Ritchie Bros. Reports Record Sales at 2008 Auctions

December 29, 2008 – Vancouver, British Columbia-based Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers estimates its preliminary gross auction proceeds were $3.57 billion for 2008, which represents a 12 percent increase over 2007, making 2008 the largest year in the company's 50-year history. Ritchie Bros. plans to release its full audited financial statements and management's discussion and analysis for 2008 on Feb. 26, 2009.

 

Ritchie Bros. conducted 193 unreserved industrial auctions in 13 countries throughout North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Australia in 2008. The company also conducted 147 unreserved agricultural auctions in 2008.

 

Peter Blake, Ritchie Bros. CEO, said he is pleased with the record-setting growth in spite of the global economic turmoil. "When economies around the world took a sudden and dramatic downturn at the start of our fourth quarter, some of our customers decided to delay selling their idle or surplus equipment until the market found its level,” he said. “We've seen more pricing stability at our auctions in recent weeks, which gives comfort to potential consignors and bodes well for 2009.” Blake noted that unreserved auctions provide almost instant liquidity and global fair market value for equipment sellers.

 

However, the company faced unusual currency headwinds during the last quarter of 2008, which negatively affected the fourth quarter gross auction proceeds—which represents the total proceeds from all items sold at the company's auctions—by $55 million. "The Canadian dollar, Euro, and Australian dollar all experienced significant erosion compared to the U.S. dollar during the period,” Blake said. “We continued to see strong gross auction proceeds growth in Canada, Europe, and Australia, where we conduct auctions in non-U.S. currencies. However, we report our consolidated results in U.S. dollars, and some of that growth is muted when we convert these non-U.S. dollar amounts from the local currency into U.S. dollars.” Mitigating that effect is the fact that roughly 60 percent of Richie Bros.’s operating costs on an annual basis are in non-U.S. currencies, meaning the consolidated operating costs reported in U.S. dollars benefited from these currency fluctuations, he added.

2008 Stats

Nearly 16,000 online bidders from 85 countries purchased more than $700 million of equipment and trucks from Ritchie Bros. auctions in 2008, an increase of 17 percent over record 2007 results. Online bidders represented approximately 29 percent of the total number of bidders at Ritchie Bros. industrial auctions in 2008. Online bidders were winner or runner-up bidder on 30 percent of the lots offered online at these auctions.

 
In 2008, Ritchie Bros. paid dividends of more than $35.6 million, an increase of 14 percent compared to 2007. In December 2008, Standard & Poor's named Ritchie Bros. to the S&P/TSX Composite Index.

 

Additionally, the company set 12 regional gross auction proceed records, including $190 million in February 2008 in Orlando, Fla.; $57 million in March in Forth Worth, Texas; and $54 million last March in Las Vegas, Nev. Ritchie Bros. also conducted its first ever auction in Poland in November.

 

Ritchie Bros. will conduct its first unreserved auction in 2009 at its regional auction unit in Las Vegas, Nevada on February 6-7. In February, Ritchie Bros. will conduct its first six-day auction at its permanent auction site in Orlando, Florida.