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 zero. 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 Invest 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 presentation are Matt Beasley, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, Seth Runzer, President of ABF Break, and Stephen Leonard, Chief Commercial Officer and President of Asset Light 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 ARCBEST's future results, please refer to the forward-looking statements 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 include some of the world's most recognizable brands. With ARCBEST'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 LPL 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 LPL 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.

Thank you, Judy, and good morning, everyone. I'll provide an overview of the quarter and an update on our balance sheet and capital deployment plans. Consolidated revenue from continuing operations was $1.1 billion for the quarter, down 9% year over year. On a non-GAP basis, consolidated operating income was $75 million, down 43%, and adjusted third quarter earnings per diluted share was $2.31. While our consolidated results reflect a softer overall market than last year, we have benefited by having the right capacity options and expertise to serve customers during this period of market disruption and have also seen results from our cost savings and efficiency initiatives. In the asset-based business, revenue was $741 million, down 4% year over year on a daily basis, and non-GAP operating income was $83 million. Overall, pricing remains rational and has been strengthened by recent market events. For asset-based customer contract renewals and deferred pricing agreements negotiated during the third quarter, we secured a 4% average increase. The benefit of our cost and efficiency efforts in this segment included a reduction in purchase transportation, cartage, and equipment rental costs. The third quarter non-GAP asset-based operating ratio of .8% reflects a sequential improvement of 400 basis points compared to second quarter, which is particularly noteworthy because our new labor agreement added approximately 350 basis points of cost relative to second quarter. Excluding that increase, our sequential operating ratio improvement was approximately 750 basis points. That impressive result did not happen by accident, and I'm proud of the way our team came together over the last few months to serve our customers during a time of market disruption while remaining focused on cost and efficiency. I'm also pleased to report that we have carried this momentum into the fourth quarter. Excluding periods impacted by the pandemic, the average sequential change in ARCBEST's asset-based operating ratio from the third quarter to the fourth quarter during the prior 10 years has been an increase of 100 to 300 basis points. Despite this historical trend, after considering the impacts of the market disruption, recent commercial successes, a general rate increase, and cost reduction efforts, the asset-based operating ratio is expected to modestly decrease from third quarter 2023 to fourth quarter 2023. Transitioning to asset light, third quarter daily revenue decreased 17% year over year. This was primarily due to lower revenue per shipment. The segment had a non-GAAP operating loss for the quarter of $4 million. We provided preliminary asset light business trends for October 2023 in the Form 8K exhibit to the press release filed this morning, and operating statistics in that business continue to reflect a softer market compared to last year. Net capital expenditures totaled $155 million for the first nine months of the year, and we currently expect net capital expenditures in the range of $270 million to $285 million for the full year, which is slightly lower than our previous estimate last quarter. Our Class 8 tractor orders remain in place, and we currently expect to receive all ordered road tractors by the end of the year. ARCBEST's cash balance and total liquidity remain strong levels. As of the end of the third quarter, we had a net cash balance of $98 million, an improvement of $36 million since the end of last year. Total liquidity stands at approximately $581 million, and despite rising rates, the composite interest rate on ARCBEST's outstanding debt at the end of the recent quarter was 3.3%. Our solid financial position and strong balance sheet position us well for the future. Our capital allocation strategy includes organic capital investment and new equipment purchases, real estate additions and upgrades, and technology investments, which will enable us to continue serving our customers with excellence now and into the future. We are monitoring the market for external growth opportunities to enhance our business, and we are returning capital to shareholders while targeting investment grade credit metrics. So far this year through yesterday, our settled share repurchases and dividends paid have returned approximately $86 million of capital to shareholders. Based on those share repurchases, approximately $48 million remains available under the current repurchase authorization for future common stock purchases. In conclusion, I'm excited about our future. We are helping guide our customers through the current market with a century of experience under our belt. Our proven ability to excel across different cycles is a testament to our resilience and our strategy, and our robust balance sheet stands out, especially when customers are in search of stability in uncertain times. Now I'll turn the call over to Seth to discuss our asset-based business.

Good morning. I am pleased to report ABF grew daily shipments during the quarter over 1% year over year while aggressively managing costs and focusing on efficiency without limiting growth. With a large amount of capacity leaving the market, customers came to us to keep their freight moving. This helped in achieving a more optimal mix of freight in our network, which improved profitability. In short, we've been able to reduce costs while improving service. As Matt said, we have reduced costs in purchase transportation, cartage, and rental equipment, and we continue to enhance dashboards for our leaders, which provides real-time visibility to business and productivity levels. This enables our team to quickly and effectively take action to ensure we're using our resources in the most effective manner. As we enter our 101st year, we continue to transform ABF through innovation, investment, and an intense focus on quality. For the past two years, we've been working to improve some foundational systems and processes. We've completed over a dozen initiatives to improve our operation, and we have many more in progress. You can see the results of these efforts and the sequential improvement in our operating ratio, but our continuous improvement in our business journey is ongoing. We are a high-quality carrier, and that means our product must be high-quality. I'm pleased with our progress, but we still have more work to do. In closing, I want to highlight our approach to managing our shipping levels and optimizing our network. Our long history of using data to make decisions and the sheer amount of data we have enabled us to optimize our business daily. And our levers of using dynamic pricing and QPAC to fill empty capacity are key strategic differentiators. I'm grateful for the collaboration between our teams in the third quarter, where we quickly adapted to the market to increase our mix of core business. Through our facility investments, we have added over $200 this year and plan to add more than $500 additional between now and the first quarter of 2025. Our focus remains on service, efficiency, and profitable growth, and we're not slowing down. Now I'll turn the call over to Stephen.

Thanks, Seth, and good morning, everyone. In the asset-like business, truckload margin to remain soft, but we grew shipments despite weak demand and even achieved record shipment levels for our managed transportation businesses. We helped customers navigate market disruption, which is a testament to the strength of our solutions and deep customer relationships. As Matt mentioned, we've been aggressively managing costs and continue to look for ways to further align costs with business levels and improve efficiency. While market disruptions continue, our breadth of integrated solutions positions us well to serve customers. Using our managed transportation solution, we were able to help shippers who were impacted by the reduction in LTO capacity. We partnered with them to understand their supply chain needs and help them avoid the capacity constraints others may have experienced. We offer creative solutions using multiple modes to keep our customers' supply chains moving, resulting in a better outcome for our customer. And as customers have seen significant disruptions in the market, our stability and financial strength are differentiators. Customers need a partner they can count on, and we are well positioned to meet their needs. Now back to Judy for some final thoughts.

Thank you, Stephen. Our success has been deeply tied to the ongoing pursuit of our mission to connect and positively impact the world through solving logistics challenges. We live this mission to the fullest this quarter as we navigated and successfully responded to industry disruptions. We are well positioned to understand and address customer needs with powerful capabilities and the deep expertise of a trusted team. As we look to the future, we are confident that this strong position and a keen focus on our three strategic pillars of growth, efficiency, and innovation will enable us to accelerate from here. This concludes our prepared remarks and we'll now open the call up for questions.

Okay, Frank, I think we're ready for some questions.

Thank you. If you would like to register a question, please press the 1-4 on your telephone. You will hear a three tone prompt to acknowledge your request. If your question has been answered and you would like to withdraw your registration, please press the 1 followed by the 3. One moment please for the first question.

Our first question comes from Ravi Shankar with

Morgan Stanley. Please proceed.

Thanks very much. Good morning, everybody. So when everybody in the space is looking at the volume and revenue opportunities, you guys crush it on costs, which was truly remarkable to see. Can you just unpack that a little bit more? Was this just operating leverage from getting more density with more volumes coming into the network? Were these explicit cost actions that were in the pipeline for a while? Are there more to come? I think the number one question, people's minds this morning is how sustainable is this? So I would love to get there,

please. Well, yeah, thanks for the question, Ravi. And it's a good one. We saw the opportunity to better address our costs as we were adding people over the years of 2022 and 2021 and making sure that we had them to have proficient productivity levels and a good experience and that sort of thing. And we've always in the past used variable costs such as purchase transportation, cartage and rent equipment to help facilitate our growth needs. But as we were finalizing our labor deal, looking at the proficiency level of our people and just the drop of the economy and the opportunity set, we saw a better answer and really got focused on reducing some of those variable costs and making sure that we had the right business mix as we were going into the third quarter.

Great. And so is this considered to be like a one-time reset or do you think there's kind of more to come in the pipeline?

Well, you know, what I think is we're always adjusting and we're wanting to make sure that we have the right resources serving the best business mix. And I think that the asset-based team does a great job of that along with working with our sales opportunities and our yield managers. We really see this as an ongoing effort to make sure that our resources that we're deploying are the most efficient and effective while also just having a keen focus on serving our customers well.

Great. Thanks, Judy. Our next question comes from

Jason Seidel with TD Cowan. Please proceed.

Thank you, operator. Judy and team, good morning. Appreciate the time. Good morning. I wanted to ask a quick question on some of the October trends. Did you guys see any benefit from the cyber attack at SDEs? And then if I look at cost real quickly, if you exclude labor, are you guys starting to see a little bit of a deterioration in sort of the inflationary cost environment?

Hey, Jason, this is Christopher Atkins. I'll kind of report on the cyber event as it relates to our business. We did see an influx of some of that business the first couple weeks of October, and largely that was from customers, existing customers of ADF, that we were able to help them during that time of disruption. Since then, that has largely gone back to the carrier that was handling that previously, but we're still, even apart from that, seeing substantial growth in our core business. As we've talked about, that business is still up 20% in October, in compared to June of 23.

Okay, that's good color. And on the cost side?

I would say on the cost side, this is Seth. I would say on the cost side, we're starting to see some things normalize, but there's other areas, like trailers, for example, where the cost is still inflated versus historical averages, but we are seeing some things start to normalize quite a bit on the cost side.

Yeah, I would, one, you know, just recent conversation that I've been in, I think the insurance market, they're pretty hardened right now. And so, you know, we're working through the answer there, but that's going to be one that we're watching just to highlight it.

Sounds good. Appreciate the time, as always, guys. Yes, thanks. Our next question comes from Ken

Hexter

with

B of A. Please proceed.

Hey, great. Good morning. So, just two questions. Shipments were up 4% year over year in October. Thoughts on your capacity availability now? You know, how much can you handle the growth you talked about, adding 500 doors, but between now and 25? And then I guess on the financial side, to Ravi's question, what change from targeting flat OR to up 400 basis points? I mean, you gave mid-quarter updates. I'm just wondering, you know, on that cost side to the permanency question he's asking, you know, what changed from your point of view aside from yellow bankruptcy, which you knew by that point, just to see the sustainability of those costs? Thanks.

Yeah. Hey, morning, Kim. This is Matt. So maybe I'll start with your last part of your question, then I'll turn it over to to cover the first part. You know, certainly, we saw continued momentum through the quarter. And so you could see that and how we talked about it. So when we were talking on the call in July, you know, we were talking about being able to target a flat OR, you know, even after the impacts of the new contract. Then we roll forward to the update that we provided in August. And, you know, that's when we're really starting to see the impact of the cost and efficiency measures that we had put in place. Certainly, the market impacts are really starting to be felt. And so, you know, at that point in time, we were saying that we thought we could not only overcome those increased costs, but actually should be able to show some modest improvement in the OR. And certainly, that momentum just continued to carry into September. And so, that's ultimately what resulted in the ability to be able to improve it by 400 basis points sequentially. And then I'd say, you know, that kind of progression really spells out and plus in conjunction with the GRI that was put in early in October for us to continue that momentum into the fourth quarter, which is why we said that we think we can see potentially decrease sequentially into the fourth quarter as well. And then I'll turn it over to Seth to cover the first part.

Yeah. So, when I think about excess capacity in the market, it really comes down to four different things. The first is people. And we feel pretty good that we're properly staffed for our current business levels. And we continue to replace attrition in strategic locations. We have a good line of sight on our growth pipeline. So, and we feel like we can bring on labor much easier and quicker than we did throughout the pandemic, which is a good thing. So, pretty good about people. On the equipment front, we continue to invest in the fleet like we have for many years. We have one of the newest fleets on the road. Our fleet's slightly bigger and we're working on getting some of those higher cost units out now, but we could pivot for growth. But I really don't see any concerns on equipment capacity for growth. The third is real estate. We've been working on our long-term real estate plan for the past two or three years. You need to be positioned well ahead of the cycle from a real estate perspective. And we have a mature network. And we believe we're positioned well in those key markets. This year alone, we've opened up a new facility in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania. We expanded our San Antonio site. We moved into a new Phoenix facility. So, we're doing a lot of things on the real estate front. So, we feel good about where we are there as well. And we got more coming next year as well. And then the fourth really is productivity. So, the more productive you are, the more freight you can handle for the same cost. So, in my opening comments, I talked about the transformation at ABF and how we're really focused on technology and optimization to ensure that we're as efficient as possible. So, we've completed a lot of initiatives, but we have a lot more still to do. So, with all that said, the investments in network visibility and our optimization tool set, we have capacity for growth and we can flex that up or down based on what the markets do and what opportunities we see in front of us.

Great. If I could squeeze in a follow-up to that, just the tech investors, real quick, the tech investments are still broken out as one-timers. It seems like those are continuous and ongoing. Should that just be part of ongoing business at some point?

Well, Ken, I think we spoke to that in the 8K with respect to ABF. And so, what we're seeing there is, as we've moved the back to conventional operation in Kansas City and in Salt Lake City, and we've previously done that in Indianapolis, you will, as you go forward, it will be all in regular operations because we're no longer piloting in those other areas. We do continue to have our innovations costs broken out and continue that same treatment where we're piloting for new customers with Vox. We're doing some things there that are very new and innovative and with our customers just gaining some momentum in pilot-type environments. And so, we're continuing that cost, but at the same time, we're really excited about the prospects for a new revenue stream from that business. And look forward to telling you more about that as we enter into 2024.

Thanks for the time. Appreciate the thoughts. Thanks. Our next question comes from Scott Group

with Wolf Research. Please proceed.

Hey, thanks. Good morning. So, I want to just ask on the morning, I just want to ask on the OR commentary around Q4. So, back to Ken's point. So, you said modest improvement in Q3. You ended up with 400 basis points of improvement. You're saying modest again. What's the right range to be thinking about when you talk about modest sequential improvement? I just want to see if you have a finer point around that.

Yeah. So, yeah. Thanks, Scott. You know, I would say, we were very pleased with the performance in the third quarter. Like I mentioned, we're carrying that momentum into the fourth. We didn't really guide to a specific range, but as I say, we think about modest now. We probably think of it in the context of maybe a 100, potentially up to 200 basis point improvement, something in that range.

Okay. Very helpful. And then when I, the pricing renewals improved from 3% to 4%. You know, I think we're all trying to figure out like, how big of a deal is this yellow bankruptcy? How much is the market really changing? Does 4% feel like that's the right number? Is that a number that you'd expect to accelerate further as you get into Q4 and 2024? What's the pricing strategy right now?

Sure. Hey, Scott. This is so, you know, really from the third quarter benefit from the disruption was really a mixed impact of handling, improving the mix of getting more core business, which tends to be more profitable business for us. And it's more profitable for many reasons. Price is one of those, but also productivity and efficiency, there's improvement or opportunities there for us to do to handle that efficiently. You know, in the 4%, really we think our core business is at a really good place. And we want to maintain that long-term and we want to be offering fair prices to our customers for the service that we're providing. So, you know, we're really trying to overcome inflation through pricing and for efficiency gains. So I don't know that you'll necessarily see acceleration there in our core business, but we are always optimizing the mix to get the right mix to get the best income results.

Okay. Thank you guys. Appreciate the time. Thanks, Scott. Our next question comes from

Jack Atkins

with

Stevens. Please proceed.

Okay, great. Good morning and thank you for taking my questions. So I guess I just would like to maybe double-click a little bit on some of the actions in the third quarter. And it's very encouraging to see it flowing through to the bottom line. But I guess when you think about the improvements that you saw specifically on the purchase transportation side, Judy, both expenses, excuse me, rents and PT, you know, were improved pretty significantly sequentially. Can you maybe give us a couple of specific examples of actions you took there to improve those costs?

Sure. I'm going to let Seth answer that question.

Yeah. Okay. I would say on the city-carded side, you know, that's where our drivers are going out and delivering freight every day, pick up and delivery type drivers. Christopher mentioned that shift and mix, and that more consistent published core business gave us greater productivity. But I'll also point to some of the technology that we've used, which is city route optimization, which Judy mentioned in her opening comments. We've seen a pretty material return from that using AI, machine learning, a lot of our internal tech to optimize those drivers going out full and also coming back full. And we still have two more phases of that coming. So really, when you think about cartage, the more productive you are, the more you can reduce that external cost. And that's going to provide a better service to our customers by getting an ABF driver delivering and picking up their freight. So we expect that to continue as we move through the fourth quarter and into the future, because we know it's a better option on cost. As far as, you know, just PT over the road, we have a lot of our own drivers where we were able to swap that. But when we look at the mix of business that we were handling and that shift in core, that really changed some of the lanes that was moving. So we were able to optimize the way our road drivers move as well with some of those network visibility tools that I mentioned. So we expect those cost actions to continue throughout the fourth quarter, just as how we continue to transform, you know, the way we operate.

Okay, that's really encouraging to see. And I guess maybe shifting gears and asking about the asset light segment for a moment. You know, I know there have been a lot of changes there over the last couple of years through the acquisition of Molo, but, you know, I think the fact that you guys are, you know, generating an operating loss there, I would imagine that probably continues into the fourth quarter. I mean, you know, at what point do we start seeing some more, you know, cost out taking place there in an effort to flex down the cost structure? You know, typically you think about these asset light businesses as having a pretty variable cost structure. And I'm just sort of curious, you know, should we see, are there options to maybe take some additional costs out there, just given how challenging the business backdrop is?

Yeah, you know, for us on asset light, I mean, you know, what we're seeing right now is, you know, customers are really, you know, seeing what we do in the asset light space is bringing a lot of value to their supply chain. And, you know, the market is such that, you know, prices are down, obviously. And so we're not immune to that. But at the same time, we want to keep a structure in place that allows us to capitalize when the market turns. So, you know, our view on that is we're just trying to strike the right balance. We obviously look for ways to improve efficiency and at times, you know, reduce costs. But at the same time, we want to be balanced in what we do there so that we can be responsive, you know, when the market improves. And so that's how we think about it. And we'll continue to manage it that way as we go into the, you know, the rest of the quarter and then into next year. Okay, thank you for that.

I think the customer side of that is just that truckload is a very sought after solution, you know, by our customers and it just works well within our integrated solution set. And so, you know, we want to stay well positioned, as Stephen said.

Thank you. Thanks. Thanks, Jack. Our next question comes from Chris Weatherby with Citigroup.

Please proceed.

Hey, thanks. Good morning, guys. I wanted to ask quickly on sort of the approach to pricing. So I guess prior to the yellow bankruptcy, there was a little bit more work being done in the transactional part of the business. And I guess I'm curious, as you think about the path forward, how much transactional activity is going to occur relative to your sort of core book of contractual business? So we've seen shipments come down. It seems like there's a mixed profile change that's occurring, but at the same time, the transactional market probably has improved quite a bit sequentially. So just want to get a sense of how you think about that approach going forward.

Sure, Chris. This is Christopher. So I would say it largely depends. So it depends on our network, where our capacity is, where investments have been made. It depends on the market prices. It depends on the competitive landscape. All those factors play into that decision-making process. And the good thing is we're making a decision on a daily basis. And so our operations, sales and yield teams are coordinating daily, regularly communicating to figure out what is the optimal mix in our network. And that changes day to day. And we're prepared and agile to respond to the needs of the customer.

Okay. So I guess it's fair to suggest that if we see, you know, if there were softness in the market last, you know, we saw in the first half of the year that maybe you'd have a slightly different approach to the way that you try to manage it. I think there was a desire to sort of add some volume in a pretty challenging market. Would that still be the approach that you think about or it would be more price dependent this time around?

Yeah, so I think it all depends, you know, like I said, on the marketplace. But I'd say, for the third quarter, like Seth has already talked about, we did reduce a lot of those variable costs with cartage, rental and different variable costs that we've done. So we will continuously monitor that and make sure that that transactional business is covering any additional variable costs that we're bringing on.

That's helpful. And just one quick follow up on the cost side. Just how do you think about headcount going forward? Do you guys have sort of what you need? Do you think that there's potential efficiencies here or just your general comments about headcount going forward would be great?

Yeah, I would say we continue to hire in strategic markets where we see growth opportunities as we want to provide great service to our customers. When you look at our turnover and attrition stats, they're some of the lowest in the industry. So that's a great thing. Our people stay around for a long time, which is great for our customers and our people. But this is really a location by location decision that we make based on the opportunities that we see in front of us. So throughout the pandemic, the last two and a half years, it was more challenging to bring in labor. But we've seen that soften quite a bit. So we have a good pipeline of labor that we kind of have sitting on the sidelines. So we're positioned and ready to go. But we're constantly looking at daily, almost like Christopher talked about with our mixed decisions and business that we bring in. So with those network visibility tools I talked about earlier, we know where we need labor and we know six months in advance where we need labor. So that gives us a lot of tools to say, let's make a decision now for what we see coming in the future. And that's that's different from what we've had in the past.

Great. Thanks very much. Appreciate it. Our next question comes from Tom with UBS.

Please proceed.

Yeah, good morning. I wanted to see if you could offer some thoughts on just kind of underlying freight trends. I think both on the LTL side and then also it seems like in the asset light business, you're seeing a bit of further deterioration in volume in October. And so I don't know if you think that's just market getting weaker or if that's a function of any change in approach. So yes, some thoughts on market trends. Thank you.

Yeah, hey, Tom, good morning. So, I mean, I'd say that the overall backdrop is one that we've seen the manufacturing sector, it's been in decline. We've seen that decline, I guess, less than a little bit in the latest report. We feel like that the stocking cycle is coming to an end. And so, you know, you still see a little bit of that softness. And so I'd say, you know, we see the potential for that to become a catalyst. Certainly, we've had very specific market catalyst in the LTL space as it relates to capacity that had been a tailwind there. But, you know, I think if we move forward, we see some recovery in the manufacturing sector, we see a move towards restocking. Then, you know, those could be additional tailwinds just more broadly across the business.

What about on the asset light side and in truckload? It seems like that's the trend and that's been seems to be getting a little bit worse looking at the October shipments.

Yeah, I mean, Stephen can talk to it a little bit more. I'd say overall, we've been seeing increases in market share and increases in shipments, but we certainly remain focused on profitability. Maybe Stephen can talk about, you know, what that's looking like in October.

Yeah, some of that is just a, you know, a function of us making sure that we're disciplined around price and that we're getting value for the services we provide. But there's still tremendous opportunity there. We're seeing lots of opportunities. We're just being careful about, you know, how we think about bringing on new business. And, you know, so that's reflected a little bit in what we're seeing in October, but still see lots of opportunity for growth. And that's what we're focused on.

Right. Okay. And just one quick follow up on price. I think, you know, how long does it take you to kind of get through the book? Such that the stronger pricing environment would be fully reflected. It seems like you're showing a little bit of further momentum on price in October. I know you got the GRI, but how do you think about kind of the timing where that, you know, we might see further acceleration in price in the asset, you know, in the LTL business?

Sure. So the way I think about it, Tom, this Christopher is that, you know, a large portion of our business that is in the core business is subject to our annual contract negotiations. So as you think about that, those agreements are typically good for one year for 12 months. So we'll work through around a quarter of that business each quarter, if that makes sense.

So you potentially could continue to see accelerating price for a couple more quarters.

Sure. Yeah, I think that's fair. Prices will always be increasing as our costs go up, the cost of doing business goes up. So, yeah, I would expect that to continue.

Okay. Thanks for the time. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Jordan Allager with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed.

Hi, morning. I was wondering if you could discuss, morning, that sort of freight redistribution. What I mean is, do you think you could see some additional share opportunities in the quarters ahead, perhaps? I mean, I think that's a good question. You know, some of your peers or competitors out there maybe took on too much, perhaps struggling with service. I mean, does that pose opportunity for you?

Thanks. Sure. Yeah, I think that definitely does pose an opportunity. I don't know that I'm seeing a big issue with service in the marketplace necessarily. I think the freight has landed with the carriers that it will immediately fall into disruption. Now shippers and carriers are working through each of those deals to make sure the carriers are making sure that that business fits in their network well and it's priced appropriately and the shippers are making sure that they're getting the service and the price that makes sense for their business. But I think that's a case by case basis that shippers and carriers will continue to work through, make sure that they have the right relationships. Yeah, we're also seeing there's an interest in diversifying the carrier portfolio of shippers, which I think positions us really well with our managed solutions that we're not just an asset based player. If they have issues with sole sourcing with one carrier, that leads really well into our managed solutions hands.

Okay, and then just a follow up just on like freight characteristics mix. Obviously, weight per shipment right now is impacted by certain factors as you transition your business to this core LTL. Can you maybe talk a little bit about weight per shipment trends as you look ahead into next year? Does that start to normalize or rebalance? Thanks.

Yeah, so that's a good question. I do think that there are just some dynamics like Christopher said on the dynamic side, we definitely target freight based on certain characteristics and how it works best from a profitability standpoint. So, you know, there has been a little bit of an impact on the way just as we transition a little bit in our mix. And then there's probably just a little bit of a broader, you know, macro backdrop, you know, as again, there's been a little bit of weakening in manufacturing and we've been going through the stocking that probably contributes just broadly to some overall declines on weight. You know, Christopher, I don't know if there'd be anything else that you'd add on those drivers. Yeah, and that dynamic

business we've talked about tends to be larger, heavier freight and says your mix changes that transition from the heavier stuff to the lighter core stuff will have an impact on our weight per shipment pulling it down.

Thank you. Thanks, Jordan. Our next question comes from Jeff Kaufman with Vertical

Research Partners. Please

proceed. Thank you very much and congratulations on a very solid quarter. A couple questions, just one clarification on the Tom Wadowitz question. I think what Tom was going after was, you know, the trend in July, August, September in the asset light business was shipments per day up about three to 4% and then suddenly in October that drops to down six. And the answer was, oh, we'll be stockings ending so things are getting better, but it doesn't seem to explain that big drop from September to October. So I guess I was just wondering, because that surprised me a little bit. Is this a function of the restructuring that you were doing on the asset light side? So this is really our go forward rate. Is October a bit of an anomaly and we probably shouldn't read that way on fourth quarter or was there a material step down in the asset light market that caused October to be what it was?

Well, I mean, again, you know, for us, I don't know that I would read too much into it in terms of, you know, maybe where we're headed in future quarters. We, you know, we still see a tremendous opportunity. We're connecting well with customers. The service resonates well. And so we're we're we see opportunities to continue to grow. But at the same time, you know, we're we feel like we're at the near the bottom or at the bottom of the kind of pricing market. And so, you know, we're being careful about what we're doing in bids and that type of thing. And I think, you know, you could see that kind of show up in October. But, you know, we we feel like that's going to turn. It's going to come back and we'll be in a better, you know, in a better opportunity to grow and add volume. So I don't see that as a trend that that will continue. But, you know, we've got to we've got to work within the given market. And so that's that's kind of how we're thinking about it going forward. We've also, you know, continue to see growth in the other areas and asset light. You know, we're seeing, you know, managed and some of our other services, you know, we're starting to add more volume at a higher rate. So there's there's some good things going on across asset light. But again, for me, I want to make sure that we were just making good decisions about price and how we think about the business that we're bringing on. And you can see a little bit of that in October.

One thing to take note of is the managed part of that that you're talking about. We don't reflect that in the shipment count that's disclosed. And there is momentum. There is momentum there. And we reference it. We do that just for clarity around the shipment level. So primarily what you're seeing when you see that statistic is truckload and to some extent the expedite trends, which, you know, right now are very challenging. And, you know, the point that I think Stephen's making is that we're a little bit more focused on making sure that these customers that we're doing business with over the little bit longer term here are right for us. We're right for them. And, you know, there's value in the relationship. And, you know, that doesn't speak to the opportunity being less at all because we have robust opportunities across all of our solutions. And we're excited about that.

Judy, thank you. And that gives me a lot more clarity. So appreciate that. Just one follow up on asset light and one quick question on asset based. So the OR, as we measure it, and I know we can argue whether that's the best way to look at this or not, is down about 450-ish basis points year on year. And about 300 of that is explained with the purchase transportation going from 84 to 87% of revenue. You know, what's causing that other 150 basis points? Because as much as asset based was a great positive surprise in the quarter, I think asset light was a bit of a disappointment. Is it because expedited's down and you do have overhead costs associated with that? What would explain that 150-ish basis point decline not related to purchase transportation?

Well, you know, I mean, I think that what we're doing is, as Stephen said, just continuing to have investments in people and resources to serve that growth opportunity. And I think just, you know, as you look at the overall result, you see that. Now, I'll say this. We've addressed that to some extent with some of the facility decisions that we've made and you see the impact of those. And we're continuing to look for other ways, you know, to be more efficient. One thing we haven't talked about yet on this call is just a focus on the small and medium sized business segment. We see a real opportunity there for both growth and improved margins in asset light. And we're working on that. That'll be an impact in 2024, perhaps in the second half of it, but, you know, something that's in our line of sight.

Okay, thank you. And then last follow up. I know you were talking about the 500 doors by 2025 and, you know, there's a big real estate opportunity with some of these yellow properties that are coming to market. As we're thinking about capital spending for 2024, I know you mentioned that there was, I think it was 60 million a catch up from 22 that was in this year's number. Could we probably see a little more spent on real estate as opposed to operating equipment in 24? And I know you haven't come out with the 24 capex, but as we're thinking about modeling, could we see kind of a pullback to the mid 200s normally, but maybe something closer to this year if we add in real estate potential for next year?

Yeah, so, you know, Jeff, certainly, you know, I think there will be over the coming months, you know, opportunities on the real estate side in the space. You know, I'd say just generally our 2024 plan and thoughts on capital are still coming together and probably too early to give an overall picture of that at this point.

Okay, thank you very much and

congratulations. Thank you, Jeff. Appreciate that. Our next question comes from Stephanie Moore with Jeffries. Please proceed.

Hi, good morning and congrats on the good quarter. Thank

you.

You're welcome. So, I think, you know, I think you guys do a really good job of kind of managing your shipments throughout the cycle. You know, you obviously talk a lot about the usage of dynamic, LTL freight. Can you talk maybe about what you're thinking regarding a normalized shipments per day? And then do you think if you do you think three Q represents kind of an optimal mix for you guys or do you think there's more to do here? Given the disruption of the market.

Yes, this is Chris. I'll start. I think I'll reference the maybe near term. I think that that's some longer term plans. He could speak to but on the on the near term right now we're targeting around 20,500 shipments per day on a daily basis. But that varies like again day to day, week to week based on the opportunities that are in our pipeline and what the current capacity situation is

that

did you want to speak to the long term?

Yeah, I would just say we're constantly trying to optimize our mix, but also lead potential for growth. So we're open to that growth. And we're investing in that growth. When you think about the people, the facilities we talked about the efficiency measures that we've taken. That's really all the position us for long term growth. So we feel like we'll continue to do that as long as the opportunities are there and profitable for us.

Got it. And maybe just as a follow up and kind of taking a step back here, it does seem that this quarter demonstrates you guys really kind of firing all cylinders, whether it's the mix, you have the pricing coming in. You noted. Obviously you already have this mature terminal network and then kind of the last point we clearly can see is a lot of these productivity actions are kind of coming through very nicely. While I think we all can agree to fill a pretty weak freight environment. So all those things considered, do you think you can deliver kind of a sustainable eight handle OR going forward just based on all these factors?

Yeah, I mean, Stephanie, I think that's certainly what we're we're targeting. I think one of the things that's interesting about this environment is that if you look at the underlying macro weakness, you can compare it back to some pretty rough periods. You know, you hear comparisons back to nine, maybe even in the spring of 2020. And, you know, we can see that through some of the other solutions as well as the asset based solution. But they unique and really helpful opportunity that we have is to address this disruption with our customers that resulted from the yellow bankruptcy and other things that have gone on in the marketplace. And, you know, so I feel like that it's it's not only dealing with the, you know, the macro weakness, but seizing, you know, on an opportunity to help our customers navigate this disruption. And we've highlighted in some of our prepared comments, but I really want to highlight this for you is just the ability to say yes to a customer. And it might be business that runs through the asset based network, but it could also be, you know, a better fit for managed that runs with, you know, other LTO carrier partners or truckload optimization work that we're doing. And it's just a good model in a period of disruption, which seems to be happening a lot more often. So if we navigate all of that, well, we're in the 80s, you know, in an environment like that, we know we have a lot of. Other innovations and tech opportunities for improvement. You know, I'm excited about our future and we're very focused on on getting even better. And, you know, I just want you to to hopefully see that with the execution of our team in this quarter.

Got it. Yep, absolutely crystal clear. Thank you.

Frank, I think we've got time for one more question.

Our next question comes from Bruce Chan with Steve, please proceed.

Hey, good morning team. This is Andrew Cox on for Bruce. Thanks for taking my questions.

We just wanted to want.

Hey, guys wanted to ask about how you guys are thinking about the portfolio of businesses and services. What, what still might be missing from the, from the portfolio and where do you guys see opportunities to add services or press? And should we expect the current revenue mix between asset and asset light to hold for the next few years? Are you expecting some sort of change? Thank you.

Andrew, this is Dennis. Yeah, great question. You know, we really like the mix of capabilities that we have right now. I mean, I think we've talked in previous quarters about. And talked on this call about our managed business and really leaning into that. We expect growth out of truckload and certainly growth out of asset base as well. So we like the mix that we bring to customers today and certainly, you know, investments in those areas are where we're focused. And then, you know, your other question about how we should expect the mix to evolve over time. You know, we expect that mix really over a long period of time to look more like our customers spend. And so when you think about the size of these markets and how customers spend on freight and transportation, we expect that, you know, we're going to continue to grow the mix toward that asset light business. Even as asset base grows. So that's what I would say about, you know, happy about the capability set we have. And then, you know, we expect on a long trajectory really start looking more and more like the market spend.

All right. Thank you guys. Congrats again.

Thank you. Okay, well, thank you. I think this concludes our call. We appreciate you joining us. Thank you very much.

That does conclude the conference call for today. We thank you for your participation and ask that you please disconnect your line. Have a great day. Everyone.