U-Haul Holding ($UHAL) Stock Hub 2026: A Property Company That Rents Trucks

01 Revenue Up, Earnings Down, And 5.2 Million Square Feet

U-Haul reported revenue of $1.682 billion for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, up 3.2 per cent, and net earnings available to common shareholders of $122.9 million, down 13.6 per cent. Revenue up, earnings down. The explanation sits in one number: the company added roughly 5.2 million net square feet of self-storage in the last twelve months, and new storage costs money long before it fills.

Average monthly occupancy at the owned storage portfolio fell from 78.1 per cent to 72.9 per cent year over year. That reads like a demand problem and is not one. Occupied square feet actually rose, from an average of 55.4 million to 55.9 million. The denominator grew faster: total square footage went from 69.6 million to 74.7 million. A company that builds storage faster than it fills it reports falling occupancy while filling more space than before.

This is the central mechanic of the U-Haul file, and it separates this company from the two airport rental businesses it is usually filed beside. Hertz and Avis rent a depreciating asset that someone else builds. U-Haul rents trucks and trailers, and it also builds, owns and operates the real estate those customers move their belongings into. In the quarter it spent $822.4 million on property, plant and equipment while generating $630.3 million from operations.

02 Executive Summary

The figures below come from the Form 10-Q filed on August 5, 2026, covering the first quarter of fiscal 2027. U-Haul’s financial year ends on March 31, so the quarter to June 30, 2026 is fiscal Q1 and calendar Q2. Every comparison here uses the same fiscal quarter of the previous year.

The quarter. Revenue of $1,682.0 million against $1,630.5 million. Earnings from operations of $250.6 million against $257.4 million. Net earnings available to common shareholders of $122.9 million against $142.3 million. Diluted earnings per share of $0.58 on the voting class and $0.63 on the non-voting class.

The segments. Moving and storage produced $1,601.9 million of revenue. Property and casualty insurance produced $31.2 million of revenue and $9.7 million of net earnings; life insurance produced $51.5 million and $2.7 million. Eliminations removed $2.6 million of revenue and $12.4 million of net earnings.

The two revenue lines that matter. Self-moving equipment rental revenue of $1,088.4 million against $1,059.0 million. Self-storage revenue of $250.2 million against $234.2 million, an increase of 6.8 per cent driven by square footage rather than by price on a full portfolio.

The balance sheet. Cash of $1,097.3 million. Total debt of $8,105.4 million net of issuance costs. Total equity of $7,659.8 million. Total assets of $21,661.5 million. Property, plant and equipment of $16,724.1 million net, against a gross figure of $23,798.8 million, of which $8,876.3 million is the truck fleet and $1,239.8 million trailers and other rental equipment.

The capital structure. 19,224,580 voting shares and 175,168,915 non-voting shares at August 3, 2026. Quarterly dividends of five cents are declared on the non-voting class only. In the quarter the company repurchased $15.6 million of voting stock and $32.4 million of non-voting stock.

What is not there. No numerical guidance. The company states its intention to keep real estate capital expenditure high in fiscal 2027 and to fund it largely with debt, lease financing and operating cash flow, but publishes no revenue or earnings range.

03 Three Businesses On One Brand

U-Haul is three businesses stacked on one brand, and the stack is the reason the financial statements look nothing like a rental company’s.

The moving business. Trucks, trailers and towing equipment rented one way or round trip, sold through more than 2,400 company-operated locations and more than 23,000 independent dealers. This is the part that shares a name with vehicle rental and shares almost nothing else: the fleet is bought to be held for many years, not turned over annually, and the network is built on franchise-style density rather than airport concessions.

The storage business. Self-storage facilities owned and operated by the company, plus U-Box portable containers. This is a property business with a rental company attached to the front of it, and it is the reason the balance sheet carries $10.7 billion of gross buildings and improvements and $1.9 billion of land.

The insurance businesses. A property and casualty arm that underwrites the coverage sold with rentals, and a life arm. Together they produced $82.7 million of revenue in the quarter, about five per cent of the group, and $12.4 million of net earnings.

The three interlock. A customer renting a truck buys damage coverage from the insurance arm and rents a storage unit at the destination. That is why U-Haul reports no fleet utilisation figure and no revenue per day: the metric that matters is transactions across a network, and the profit shows up in three places at once.

04 First Quarter Fiscal 2027 In Numbers

The reported statement of operations for the quarter, with the same fiscal quarter of the prior year alongside.

The distance between revenue up 3.2 per cent and net earnings down 13.6 per cent is the cost of the build-out. Depreciation on newly completed storage and on a truck fleet carried at $8.9 billion gross, plus interest on $8.1 billion of debt, absorbs the incremental revenue and more. That is the arithmetic of a company investing through a cycle rather than harvesting one.

Note also the two earnings per share lines. The voting and non-voting classes report different figures because the dividend is declared on the non-voting shares only, which changes the allocation of earnings between the classes under the two-class method. It is an accounting consequence of a governance decision, and it is permanent until the dividend policy changes.

05 Self-Moving: The Truck Rental Engine

Self-moving equipment rental revenue of $1,088.4 million is 65 per cent of group revenue and the single largest line in the file. It grew 2.8 per cent year over year.

What that number measures is the American household’s willingness to move. It is not a leisure travel metric and it does not follow airline traffic; it follows housing turnover, job relocation, rents and the season. The summer quarter is the peak, which is why the fiscal first quarter is the strongest of U-Haul’s year and why comparing it with the March quarter tells you nothing.

The fleet behind it is carried at $8,876.3 million gross for trucks and $1,239.8 million for trailers and other rental equipment. U-Haul does not disclose a unit count for either, and it does not publish utilisation or revenue per day. Those are airport rental metrics, and they do not describe a one-way network where a truck picked up in Phoenix is dropped in Denver and has to be repositioned or rented onward from there.

The absence of those metrics is a genuine analytical gap, and the honest way to handle it is to say so. What can be tracked is the revenue line itself, the gross fleet value, and the capital expenditure that maintains it: $822.4 million of gross additions in the quarter against $148.3 million of proceeds from sales of property, plant and equipment, so $674.1 million net.

06 Self-Storage: Growth That Dilutes Occupancy

Self-storage revenue of $250.2 million grew 6.8 per cent, and the occupancy figures underneath it need reading carefully.

Occupancy fell 5.2 points while occupied square footage rose. Both statements are true because the portfolio grew by 5.2 million square feet in twelve months, of which roughly 0.8 million came from acquisitions and 4.4 million from new development. Newly opened storage begins at zero occupancy and fills over a period usually measured in years, so a company in an aggressive build phase reports declining portfolio occupancy for as long as the building continues.

That makes occupancy the wrong headline number here and makes two others the right ones. The first is occupied square footage, which is growing. The second is the pace of additions, roughly 1.1 million net square feet in this quarter alone. If development slowed tomorrow, reported occupancy would begin climbing toward the mature portfolio rate without any change in demand.

The strategic case for building through a soft patch is that land, entitlements and construction take years, and the facility that opens in 2029 has to be started now. The risk is equally clear: capital spent today earns nothing until the units fill, and every quarter of delay is carried as depreciation and interest.

07 The Insurance Segments

The two insurance segments are small in revenue and useful in structure.

Property and casualty converted $31.2 million of revenue into $9.7 million of net earnings, a 31 per cent net margin, because it underwrites coverage sold alongside the company’s own rentals to customers it already knows. That is a structurally advantaged book: distribution costs nothing and the risk is understood.

Life insurance produced $51.5 million of revenue and $2.7 million of earnings. It is a legacy business rather than a strategic one, and its results move with investment income more than with the moving season.

Both segments matter less for their profit than for what they let the parent do. Insurance floats capital, and a group that owns its own underwriter finances part of its risk internally instead of buying it in a market that reprices every renewal.

08 $822 Million Of Capital Expenditure In One Quarter

U-Haul spent $822.4 million on property, plant and equipment in a single quarter, against $916.6 million in the same quarter a year earlier, and generated $630.3 million of operating cash flow.

Read those two numbers together. Capital expenditure exceeded operating cash flow by $192.1 million before any proceeds from disposals; after $148.3 million of proceeds, the gap narrows to $43.8 million. This is a company that is reinvesting essentially everything it earns, plus a little more, and it has said in the Form 10-Q that fiscal 2027 investment will be funded largely through debt financing, external lease financing and cash from operations.

All of that capital expenditure sits in the moving and storage segment. The insurance segments spent nothing. Within moving and storage it splits between the truck fleet, which has to be replaced continuously, and real estate, where management has stated its belief that a high level of real estate capital expenditure will continue in fiscal 2027.

The trade being made is explicit. Cash that could return to shareholders or reduce debt is being converted into buildings and vehicles that will produce revenue for decades. The company is 80 years old and has done this before. What an investor is buying is the judgement that this is the right decade to do it again.

09 The Balance Sheet: Positive Equity And Owned Ground

The balance sheet at June 30, 2026, with the fiscal year end at March 31, 2026 alongside.

Property, plant and equipment is the asset base: $23,798.8 million gross, $7,074.6 million of accumulated depreciation, $16,724.1 million net. Inside the gross figure, land is $1,866.8 million, buildings and improvements $10,728.0 million, the truck fleet $8,876.3 million, trailers and other rental equipment $1,239.8 million, and furniture and equipment $1,087.9 million.

Equity of $7.66 billion against total debt of $8.11 billion is the number that separates U-Haul from the two car rental companies in this section, both of which report negative book equity. It reflects eight decades of retained earnings and a balance sheet that owns rather than leases the ground it operates on.

The land and buildings carry a further consideration that the accounting does not show. Real estate is held at depreciated historical cost, so a portfolio assembled over decades sits on the books at a number that has no necessary relationship to what it would fetch today. That works in the owner’s favour and it also means the reported book value is not a market value in either direction.

10 The Maturity Ladder

The maturity schedule, from the borrowings note, by fiscal year ending June 30.

Roughly $1.95 billion matures within twenty-four months of the balance sheet date, against $1.10 billion of cash on hand and operating cash flow running at more than $600 million a quarter in the seasonal peak. Nothing in that schedule looks like a wall; it looks like a ladder built deliberately, with no single year carrying more than about 14 per cent of the total.

That is the practical difference between owning real estate and renting fleet. A fleet lender sizes the loan to the value of vehicles that depreciate every month, so the borrowing has to be refinanced constantly. A mortgage on a storage facility is written against an asset that does not lose value on a schedule, so the term can be long and the maturities spread.

11 Two Share Classes, One Dividend

U-Haul has two classes of common stock listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and the difference between them is not cosmetic.

UHAL is the voting class, par value $0.25, with 19,224,580 shares outstanding at August 3, 2026. UHAL.B is the Series N non-voting class, par value $0.001, with 175,168,915 shares outstanding at the same date.

Quarterly dividends of five cents a share are declared on the non-voting class only. In the eighteen months to June 2026 they were declared on March 5, 2025, June 4, 2025, August 21, 2025, December 3, 2025, March 4, 2026 and June 3, 2026, costing roughly $8.8 million a quarter. The voting class received no dividend in any of those periods.

That structure produces a rare arrangement: the class with the votes gets no income, and the class with the income gets no votes. It also produces the two different earnings per share figures reported each quarter, $0.58 and $0.63 in this one, because the two-class method allocates earnings partly by dividends declared.

The company bought back stock in both classes during the quarter, $15.6 million of voting and $32.4 million of non-voting, against no repurchases in the comparable quarter a year earlier.

12 Control: The Shoen Family And 50.1 Per Cent Of The Votes

Control of the voting class is concentrated in the founding family, and the filings say so plainly.

According to the annual report for fiscal 2026, Willow Grove Holdings LP, controlled by Edward J. Shoen and Mark V. Shoen, holds 9,791,911 voting shares. Together with shares held directly by Edward J. and Mark V. Shoen, the total is 9,828,541 shares, approximately 50.1 per cent of the voting common stock. A further 686,697 voting shares, about 3.5 per cent, are held through the employee stock ownership plan.

Fifty point one per cent is not an approximate majority. It is the number at which every matter put to a vote of the voting class has a predetermined outcome unless the holders divide among themselves. For a shareholder in the non-voting class, which is where almost all of the market value sits, the practical position is that of a partner in a family enterprise with a listed price attached.

Whether that is an advantage depends entirely on the judgement of the family. A controlled company can invest through a downturn without answering to a quarterly consensus, which is precisely what the current capital expenditure programme requires. It can also decline to do things minority holders would prefer, and there is no mechanism to compel it.

13 U-Haul Against Hertz And Avis

The three United States listed vehicle rental companies, on their most recently reported quarters.

U-Haul earned roughly twice the net profit of either car rental company on the smallest revenue base of the three, and it did so while spending $822 million on capital projects in the same quarter. The reason is structural: it owns assets that produce revenue for decades and finances them long, rather than owning assets that lose value monthly and financing them short.

The comparison is still useful in one direction. When American households move less, U-Haul’s self-moving line shows it first and most directly, because nobody rents a truck for pleasure. That makes this file a leading read on the same consumer who later decides whether to take the trip that Hertz and Avis depend on.

14 Risks And Red Flags

Occupancy is falling while the portfolio grows. Average monthly occupancy went from 78.1 to 72.9 per cent. The cause is 5.2 million square feet of additions, but a demand slowdown would look identical in the headline figure, and the two can only be separated by watching occupied square footage.

Capital expenditure exceeds operating cash flow. $822.4 million against $630.3 million in the quarter. The company has said the programme will be funded largely with debt and lease financing.

Earnings are falling while revenue rises. Net earnings available to common fell 13.6 per cent on revenue up 3.2 per cent, as depreciation and interest on the build-out absorb the increment.

The moving business follows housing. Self-moving equipment rental is 65 per cent of revenue and tracks household relocation, which is sensitive to mortgage rates, rents and employment.

No published guidance and no fleet metrics. There is no revenue or earnings range, no unit count for the fleet, and no utilisation or revenue-per-day disclosure. Modelling relies on segment revenue and capital expenditure rather than operating statistics.

Concentrated control. Approximately 50.1 per cent of the voting class is held by the Shoen family. The listed non-voting class has the dividend and no vote.

Real estate cycle exposure. A storage portfolio carried at depreciated cost is exposed to construction costs, local supply and the rate environment, and the assets cannot be repositioned quickly.

15 Scenarios

Three descriptive paths, none of them a forecast and none of them a recommendation.

The build-out fills. Development continues at the current pace, the newly opened square footage leases up, and occupied square footage keeps rising while portfolio occupancy bottoms and turns. In that world the depreciation and interest already in the numbers meet a larger revenue base, and reported earnings recover without any change in the moving business.

Housing stays frozen. Relocation volumes stay low, self-moving revenue growth slows below the rate of fleet depreciation, and the new storage fills more slowly than planned. Capital expenditure that has already been committed continues to arrive as cost, and earnings compress further before they recover.

The pace slows deliberately. Management reduces development, capital expenditure falls toward maintenance levels, free cash flow appears where there is currently almost none, and reported occupancy rises mechanically as the denominator stops growing. That would be the most visible change of all in the reported numbers, and it would say that the family judged this to be the wrong decade to keep building.

16 Bottom Line

U-Haul is a property company that rents trucks, and reading it as a vehicle rental stock produces the wrong questions. Revenue of $1.682 billion in the quarter to June 30, 2026 grew 3.2 per cent while net earnings available to common shareholders fell 13.6 per cent to $122.9 million, because the company spent $822.4 million on property and equipment in the same three months.

The balance sheet is the argument. Total equity of $7.66 billion against debt of $8.11 billion, $16.7 billion of net property, a maturity ladder with no year carrying more than about 14 per cent of the total, and $1.10 billion of cash. Neither Hertz nor Avis has anything resembling that, and neither has the option to keep investing through a soft patch without asking anyone.

What to watch, in order. Occupied square footage rather than the occupancy percentage, because the first is demand and the second is arithmetic. The pace of net square footage additions, currently about 1.1 million a quarter. Capital expenditure against operating cash flow, which is the clearest signal of whether the investment phase is continuing or ending. Self-moving equipment rental revenue, as the direct read on household relocation. And any change to the dividend, which is declared on the non-voting class only.

Related Research On Merlintrader

These pages sit alongside it in the Merlintrader travel section.

• Hertz Global Holdings ($HTZ) Stock Hub — airport car rental, 83 per cent fleet utilisation and negative book equity.
• Avis Budget Group ($CAR) Stock Hub — 664,638 vehicles, 35.3 million shares and a $3.4 billion equity deficit.
• Merlintrader Travel Pub — the travel index, with every airline, cruise and vehicle rental hub and its own update date.