Radiant Logistics, Inc.

This afternoon, Bond Crane Radiant Logistics founder and CEO and Radiant's chief financial officer, Todd Maycumber, will provide a general business update and discuss financial results for the company's first fiscal quarter ended September 30, 2024. Following their comments, we will open the call to questions. This conference is scheduled for 30 minutes. This conference call may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The company has based these forward-looking statements on its current expectations and projections about future events. These forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and assumptions about the company that may cause the company's actual results or achievements to be materially different from those results or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. While it is impossible to identify all the factors that may cause the company's actual results or achievements to differ materially from those set forth in our forward-looking statements, such factors include those that have in the past, may in the future be identified in the company's SEC filings and other public announcements. which are available on the Radiant website at www.radiantdelivers.com. In addition, past results are not necessarily an indication of future performance. Now I'd like to pass the call over to Radiant's founder and CEO, Bon Crane.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining in on today's call. While the slower freight markets persist, we continue to deliver solid financial results and generated $9.5 million in adjusted EBITDA for the fiscal quarter ended September 30, 2024, which is generally in line with results from the comparable prior year period, as well as our most recent previous quarter ended June 30, 2024. And although we believe our industry will likely continue to face market headwinds into 2025, we do expect to benefit from project type opportunities over the near term, that should fortify our results while we wait for a more durable broad-based recovery. As previously discussed, we believe we are well positioned to navigate through these slower freight markets as we find our way back to more normalized market conditions. We continue to enjoy a strong balance sheet with approximately $10 million in cash on hand as of September 30, 2024, no meaningful debt, and a virtually untapped $200 million credit facility. At the same time, we remain focused on delivering profitable growth through a combination of organic and acquisition initiatives and thoughtfully relevering our balance sheet through a combination of strategic operating partner conversions, strategic tuck-in acquisitions, and stock buybacks. Through this approach, we believe over time we will continue to deliver meaningful value for our shareholders, operating partners, and the end customers that we serve. We made good progress in this regard over this last quarter with the acquisition of Texas-based Foundation Logistics and the conversion of our Michigan-based strategic operating partner location, Focus Logistics, which is combining with our existing Radian operations in Detroit. We believe these two transactions are representative of our broader pipeline of opportunities, which includes both greenfield acquisitions i.e., companies not currently part of our network, as well as acquisition opportunities inherent in our agent-based forwarding network where we can support our current operating partners in their exit strategies. We look forward to providing further updates as we progress along these lines. With that, I'll now turn it over to Todd Maycumber, our CFO, to walk us through our detailed financial results, and then we'll open it up for Q&A.

Thanks, Bon, and good afternoon, everyone. Today we will be discussing our financial results, including adjusted net income and adjusted EBITDA for the three months ended September 30th, 2024. For the three months ended September 30th, 2024, we reported net income attributable to Radiant Logistics of $3,376,000 on $203.6 million of revenues, or $0.07 per basic and fully diluted share. which includes a million-dollar gain on litigation. For the three months ended September 30th, 2023, we reported net income attributable to Radiant Logistics of $2,622,000 on $210.8 million of revenues, or six cents per basic and five cents per fully diluted share. This represents an increase of approximately $754,000 of net income over the comparable prior year period, or 28.8%. For adjusted net income, we reported $7,883,000 for the three months ended September 30th, 2024, compared to adjusted net income of $6,549,000 for the three months ended September 30th, 2023. This represents an increase of approximately $1,334,000, or approximately 20.4%. For adjusted EBITDA, we reported $9,452,000 for the three months ended September 30th, 2024, compared to adjusted EBITDA of $9,167,000 for the three months ended September 30th, 2023. This represents an increase of approximately $285,000, or 3.1%. With that, I will turn the call back over to our moderator, to facilitate in the Q&A from our callers.

Thank you very much. At this time, we will be conducting our question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For any participants using speaker equipment, it might be necessary to pick up your handset before you press the keys. Please wait a moment whilst we poll for questions. Thank you. Your first question is coming from Jason Seidel of TD Cowan. Jason, your line is live.

Thank you, operator. Bon, Todd, afternoon, gentlemen. A couple quick questions here from my line. I guess, number one, you talked a little bit about that pop-up work. Where did it come from? Is this being generated from the retail side or is this maybe storm related?

Sure. B is the answer to the question, storm related. So, you know, as, you know, in some previous quarters, you know, we've had opportunities to kind of respond to humanitarian natural disaster type situations and So the hurricanes that impacted the southeast are creating some kind of – it's turning out to be the recurring, non-recurring revenue line item as those opportunities continue to present themselves over time. So I think one of the points to be made is there's still quite a bit of challenge out in the marketplace for a lot of the transports, but in part thanks to the diversity of our portfolio and kind of all the different areas that we can play that, you know, we're kind of faring reasonably well in a tough environment. And we wanted to, without getting into the details, wanted to foreshadow we were expecting, you know, a kind of a stronger than might not otherwise be expected quarter into December. You know, it's not necessarily reflective of, the new run rate, but we're going to have some project type business landing in Q4, or excuse me, quarter ended December 31, our fiscal Q2. That's going to help kind of help us show really well here in the coming quarter.

That makes sense. The other thing, you know, I was at a lunch with clients today and sort of expectations on the ocean side for pricing sort of came up. I wonder your thoughts because, you know, obviously we were so high for so long with some exogenous events, I think driving up some of the ocean pricing. What are your expectations as we look into 25?

Well, it's going to be, you know, it's always interesting. It seems, you know, I think near-term prices are going to remain relatively robust due to, you know, people trying to get ahead of potential tariffs as well as some of the Red Sea activities. So I think relatively near-term, I think there's a lot of things that would support prices. You know, capacity will stay relatively tight. Kind of how durable that is after we kind of get kind of past the tariff dynamics and hopefully things settle down in the Red Sea. You know, I don't...

I think short term, yes. Longer term is a TBD.

Okay. Understood. And you brought up tariffs. I mean, is there any feedback from your customers to, was there any pull forward in anticipation of a potential, uh, Trump victory? What should we sort of expect going forward?

Yeah, I think generally speaking, there, there has been a kind of a, a pull forward and, um, We'll see kind of how that plays out over time. But I do think part of what we're seeing, not just us, but just kind of more broadly what we're seeing is people that were hedging their bets a little bit. And again, who knows what part of all of that narrative is posturing versus something that's really going to be put into motion. So we'll try to stay nimble and support our customers as best we can, kind of responding to those which I'm sure will be lively.

Understood. I want to get back to the quarter ending December here coming up. Given your project work, how should we think about EBITDA margins on a sequential basis?

I would...

I expect margins to be down a little bit because of the nature of some of the project work we're doing, but on an absolute basis, our gross margin dollars to be going up.

Okay. So it's more revenue.

That's code for charters.

Fair enough. Fair enough, Bob. Well, listen, I don't want to take up all the questions. Let me turn it over to somebody else here. Appreciate the time, guys.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Your next question is coming from Jeff Kaufman of Vertical Research Partners. Jeff, your line is live.

Thanks. Hey, guys. Congratulations. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Sounds like some exciting opportunities in 4Q. So good luck with that. I had just two questions that Jason didn't ask. Number one, Todd, I think you mentioned a million-dollar litigation gain. Was that in other income? That explains the differential in other income.

Yes, that's exactly what that is.

Correct.

And an add-back in our adjusted EBITDA number, so we backed that out in kind of the numbers as presented.

Yeah, no, listen, some quarters is bad, some quarters is good. That's always nice to see. And then could you help me understand, it looked like there was a big move downward in commissions this quarter relative to kind of the run rate it was at in previous quarters and a small jump in personnel costs. It looked a little too big to be explainable by, okay, well, we've bought in some agencies. I was just wondering, you know, agency commissions seem to be down almost 700 basis points versus, you know, where it was running. So what was going on with the agency commission line?

that i mean that it well obviously it's you know it's a it's a mix of product is a piece of it and the other piece of it is is we bring in you know so not only do we do the conversions right but in addition to that bringing in the other stations that weren't part of our network for instance foundations is an example where you were bringing in the revenue bringing the cost sales and and there's no, you know, there's no commission paid. So that's, those are the big drivers in the reduction in the overall commissioning expense.

And if I remember correctly, and maybe this would also be somewhat helpful to it, you know, in the comparable year ago period, one of our agency stations actually had some significant charters themselves. And so there was some kind of non-recurring project charter type business at the agency level in the year ago period. And that would also explain kind of a part of that reconciliation that you're thinking through.

Okay. No, I just, I know it jumps around a little bit quarter to quarter. I was just trying to reconcile. So the way I would interpret that is if you're doing more charters in 4Q, maybe this is a Gross margin dollars, lower revenue, or I'm sorry, lower margin.

Yeah, lower margin percentage.

Okay. And just one last question, if I can. So in terms of what you see, and I saw the commentary, hey, it's still a tough environment. We're holding in and doing everything we can while we're waiting for the turn. There's been some talk of green shoots in different industry segments or different parts of the supply chain. This past quarter, you know, maybe not enough to move the whole needle, but encouraging nonetheless. Where would you say you're seeing more green shoots, whether it's a geography or a vertical or something like that?

I think we're definitely seeing kind of a tightening of capacity on the West Coast, largely influenced by kind of the ocean import activity that's going on. So I think we're definitely seeing seeing a little bit of capacity tightening, which, you know, hasn't been part of the narrative for several quarters now. The real, I think, the ultimate question, which we don't have a good answer for, is just kind of the durability, you know, whether this is going to be short-lived or whether this will be more sustainable. You know, I'm hopeful that kind of a more, you know, business-friendly tax environment will get you know, corporate America investing and kind of growing again and all that kind of stuff. But it's kind of way too early to, you know, to start to draw conclusions about that. But, you know, if you, if you lean just right, you can, you know, kind of see a path that, you know, hopefully that type of environment.

All right. Well, thanks so much and congratulations.

Thanks.

Thank you, Jeff.

Thank you very much, Jeff. And the next question is coming from Mark Argento of Lake Street Capital. Mark, your line is live.

Hi, good afternoon, guys. Just wanted to follow up. Looks like you made a couple incremental tuck-in acquisitions. You guys have done a handful this year. Looks like you're continuing to that pace. Any kind of incremental thoughts, Bon, about what you're seeing in the marketplace? What are you, you know, These guys are kind of getting to the point where it's just time to back it in or value proposition is high. What's the thing that seems to be tipping these over for you?

I think it's a combination of things. Mark, you've been involved in the story a long time now and kind of this notion of the gray tail or kind of our agency partners as they're getting older and kind of approaching retirement age. Just that whole pipeline is maturing, no pun intended. And so just the frequency is kind of natural. Those conversations are accelerating, and we expect that trend to continue. So we remain actively involved with a number of operating locations, and we're excited to support them when and if they're ready to transact. So that's part of what we're doing. And then kind of the other part, which is, you know, equally exciting is the, you know, we've been pretty disciplined over the years in terms of our own thoughts around valuation and structure. And while we were, while we've always been kind of open for business, the market kind of had moved away from us for a period of time. But the market, generally speaking, has kind of come back to us. So we haven't necessarily changed what we're doing or our approach or our thoughts or our philosophy, but the markets have just kind of come back to us in a way where we can get deals done. And so we're really excited about that, particularly if you think about the fact that we have an unlevered balance sheet. Many of our competitors' balance sheets are actually out of whack and they're kind of a little bit of a penalty box as they're having to kind of recapitalize and do a number of kind of awkward, you know, things to kind of steady themselves. And so, you know, in my mind, we can effectively double our EBITDA within our existing capital structure. And so that's really exciting. And I think it's, you know, at least I think that message is starting to sink in and why we're starting to see, you know, some positive and, you know, hopefully durable, you know, lift in our stock price.

Right. And just to refresh memory in terms of the general structure that you guys have is, you know, some upfront and then an earn out. Maybe just refresh me and the audience on that.

Yeah, yeah. So we would, you know, typically, you know, use an earn-out structure or almost exclusively use earn-outs in terms of our structure where we would, you know, value a business. And again, just for the benefit of the conversation, you know, we typically, you know, most of our transactions have been what I'll characterize as plus or minus $2 million EBITDA-type transactions. And, you know, we believe we can value and structure those in a way that, you know, is a win-win for everybody, and that includes, you know, the use of earn-outs where the sellers continue to have skin in the game for, you know, several years post-closing to ensure that the business continues to perform, and that helps kind of structurally mitigate against overpaying for a business in the case of underperformance.

I appreciate the update. Thanks, guys. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Your next question is coming from Kevin Ganey from Thompson Davis. Kevin, your line is live.

Hi, Vaughn Todd. Good quarter. Maybe I wanted to see if you guys could remind us how you guys reacted with the first or maybe how your customers reacted with the first round of tariffs that came back in the the first phase of that administration and how, what that did to your business and how we might think about what it could do moving forward.

Well, I think we saw, you know, it's, there were a few, a few things going on at the time, right? So, you know, there was a kind of a natural pull forward where people try, you know, well, anytime that these things happen, there will be winners and losers, right? And some, you know, particular product will be subject to tariffs and others might not. So it's not a one-size-fits-all question. First, you have to kind of look at businesses or industry groups that are, you know, the subject of the tariffs to begin with. So that'll be part of the analysis. But for those, you know, affected players, they're going to be trying to construct solutions to mitigate their own exposures to the tariffs. So that may and there's a number of different things that can happen. It can take the form of trying to just beat the clock and kind of get product moved in advance of the effective dates of the tariffs. In other scenarios, it might cause kind of a reconfiguration of the supply chain and cause, you know, raw materials and sub-assembly, you know, workflows to get repositions into different parts of the world to try to navigate those exposures as well and so we try to you know help execute those those strategies you know kind of last time that all this was also happening in the face of uh kind of the huge congestions and kind of post-covet hangover and all that type of stuff so i don't know that what we're going to see next is going to be I'm not sure history is a perfect kind of reflection of what we would expect here because that was such a unique kind of moment in time back when we were kind of dealing with the shutdowns and the tariffs concurrently. But, you know, it's going to create challenges for shippers and we'll be here to help, you know, however we can. And we'll see kind of how long the the pressures remain on the West Coast ports in particular to kind of digest the volumes. And I really haven't heard much of it as of late, but I would expect warehousing capacity to get tight again, right? It loosened up a little bit, and we were kind of going through a little bit of a destocking exercise. But if people are pulling forward, they've got to find some place to put all their stuff, right? So I would see at least near-term kind of warehousing capacity getting precious again.

That makes a lot of sense. Maybe you could also talk a little bit about maybe specific in markets, whether it be retail, consumer, maybe industrial, or something along those lines, what you're hearing from them, especially entering peak season, I guess, for the retailers.

Yeah. I don't, you know, I don't have a lot of color to add on an individual industry vertical. You know, I would, I would say all in all, the market remains pretty darn soft. You know, outside of e-comm and e-comm exposures, you don't hear a lot of, chest-thumping for many of the players out there, ourselves including. We just happen to have, kind of through the portfolio effect I was alluding to earlier, some opportunities to kind of do some and be involved with some really interesting project-type work. But across a lot of, even things like Food and beverage and CPG, which are normally pretty steady, on a comparable basis, even those markets have proved to be soft, at least through our lens.

I appreciate the color.

Todd, I knew the cue would come out. I just wanted to see what you guys had for operating cash flow in the quarter. So I could think about free cash flow, really trying to get the free cash flow.

Yeah, I mean, it's really, I mean, well, you know what I mean? I mean, you know, overall cash flow, I mean, we spent a lot, right, with the acquisitions. You know, that was the biggest driver, you know. So, I mean, the net cash, you know, what did we come in at?

I think cash from operations for the quarter was near breaking.

It was $205,000, you know. And then we had, you know, we had big outflows, of course, with the acquisitions.

Make sense? Appreciate the time, guys. All right. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Well, we appear to have reached the end of our question and answer session. I will now turn the call back over to Bon for closing remarks.

Thank you. Let me close by saying we remain optimistic about our prospects and opportunities to continue to leverage our best-in-class technology, robust North American footprint, and extensive global network of service partners to continue to build on the great platform we've created here at Radian. At the same time, we intend to thoughtfully relever our balance sheet and through a combination of agent station conversions, strategic tuck-in acquisitions, and stock buybacks, continue to create shareholder value. Through this multi-pronged approach, we believe we will continue to bring good value to our shareholders, operating partners, and the end customers that we serve. Thanks for listening and your support of Radiant Logistics.

Thank you very much. This does conclude today's conference call. You may disconnect your phone lines at this time and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.