ArcBest Corporation

Greetings and welcome to the ARCBEST third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, we will conduct a question and answer session. At that time, if you have a question, please press the 1 followed by the 4 on your telephone. If at any time during the conference you need to reach an operator, please press star 0. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded on Friday, October 27, 2023. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. David Humphrey, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you for joining us. Today, we'll provide an update on our business, walk you through the details of our third quarter 2023 results, and then answer some questions. Joining me for the prepared remarks are Judy McReynolds, Chairman, President, and CEO of ArcBest, Matt Beasley, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, Seth Runzer, President, ABF Break, and Stephen Leonard, Chief Commercial Officer and President of AssetLight Logistics. In addition, Dennis Anderson, Chief Strategy Officer, and Christopher Atkins, Vice President, Yield Strategy and Management, are available to answer questions. To help you better understand ArcBest and our results, some forward-looking statements could be made. Forward-looking statements, by their very nature, are subject to uncertainties and risk. For a more complete discussion of factors that could affect ARPBEST's future results, please refer to the forward-looking statement section of our earnings press release and our most recent SEC public filings. To provide meaningful comparisons, certain information discussed in this call includes non-GAAP financial measures as outlined and described in the tables in our earnings press release. Reconciliations of the GAAP financial measures to the related non-GAAP measures discussed in this call are also provided in the additional information section of the presentation slides. There is also a conference call slide deck that could be found on the ARCBEST website, arcb.com, in exhibit 99.3 of the 8K that was filed earlier this morning. Now I will turn the call over to Judy for some opening comments.

Thank you, David, and good morning. Thank you for joining us. We've been celebrating ARCBEST's 100th anniversary this year, an extraordinary milestone, which is a testament to the ARCBEST team and the strength of our customer-focused strategy. We work every day to be trusted advisors to our customers which includes some of the world's largest and most recognizable brands. With ArcVest's full suite of shipping and logistics solutions, our work is critical to our customers' businesses, and we don't take that lightly. We constantly work to see the world through their eyes and look ahead to help them anticipate and respond to market changes and disruptions. In fact, we view our close, collaborative, and highly strategic customer relationships as an important competitive differentiator. While the overall logistics market remained soft in the third quarter, we benefited from our ability to help customers navigate market disruption. In this time of increased uncertainty, I saw the strength of our strategy firsthand as we provided integrated solutions which our customers relied on to ensure their goods continued moving through the global supply chain. We reacted with agility, and I'm encouraged by the conversations we've had with customers. They reiterated that our flexible capacity and logistics expertise has met and exceeded their needs. We significantly improved our published shipment levels and pricing in our asset-based business on a sequential basis, and our managed transportation solution in our asset-light business saw shipment count levels reach an all-time high. Our relationships with our customers and commitment to innovation have been key drivers in our revenue more than tripling and profitability significantly improving over the last decade. And we're not done. We continue to invest in facilities, technology, and innovation and our team. These key areas will accelerate growth and unlock additional value moving forward. First, we have a strong footprint of facilities today, which allows us to service our customers efficiently. We continue to invest in further expansion and see the opportunity to accelerate our facility plan in the current LTL real estate environment. Second, our deep commitment to technology and innovation has enabled us to transform our company, and we continue to pursue a robust set of initiatives. For example, earlier this year, we deployed a generative AI tool to support an internal team that performs quality audits of our customer service interactions. This team removes friction points and improves hundreds of processes every year, and this new tool quickly provides key insights to further advance these efforts. In addition, our ABF city route optimization project has leveraged AI to reduce mileage and decrease fuel consumption, which supports a more sustainable future. Looking ahead, we will continue developing and investing in solutions to support best in class service to our customers and drive business efficiencies. Lastly, our values driven culture is deeply rooted in creativity, integrity, collaboration, growth, excellence, and wellness. We are committed to investing in our people and living out our core values every day. Before I hand the call over to Matt, I'd like to offer a few observations about what we're seeing in each of our business segments. In our asset-based segment, the current LTL market dynamics are contributing to improved trends. Our team continues to respond nimbly to evolving market dynamics in real time, pivoting quickly to fill our network in the most profitable way. In our asset-light business, while we are growing customers and shipment volumes, we are not immune to market conditions and continue to work to find efficiencies. We have managed down costs, and our team has done a great job of growing our customer base and shipment count. Our ability to help customers navigate market disruption over the past few months has demonstrated the strength of our highly experienced team and our broad suite of integrated logistics solutions. We were there for our customers to help them think holistically about their supply chains while providing a service offering not available from pure play operators. and we continue to see opportunities to expand our relationships with existing customers. And now I'll turn it over to Matt to take you through the quarter in greater detail.