
We recognize that the world around us is constantly evolving.
Jim Kessler: as are our partners' needs and expectations. However, what remains unchanged is their desire to work with a trusted partner, one who listens, understands their challenges, and takes a proactive approach to delivering solutions that drive superior business outcomes.
Jim Kessler: This is the foundation of our growth strategy. Put our partners first and over-deliver on our commitments.
Jim Kessler: By consistently doing this, we will solidify our position as their trusted global partner for insights, services, and transaction solutions. And of course, we will do this with an eye toward our operational efficiency and excellence.
Jim Kessler: We see significant opportunities to drive transactions and grow our market share by creating a seamless and trusted experience for our sellers and buyers.
We have three key areas of strategic focus.
Jim Kessler: First, we aim for premium price performance for the assets transacted across our omni-channel marketplace, while effectively accommodating our partners' liquidity preferences.
Jim Kessler: This is about managing supply and creating deep liquidity pools by expanding the global buyer base.
Jim Kessler: We are doing this by harnessing technology to merchandise assets at scale and providing a diverse and thoughtful selected range of assets to meet each buyer's unique needs.
Second, we are focused on growing our enterprise partner base.
Jim Kessler: This includes insurance companies in our automotive sector and large fleet owners in our C, C, and T sector. Our partners increasingly rely on our expertise to enhance their profitability by optimizing the life cycle of the assets they transact through us.
Jim Kessler: The more effectively we can communicate and demonstrate our value upstream from the transaction, the stronger our position will be in earning more transactions from partners and gaining market share.
Jim Kessler: This means helping insurance partners with the first notice of loss, shortening total cycle time, and reducing advanced charges.
Jim Kessler: In CC&T, this involves supporting partners with insights, minimizing maintenance costs with smart equip, and streamlining asset transportation with Veritred.
Jim Kessler: At the end of the day, it's about driving a quantifiable value to their P&L.
Jim Kessler: Lastly, we remain focused on driving growth with our regional CC&T customers, comprised of small and mid-sized businesses that highly value personalized engagement in relationships with our territory managers.
Jim Kessler: By leveraging the expertise of our sales team as trusted advisors, we are confident in our ability to strengthen existing relationships and build new ones.
Jim Kessler: As we optimize and expand our sales coverage, we are well positioned to capture additional market share and deliver sustained growth.
Jim Kessler: We will enable all this by continuing to focus on modernizing our technology capabilities, investing in the development of our teammates, and strategically deploying M&A to expand our capabilities and market reach.
Jim Kessler: Looking back at 2024, we made significant progress on all of these enablers to accelerate growth.
Jim Kessler: I am proud of the advancements of our technology capabilities with the launch of RBAuction.com on a modern technology stack. This will be the cornerstone for efficient and scalable growth in the CC&T sector.
Jim Kessler: We invested in our team and welcome several talented senior leaders to our organization including Eric, our CFO
Jim Kessler: Steve Lewis, our COO, and Nancy King, our CTO. Lastly, we enhanced our omni-channel marketplace by acquiring a new channel, Bloom and Bucket, a technology-enabled fixed-price marketplace.
Jim Kessler: Now let's move to the business trends we have been seeing recently. Although we are hearing more confidence and optimism from our partners and customers in CC&T, they continue to evaluate business conditions in the face of continued uncertainty in 2025.
Jim Kessler: Much like last quarter, we would continue to describe the environment as wait-and-see.
Jim Kessler: We are the ideal partner to help the industry navigate its fleet management needs in either a slowdown, where the customers execute a deep lead-in strategy, or a re-acceleration where customers start purchasing new equipment and drive in decisions on aged equipment.
Jim Kessler: We are focused on driving sustainable growth and continue to invest in our North American sales organization.
Now let's move to the automotive sector.
Jim Kessler: Fourth quarter salvage industry volumes benefited from cat events and the ongoing secular growth and loss ratios.
Jim Kessler: Fueled by the favorable spread between repair, cost inflation, and used vehicle inflation.
Jim Kessler: In the fourth quarter, CCC Intelligence Solutions estimated that the total loss ratio increased nearly 230 basis points to approximately 23.8% compared to 21.5% in the same period last year.
We continue to attract new international buyers to our marketplace.
Jim Kessler: Achieving a record high percentage of vehicles sold to international buyers in our automotive sector.
Jim Kessler: That said, we are starting to cycle over some of the significant process and technology improvements from last year, and are therefore more exposed to the weakness in the broader macro environment.
Jim Kessler: Average selling prices of salvaged U.S. insurance vehicles declined less than 1%, and when excluding the impacts from CAT, declined approximately 2% year-over-year. I will now pass the call to Eric to review our financial performance and outlook.
Eric Guerin: Thank you, Jim. As I conclude my first full year at CFO, I am proud of the financial discipline we've instilled as a team. This past year, we have maintained a strong focus on operational efficiency, strategically investing in long-term growth opportunities, and substantially reducing our leverage.
Total GTV increased by 2%.
Eric Guerin: Automotive GTV increased by 4%, driven by a 7% increase in unit volumes, sparsely offset by a decline in the average price per vehicle sold.
Eric Guerin: Excluding catastrophe-related impacts, our automotive sector GTV would have declined by approximately 4%, while unit volumes would have increased by approximately 1%.
Eric Guerin: Unit volume growth, excluding the impact of the cat in the quarter, was driven by strong organic growth from existing partners, partially offset by the previously announced customer loss.
Eric Guerin: We expect to completely lap the volume loss associated with this customer in the second quarter of 2025.
Eric Guerin: GTV in the commercial construction and transportation sector decreased by 1%, driven by a decline in the average price per lot sold, partially offset by an 18% increase in lot volumes.
Eric Guerin: The average price per lot sold declined due to both asset mix and continued deflation in asset values. Asset mix headwinds stemmed from lot volume growth from rental and transportation industries where asset values are intrinsically at lower ASPs.
Eric Guerin: Excluding the impact of the Yellow Corporation bankruptcy, the GTV decline in the commercial construction and transportation sector would have been approximately 2%. By the end of the fourth quarter, most of the unit volumes related to Yellow had been sold.
Eric Guerin: Moving to service revenue. Service revenue increased by 8% due to a higher service revenue take rate and higher GTV.
Eric Guerin: The service take rate increased approximately 110 basis points year-over-year to 21.3%, driven by a higher average buyer fee rate and growth in our marketplace services.
Eric Guerin: Moving to Adjusted EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA increased 13% on the expansion in our service revenue take rate, a higher level of GTV, and a higher contribution from inventory returns.
Eric Guerin: Our dedication to efficiency and disciplined execution was evident again in the fourth quarter as adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of GTV increased to 8.4 percent compared to 7.7 percent the prior year.
Eric Guerin: Adjusted earnings per share increased by 16% on higher operating income and lower net interest expense, partially offset by a slightly higher adjusted tax rate.
Eric Guerin: Our solid operational performance and continued debt paydown drove a one-tenth of a turn decline in our adjusted net debt to trailing 12 months adjusted EBITDA to approximately 1.6 times compared to the third quarter of 2024.
Eric Guerin: Moving to the outlook, we wanted to provide our initial thoughts for 2025.
Eric Guerin: We expect full-year gross transaction values to grow between 0 and 3% year-over-year as we continue to gain market share in 2025.
Eric Guerin: Note that we will face the most challenging comparison in the first quarter of 2025 and expect consolidated GTV to decline mid-single digits year-over-year.
Eric Guerin: We remain dedicated to our operational excellence program while prudently investing in growth initiatives.
Eric Guerin: We expect full-year adjusted EBITDA between $1.32 billion and $1.38 billion, or approximately 1.6% year-over-year growth.
Eric Guerin: We also expect our full year 2025 gap and adjusted tax rate to be consistent with 2024 and be between 25 and 28 percent.
Eric Guerin: Moving to CapEx, we currently expect full-year capital expenditures, which include PP&E, net of proceeds on disposals, and additions to intangible assets, to be between $350 and $400 million.
Eric Guerin: This is a step up compared to 2024, mainly due to our investment to support our greenfield expansion in Australia, selectively acquiring property to optimize our portfolio while supporting volume growth, and continued investment in technology.
With that, let's open the call for questions.
Eric Guerin: Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star 1 again. Please ensure you are not on speakerphone and that your phone is not on mute when called upon. Thank you.
Speaker Change: Your first question comes from Stephen Hansen with Raymond James. Your line is open.
Stephen Hansen: Yeah, good afternoon guys. Thanks for the time. Appreciate it. The results look great. Just a quick question on the market share gains that you've described. I mean, how do you feel about progressing that through the balance of 25? You've spoken to some wins already that are under your belt. Do you expect additional wins through the balance of this year? Anything large in material or is it going to be small incremental wins as you go?
Stephen Hansen: Hey Stephen, it's Jim. Great question. I'm just going to stick to what's in our control. We are going to be very focused on providing the highest level of service to our partners. And more specifically, the team is
Stephen Hansen: Very focused on, especially in this environment, how do we add value to our partners so they can see it in their P&L?
Stephen Hansen: And that's what the team is really focused on. And we believe by staying focused on that, that's gonna produce the outcome, which we want is additional market share. But to fully answer your question, the one part of the equation is not in my control of when someone says yes.
Stephen Hansen: So what we're going to stay focused on is what is in our control and make sure we keep delivering value to our partners.
Speaker Change: Okay, that's fair. Thanks. And I'll just ask one more here and then come back in the queue. But just curious, Jimmy, I think you mentioned a couple different items.
Speaker Change: in terms of capital allocation priorities, and one of them was M&A. I mean, where does that land in sort of the collective priority list for you as it stands? It sounds like you've got a bunch of things you want to invest in. Just curious if M&A overrides the potential for buybacks at some point in the future as well.
And Eric, do you want to take that one?
Speaker Change: Yeah, as we laid out a couple quarters ago, our capital allocation framework, we've always had M&A listed on there. My focus...
Speaker Change: for most of 24 was to get within our net debt to adjust to even a range as I articulated on this call we're at 1.6 times so we're in a good place.
Speaker Change: So it's part of our strategy. It always has been, as we laid out earlier in 24. So we continue to look at M&A opportunities, but it's.
Speaker Change: So we'll look at technology and continue to look at properties.
Appreciate it, Collar. Thanks, guys. Yeah.
Speaker Change: The next question comes from Michael Sinegar with Bank of America. Your line is open.
Speaker Change: Yeah, thanks for taking my questions just On the on the GTV growth outlook you mentioned obviously Q1 a tough comp
Speaker Change: the split of auto which seems like you guys are gaining share versus the commercial transportation. Clearly you guys have
Speaker Change: you know a tough comp, you're cycling through the yellow, still a good performance in Q4. Just curious, I know you guys have Orlando in a few days, you're seeing how that builds. I'm just curious what you're kind of expecting with some of the puts and takes, how you should kind of think of that GTV makeup right there.
Speaker Change: Yeah, I'll start, Michael, then I'll pass it over to Eric to add any more color if he would like.
Speaker Change: Let me just start with automotive first. Just as a reminder, you know, the carrier loss that we announced, you know, a little bit over a year ago.
Speaker Change: This is the last quarter that we have to deal with that conversation and then all the other games that we talked about start to kick in. So I think we feel really good about the trajectory of automotive of where it is.
When you get into CC&T...
Speaker Change: Along with yellow, just want to remind the group, and this really goes back to when COVID created a very erratic supply chain and equipment wasn't getting produced. And then a couple of years later, equipment got, new equipment got produced and then there was a lot of disposal.
Speaker Change: And with the very large strategic accounts we have, we got the benefit over a year ago of that disposal. Now we're going up against it. And I don't consider that a...
Speaker Change: I think about it like yellow. It was really the COVID was a one-time event that happened. We got the benefit. So to me, when you really look over two years, you kind of get a normalized growth rate that you would expect for this sector.
Speaker Change: And that's what you would see. So that's why we're just calling it out because they're very unique things that have happened over that time period.
Speaker Change: And then when we start looking into the back half, it kind of starts to look normal without those things. We still have yellow that we have to deal with for the whole year, but that starts to become less as you go out the year. And Eric, is there anything you would like to add? I think, Jim, you covered it. Okay, thank you.
Speaker Change: James, if I could just squeeze one more in. I love to get your sense of what you're hearing on the auto side. Obviously, you guys are gaining share, which is what you can control. There's just a lot of headlines around tariffs.
and what that might mean for the auto side. Just...
Speaker Change: Is there any impact how that would flow through to the salvage side? Are you hearing that come up with buyers or sellers?
the knock-on effect of what terrorists might mean.
Speaker Change: to the new automobile side and how that might flow through the salvage, or maybe there really isn't an impact. I'd just love to get that sense.
Speaker Change: Thanks. Yeah, look, first we'll just start with, you know, as we think about the tariffs, first between New Mexico and Canada, everything got delayed, right? So, of course, we're still working through with our customers and our partners.
Speaker Change: What would that mean if something happened? I think the great thing about our marketplace, no matter if it's the CC&T or the automotive side, there is a need for these assets.
Speaker Change: And it's really up to our team with insights and data, how do we help them navigate this world, because there is a need for these assets as we go through it. So we're going to be very focused on.
Speaker Change: What's really going to happen? How do we navigate it? How do we use all the data and insights? And again,
Speaker Change: What we want to get back to is making sure we're adding value to our partners no matter what environment we have and the one benefit we do have with RB Global is being a global company we have access to a lot of liquidity and a lot of markets and
Speaker Change: A lot of different things that we can help our partners navigate through this time, and I think the one thing that we're hearing the most apprehension about from the automotive side of our partner is really automotive parts.
Speaker Change: is really what we hear more of the concern of what's going to happen to the supply chain if tariffs get enacted versus the salvage car itself. But Eric, Sameer, anything from either of you that you'd like to add?
Okay, I think that is, that is, you got it.
Speaker Change: The next question comes from Craig Kennison with Baird. Your line is open.
Craig Kennison: Hey, good afternoon. Jim, you mentioned in the C, C and T business kind of a wait-and-see market, and I think that was an appropriate description last quarter as well. Wondering what you see as a potential trigger to change the nature of this market so that
Transactions start to flow a little better.
Yeah, look, for us...
You know, we're constantly in communication with our partners.
Craig Kennison: And I think interest rates, you know, not really coming down farther, where I think everyone would have hoped there would have been some more cuts, which would have then attracted, okay, do I invest in new equipment?
Craig Kennison: going through it, waiting to see what tariffs. I think some of our partners are waiting to see, you know, these mega projects, do they come to fruition? What's gonna happen with the new administration? I think everyone...
Craig Kennison: has hope of what's going to happen, but like all of us, we have to manage our balance sheets and our cash flow. And the great thing for our business, we realize we're not going to control their decision of when they make the decision to do dispositions.
Craig Kennison: But again, we're going to add value no matter if it's data, insights, if it's transportation services, inspections, appraisals, everything we can do to help them optimize their P&L when they're ready for dispositions, and I think we showed it.
Craig Kennison: When COVID happened and all that new equipment came in and they had to dispose of equipment, I don't think there was anyone else with our scale that could have helped them.
Craig Kennison: in that time to manage premium price, to get this through the auction channels that we have. So I think we've showed when someone's ready to make the decision, we're the right partner and to be able to help them with it. So that's what we stay focused on.
Craig Kennison: Yeah, thanks. And maybe as a follow-up, you know, it looks like the federal government is taking a harder look at, you know, efficiency through DOJ, and I'm curious if you're seeing any uptick in activity on your platform as it relates to potential RFPs or projects associated with assets that just may not be, you know, needed anymore.
Craig Kennison: Look, it's a hard question, right, because, you know, when you think about the categories on a large scale, you know, we definitely see the surplus items and different brands that we serve that fit that. But I wouldn't call it anything abnormal, right, at this point yet.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you.
Craig Kennison: Once again, ladies and gentlemen, it is star one to ask a question.
Speaker Change: Your next question comes from Gary Prescopino with Barrington. Your line is open.
Gary Prescopino: Hi, good afternoon, Jim and Eric. Hey, Jim, since we're almost over a year into this with the IAIA transaction, can you give us some idea of how much you've reduced the cycle times?
Speaker Change: How much you've increased the salvage returns for your customers on average?
Speaker Change: We're not going to go to specific metrics. We actually issue a quarterly KPI report to all insurance partners that explain this.
And what I would just say to this group is...
Speaker Change: We are very confident that we are going to consistently overperform to the SLAs that we've committed to to our partners.
Speaker Change: And we're going to be relentless. We are not going to stop. We are going to continue to drive up those numbers, and we're going to innovate and look for ways to do it.
Speaker Change: But I just want to share our confidence. We're about a year into issuing to the global insurance base, no matter if you do business with us.
Speaker Change: If you don't, we issue it to all the leaders of the insurance companies just to create transparency and to show our confidence of our performance. And I believe it's very consistent performance over the last 18 months that I'm very proud of for the team.
Okay, that's helpful.
Speaker Change: And then just in terms of your international buyers of salvage, will these tariffs that are being floated around, or whatever they're put in place,
Speaker Change: Would that be much of an impact to them? I guess I guess what I'm getting at with the reciprocal tariffs
Speaker Change: There was a lot of noise about the differential on the tariff from an American car imported into Europe versus a European car imported into the United States meaning new cars, but
Speaker Change: Are there really, is there really the potential for onerous tariffs on salvage that's exported out of this country?
Speaker Change: Look, it's a hard question for us to navigate since I don't think anyone has been really clear about what assets and what things are part of the tariff so it's very hard to...
Speaker Change: really give you a detailed answer. Again, our belief is these assets are needed.
Speaker Change: And what we worry more about is probably the short-term impact and the long-term. We probably think of these as a tailwind as you think about price and ASP of what it means to it.
Speaker Change: But again, what we want to make sure we do with our partners is we need to show value for them in their pay now, and we know we can navigate this environment from a global base with the footprint that we have. We're one of the few that are truly global, no matter if it's Europe, Mexico, Canada.
Speaker Change: to navigate this with our partners. So I think it's more short term and long term, I think there could be a tailwind as we think about what happens to the price.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you, Gary. See you next time.
Speaker Change: The next question comes from Maxim Sychev with NBF. Your line is open.
That's all, gentlemen.
Speaker Change: I was wondering if you don't mind going back to the first point of the strategy, like the desire to achieve premium price performance across channels. Do you mind maybe building a little bit in terms of what exactly are we going to be doing from an operational perspective in order to achieve that?
Speaker Change: Yeah, the one thing that we take very serious from all of our partners is
Speaker Change: How do we continue to, you know, innovate and drive what we call premium price? But also, if you're a buyer in our marketplace, we want to make sure you have all the information and data you need to make a true decision to have confidence in what you're purchasing.
Speaker Change: We know it's important in the marketplace, so we look at different auction channels and we try to balance.
The Liquidity in a Time You Need for Cash
Speaker Change: Along with, okay, ASP. So with all of our channels, you know, if you want to be in TCC, TNV, and Marketplace-y, where we're kind of put a buy-now price and negotiate for you, and if you have a long period of time, we know that channel can produce
Speaker Change: you know, a higher percent than if you're in a Ritchie Brothers live event and it's an unreserved auction. But the one thing with the Ritchie live event, you know you're going to get liquidity, right? So we look at it on a liquidity scale to price scale and we actively listen to our partners.
Speaker Change: of what need do you have and how do we help you solve it? And the boom and bucket transaction is a great example of an innovation of how do we help build another marketplace to drive a higher price?
Speaker Change: So we're really, you know, our auction channels, how we market, how we bring new buyers to the marketplaces that we serve.
Speaker Change: And then making sure for the buyers they have the most accurate information and description for any equipment or autos in our channel. And a good example on auto, we added trim level data to all of our automobiles. I think we're over 95%. You actually get the right description of trim. And we're the first ones to do that, which we have seen it added to our ASP. So they're just examples of the things we constantly think about.
Speaker Change: One quick question for Eric if I may. In terms of the CapEx investments, how should we think about the incremental ROI in this? Is this to support future growth or is it to support already one market share and you have to enable those investments to support those clients? How should we think about this?
Thank you.
Speaker Change: Yeah, I would say it's both of the above. Some of it is existing, looking at opportunities where it makes sense. We would look to purchase some properties.
Speaker Change: As I articulated on the remarks, you know, we won the Australia
Speaker Change: automotive business. We're really excited about that opportunity, but that comes with some incremental investment. But again, we're excited about that win and that opportunity. So it's really a combination of the things above. On the tech side,
Speaker Change: We have Nancy on board now. We are continuing on our path.
Speaker Change: to improve our technology and improve the experience for our customers. So we're excited about those investments and they all have a lens that we look at it with a return on investment analysis. And Max, I would just add to Eric's point, when you think about Australia,
Max: Yes, we got our first win, but as you can imagine, this investment is based on multiple wins that we expect to get over a period of time to really make this investment get down to the ROI that we want.
Max: Getting the number two player to say yes was a great team effort and again very proud of the team. But our expectation as we look five years out, we expect there to be more wins so we get the ROI that we want.
Okay, excellent call. Thank you so much.
Stephen Hansen: The next question comes from Stephen Hansen of Raymond James. Your line is open.
Stephen Hansen: Oh, hey guys. Thanks for the follow-up. I'm just curious, Jim, you referenced in the past a few other initiatives, one being hiring additional sales reps to broaden your territory reach or your reach, I guess, from the origination standpoint. Can you give us an update as to how that strategy has been going from a market share gains perspective?
Stephen Hansen: Yeah, it's going really well. We really feel really comfortable. What we want to get better at is when you hire someone, how do you get them up to speed as quickly as possible, right? So we just brought in someone new on our HR team, someone who I worked with
Stephen Hansen: before in my collision days, so I feel really good that's going to help our team get up to speed. But we see a great ROI in the program and
Stephen Hansen: You know, what I feel really good about is, as we get really efficient at bringing people in and getting them up to speed, there are areas where we know we can still add people to take market share, so we're going to stay focused on a program, but we feel really good about the ROI that we get. And like I said, what we have to get better at is how do you get someone up to speed as quickly as possible?
Speaker Change: Okay, that's helpful. And then just the last one for me is just, I think it's, I'm not sure how fair it is, but you've been criticized in the past with your cat performance. It sounds like your comments here today suggest...
Speaker Change: You know, your SLAs on cat performance have been meeting or exceeding most expectations. I mean, does that take away some of the hindrance you've had in the past on winning market share back? I mean, do you view that as a step change forward, I guess, is the question, in terms of your ability to win new business and performing well on cat? Thanks.
Speaker Change: Great question and kind of how I would, and look, I wasn't here for some of the.
Speaker Change: perceived issues that people put on IAEA's shoulders. But the one thing I can tell you
Speaker Change: Since I've been here, when I look back at some of the data...
I believe IEA has performed very well in most cats.
Speaker Change: I know there was a partner issue in the past, so for me, what I'm really focused on for that partner is to show how consistent and reliable our service is.
for this
Speaker Change: Specific season that we just passed the emails I got from our current partners about our performance and how well the team did
Speaker Change: I'm very proud of it and I'm, you know, there's only two of us and I'm willing to put our performance up against everyone and again
Speaker Change: The one thing that we did is we immediately emailed out our performance results to everyone. So everyone in the industry can see how well we perform and how we did perform. They can choose if they thought it was well or not, but I consider it that we did really well. So I don't think there should be any doubt in anyone's mind that if it's the daily business of process and salvage or a cat event, that there should be any worry if IEA can perform or not. But again, some of that
Speaker Change: that is up to other people to make that decision and not mine, but I feel really good about the transparency that we have done for this whole year and this CAT event, and I believe the team did a great job this year.
Appreciate the call, guys. Thanks.
Michael Seneca: The next question comes from Michael Seneca with Bank of America. Your line is open.
Michael Seneca: Hey guys, thanks for letting me jump back on. I just wanted to ask, the SG&A I think was down year-over-year, at least on the reported number, while GTV was up. I'm just curious, you know, I know you guys are investing back in the business. Is there anything you want to flag?
Speaker Change: on the cost line that we should be aware of. And just lastly, Jim, I'm just curious, obviously, you know, great performance this year on the take rate. As we think about 2025, what are you guys kind of embedding in that outlook? Are you assuming the take rate
Speaker Change: stays where it is. Is there an assumption that there will be an increase in buyer fees or incremental growth from marketplace services? Anything you guys have put into place early this year that is driving that take rate? Just anything you kind of help us out on that part. That would be great. Thanks, everyone.
Speaker Change: Let me start at a high level, then I'll pass it to Eric if he wants to add any more detail. And we have a very disciplined.
Speaker Change: You know, take, rate, feed, review process that we do every single year and we follow it again this year.
Speaker Change: So I'm not going to get into any specifics of what do we have in our forecast or assumptions, but we follow a very disciplined process that we
Speaker Change: implement typically at the first of the year. Then we do evaluations as we go throughout the year to see if any adjustments need to be made. So, Eric, do you have any other fee or...
Eric Guerin: conversation? Not on GTV. Yeah, I'm good. Yeah, I think on the SG&A side, your first question there, you know, as I came on board, and Jim shares this philosophy, right, we're going to continue to focus on
managing our operating efficiency while over-delivering against our partners.
Eric Guerin: expectations. So I think the SG&A performance is just in line with that continuous
Eric Guerin: that we've instilled in the organization to make sure that we manage our costs effectively, but also make sure we invest in the business. We just talked about the Salesforce expansion and how we're.
Eric Guerin: continuing that effort and are happy to happy to do that. So it's this balance of making sure we remove costs that don't need to be there but also continue to invest in the business and that's going to be a discipline that will continue
Eric Guerin: Michael, I would just add to Eric's comment is just to remind the group
Michael: The way RB Global became RB Global is through a lot of acquisitions that kind of happened over time.
Michael: So, what we're really pushing our team, to Eric's point, is making sure we're running this business very effectively and efficiently.
Michael: and we're going to be relentless with that. We're going to keep going until we feel like we really have a very effective, efficient organization with a structure of roles and responsibilities.
Michael: It's something we're never going to not focus on, right? Even if we think we're the best and we're optimal, there's always going to be a push to, how do we get better at what we're doing from an efficiency? But to Eric's point, the one...
Eric Guerin: The thing we're never going to lose is we have to over deliver on our commitments to our partners.
Michael: and we have to add value in their P&L. What makes me feel really good is when we go into a partner for any kind of quarterly review and they tell me they can see what we're talking about in their P&L. Then I know
Michael: That's when I know I feel really good about what the team is doing. But we're going to be relentless to make sure we operate a very efficient business. And right or wrong, some of the things in our favor is when you grow by acquisitions in your older company, that tends to give you the ability to have some of that opportunities in front of you.
Michael: This concludes the question and answer session. I'll turn the call to CEO Jim Kessler for closing remarks.
Jim Kessler: Thank you so much and just wanted to thank everyone for their participation. We really do appreciate it.
Jim Kessler: The one thing I would be remiss is the executive team is down here in Orlando. We are at the world famous Orlando Auction on the construction and transportation side of the business. This week is always an exciting week. We just had our customer appreciation event last night.
Jim Kessler: Probably the most well attended since I've been here and probably in the history of the company.
Jim Kessler: But when you have a week like this with the amount of GTV we're going to process in a very short period of time, I just wanted to thank all of our teammates. Thank you for all your hard work. It is very much appreciated.
Jim Kessler: And then the great thing is, after this week, next week, we turn our attention on the automotive side.
Jim Kessler: IAEA has their industry event next week where we'll see a lot of our partners and get to talk about 24 and then talk about 25 Innovation and what's to come and how we're going to add value. So I just want to thank all of our teammates Thank you for all your hard work. We really appreciate it
Jim Kessler: and we're going to keep it going. So thank you so much and everyone have a great night.
Jim Kessler: This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.