Textainer Group Holdings Limited (TGH)

Textainer Group Holdings Limited was one of the world's largest lessors of intermodal shipping containers. It bought standard dry containers, refrigerated units and special-purpose boxes and leased them to ocean shipping lines, mostly under multi-year contracts, and it also sold used containers at the end of their leasing lives. Its owned and managed fleet exceeded 4 million twenty-foot equivalent units. Leasing allows carriers to expand and adjust their container supply without buying every box they use.

The company was incorporated in Bermuda and traces its container leasing operations back to 1979, with its main management office in South Africa and large operations in California. It became a public company in 2007 with a listing on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TGH. In 2019 it added a secondary listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, reflecting longstanding South African links in its ownership. It also issued two series of preferred shares that traded on the NYSE.

Demand for leased containers jumped during the supply chain disruptions of 2020 to 2022, when shipping lines struggled to find enough boxes and lease rates climbed. Textainer used the period to sign long-term leases, expand its fleet, refinance debt at low rates and repurchase a large amount of its own stock. Those long contracts helped keep earnings steady when container demand cooled in 2023 and new container prices fell from their peak levels.

On October 22, 2023 Textainer agreed to be acquired by Stonepeak, a private infrastructure investment firm, for $50.00 per share in cash, about a 46 percent premium to the prior closing price and an enterprise value of roughly $7.4 billion. Shareholders and regulators approved the deal, and it closed on March 14, 2024. Trading in the common shares on the NYSE was suspended before the market opened that day, and Johannesburg holders received the cash price converted to rand.

On the closing date Textainer also called its 7.000% Series A and 6.250% Series B preference shares for redemption on April 15, 2024 at $25 per depositary share plus accrued distributions, after which those securities were removed from the NYSE as well. Textainer continues to operate as a privately held container lessor owned by Stonepeak. The deal was one of several in which infrastructure investors bought container leasing companies, attracted by their long-term contracted cash flows.