Mitsubishi HC Capital Inc.

Mitsubishi HC Capital America stayed in truck financing through a three-and-a-half-year freight recession that drove many banks out of the sector, and its over-the-road volume has since improved by roughly 30%, according to Kirk Mann, executive vice president and general manager of the company's transportation vendor solutions business. Mann told FreightWaves that remaining competition is mostly OEM captive finance arms, a couple of large independents and a few bank-led groups, and that 85% of motor carriers with fewer than two years of operating experience and their own operating authority failed over a three-year stretch of the downturn. He described an asset bubble in which a Freightliner Cascadia 13-speed with a tall sleeper and fewer than 500,000 miles was worth $45,000 but financed at about $110,000, while J.D. Power data show a typical 4-year-old sleeper tractor that sold for roughly $30,000 to $50,000 between the Great Recession and the pandemic peaked near $118,000 in early 2022, a 136% jump, before Class 8 average retail prices settled at $60,986 as of September, per ACT Research. Mann said the lender has improved recoveries on transportation assets by 15% through a dedicated asset management function, and that financing now runs from roughly 5.25% for investment-grade private fleets up to 12% or higher for lower-credit small operators, with fleets of 50 to 200 units increasingly approaching the company through dealer relationships. He attributed the volume gain to replacement demand rather than EPA 2027 pre-buying, with fleets buying almost entirely new at about 80% new and late-model used taking the rest, and said cost per mile is the decisive underwriting metric.

Brookfield Renewable and Mitsubishi HC Capital are co-launching a joint venture to own and operate a portfolio of established power-generating facilities in Europe. The portfolio includes wind, solar, and energy storage assets with a combined potential output of 570 megawatts, adding to Brookfield Renewable's existing 47,300 megawatts of capacity. This marks the third such joint venture announced by Brookfield Renewable this year, following the creation of Northview Energy with British Columbia Investment Management Corp. and Norges Bank Investment Management, and the agreement to wholly acquire renewable energy developer Boralex with La Caisse. The deal supports Brookfield Renewable's long-term annual dividend growth target of 5% to 9% and its total annual return target of 12% to 15%.