Noble Iron Grows First Quarter Revenue 14.9 Percent

Rental company, distributor and software provider Noble Iron posted $6.49 million in first quarter revenue compared to $5.65 million in the first quarter of 2015, a 14.8-percent increase.

Michael Roth

May 31, 2016

2 min read

Noble Iron staff and guests at last year39s Grand Opening of its Pico Rivera Calif facility in the Los Angeles area — Noble Iron staff and guests at last year's Grand Opening of its Pico Rivera, Calif., facility in the Los Angeles area.

Rental company, distributor and software provider Noble Iron posted $6.49 million in first quarter revenue compared to $5.65 million in the first quarter of 2015, a 14.8-percent increase. The increase was caused by a hike in equipment rental and distribution revenue driven by higher utilization and asset-sharing initiatives as well as the strengthening of the U.S. dollar, the company said. Revenue from Texada Software remained relatively flat year over year as last year contained a number of one-time revenue gains and the company’s new software products are currently early in the roll-out stage.

Cost of revenue during the first quarter was $3.1 million, an 18 percent or $0.5 million jump compared to the first quarter of 2015, because of an increase in expenses for third party asset shared equipment, depreciation, leasing of equipment delivery vehicles and the strengthening of the U.S. dollar.

For the first quarter of 2016, Noble Iron posted a net loss of $3.1 million, a 13-percent or $0.4 million increase compared to the year-ago quarter because of increased expense levels and investments in rolling out new initiatives. The company recorded an adjusted EBITDA loss of $0.1 million

Noble Iron’s software group, Texada Software, remains focused on the rollout of new applications such as Fleet Logic and Insights. Within the equipment group, Noble Iron’s focus continues to be on optimizing the rental utilization of company and third party-owned fleet and on strengthening its asset-sharing platform and market share.

During the quarter, the company launched Insights, a business intelligence SaaS application, available for Texada Software customers. It also hired Louisa Fossett as Noble Iron’s chief people officer.

Noble Iron, No. 87 on the RER 100, is headquartered in San Francisco, with equipment operations in Los Angeles and Houston and software facilities in Guelph, Ontario, Canada.

About the Author

Michael Roth

Editor

Michael Roth has covered the equipment rental industry full time for RER since 1989 and has served as the magazine’s editor in chief since 1994. He has nearly 30 years experience as a professional journalist. Roth has visited hundreds of rental centers and industry manufacturers, written hundreds of feature stories for RER and thousands of news stories for the magazine and its electronic newsletter RER Reports. Roth has interviewed leading executives for most of the industry’s largest rental companies and manufacturers as well as hundreds of smaller independent companies. He has visited with and reported on rental companies and manufacturers in Europe, Central America and Asia as well as Mexico, Canada and the United States. Roth was co-founder of RER Reports, the industry’s first weekly newsletter, which began as a fax newsletter in 1996, and later became an online newsletter. Roth has spoken at conventions sponsored by the American Rental Association, Associated Equipment Distributors, California Rental Association and other industry events and has spoken before industry groups in several countries. He lives and works in Los Angeles when he’s not traveling to cover industry events.