Triton International Limited

Good day and welcome to the Triton International Limited third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star then zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on a touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to John Burns, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Matt. Good morning and thank you for joining us on today's call. We are here to discuss Triton's third quarter 2021 results, which were reported this morning. Joining me on this morning's call from Triton is Brian Sundy, our CEO, and John O'Callaghan, our Head of Global Marketing and Operations. Before I turn the call over to Brian, I would like to note that our prepared remarks will follow along with the presentation that can be found in the investor section of our website. I'd like to direct you to the slide two of that presentation and remind you that today's presentation includes forward-looking statements that reflect Triton's current view with respect to future events, financial performance, industry conditions. These forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Triton has provided additional information in its reports on file with the SEC concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in this presentation, and we encourage you to review these factors. In addition, reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are included on our earnings release and the presentation. With these formalities out of the way, I will now turn the call over to Brian.

Thanks, John. and welcome to Triton International's third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. I'll start with slide three of our presentation. Triton achieved outstanding results in the third quarter of 2021. We generated $2.43 of adjusted net income per share, an increase of 14% from the second quarter, and we achieved an annualized return on equity of almost 30%. Our outstanding results in the third quarter were driven by strong growth in our recurring leasing revenues and a significant reduction in our average effective interest rate due to our refinancing activity. We expect our adjusted earnings per share in the fourth quarter will increase slightly from our outstanding performance in the third quarter. Our excellent results are being supported by very favorable market conditions. Strong trade volumes and ongoing logistical disruptions continue to drive exceptional container demand. And this exceptional demand is driving very high prices for new and used containers and exceptionally high container utilization and leasing rates. Triton has locked in durable enhancements to our business. We have purchased over $3.4 billion of containers for delivery in 2021, which will lead to nearly 30% asset growth this year. These containers have been placed on long-duration, high ROE leases and will underpin our profitability and cash flow for many years to come Our strong deal share this year also further secures our position as the go-to supplier in the industry and further extends our scale and unit cost advantages. We have completed our transition toward unsecured investment grade financing and we have meaningfully reduced our average effective interest rate with aggressive refinancing. We are also seeing a financial transformation of our customer base as the shipping lines used their extraordinary profitability this year to de-lever. Overall, our expected long-term financial performance has shifted meaningfully upwards. We continue to use our strong cash flow to drive shareholder value in a number of different ways. We have used most of our cash flow this year to fund massive value-added investments in our container fleet. Now that container deliveries have pushed past the traditional peak seasons, we have shifted some of our cash flow to share repurchases. We also announced an increase in our quarterly dividend to 65 cents per share. And we have done all this, massive fleet investment, renewed share repurchases, and an increased dividend while keeping our leverage comfortably in our historical range. I will now hand the call over to John O'Callaghan, our Global Head of Marketing and Operations.

Thank you, Brian. Turning to page four.

Page four illustrates that goods consumption and logistical bottlenecks are driving strong container demand. The two charts on the left clearly explain why container demand is exceptionally strong. It's driven by consumption remaining very high in the US, and as imports continue to surge to meet that demand, it's causing a snag in the supply chain further impacting the restocking of inventories. The charts on the right are the cause and effect. As global trade volumes remain strong, there are still multiple bottlenecks that are not being solved throughout the system. As you can see in the bottom right chart, there is a historically high number of container vessels wading off the U.S. West Coast to discharge their cargoes. There are not enough available ships, containers, trucks, and chassis to meet demand. And combined with insufficient labor in the yards, terminals, and rail networks, they remain congested and the logistical challenges continue. The disruptions are not currently improving and can be seen worldwide, especially U.S. east and west coasts, the main Chinese ports, as well as northern Europe.

Page 5.

Page 5 illustrates that freight rates and new and used container prices have continued to rise through the quarter, driven by strong demand for vessel space and containers. The chart on the left illustrates the Trans-Pacific and East-West spot freight rates relative to bunker costs. Freight rates remain extraordinarily high, reflected in the continued strong demand for cargo and the logistical bottlenecks keeping capacity short. You can see in the upper right chart that new container prices have remained in the $3,800 range. The bottom right chart illustrates the sale price of used containers continued to rise throughout the third quarter due to the continued surge in demand for cargo use and the shortage of available sale containers. Page six. Page 6 says that although container production is high, the container fleet remains tight. The chart on the left shows annual production broken out in percentages between leasing companies and the shipping lines. We show on the dotted line that we expect a substantial amount of new production still to be built over the remainder of 2021. This would represent container fleet growth of 10% or more. This is higher than trade growth, but container production was not much above the estimated replacement range in 2019 and 2020, illustrated by the gray band, and also explains why the market experienced significant container shortages last year. As you can see by the percentages in the orange box at the bottom of the left chart, the leasing share has been very high since the surge started, at over 70% in 2020, and approximately two-thirds so far in 2021. But we expect this to be more balanced in the fourth quarter. On the right, you can see new production inventory, and despite the factories producing containers in greater quantities, inventories and new containers remain relatively low. There's limited depot stock on the ground, and although we're seeing a slight increase in new production stock upon its golden week, our customers are suggesting that this will continue to be absorbed at a good clip. Turning to page 7, page 7 shows that Triton's key operating metrics reflect the strong market. This can clearly be seen on the top left chart with utilization at near maximum levels. Under upper right chart, you can see the third quarter pickups remain very high as customers continue to absorb equipment through the peak seasons. We had very low drop-offs with these almost immediately going out on lease or sold with a high gain on sale. The bottom charts demonstrate the significant bookings of new and used dry containers over the last 12 months. The lower left bubble chart reports when we contract the deal. You can see our peak season lease contracting levels were down on the third quarter as most of the containers ordered in the third quarter were for delivery after the peak season. We have accepted and placed on order 1.2 million TU of new production containers so far in 2021. Over 80% of these have been delivered in the first three quarters, and we expect most of the remainder to be picked up through the fourth quarter. The leases negotiated have had an average duration of 13 years, and the bubbles also illustrate the increase in market lease rates as container prices have jumped to meet demand. The size of these investments in 2021 are even more impressive on a dollar value basis. We've placed $3.4 billion of orders for containers in 2021. On the bottom right chart, looking to the extreme right bar under what's current under depot inventory, this has all been leased out. Over 75% of these depot pickups since June 2020 have gone into lifecycle leases, and the average inflate rate has increased. Page 8 helps illustrate what we've achieved. We put our new containers on very long-duration leases, and we're focused on placing our used container on lifecycle leases, which has had a significant impact on our average lease durations. Lease durations have gone from 40 months five years ago to 60 months today. If you include a typical amount of time it takes customers to return containers, we probably have, on average, 70 months of locked-in on-hire time We're looking forward to continuing to build in longer-term benefits across the fleet portfolio. I'll now hand you over to John Burns, our CFO.

Thank you, John. On page nine, we have presented our consolidated financial results. Adjusted net income for the third quarter was $163.8 million, or $2.43 per share, an increase of 13.6% from the second quarter, and over 100% from the prior year's third quarter. These exceptional results represent an annualized return on equity of 29.4%. In the third quarter, we incurred $42.7 million in debt termination expense, largely made up of a make-hole premium associated with the prepayment of institutional notes. Due to the non-operational nature of this charge, we have excluded it in arriving at adjusted net income. We expect to recapture the vast majority of this payment through lower interest expense over the next several years. Turning to page 10. Our results in the third quarter reflect the benefits of the significant investment in new containers we have made to support our customers as they have responded to the jump in trade volumes. In the third quarter, we benefited from a significant delivery and on-hire of new containers, along with a full quarter's revenue from the prior quarter's high volume of new container on-hires. This drove an 8.2% sequential increase in leasing revenue and a 9.2% increase in average revenue earning assets. Revenue growth was less than asset growth largely due to the growth in finance lease portion of our fleet and the way finance lease revenue is recognized. Due to date, we have invested $3.4 billion in new containers and $2.7 billion has been delivered and placed on hire by the end of the third quarter. Average utilization increased two-tenths of a percent from the second quarter to average 99.6% and remains at that level today. This near maximum level of utilization drove down direct operating expenses by $800,000 from the second quarter and over $20 million from the prior year, largely due to the very low container storage and repair expenses. The prepayment of our institutional notes in June and August together with the issuance of bonds at much lower rate levels, enabled us to reduce our effective interest rate for the third quarter to 2.77%, representing a 43 basis point drop from the second quarter and over 100 basis points from the third quarter of last year. Our combined trading and disposal gains remain exceptionally strong at $34.8 million for the third quarter. though down $7.3 million from the second quarter due to limited off-hire and disposal volumes. Turning to page 11. This page highlights our strong and stable cash flows, which drive long-term value. The graph on the top left shows our cash flows before capital spending, and you can see how this year's exceptional operating performance together with the $3.4 billion in new container investment, has generated a step-function change in our cash flows. And we are leveraging the current market conditions to generate long-duration lease contracts that will lock in this higher level of long-term performance and cash flows. The graph on the bottom left shows how our strong and resilient cash flows, together with the short order cycle for containers, enables us to maintain our leverage in a steady range over the long term. Our leverage has increased back into the normal range over the last two quarters, reflecting our aggressive investment in new containers, partially offset by our recent preferred share issuance. The graph on the right demonstrates how these strong cash flows and our financial stability have enabled us to create significant shareholder value by steadily growing the book value of our business while paying a substantial dividend. Turning to page 12. Earlier this month, we completed the previously discussed strategic transition of our debt capital structure to primarily unsecured debt. Fitch upgraded Triton to a triple B minus, and along with S&P, who already upgraded Triton to investment grade, affirmed the existing investment grade rating on the $2.3 billion of recently issued bonds on an unsecured basis after giving effect to the fallaway collateral provisions of those notes. At the same time, we amended our existing bank revolving facility and a term loan facility from secured to unsecured. Together, these events and transactions result in Triton becoming a fully investment grade company We believe this debt structure will provide us multiple benefits and extend our already substantial competitive advantages. I'll now return you to Brian for some additional comments.

Thank you, John. Slide 13 focuses a little more on how our strong cash flow gives us numerous levers to drive shareholder value. As we've mentioned, our primary focus this year has been making aggressive investments in our container fleet. to support the massive container needs of our customers. We expect to increase our assets nearly 30% this year, and we have built a higher, long-lasting foundation for our profitability due to the 13-year average duration and the high expected IRRs for the leases covering these containers. We have slowed our container purchases over the last quarter as delivery times pushed past the traditional peak season. We have continued to conclude leasing transactions but we primarily utilized the very large orders we placed earlier for third quarter deliveries. Our shelf of uncommitted new containers is now on the low end of our recent range, giving us an opportunity to assess where container prices will go post-peak season. To the extent that our investment level normalizes, we will generate significant excess equity cash flow. We've already used some of this excess cash flow to restart share repurchases. and we repurchased 600,000 shares in September and October. We believe investing in our shares is a compelling value for us and share repurchases are also highly accretive to EPS due to our very low PE ratio. We increased our share authorization back to $200 million to give us sufficient flexibility to repurchase shares when this is our focus. We also raised our dividend nearly 15% this quarter to 65 cents per share This increase follows a nearly 10% increase made last October. Despite these excessive increases, our dividend payout ratio remains conservative, reflecting the substantial improvement in our profitability. The higher dividend also reflects our confidence that our increased profitability will be durable. Slide 14 puts some numbers behind our cash flow analysis. The top grouping of numbers illustrates how we think about our free cash flow using annualized third quarter financial information. In the third quarter, we generated over $1.5 billion of annualized cash flow before capital spending. We estimate that we need to spend between $825 and $850 million on new containers each year as replacement capital spending. This leaves about $700 million of annualized steady state cash flow before our regular dividend and roughly $525 million of annual equity cash flow after the dividend. The next set of numbers illustrate a few things we can do with this $525 million of cash flow that we have left after replacement capital spending in our dividend, all while maintaining a constant leverage ratio. If we focused on capital investment, we could self-fund the equity needed for nearly 20% asset growth. Alternatively, if we focused on share repurchases, we could repurchase almost 15% of our shares at the recent trading range. If we wanted instead to focus on dividends, we could pay almost another $8 per share on top of our regular dividend, bringing the total annual dividend to well over $10 per share. We have typically pursued a mix of these options. I'll finish the presentation with slide 15. Triton achieved record performance again in the third quarter of 2021. We generated $2.43 of adjusted earnings per share and achieved an annualized return on equity of 29.4%. Triton has used the strong current market conditions to make durable enhancements to our business. Our large block of 2021 containers are locked into long-duration leases with high returns. Our high share of new leasing transactions is reinforcing our scale advantages and further securing our position as the go-to supplier in the industry. We have extended our lease durations and increased the portion of our containers on lifecycle leases. And we have locked in lower long-term interest rates and a higher leasing margin with our transition to unsecured investment-grade financing. and aggressive debt refinancing. We are using multiple levers to drive shareholder value, including aggressive fleet growth, share repurchases, and an increased dividend. And we expect our financial performance will remain strong. We expect our fourth quarter adjusted net income will increase slightly from our record results in the third quarter. We expect our cash flow and profitability will remain elevated into the longer term. And we expect our net book value per share will increase rapidly due to a high return on equity. That's the end of my prepared remarks. But before we transition to questions and answers, I would like to mention that Triton will hold an investor day on November 17th. At the investor day, we will focus more on why we think Triton represents a compelling value and will provide a deeper dive into current market dynamics, our performance, and the value we've created this year with our massive investments. I will now open up the call for questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then 2. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question will come from Larry Solo with CJS Securities. Please go ahead.

Great. Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. Congratulations on a really impressive quarter and outlook. Just first question maybe on the sort of earnings power in your term. Sounds like you're going to do your guidance around the 250 number for the quarter in Q4. And I know maybe this is a dangerous exercise, but if we sort of annualize that number, I know you're not giving guidance for next year, but it does seem like you're pretty locked in for the next few quarters. And I think one concern we get from some of our clients and investors is, you know, that some of these benefits are short-term and they'll be sort of like an earnings clip at some point. I sort of just, you know, hear your comments and see what the expiration schedule looks like over the next couple of years. You know, what would prevent you from doing even close to, you know, this sort of earnings number even through 2023? Even if you don't place any more containers and there's a minimal amount coming off higher the next couple of years. So, you know, what would be the danger of saying that you kind of seem like that $10 earnings power for the next couple of years is, you know, fairly locked in barring some, you know, nuclear war type scenario, you know, negative scenario. But, you know.

Yeah, no, thanks for the question. You know, I think as you probably know, we typically don't give, you know, specific guidance beyond the next quarter. And so, again, our guidance from Q3 to Q4 was that we expect earnings to be up slightly from the already very strong level in the third quarter. We've made a number of comments this quarter and before that we do feel that we're building a new higher level of profitability given the improvements that we've made in our business, including adding a lot of containers on very long-duration high-ROE leases. You know, we've done a lot of great work with our existing containers, locking those away on long-duration leases. And then we've done a lot with our financing margin or interest rate and leasing margin, you know, with all the refinancing activity that we've done. And so, you know, we do feel, you know, very well protected as we head into the next couple of years and feel that we are at a new, you know, higher level of earnings than we were in the past. And that also the likely spread of what we might achieve in the future between, say, negative cases and positive cases that spread has come down just because so many of our containers are locked away, you know, for a long time, as we've shown in our slides. So basically, you know, the premise that, you know, we do expect earnings to remain strong, you know, for a while is right. You know, we don't like to give any specific guidance on just what that means in terms of a specific number. But again, we do think we, you know, are in very great shape to have strong financial performance for years to come here.

Right. And it does sound like maybe a subtle shift and maybe you're just sort of taking a pause to see what happens as we get past the major buying season, seasonal strength. But it sounds like maybe a little bit of a shift, less buying in the near term, maybe only minimal buying over the next few quarters and more of a shift towards share of purchases that you did in 18 and 19. Is that a fair assessment or are you sort of just keeping all options open at this point?

Yeah, no, I wouldn't want to roll forward too many quarters. I think the main thing we'd say is the market remains very strong. So trade volumes are still elevated. There's still a tremendous amount of consumer demand in the U.S. and other places, too. There's still a huge amount of operational disruption, again, in the U.S., but also in many other places in the world that are slowing container turn times and sort of absorbing excess container or extra container capacity. And so, you know, we wouldn't say that, you know, we expect, you know, necessarily expect, you know, capital spending to be low or demand to be less as we head into next year. You know, I think the main thing we just say is that it's a timing issue, you know, where as we're ordering containers really starting in, you know, July and continuing through now, you know, the container delivery dates are, you know, at what we call the post-peak season, you know, sort of October, November, December, January. You know, we're typically, you know, our shipping line customers take some time to digest the containers that they've added and, you know, the seasonal cargoes go down. And so I think I would describe it more we've just taken an opportunity to, you know, use the containers that we've ordered for very high prices and supply those to the leases that we're doing. And it gives us an opportunity to see, you know, what happens with container prices, what happens with demand as we, you know, go through the post-speed period and then into next year. But I think it's really an open question. I think, you know, we feel that, you know, the odds are it's going to be another, you know, very good year for, you know, for the leasing business next year. And, you know, the question, yeah, I don't know that we'll hit the same investment levels that we did this year, which would free up, you know, cash flow for other things. But, again, the great thing for us is we don't have to, you know, make long-term bets on where we think the market's going. You know, container delivery timings, you know, typically it's a couple of months. And so we can just wait and see what happens and, To the extent that we see very compelling investment opportunities like we did this year at high volumes, we'll do that. To the extent that we don't have as significant CapEx requirements, we will shift cash flow to other things, which certainly could include share repurchases and already have as we utilize some of our excess cash flow during this period while we're waiting and seeing what's happening to container prices and lease demands.

Okay, great. Just last question, if I may. Just your thoughts sort of longer term on the dynamic between leasing versus purchase containers, but by shipping lines. We all know sort of the advantages of leasing, and clearly it's a much more flexible business model. Do you feel like with all that's happened over the last few years that maybe it's not 75% of containers or 65% even that you know, are leased on a go-far basis, but it seems like that push through 50% and above and maybe, you know, you get a more sustainable benefit from, you know, more leasing revenue, more leased containers versus purchase as we look at the next few years. Is that, you know, a fair comment?

Yeah, so certainly the shift in share of how containers are coming into the business from You know, it had been, you know, maybe 10 years ago, you know, majority purchase to really over the whole last 10 years, majority in that least, you know, has been, you know, a good thing for the leasing business. You know, it gives us all opportunities to grow our fleets faster than global trade, you know, without needing to take market share. And it's one reason why at Triton, you know, we've been able to grow our fleet, I think it's 8% or 9%, or maybe now, including this year, probably close to 10% a year over the last 10 years. And, you know, it's also something we've seen, you know, over the last, you know, two years during this surge time that, you know, the share of new containers coming in. I think as we showed on one of our slides was, you know, we estimate over 70% of the new containers coming in were leased in 2020 and something in the low 60%, you know, have been leased so far in 2021. I think the one caveat to that that John O'Callaghan mentioned is just, you know, our customers are making a tremendous amount of profitability this year and many are actually building cash on the balance sheets because they you know, they're so profitable and they just have a limited number of liabilities that are prepayable. And so we suspect that that may cause some customers to increase their purchasing of containers. But we don't think it's going to be dramatic. And I think most of our customers, you know, have reached the conclusion that leasing is just a good way to add containers to their fleet, that it's actually fairly cost efficient, especially given the efficiency of our capital structure, as well as there's a lot of flexibility benefits of picking up containers when and where you want them with the size type that they need. at that moment. And so, again, we do think this kind of secular shift towards leasing will continue. But again, in the very near term, it's possible we may see a little bit of increased buyings because of the excess cash for our customers.

Fair enough. That makes sense. I appreciate the thoughts on the call. Thank you. Thank you.

Our next question will come from Michael Brown with KBW. Please go ahead.

Great. Hey, good morning, guys. I was hoping to just put a finer point on the fourth quarter guidance where you expect adjusted EPS to rise quarter over quarter, which is not all that surprising to hear, but great to see that still playing out here. What does that contemplate for leasing revenue growth? You talked about the fact that the margin can continue to expand as the containers that were picked up in the third quarter, you get that kind of full quarter benefit. But you did see revenues grow 8% sequentially in the third quarter. So is there a way to kind of say the fourth quarter will be a similar type of growth? Is that kind of the right way to think about it? Or is it possible for it to come in actually a little bit better than that?

We typically don't like to give guidance on subcomponents of our income statement. We've just settled on giving guidance at the bottom line, just in that income per share. But I think the dynamics that we expect to happen are that we think our leasing revenue and our leasing margin will continue to grow from the third to the fourth quarter. On the revenue side, that's driven by continued pickups for the leases that we've done, and we'll probably continue to do some leasing. even though it's post-speak season. And also, just I think you referenced a second ago, just by the fact that we had a very large number of containers picked up in the third quarter that had a kind of partial quarter's worth of revenue because of the timing of the pickup that will get a full quarter's worth of revenue in the fourth quarter. And then the second driver, expanding our leasing margin, is just a lower average effective interest rate. It's a similar story where we paid off some more expensive financing during the third quarter and had a partial period benefit of that. and we expect now a full period benefit of lower average effective interest rate in the fourth quarter. And so, you know, losing margin up nicely from Q3 to Q4, we do suspect that will be offset some by lower disposal gains. And I think as we've shown in our charts, the prices are still very high, and we don't expect, you know, to be really constrained by price, you know, but we just have very, very few containers left to sell. And we've been squeezing very attractive gains out of limited inventories. But as the inventory continues to just get tighter and tighter, it does become hard to maintain gains at the same level that we've seen. And so, again, that's the basic dynamic. But we do think the revenue growth and the margin growth will offset the sort of lack of inventory and a decrease in sale. But the other good thing for that for us is not only do we think the you know, overall profitability is going to increase slightly. It's also an improvement in mix, you know, that the benefits we get from the growing revenue and the lower interest expense, you know, those things are durable, you know, last for a lot of years where the gains obviously are more transactional. And so again, we're looking at, we think a very, you know, strong fourth quarter of increased profitability as well as an improved mix.

Okay, great. Thanks for all that additional color. So I think one of the dynamic shifts that I've been talking about with investors is just that change from the level of investment in CapEx coming down from the peak levels. And then as your cash flows have continued to grow, there'll be a shift to capital return. And we saw that playing out with dividend increase this quarter and then getting back in the market for share buybacks. As you move into 2022, how do we think about how that continues to play out? You talked a little bit about how right now as we're coming off the peak season that there's a little bit of uncertainty about doing a lot of CapEx at this moment, and that certainly makes sense. But as you move into 2022, do you still expect to see revenue earning asset growth, and how could that compare to historical periods? And then You have the authorization for $200 million out there. What is kind of the cadence that we could expect for something like that? Because if I look at slide 14, where you show your cash flow after replacement capex and regular dividend, that shows that you could take out 14% of shares here and maintain your current leverage. So just trying to get a sense of how to think about your authorization relative to what you're showing there on that slide.

Yeah, sure. So, I mean, first maybe just a technical point on our authorization. We typically just think of the authorization as almost like an administrative thing, you know, where we want to make sure that we have enough room to buy back shares and we see shares investment as the best way for us to deploy our excess capital. So, you know, when we increase the share authorization to $200 million, that doesn't say that that's the minimum we're going to spend or the maximum we're going to spend. It's just something that we maintain, you know, is a reasonable amount of room that we can then, you know, utilize over the next couple of quarters and Just given our trading volume, it's probably hard to utilize more than that over a couple of quarters. But again, we just go back to our board if we use a portion of it. And again, they're quite supportive of buying back stock when it makes sense. And we would just re-up it again. So I wouldn't put too much emphasis on that $200 million other than to say, yeah, we've been buying shares. And so we needed to create some more room to do more. In terms of where we go in 2022, I think the main thing is we say we'll wait and see. The good thing about container investment is there is a very short lead time, and it gives us the opportunity to see what actually happens in the market without needing to try to predict what happens too much. We always maintain a shelf of equipment that allows us to supply customers what they need over the next few months, and if they take it, well, we buy more. In 2021, we had just an amazing array of attractive investments that You know, we were buying containers very aggressively. We were doing deals. We mentioned a few times we estimate equity IRRs in upper teens, in some cases lower 20s, given the inventory profits we were making. And despite the fact that we also felt, you know, our shares were a compelling investment, you know, it was just, you know, the attractiveness of the CapEx financially as well as what it was doing for our franchise, it's securing our position in the industry both in terms of scale as well as sort of relationship with customers. But that was the best use. As we get into 2022, we'll just, as we always do, do the same. If we have significant and substantial investments in our container fleet, we'll look to do them. But we will compare that against the value we think we can create by buying our own shares. And I think as you've mentioned in your note and we've mentioned in our talk, the shares trade for a very low multiple of our earnings. And so because of that and because of our confidence and the durability of our earnings, we see the shares as a compelling value too. And so, again, I don't want to predict necessarily exactly what will happen in the market or exactly how we'll do that trade-off of attractive asset growth relative to attractive share repurchases. But again, as I've mentioned a few times, the cash flow gives us a lot of optionality. And the senior management team spends a lot of its time and focus on making sure that we put our cash flow to its best use as we definitely will be focused on that next year too. But again, the market backdrop we think is actually pretty attractive, and we've slowed a little bit, as we mentioned, our purchases because we had a lot of orders for delivery during the peak season that we placed earlier. And price is very high, and it's interesting to see what's going to happen with that during this post-peak season. But again, I wouldn't suggest at all that we sort of are kind of conservative about next year or pulling back. It's really just kind of waiting and seeing.

Thanks, Brian. That was great. Great color there. Maybe just one more if I could sneak it in. Your ROE, it's consistently risen this year. It was 25% in the first quarter, 26.6% last quarter. It topped 29% this quarter, all of those on an annualized basis. With the gain on sale piece, that could be somewhat episodic, but I think it's fair to assume volumes will rise and maybe the gain per container comes down, but probably will still be pretty healthy here for a while. I guess what I'm trying to get at is what is the right baseline expectation for Triton's ROE now? I mean, you've put on, I think it was something like 40% of the portfolio in this post-COVID period. Correct me if I'm wrong on that, but Structurally, your ROE just seems like it's well above where you guys were targeting in the past, which I want to say was something closer to like a 20% ROE. So I don't know if that's an Investor Day kind of topic, but I'd love to get a little bit of color on that.

Yeah, I'll certainly give some color now, but I'm glad you mentioned your Investor Day. We'll hopefully give some interesting details and color on all these things beyond what we can talk about in this kind of time frame. um you know but i think as we talked you know earlier we expect our profitability to remain you know higher than its normal range for a long time uh you know coming from the fact we have put a lot of containers on very high rov leases uh the fact we've locked in those leases for you know very long durations and also we do expect a favorable market backdrop to continue you know just given the the strong consumption the high trade volumes the ongoing operational disruption so So all those things come together and we say, yeah, we do think, you know, ROE and profitability, you know, should be higher than our typical range, you know, for the foreseeable future here.

Great. Thanks. And looking forward to hearing more next month.

Yep. Thanks, Michael. Again, if you have a question, please press star then one. Our next question will come from Liam Burke with B Reilly. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, Brian. Good morning, John. Yep.

Good morning.

Brian, port congestion has played a role in the business, and it's worked in your favor. How do you see, and for the foreseeable future, it's going to be a reality of the shipping industry, but how do you see port congestion affecting your business long-term, or do you see it changing or any kind of change as congestion eases?

Yeah, so we are watching it closely. We don't see it directly, but we're kind of watching a lot of the same data. I think those that follow the transportation industry watch, and plus we're talking with our customers every day that are living with it. I'd say our take is, from listening to our customers, is that we don't expect any rapid improvement in port congestion, and it's not really just the ports. The ports are congested. There's not enough truck drivers. There's not enough labor in the warehouses to turn the containers and then unstock them. And it's not just in the U.S. either. It's in Northern Europe, in the U.K., port issues in China. And so, you know, really the whole global, you know, container flow has been disrupted just by the surge in cargo demand coupled with, you know, a variety of challenges that have been pandemic induced. And, you know, we don't think that's going to unwind quickly. You know, that says when it does start to unwind, it will you know, be a source of extra container capacity. So it'll almost be like a little bit of extra production, uh, as containers are freed, uh, from, you know, being bottlenecked and then start to flow more rapidly around. And so it's just something that we keep our eye on when we, when we place orders for containers. Um, you know, the very good news for us, uh, is that as we ramped up capacity to supply this, this time where containers are, are getting stuck and add extra capacity, you know, we're putting those containers. And in fact, all of our containers, on very long-duration leases. So it's not as if, you know, if containers are freed up from, you know, from these bottlenecks, they can't all come rushing back to us. You know, our customers have taken them on very long-duration leases. And so, you know, my sense is for us that the more likely impact will be, you know, you might have, you know, growth in the container fleet and so therefore investment opportunities for us, you know, knocked off by a point or two as these, you know, bottlenecks start to ease. But, again, we think it's something that plays out over a long period of time. And as well, as we've mentioned a few times, we don't have to make very long bets on when to buy containers. You know, we maintain a shelf of equipment. As we lease it out, we add more. And, you know, to some extent allows us to kind of feel our way there as, you know, as these bottlenecks start to ease. But, again, we think this is not an immediate situation. It's much going to be down the road.

Great. And, uh, you are the market leader. You have some clear barriers to entry here, but as the market has continued to unfold coming your way, have you seen any change in the competitive environment?

No, not really. It's a business of specialists. Uh, and there's a, I was, one thing I would say this, uh, that's table stakes are very high to getting involved, uh, that, you know, you have to have an infrastructure that covers the globe, uh, operationally and then for marketing. And so it's not like financial players can come and go from container leasing. Once you have to make significant investment to be in, then you're in. And so typically we haven't seen, for example, new entry because the market is so strong. One thing that we do see, and it's a dynamic that typically plays to our favor, is when the market is very strong and customers are desperate for equipment. That's when they really want to work with Triton because we are the market leader. We also maintain by far the largest shelf of available equipment. And they also know that we have the deepest pool of operating resources and that we're willing to spend extra to make sure we deliver. And so we see that when the market's really strong like it's been, our deal share goes up. And we estimate that our deal share is probably over 40% since the market first really took off last year, as compared to our overall leasing fleet share of, say, a little under 30%. The great thing for that is when the market's very strong is also when the rates are strong and then returns. And so we get a disproportionate share of the good business out there. We do see sometimes that after maybe the market cools a little bit, our competitors then start to maybe try to come in a bit more aggressively. Our customers feel they have more options if things aren't quite at such a boil to work with companies that aren't maybe as capable as we are. But in general, we haven't seen anything really unusual. It's still, you know, the business is still served by the leasing companies that have served it for a long time.

Great. Thank you.

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Brian Sonday, Chief Executive Officer, for any closing remarks.

Yeah, thank you very much. We'd just like to thank everyone for your ongoing interest and support of Triton International. And we look forward to hoping to speak with all of you at our Investor Day.

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.