Good day and welcome to the GATX 2021 fourth quarter conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Shari Hellerman, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Thank you, Jen. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining GATX's fourth quarter and 2021 year-end earnings conference call. I'm joined today by Brian Kenney, President and CEO, Tom Ellman, Executive Vice President and CFO, and Bob Lyons, Executive Vice President and President of Rail North America. Please note that some of the information you'll hear during our discussion today will consist of forward-looking statements. Actual results or trends could differ materially from those statements or forecasts. For more information, please refer to the risk factors included in our release and those discussed in GATX's 2020 Form 10-K and 2021 Form 10-Q. GATX assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. I'll provide a quick overview of our 2021 fourth quarter and full year results, and then Brian will provide additional comments on 2021 as well as our outlook for 2022. After that, we'll open the call up for questions. Earlier today, GATX reported 2021 fourth quarter net income from continuing operations of $61 million or $1.69 per diluted share. This compares to 2020 fourth quarter net income from continuing operations of $17.8 million or $0.50 per diluted share. The 2021 fourth quarter results include a net positive impact of $4 million or $0.11 per diluted share related to tax adjustments and other items. For the full year 2021, GATX reported net income from continuing operations of $143.1 million or $3.98 per diluted share. This compares to net income from continuing operations of $150.2 million or $4.24 per diluted share in 2020. The 2021 and 2020 full year results include net negative impacts of $1.08 per diluted share and $0.35 per diluted share, respectively, associated with various tax adjustments and other items. These items are detailed on page 13 of our earnings release. Total 2021 investment volume was $1.1 billion as we continue to find attractive opportunities to invest in our businesses across the globe. Additionally, in 2021, GATX repurchased about 131,000 shares for approximately $13 million. As of December 31, 2021, we have approximately $137 million remaining under our existing repurchase authorization. Lastly, as noted in the earnings release, we currently expect 2022 earnings to be in the range of $5.50-$5.80 per diluted share. With that, I will now turn the call over to Brian. Yeah. Thanks, Sherry. Good morning, everyone. As Sherry said, I'll give you some brief color on our 2021 performance, but more importantly, get to some more detail underpinning our 2022 guidance. Let me get started. Sherry gave you the numbers, so I won't repeat them here, but I will say that we increasingly outperformed our expectations as we moved through the year. That was especially true at Rail North America. As you saw in the press release, absolute lease rates have increased now for six consecutive quarters, and that drove our Lease Price Index to be virtually flat in the quarter at -0.7%. I'll give you more on where we think lease pricing is going in 2022 in just a minute. The pricing strength was driven by solid demand, was driven by our diversified fleet composition, and was driven by excellent execution by our commercial team. As the year progressed, they took more risks. They pushed lease rates harder, and they succeeded. They enjoyed high lease renewal success, which drove lower fleet churn than we expected coming into the year. Combined with lower railroad repairs and our ongoing efforts to drive more repairs into our own network, we thus experienced much lower maintenance costs than we originally expected. The last factor to talk about for 2021 in Rail North America was high asset values. Not only did the railcars that we sold in the secondary market realize the values that we originally planned, but continued high scrap prices also drove scrap gains through 2021 as well. It was a very strong year for Rail North America versus our expectations, and the team really did take advantage of an improving market. Turning to Rail International, we expected a significant increase in profitability in 2021, and they delivered. They increased their segment profit by over $21 million from 2020. That was about a 25% increase. That performance was driven by continuing strong underlying markets and increasing earnings from the significant investments that we've made over the last few years. In addition, they didn't have to deal with the foreign exchange headwinds that they dealt with in 2020. Within Portfolio Management, profit on our Rolls-Royce and Partners Finance joint ventures was down $40 million from the prior year, but that was just as we anticipated, and that JV continues to operate in a difficult market for long-haul air travel. The drop in segment profit was driven by much lower asset remarketing gains relative to the prior year. Concerning our acquisition of Trifleet, our tank container leasing business, they too outperformed our expectations. A worldwide tank container market strengthened throughout the year. As you might remember, we originally expected Trifleet to be $0.10 dilutive to earnings in 2021, and that was due to the accounting associated with purchase price holdbacks and retention agreements in connection with the acquisition. Trifleet actually ended up 2021 being slightly accretive. In summary, 2021 showed very strong financial performance versus our expectations really across our businesses. Before I close the discussion on 2021, I wanna point out, as Sherry indicated, we invested over $1 billion again in 2021. Now, $360 million of that total was for railcar deliveries that we were obligated to take coming into the year. That's from our committed supply agreements with Rail North America. That means we were able to close over $770 million of other attractive investment opportunities in 2021 with our customers. That was accomplished despite asset prices steadily increasing throughout the year. From my perspective, that's extraordinary performance by the team. As I said in the last earnings call, it's getting tough to economically justify speculative investment due to the extremely high asset prices present in today's market. To close that level of investment in 2021, our team had to secure the customers in advance. They had to have them commit to higher lease rates, and in many cases, longer lease terms, all in order to amortize that increase in asset costs. Their success in doing so is why these investments will be attractive financially to us despite the higher cost. It points to a couple of things, but the success is a sign that not only does our team have strong customer relationships, it's also a sign that there's good demand for our new assets across our market. A really good job by the team to secure that level of investment and still maintain our investment discipline. Let me turn to the 2022 outlook. I'll start by saying that we enjoy a strong balance sheet, excellent access to capital, continued favorable market conditions in our growing international rail businesses, and for the first time in years, the market for our largest business, Rail North America, seems to have turned the corner and has recovered to the point that the GATX fleet can experience some pricing leverage. Some detail on that point. As you know, Rail North America has been operating in a market with an oversupply situation for years, really since the crude by rail boom collapsed in early 2015. Over the last two years, you've heard us say that this market is gradually recovering, and that was due to natural industry fleet attrition, so spurred by the combination of reduced railcar manufacturing output combined with the scrapping of older cars. For a fleet as well constructed and as well diversified as the GATX fleet, we think that market conditions have recovered to the point that we expect to see, on average, positive lease rate changes upon renewal in 2022. In fact, we currently expect our Lease Price Index to show a positive 5%-15% change this year. That's a noteworthy development, as the last time we saw a positive change in the Lease Price Index for a full year was in 2015. We also anticipate continued high renewal success, slightly lower utilization this year, with the net effect of all these factors being that we expect a small revenue increase for Rail North America versus the last year. Looking at net maintenance expense, it's been a good news story. We've outperformed our expectations for this the last three years. In 2021, we continued to aggressively move more work from third-party facilities into our own network, and thus we realized lower than expected costs. With over 90% of our tank car and covered hopper maintenance events now being performed in our own network, further efficiency gains from that strategy will slow in 2022. With the labor disruptions we're currently seeing from COVID waves and the inflationary pressures on material costs, we currently expect we'll be doing well to have net maintenance expense be relatively flat in 2022. The last factor I wanna discuss for Rail North America is asset disposition income. The secondary market for railcar sales in 2021 was very strong, as we said, and as expected, we realized much higher gains on asset dispositions versus the prior year. Asset prices remain high and investor appetite is strong, and that's due to the widespread access to low-cost capital. High scrap steel prices. We'll expect another strong year for asset gains in Rail North America. In fact, I'd say we anticipate a level similar to or somewhat higher than 2021 as we continue to optimize our fleet. As always, if the secondary market changes, we'll change our disposition plans and we'll act economically. The net effect of all this is that we expect 2022 segment profit at Rail North America to be up in the $15 million-$25 million range from 2021. Let me move to Rail International, and I'll start with GATX Rail Europe. As we've discussed in recent years, the European rail wagon leasing market, it remains as robust as we've seen since we entered the market in the early 1990s, and we expect that favorable market to continue, and we're investing more into that market. In 2022, we anticipate adding more than 1,400 wagons at attractive lease rates, all while continuing to realize small renewal rate increases on the existing fleet. That combination of new investment and strong performance on the existing fleet is expected to result in an increase in Rail Europe's profit of $4 million-$6 million in 2022. In Rail India, their 2021 fleet growth, as you know, was curtailed yet again by a manufacturing shutdown due to another COVID wave in the spring of last year. That risk obviously still remains. Absent another COVID shutdown, we anticipate significant growth in our Indian fleet this year, currently expecting to add over 1,200 wagons to our fleet in 2022. They also continue to diversify their car types, their customer mix, and their growth is expected to increase their profit in the range of $3 million-$5 million this year. Combined with GATX Rail Europe, that means the expected segment profit growth for Rail International in total is expected to be in that $7 million-$11 million range in 2022. Portfolio Management, as I said earlier, the RRPF joint venture, that's our partnership with Rolls-Royce, continues to be hampered by the reduction in long-haul global air travel. Honestly, we've given up trying to estimate the timing of a full recovery of air travel because it appears to be so dependent on the ebbs and flows of the pandemic. We strongly believe in the ultimate recovery of that market. In the meantime, we'll continue to focus on improving the JV's performance, and finding attractive investment opportunities, such as the $350 million in direct engine investment that GATX made in 2021. In 2022, we expect lower segment profit of $5 million-$7 million in Portfolio Management, and that's due primarily to lower asset remarketing activity at RRPF. Lastly, at Trifleet, as I said, the tank container leasing market improved throughout 2021. It remains strong as we enter 2022. We did increase Trifleet's investment in that business due to the strong market, combined with GATX's more efficient access to low-cost capital. I also think we're just starting to realize the customer synergies we anticipated before we purchased that business. We currently expect Trifleet profit to increase in the $2 million-$3 million range in 2022. Quickly, SG&A and other corporate costs. We are experiencing the same cost pressures that everyone is experiencing these days related to employee wage inflation, but also due to some growth-related headcount at Rail International. That should be offset by some 2021 corporate costs that won't occur again this year. Right now, we expect the SG&A and corporate costs will be essentially flat in 2022. The last item is our tax rate. It's projected to be a point or two lower this year due to some tax adjustments in 2021 that should not reoccur this year. The net effect of the increase in segment profit, flat SG&A and corporate costs, and a slightly lower tax rate, and the assumption of resumed share repurchase in 2022, results in our expectation that earnings per share will be in the range of $5.50-$5.80 per diluted share this year. Again, all of this assumes no significant COVID-related disruptions again in 2022. I want to close by reminding you that, as always, 2022 will mark our 104th consecutive year of paying a dividend, a track record that very few can match. The GATX board meets this Friday. They will discuss our 2022 plans for the dividend, so we'll announce that decision at that time. Obviously, the board understands the importance of the dividend, and I think our century-long streak is a great example of our long-term record of success and commitment to our shareholders. Once again, I wanna stress that GATX employees executed our plan very well yet again in 2021. I'm really confident that between the investments we are making and the expectation that our largest business will see positive revenue trends for the first time in over six years, that we'll continue to reward our shareholders' confidence in us for years to come. That's all I had. Operator, you can open it up to questions. Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, press star one to ask a question. We'll pause for just a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. We'll go first to Allison Poliniak with Wells Fargo. Thanks. On, I guess, the LPI, you know, obviously a positive direction here. Could you maybe give a little color in terms of, you know, obviously absolute lease rates are gonna be renewing higher than what's being renewed. Relative to what you guys view as normal, could you give us any, like, perspective of kinda where we are with that at this point? Allison, it's Bob. I'm happy to take that question for you. As Brian mentioned in his opening comments, you know, for the sixth consecutive quarter, we saw absolute lease rates move up. As we look into 2022 with regards to the LPI, we have for the first time in a very long time, both elements working in our favor, which is the average expiring rate is actually ticking down a little bit, and the average expected renewal rate is going up. That puts us in that positive 5%-15% range. You know, where we are with regards to normalized long-run lease rates, particularly with regards to the tank car fleet, we're getting closer to that equilibrium line. Still some to go, and the variability in freight is typically much higher than it is in tank. All signs moving in the right direction. Great. Brian, I wanna go back to a comment that you gave with some of your color and outlook. You mentioned the high renewal rate, obviously positive lease rate, but you said the lease rate renewal is gonna be lower, meaning, I guess, your percentage, and I know it's been high the past two quarters. I guess any thoughts there in why you're thinking that? On top of that, maintenance flat. If that was gonna be lower, I thought that would be higher. Are those just cars that are getting retired at this point? Just any thoughts around that? Well, what I said was renewal success would be similar in 2022. I did say we might have a slight drop in fleet utilization. Honestly, the only way it can go is down when you're at 99.2%. There could be a slight drop there. We expect similar renewal success in 2022 as we had in 2021. On the maintenance side, Bob, do you wanna? Sure. I think a couple things going on on the maintenance side. Again, to reiterate what Brian said in his opening comments, overall, we expect the net maintenance line to be relatively flat with where we were in 2021. While we are facing some pressures with regards to both labor rates, material costs, many of the things that other folks in our industry are facing in all industries, we'll be able to hold the line overall on cost because of the number of efficiencies that we've been able to realize, the number of cars we're running through our own network relative to where we were in years past. We're essentially offsetting some of those macro pressures with the things we've been able to do in our network over the course of the last few years. Understood. Thank you. We'll go next to Justin Long with Stephens. Thanks, good morning. I wanted to circle back to Allison's question about absolute lease rates. Are you able to share the% increase that we saw in the fourth quarter in absolute lease rates? Circling back to the assumption on remarketing income, just because that's something that can swing results around so significantly in North America, any color you can give us on the cadence quarterly of that remarketing income that we should expect in 2022? Sure. Justin, it's Bob. I'll take the first one. With regards to absolute lease rates between third quarter and fourth quarter, tank and freight combined, you're looking at a number about seven or 8%, sequential increase. Again, what's most powerful there is that's six quarters in a row with a positive number in front of it. That's what it takes in this industry is consistent performance like that overall to turn rates and turn the tide, and we're definitely seeing that. With regards to remarketing income, always difficult to predict quarter to quarter just because of the way timing of transactions work, the number of transactions we have in the secondary market. You know, where we sit today, I think we'll get the year off to a pretty good start in the first and second quarter. It may be a little bit more weighted towards the front end, but again, always hard to predict. Understood. Secondly, I wanted to follow up on capital allocation. Brian, you alluded to the over-$1 billion investment in each of the last two years. Any thoughts around what that number could look like in 2022, just based on what you're seeing in the market and valuations? Maybe you could touch on buybacks as well. It sounds like we're restarting things on that front, so curious how much that's factored into the guidance. Yeah. With what we currently see in the market in terms of investment opportunities, and this would not necessarily be speculative investment, I think we can have another billion-dollar year in 2022, Justin. As I said, you know, we've been able to realize without doing any speculative, we've had customers lined up in advance, and we've been able to do that, especially Rail North America. In fact, I think Rail North America in 2021 had over $200 million outside of their committed supply agreement that they closed, that they arranged in customer investments. We didn't take a spec position in those cars, so they're doing a really nice job identifying those opportunities. It's also a sign of some strength in the underlying market. I think we can do $1 billion again this year. On the share repurchase side, Tom, do you wanna? Yeah. Just to reiterate what both Sherry and Brian talked about, we have $137 million remaining on our authorization from the board, and we purchased about $13 million worth of stock in 2021. As Brian indicated in his openings, we're able to find considerable amounts of attractive investment, and we expect to be able to continue to do so going forward, as evidenced by the billion-dollar number Brian just talked about. But it is something where, in 2021, we repurchased the stock on volatile trading days, and we would look to continue to do that going forward. Our capital allocation framework always calls for us to prioritize those investment opportunities, and we consistently talk with our board of directors about stock buyback decisions. In terms of our guidance, we have over the last few years purchased anywhere between $0 of buyback and $150 million, and the range that we've provided allows for being somewhere within that historical framework. Okay. That's helpful. I appreciate the time. We'll go next to Matt Elkott with Cowen. Good morning. Thank you. Good to see the average term go up to its highest in two years. I think it's still on the lower side relative to previous recoveries. My question is, guys, you know, given the continued rate strength over the last six quarters, do you think terms could keep rising throughout this year? Any insights on where we could end the year, you know, or could we be well into the 40-month range? Would be appreciated. Sure, Matt, it's Bob. Little hesitant to put a number on that because it also can move around from quarter to quarter. In 2021, it moved anywhere from 29 months up to 37, as you saw in the fourth quarter. Now, anytime you have a renewal success rate close to 90% and you have lease rates going finally in the right direction, in certain car types, we will push term. Broadly speaking, we're still in the phase where we're really trying to focus more attention on making sure we're getting rates up to the right level, and then we'll concentrate more on term. With a fleet as diverse as ours, there are certainly pockets of car types where we're already trying to stretch those terms out. That's very helpful, Bob. You mean, you know, a year and a half into this recovery, is it looking like, does it feel like a prolonged recovery? Your earnings cycle kind of lagged the actual recovery and lease rates. Is this starting to feel more like a multi-year earnings recovery to you guys? It does, and the feeling of this recovery, quite frankly, is better than ones we've felt before because when you look back to 2013 or 2014 or even the mid-2000s, some of the accelerant in the market, the spikes that we saw in incredible demand for very small pockets of car types, the crude boom, what have you, they're real beneficial in the short term, but long term, they can cause some damage. This recovery seems very different, more fundamental. I think hopefully we'll have much longer, much more legs to it than prior ones. Okay. I think Brian mentioned that the segment profit for Rail North America should be up in the $15 million-$20 million range, if I got it correctly. You're expecting gains to be in line or slightly up from this year. I guess the $15 million-$20 million improvement is mostly from lease rate improvement as well as cost controls based on your assumptions. Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment, Matt. Okay. Just one last question, if I could. Can you guys remind us of your existing supply agreements with manufacturers and, you know, what needs to happen this year for you guys to consider significant manufacturing orders? Or, you know, have orders become somewhat of a necessity at this point, you know, in order to be able to serve your customers given the near full utilization you have? Sure. We have two supply agreements totaling 3,000 cars a year that runs through the end of 2023. We're very well covered on the supply agreements. Just for reference, currently the nearest available supply agreement availability is into the third quarter of 2022. Our commercial team has done a real nice job of placing those cars well in advance of when they're scheduled to deliver. No real comment yet, Matt, on where we'll go with the supply agreement post-2023. We'll be looking at that as the year progresses. It's important for us to have a supply agreement in place for a base load, particularly on the tank car side. No determination has been made yet on an extension beyond 2023. Got it. Thank you very much. We'll go next to Bascome Majors with Susquehanna. Yeah, wanted to follow up on the earlier question about term versus rate. Can you talk about how you've structured your sales incentives for 2022 in Rail North America to balance those? Is there any historic corollary of, if you look back at year X or year Y, it would look a lot like we structured those for this year? Thank you. Bascome, it's Bob. I'll take that question for you. I won't get into a tremendous amount of detail other than to tell you our sales incentive plans provide, with regards to our commercial organization, the flexibility to adjust on an annual basis, so we can drive towards the outcome we want. In very difficult times, obviously, we focus on utilization, and when the market is really strong, we focus on trying to make sure our sales folks are incentivized to get term. You know, we're fairly early on in the process here of finally getting some leverage with regards to lease rate. So I think we're in the early innings of that type of recovery, not one yet where you would be going very, very hard on term, as I mentioned earlier. Certainly pockets of car types, that's possible. But overall, it's really much more right now our focus is on trying to move those rates up consistent with what others in the market are doing. And we'll lead the effort there. You know, we'll have our sales force aligned accordingly. I'm sorry, and you, I think you had a second question? No, you addressed it. Yeah. Okay. To your other comments about the investment volume, you know, hopefully being another $1 billion year, you kind of made some directional comments about Rail North America in that response. It's been a while since you've grown that fleet, at least in unit terms. Could this be a year where that happens if the investments do manifest as hoped for? Yeah. I think overall, you know, where we look today, the secondary market has been so strong the last couple years that there's been some, I'd say above normal sales activities in 2021, and likely again in 2022. Again, I wanna be very clear about the fact that we are not chasing a car count. That can be a dangerous pursuit, and we've seen over the years of some other folks in the industry who've gone that route. You can always add cars, but can you do it economically? That's the most important factor we're looking at. I wouldn't rule out the possibility that net fleet growth could occur in 2022. In the end, we're gonna do the right thing, Bascome, in terms of adding cars and in terms of optimizing the portfolio. We have massive scale in this business, and whether the fleet's 113,000 cars or 112,500 or 114,000 is less of a concern to me than generating the best possible return out of that portfolio. Thanks for that, Bob. Thanks. If I could ask one more. I know you don't take over as CEO for another three months here, and you've been with the company for a long time. The company's remarkably consistent over a very long time. But is there anything that we should expect to see emphasized or focused on a little more under your leadership? If you could just give a preview of where your head is, I think that would be helpful. Thanks. Sure. I appreciate the question. As you noted, I've worked at GATX for 25 years, and the management team has been together here a very long time. I've had the benefit of working side by side with Brian for that 25 years. A lot of the strategies that you've seen in place and you've seen deployed here at GATX over those years, particularly the last 17 years under Brian's leadership, I've been involved in a lot of those decisions. Extremely supportive of the direction and the philosophy that we deploy. I wouldn't endeavor to make any significant substantial changes in the way we think about how we deploy capital or the strengths in the markets that we have. I am a firm believer that GATX is at its best when we're in long life, widely used assets with a service component and where we have asset knowledge that's truly unique. That won't change. You're gonna continue to see that, and you're gonna continue to see us try to leverage the expertise in the markets we have and to do so more broadly and globally. Thank you. Once again, if you'd like to ask a question on today's call, that is star one on your telephone keypad. We'll go next to Justin Bergner with Gabelli Funds. Good morning, Brian. Good morning, Bob. Congratulations on the appointment. Good morning, Tom. Good morning, Shari. Morning. Morning. Morning. Just to start, a couple quick sort of detail-oriented questions. There appeared to be a good chunk of other income in both Rail North America and Rail International in the fourth quarter. What was in that? Will that recur, or was that one time? I'll take that. In Rail North America, the primary uptick you saw was due to some insurance proceeds that came from a storm at one of our service centers. That was described. It was one of the items described on page 13 of the press release that Sherry mentioned. In Rail International, there's really the key driver there was what Brian mentioned about some of the FX issues we had between the zloty and the euro last year that didn't occur this year. We also had some savings in our Aiv ario expenses this year versus last year. Okay. Maybe a second, somewhat detailed question. Within RRPF, I mean, the absolute profit was still strong in the fourth quarter. I assume there were some asset gains in that number, and are you expecting asset gains to continue in the joint venture as you look into 2022? As Brian mentioned in his opening comments, we would expect next year, maybe, to see a little bit less in terms of some of those gains, relative to this year. As far as how the quarter went, the big driver of the uptick in earnings from affiliates at Portfolio Management was due to gains on asset remarketing and residual realization. Okay. As you look at your gains on asset disposition outlook for 2022, should I expect sort of it will look fairly similar in terms of the split between gains on scrappage and gains on railcars sold, or do you expect it to tilt even more towards, you know, scrappage versus sales of railcars? Yeah. One thing to keep in mind is that when it comes to scrap prices, it's really difficult to predict. The rail industry as a whole is not really a key driver of what happens there. But as far as a baseline expectation, assuming something similar to this year is a reasonable assumption, but that scrap price can move around quite a bit. Okay, thank you. Just lastly, should I be surprised that the guidance for other and sort of Trifleet therein is not for more than a $2 million-$3 million increase looking into 2022? I mean, are you continuing to ramp up investments that's flowing through the P&L, or how should I think about that $2 million-$3 million increase? Yeah, I can take that, Justin. It's Brian. It's a healthy increase. Remember, the size of this business is actually pretty small. They have around $30 million in revenue in that in 2021, about $10 million in segment profit. So you think about it like a 20% increase. Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. At this time, there are no further questions. I'll turn the call back to Shari Hellerman for closing remarks. I'd like to thank everyone for their participation on the call this morning. Please contact me with any follow-up questions. Thank you. This does conclude today's conference. We thank you for your participation.