The Greenbrier Companies, Inc. (NYSE:GBX) Q4 2020 Earnings Conference Call - Final Transcript

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Matt Elkott. Sir, your line is open. Matt, your line is open.

Oh, thank you. Good morning. Did you guys say what percentage of your backlog is for fiscal '21 deliveries?

We have not. We did not disclose that at this point. It's a little bit of a fluid situation as some of our multi-year orders have flexibility and when they place it in calendar 2021 at this point. So I would say that a good portion of our backlog will be delivered in 2021 but not a -- it's not a linear function at this point.

Okay. So I guess the insights you guys have given us so far into fiscal '21 deliveries that -- they'll be fewer than 2020 deliveries. But how much fewer, we don't know?

Again. Yes, it's a fluid environment, Matt. And as you know sometimes it's good to have a little bit of open space so that we can take advantage of opportunities as they arise. So to Justin's point most of our customers don't operate on our fiscal year. They operate on a calendar year. So when they pick deliveries is a bit fluid.

Yeah. That makes sense. And I think you got probably about 1,100 orders in North America in the fiscal fourth quarter. Can you give us some insights on how order and inquiry have been after quarter end?

Let me take that. I think we've had -- we didn't announce subsequent orders but we have had a strong month in orders with about the same level or close to the same level of awards through last week just looking at 1,100. So we've got some momentum. I'm not sure the 1,100 was typical. As you know these things go up and they go up and down. But we've got a decent pipeline which reflects the same information. I think that's -- that others have -- of opportunities, the pipeline of opportunities, which reflects what others have said about their business.

Bill, if I may just ask you one quick follow-up on the demand question. We've seen some positive signs as of late -- utilization have improved in the last three consecutive months. Rail traffic is finally heading in the right direction mostly intermodal and grain I think. And the industry fleet is on track to actually potentially decline this year. I guess, there -- what do you think needs to happen? We just need to see these trends continue for order activity to start picking up or what else needs to happen for us to start seeing green shoots in the railcar industry?

Yeah. Well, as we talked about before Matt, we see green shoots, we just always hope they're not weeds, that the major drivers that we are watching are the freight cars in storage. We believe there's a new frictional level of storage much like frictional unemployment below which it's hard to go. That used to be around 280,000 to