WillScot Holdings Corporation provides business services in turnkey temporary space solutions.
The company’s diverse product offering includes modular office complexes, mobile offices, classrooms, blast-resistant modules, clearspan structures, sanitation solutions, portable storage containers, and climate-controlled containers and trailers. The company offers its customers modular space and portable storage units with Value-Added Products (‘VAPS’), such as workstations, furniture, appliances, m...
WillScot Holdings Corporation provides business services in turnkey temporary space solutions.
The company’s diverse product offering includes modular office complexes, mobile offices, classrooms, blast-resistant modules, clearspan structures, sanitation solutions, portable storage containers, and climate-controlled containers and trailers. The company offers its customers modular space and portable storage units with Value-Added Products (‘VAPS’), such as workstations, furniture, appliances, media packages, power and solar solutions, telematics, connectivity and data solutions, security and protection products, entrance packages, electrical and lighting products, organization and space optimization assets, perimeter solutions, and other items that improve the overall customer experience. These turnkey space solutions offer customers flexible, low-cost, and timely solutions to meet their space needs on an outsourced basis.
The company services diverse end markets across all sectors of the economy from a network of approximately 260 branch locations and additional drop lots throughout the United States (‘US’), Canada, and Mexico. It leases turnkey space solutions (the ‘lease fleet’) to customers across various distinct end markets.
Products and Services
Modular Space Solutions
The company’s modular space units meet a broad range of customer needs. The company’s modular units are typically made of steel and aluminum frames and traditional building materials and range from standalone portable units as small as 24 square feet to units that can be coupled together or stacked to create versatile workspaces exceeding 40,000 square feet. In all cases, the company deploys modular units to customers rapidly from its extensive branch network using its hybrid in-house and outsourced logistics and service infrastructure. The company specializes in turnkey solutions, which means its units can arrive fully equipped with air conditioning, heating, and filtration units, electrical and Ethernet ports, plumbing and utility hookups, as well as its line of VAPS. The company’s units are transported by truck: either towed or mounted on flat-bed trailers.
The company utilizes standard fleet maintenance procedures across its branch network, monitors fleet condition and allocates capital expenditures centrally, and ensures all units meet consistent quality and condition requirements, regardless of unit age, prior to delivery to a customer. Modular leasing is complemented by new unit sales and sales of rental units. In connection with its leasing and sales activities, the company also provides delivery and installation services, maintenance, removal, and other ad hoc services.
Panelized and Stackable Offices: The company’s FLEXTM panelized and stackable offices are the next generation of modular space technology and offer maximum flexibility and design configurations. These units provide a modern, innovative design, smaller footprint, ground-level access, and are comprised of interchangeable panels, including operable window panels, door panels, and full-length glass panels that allow customers to configure the space to their precise requirements. The company can stack these units up to three stories and connect them horizontally, which provides maximum versatility.
Single-Wide Modular Space Units: Single-wide modular space units include mobile offices and sales offices. These units offer maximum ease of installation and removal and are deployed across the broadest range of applications in the company’s fleet. These units typically have open interiors, which can be modified using movable partitions, and include tile floors, air conditioning, heating and filtration units, partitions, and restroom facilities.
Section Modulars and Redi-Plex: Section modulars are two or more units combined into one structure. Redi-Plex complexes offer advanced versatility for large, open floor plans or custom layouts with private offices. The company’s proprietary design meets a wide range of national and state building, electrical, mechanical, and plumbing codes, which creates versatility in fleet management. Examples of section modular units include hospital diagnostic annexes, special events headquarters, temporary data centers, and larger general commercial offices.
Classrooms: Classroom units are generally double-wide units or FLEX panelized units adapted specifically for use by school systems or universities. Classroom units usually feature teaching aids, air conditioning, heating and filtration units, windows, and restroom facilities.
Ground Level Offices: The company also offers steel ground level offices from 10 to 40 feet in length and 8 or 10 feet in width. Many of these units are converted to office use from International Organization for Standardization (‘ISO’) certified shipping containers. These offices are available in various configurations, including all-office floor plans or office and storage combination units that provide a 10- or 15-foot office with the remaining area available for storage. Ground level offices provide the advantage of ground accessibility for ease of access and security in an all-steel design. The company equips these office units with electrical wiring, air conditioning, heating and filtration units, tile, security doors, and windows with security bars or shutters.
Blast-Resistant Modules: The company’s diverse fleet of blast-resistant modules is designed to protect any customers operating in blast radius zones, including its petrochemical, energy, refinery, and defense customers. These modules range from 480 square foot units to 2,400 square foot complexes and can be stacked to maximize space. The company’s blast-resistant units are built for quick deployment to enhance worksite safety in hazardous industries, conditions, and blast threats.
Clearspan Structures: The company’s temporary and semi-permanent clearspan structures allow it to offer more expansive flexible spaces to customers. These configurable and durable fabric structures are commonly utilized by existing customers across virtually all end markets that the company serves. Clearspan structures, also referred to as fabric buildings or industrial tents, are rapidly deployable on surfaces and locations from an asphalt parking lot to a grass field and can be adjusted to accommodate almost any space need. Use cases include industrial warehousing, controlled environments for construction sites, covered work areas, retail and distribution space, and high-end event spaces, among many others. These structures can include lighting and climate solutions and interior and exterior graphics.
Other Modular Space: The company offers a range of other specialty products that vary across regions and provide flexibility to serve demands for local markets. Examples include workforce accommodation units with dining facilities used to house workers, often in remote locations, and a range of restroom solutions, including premium restroom trailers and in-unit restroom facilities to complement both permanent and temporary infrastructure.
Portable Storage Solutions
Portable Storage Containers: The company’s portable storage containers offer an assortment of differentiated features, such as patented locking systems, premium and multiple door options, optional climate control, and numerous configuration options. Standard portable storage containers are made from weather-resistant corrugated steel and are available in lengths ranging from 5 to 48 feet, widths of either 8 or 10 feet, and a variety of configuration options. Doors can be placed at the front, front and back, or the sides of containers. The company provides its customers with various differentiated portable storage offerings, ranging from a standard ISO container to more premium products with enhanced security and other features.
Steel containers have a long useful life with no technical obsolescence. The company’s portable storage containers generally have estimated useful lives of 30 years from the date it builds or acquires and remanufactures them, with average residual values exceeding 50%. The remanufacturing process begins with the purchase of used containers originally built to ISO standards, which are 8 feet wide, up to 9.5 feet high, and 20, 40, or 45 feet long. Remanufacturing typically involves cleaning, removing rust and dents, repairing floors and sidewalls, painting, and adding company logos or signs. The company maintains its steel containers on a regular basis by removing rust, painting them with rust inhibiting paint, plug-welding holes, and occasionally replacing the wooden floor or a rusted steel panel. Repainting the outside of storage units is a common maintenance item. A properly maintained container is essentially in the same condition as when it was initially acquired or remanufactured.
Climate-Controlled Containers and Trailers: The company offers temperature-controlled containers, walk-in freezers, refrigerated storage trailers, and dock-height refrigerated trailers. These turnkey cold storage solutions come in a variety of sizes, allowing customers to efficiently manage temperature-sensitive goods across various industries and infrastructures. These solutions can include motion-activated lighting, slip-resistant floors, multiple access options, roll and swing doors, and automatic tire-inflation systems for trailers.
Value-Added Products
The company offers a thoughtfully curated portfolio of VAPS that make modular space and portable storage units more productive, comfortable, secure, and ‘Right from the Start.’
Workspaces: Offices, collaboration spaces, and break rooms can be built out to accommodate exact privacy needs and work styles and can include workstations, furniture, fixtures, appliances, cabinetry, storage, media packages, heating, ventilation and air conditioning (‘HVAC’) and air purification systems, and accessories to create the ideal work environment.
Classrooms: The company’s classroom packages help optimize environments for learning. From ergonomic desks and chairs, educators’ workstations and whiteboards to media packages, bookshelves, appliances, and data hubs, the company can provide everything needed to equip a modern classroom.
Power and Connectivity: The company offers power solutions, such as transformers, phase converters, and alternative power options, including integrated solar power. The company’s data solutions include connectivity and data solutions and its advanced telematics system on its climate-controlled containers and trailers, which includes monitoring, remote access, data collection, and customer alerts to provide access to live data and control over the unit.
Security and Protection: The company offers secure doors, locks, and window and door bars to keep customers' belongings safe. The company provides its lease customers with a damage waiver program that covers loss or damage to the leased unit. It also offers low-cost insurance coverages provided by third-party insurers to protect customers' financial interests from loss and personal injury. Storage containers can be equipped with the company's patented Tri-Cam Locking System, which features a waist-level opening lever and interlocking bars to provide easy access for the customer without sacrificing security. The company also offers ContainerGuardLock, an optional security device, which features a hidden six-pin tumbler system and is made from drill-resistant hardened steel.
Entrance Packages: The company offers a complete range of fully installed aluminum stair, ramp, decking, and overhead canopy systems.
Sanitation: Sanitation rentals and servicing are also part of the company’s VAPS portfolio. Sanitation services are handled through a reliable network of third-party partners, ensuring reliable service, cleanliness, and consistent functionality.
Lighting: The company’s mobile offices come with fluorescent lighting built in. It also has a wide array of desk lights for office applications and powerful and weatherproof motion-activated magnetic lights for interior and exterior applications.
Organization and Storage: The company’s premium VAPS offering for storage containers, the PRORACKTM storage system, is an innovative complete system of sturdy readily movable surfaces that organizes the space to exact requirements. Durable metal panels are configured to function as desks, traditional shelving, pipe racking, tool cribs, or a combination of them all. The company also offers basic shelving and insulated bulkheads.
Perimeter Solutions: Temporary fencing, including free-standing fences, gates, and barricades, can create a safe perimeter in which work can occur. These solutions can be quickly installed and typically stay in use on sites until project completion. Designed to support a variety of needs, temporary fencing is used broadly across industries, including critical protection barriers for construction sites, privacy and security at retail stores, crowd control for events, and more.
Aesthetics: The company also offers VAPS to enhance unit aesthetics, including flooring, wraps, facades, and exterior paneling.
In addition to the many VAPS in its portfolio, the company also provides incremental value to its customers by offering other services, including technical expertise and oversight for customers regarding building design and permitting, site preparation, and project management, including expansion or contraction of installed space based on changes in project requirements.
Delivery, Installation, and Removal
The company operates a hybrid in-house and outsourced logistics and service infrastructure that provides delivery, site work, installation, disassembly, unhooking and removal, and other services to its customers for an additional fee as part of its leasing and sales operations. Revenue from delivery, site work, and installation results from the transportation of units to a customer's location, as well as site work required prior to installation, and installation of the units that have been leased or sold. Typically, modular units are placed on temporary foundations constructed by the company’s in-house service technicians or subcontractors. These in-house service technicians or subcontractors also generally install any ancillary products and VAPS. The company also derives revenue from disassembling, unhooking, and removing units once a lease expires.
Product Leases
The company primarily leases, rather than sells, its turnkey space solutions to customers, which results in a diversified and predictable recurring revenue stream. For the year ended December 31, 2024, over 90% of new lease orders were on the company’s standard lease agreement, pre-negotiated master lease, or national account agreements. Rental contracts with customers are generally based on a 28-day or monthly rate and billing cycle. The initial lease periods vary, and the company’s leases are customarily renewable on a month-to-month basis after their initial term and continue until cancelled by the customer or the company. For the year ended December 31, 2024, the average effective duration of the company’s consolidated lease portfolio for modular space and portable storage units, excluding seasonal portable storage units, was approximately 41 months.
For the year ended December 31, 2024, the company’s average minimum contractual lease term at the time of delivery for modular space units, excluding ground level offices, was 10 months. Given that the company’s customers value flexibility, they consistently extend their leases or renew on a month-to-month basis, such that the average effective duration of the company’s modular space lease portfolio, excluding ground level offices, was over 40 months, and on average, the steel ground level offices on rent for the year ended December 31, 2024, had been in place for over 23 months. Customers are responsible for the costs of delivery and set-up, dismantling and pick-up, customer-specified modifications, costs to return custom modifications back to standard configuration at the end of the lease, and any loss or damage beyond normal wear and tear. The company’s leases generally require customers to maintain liability and property insurance covering the units during the lease term and to indemnify the company from losses caused by the negligence of the customer or their employees.
For the year ended December 31, 2024, the average effective duration of the company’s lease portfolio for storage containers on rent, excluding seasonal portable storage units, was over 43 months. Rental contracts provide that the customer is responsible for the cost of delivery and pickup and specify that the customer is liable for any damage done to the unit beyond ordinary wear and tear. Customer possessions stored within a portable storage unit are the responsibility of that customer unless covered under the company’s contents insurance products.
Demand for the company’s products varies by end market. Construction customers typically reflect higher demand during months with more temperate weather, while demand from retailers is stronger from September through December, when more space is needed to store holiday inventories. Retail customers usually return these rented units in December and early in the following year, but also undertake ongoing rolling store renovations, which present consistent recurring demand throughout the year.
As of December 31, 2024, the company had over 362,000 total units, including over 152,000 modular space units, over 210,000 portable storage units, and other VAPS representing fleet and approximately 128 million square feet of relocatable commercial space. Approximately 91,000 of the company’s modular space units, or 59%, and 115,000 of its portable storage units, or 55%, were on rent as of December 31, 2024.
Product Sales
The company complements its core leasing business by selling both new and used units, allowing it to leverage its scale, achieve purchasing benefits, and redeploy capital employed in its lease fleet. Generally, the company purchases new units from a broad network of third-party manufacturers; in some instances, it manufactures the units itself.
In the normal course of managing its business, the company also sells idle, used rental units at fair market value and units that are already on rent. The sale of units from the company’s rental equipment has historically been both a profitable and cost-effective method to finance the replenishment and upgrade of its lease fleet, as well as to generate free cash flow during periods of lower rental demand and utilization. The company also offers delivery, installation, and removal-related services for an additional fee as part of its sales operations.
Customers
The company’s customers operate in a diversified set of end markets, and it tracks several market indicators, such as the Gross Domestic Product (‘GDP’), Architecture Billing Index (‘ABI’), non-residential construction square foot starts, and put-in-place construction spending, to predict demand, including demand in its two largest end markets, the commercial and industrial market and the construction and infrastructure market, which accounted for approximately 43% and 42% of the company’s revenues, respectively, for the year ended December 31, 2024.
Core to the company’s operating model is the ability to deploy standardized assets that can be redeployed across its diversified customer base of over 85,000 customers. To optimize the use of fleet assets across its branch network, the company centrally manages fleet rebalancing across various distinct end markets. For the year ended December 31, 2024, the company’s top 10 customers accounted for approximately 6% of revenues, and its top 50 customers accounted for approximately 14% of revenues, reflecting low customer concentration and significant project diversification within its portfolio.
The company’s logistics and service infrastructure are designed to meet or exceed its customers’ expectations by reacting quickly, efficiently, and with consistent service levels. As a result, it has established strong relationships with a diverse customer base, ranging from multinational companies that operate across multiple geographic markets to local sole proprietors. Key customer end markets include:
Construction and Infrastructure
The company provides office and storage space and clearspan structures to a broad array of contractors associated with non-residential buildings and non-building infrastructure and, to a lesser extent, residential construction. The company’s client portfolio includes many general contractors and engineering, architecture, procurement, and construction companies in North America, working across all of the non-residential construction sub-sectors. Examples include highway, street, bridge, and tunnel contractors; water, sewer, communication, and power line contractors; and special construction trades, including plumbing, electrical, glass, glazing, and demolition. The company’s construction and infrastructure customer base is characterized by a wide variety of contractors that are associated with original construction, as well as capital improvements in the private, institutional, and municipal arenas. Units are used as offices, lunch and break rooms, accommodations, restroom facilities, material and equipment storage facilities, security offices, and other applications.
Commercial and Industrial
Customers in this category use the company’s products as their primary office or retail space, to expand their existing commercial workspace, to increase their storage capabilities, or as temporary space for festivals, trade shows, sporting, and other events. Customers in this category span a variety of industries, ranging from commercial offices; diversified manufacturing; agriculture, forestry and fishing; arts, media, hotels, and entertainment; and many other industrial end markets.
The commercial and industrial segment also includes customers in retail and wholesale trade. These include department, drug, grocery, and non-mall-based big box retailers, logistics, warehousing and distribution services, as well as restaurants and service stations. The company’s customers in retail and wholesale trade include some retailers who have storage needs throughout all stages of their supply chain.
Energy and Natural Resources
The company’s products are leased to companies involved in electricity generation and transmission, utilities, up-, mid-, and down-stream oil and gas, mining exploration and extraction, and other related sectors. Increasingly, the development of renewable energy infrastructure has emerged to complement the company’s traditional energy clientele. Units are used as temporary offices, break rooms, accommodations, security offices, blast-resistant facilities, and other applications.
Government and Institutions
The company’s government customers consist of national, state, provincial, and local public sector organizations. Modular space and portable storage solutions are particularly attractive to focused niches, such as healthcare facilities, small municipal buildings, courthouses, military and border installations, national security buildings, and offices during building modernization, as well as disaster relief.
Competition
The company’s significant competitors include McGrath RentCorp, United Rentals, ATCO Structures & Logistics, and Satellite Shelters.
Growth Strategies
The key elements of the company’s strategy are to expand adjacent solutions and value-added products; leverage scale and organic initiatives with accretive acquisitions; optimize lease rate; enhance market penetration through increased sales force effectiveness; generate cash flow through cost reductions and technology; deploy capital to strategically support organic growth and optimize returns; and use free cash flow to drive value creation.
Intellectual Property
The company maintains its intellectual property rights other than the ‘WillScot’ name, as it primarily operates under the WillScot brand. On its Modular fleet, the company maintains a patent for the design of its FLEX units in the US. On its Storage fleet, it patented its proprietary Tri-Cam Locking System, ContainerGuardLock, and other continued improvements in locking technology, shelving systems (for which it obtained a trademark for PRORACKTM), container ramps, solar racking systems, and container canopy structures.
Regulatory and Environmental Compliance
The jurisdictions in which the company operates are also subject to anti-bribery laws and regulations, such as the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977, as amended (the ‘FCPA’).
History
The company was formerly known as WillScot Corporation and changed its name to WillScot Mobile Mini Holdings Corp. in 2020 and then to WillScot Holdings Corporation in July 2024.
