06.05.2010

H&E Equipment down 38%

H&E Equipment of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA has reported first quarter revenues of $114.7 million a fall of 38.4 percent on the same period last year. Rentals fell 34.4 percent to $36.5 million, while new equipment sales dropped 57.4 percent to $27.3 million.

The company says that it has seen an improvement in its rental business since February and is holding its projections for the year. The company reported a pre-tax loss of $19.1 million compared to a profit last year of $3.1 million.

H&E chief executive John Engquist, said: "As we expected, the first quarter was extremely challenging as a result of the continuous softness in our end markets combined with seasonality and severe weather that occurred across much of our footprint. At this point, our expectations for 2010 are unchanged and therefore, we anticipate that segments of our business will continue to see low demand for our products and services. We are, however, encouraged to see improving residual values on used equipment, increased activity in our earthmoving business, which is an early cycle product, and an increase in our on rent levels that are accelerating as we move into the second quarter."

Leslie Magee, H&E‘s chief financial officer added: "We remain focused on maintaining the strength of our liquidity position and balance sheet. We managed our fleet through continued reductions of $15.1 million as we entered 2010 with very weak levels of demand. Our fleet utilisation bottomed in January reaching a low point of less than 48 percent of units on rent. Beginning in February, we achieved steady improvement and we are currently maintaining approximately 53 percent of our units on rent.”