Daseke, Inc.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss Daske's financial results for the fourth quarter and year-end at December 31, 2020. With us today are Jonathan Shipko, Interim CEO and Board Member, Jason Bates, EVP and CFO, and John Michel, VP of Treasury and Investor Relations. After their prepared remarks, the management team will take your question. As a reminder, you may now download a PDF of the presentation slides that will accompany the remarks made on today's conference call as indicated in the press release we issued earlier today. You may access the slides in the investor relations session of our website. Before we go further, I would like to turn the call over to John Michelle, VP of Treasury and Investor Relations, who will read the company's safe harbor statement within the meaning of the Private Security Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that provides important cautions regarding forward-looking statements. John, please go ahead.

Thank you, Tamiya. Please turn to slide two for review of our safe harbor and non-GAAP statements. Today's presentation contains forward-looking statements as within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Projected financial information, including our guidance outlook, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements, including those with respect to revenues, earnings, performance, strategies, prospects, and other aspects of Dasky's business, are based on management's current estimates, projections, and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations and projections. I encourage you to read our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a discussion of the risks that can affect our business. and to not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. We undertake no obligation to revise our forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances occurring after today, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required under applicable securities laws. During the call, there will also be a discussion of some items that do not conform to U.S. generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP. including, but not limited to, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted operating ratio, adjusted operating income, adjusted net income or loss, free cash flow, and net debt. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in the appendix to the investor presentation and press release issued this morning, both of which are available in the Investors tab of the website, www.dasky.com. In terms of the structure of our call today, Jonathan will start with a review of our business operations and the progress we are making as we execute against our key strategic priorities. Jason will then walk through a financial review of the quarter and year, and then Jonathan will come back to wrap up our remarks with a few closing comments before we open the line for your questions. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Dasky's interim CEO, Mr. Jonathan Shipko. Jonathan.

Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. On slide three, we outlined a few of the notable takeaways from what was another strong quarter, capping off an exceptional and transformational year for the company. In late 2019, we made a fundamental shift in how we approach our business, and we started the process of rationalizing our operations and right-sizing our cost structure as the first step in delivering best-in-class operational and financial performance to all our stakeholders. With our renewed focus, our team knew 2020 would be about seamless execution, And I'm proud to say the strong results delivered during this year reflect significant hard work by everyone on this team in execution of our 2020 priorities. I'd like to also take this opportunity to thank each of our Opco management teams who shouldered much of this change, all while successfully managing their businesses through the backdrop of a global pandemic. This is my first time communicating with the majority of our shareholders, so I'd like to take a brief moment to introduce myself. I've been a director with Dasky since we became public in early 2017, And prior to that, I served the company as a board observer beginning in 2014. In 2019, I chaired a special operating committee comprised of select board members, including Brian Bonner, our chairman, as well as select members from the management team. That committee was tasked with architecting the tactical pivot and the resetting of priorities that the company executed against in 2020. Dasky's transformation has been focused on operational excellence and improving our cost structure to drive performance, reduce costs, and achieve greater efficiency. Looking ahead to 2021, our priorities will be continuing the operational excellence momentum, platform optimization, and demonstrating our ability to drive shareholder value through sustainable growth initiatives. Now, I'd like to take a moment to walk through some of the specific highlights of 2020. As I mentioned, this past year, we successfully fortified our platform and streamlined our business through organizational integrations as well as an enhanced focus on data-driven decision-making. This was driven by the successful completions of phase one and two of our operational improvement and integration plans, which contributed meaningfully to our operational and financial performance in spite of the difficult pandemic-plagued macro environment of 2020. We now have a leaner, more streamlined business focused on execution and positioned to immediately accommodate accretive growth opportunities as they arise. We rationalized our fleet and fixed asset profile, allowing for more efficient reinvestment back into the business. These efforts also led to material improvements in specific key metrics like operating income and operating ratio. In fact, our operating ratio marked the best performance in Dasky's history as a public company. It's also critical for our investors to understand that another big accomplishment over the past year was a successful completion in building out an entirely new leadership team. This included Jason's hiring a CFO, Rick's promotion into the role of COO, as well as Jim and Julie's onboarding as our CIO and Chief People Officer, respectively. We also streamlined and assigned new responsibilities across the organization underneath these functional area leaders. And while Chris Easter's leadership helped facilitate the necessary transformational pivot our company experienced in 2020, it was this executive team, as well as the very talented operating company management teams, that made it all happen. I think it's also important to note that our business showed tremendous resilience in the face of a pandemic and lockdown conditions that no one in this country was prepared for. Despite those volatile conditions, we put up numerous profitability records in the second half of the year, which were supported by our portfolio approach and diverse client base. Understand that this diversity is purposeful and allows for us to flex into unique, accretive opportunities as they arise, such as wind and high security cargo in 2020. And while those two markets may return to more normalized trends in 2021, We are seeing encouraging signs of a rebound in other industrial markets that were more deeply impacted by the pandemic last year. Jason will provide a bit more context on this in a few minutes. Our focus on driving efficiency and more profitable operations, combined with the sale of the Aveda transportation business, which we determined did not complement our portfolio of operating companies and end markets, helped us drive significant free cash flow and strengthen our balance sheet in a dramatic fashion in 2020. This included delivering free cash flow from operations of 137.3 million and free cash flow of 168.9 million. Those strong cash flows allowed us to reduce our net debt by 104.9 million to a total of 503.5 million on December 31st. I want to pause there and recognize what a great accomplishment this was, particularly while simultaneously navigating a pandemic. We actually lowered our leverage ratio as defined by our bank agreements from 3.2 times to 2.6 times as of year end. Perhaps most notably, we doubled our liquidity versus the prior year end to over $259 million as of December 31st. Once again, just a phenomenal job and a true team effort across this whole organization, top to bottom. So as we look forward, we remain focused on sustaining our strong recovery momentum and capturing the reflation of industrial markets that are healing fairly quickly and are poised to pick up pace as pandemic conditions abate. Our immediate priorities include, first, completing our CES search process. This process is well underway, and the Board and I have already started to evaluate quality candidates as we speak. While I can't offer a specific timetable here, I can assure you that we will work with a strong sense of purpose, with the right candidate complementing the current executive team, and demonstrating the ability to drive engagement across the organization in respect of long-term sustainable growth for our stakeholders. Second, our leadership team has numerous operational and taskable initiatives in progress, and we will continue the hard work necessary to drive further financial and operational excellence in 2021. Third, as I've mentioned, we've brought on new talent and promoted from within in several key areas, including finance, human resources, IT, safety, and risk management. Some of those leaders are just getting started, and we believe they will all further streamline our organization and maximize its efficiency this year. In particular, we see tremendous opportunity to upgrade our systems infrastructure. Among other things, these upgrades will allow for further refinements and process improvements, such as real-time, more transparent information flow, which will improve decision-making, and enterprise-wide platforms to allow for better coordination and collaboration among off-coasts. When I think about internal catalysts for shareholder value creation, this is one of the biggest opportunities for the company, that will help drive better top line and margin performance in the future. Lastly, we will further refine and define the Dasky vision and strategy, which we plan to share in more detail with you in the coming months. We remain the leading flat-bedded specialized transportation and logistics solutions company in North America. We have developed a much stronger balance sheet, which we believe is imperative to being opportunistic across market cycles, and we will continue to drive solid free cash flows to further fortify the balance sheet in 2021. However, Dasky was purpose-built to be a platform for growth, and what we will do in 2021 is continue to build credibility with the market, demonstrating that we can use the lessons of the past to inform a better approach to sustainable or creative growth, all while maintaining the discipline and fervor to continue to drive operational improvements across our organization. With that, I will now turn the call over to Jason Bates to review our fourth quarter and four-year financial performance. Jason? Jason?