Daseke, Inc.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss Dasky's financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2022, as well as Dasky's outlook. With us today are Jonathan Shepko, CEO and board member, Jason Bates, EVP and CFO, and Tracy Graham, VP of Finance and Investor Relations. After their preferred remarks, the management team will take your questions. 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 these slides in the Investor Relations section of our website. Before we go further, I would now like to turn the call over to Tracy Grimm, VP of Finance and Investor Relations, who will read the company's safe harbor statement that provides important cautions regarding forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Tracy, please go ahead.

Thanks, May. Please turn to slide two for a review of our safe harbor and non-GAAP statements. Today's presentation contains forward-looking statements 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 include 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. In 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 Dasky website, www.dasky.com. In terms of the structure of our call today, we will start by turning the call over to Dasky's CEO, Jonathan Shepko, who will review our business operations and the progress we are making as we execute against our key strategic priorities. Jason Bates, Daski's CFO, will then provide a financial review of the quarter and speak briefly about our 2022 outlook, at which point Jonathan will wrap up our remarks with a few closing comments before we open the line for your questions. With that, I will hand the call over to Mr. Jonathan Shefco. Jonathan?

Thank you, Tracy. Good morning, everyone. Let me begin on slide three, where I will highlight a few of the key takeaways from our first quarter of 2022. Daski delivered another strong quarter of operational and financial performance, while continuing to make progress against our ongoing transformation and further expanding returns for our shareholders. Healthy freight demand across the industrial landscape we support has continued to sustain, with a persistent theme of supply, demand, and balance helping to drive strong freight rates across most of the end markets we service. This dynamic continues to play through in our top line, and our teams have continued to execute operationally, successfully converting this to attractive top line revenue growth and to substantial earnings for our shareholders this quarter. As I mentioned, demand across most of our key end markets remained strong in the first quarter, continuing to defy our normal seasonal trends as we posted both year-over-year and sequential rate improvements. We continue to see demand strength in construction, manufacturing, and steel markets driving flatbed performance, while high-security cargo and glass bolstered growth in the specialized segment. In the first quarter of 2022, we opportunistically shifted assets to support the work we do with the Department of Defense in order to capture this freight with our company assets as demand surged. This is yet another example of how our diversified portfolio of end markets yielded an opportunity for us to strategically redeploy assets into one of our highly specialized niche pockets of demand, providing for not only incremental freight capture, but also higher margin potential. Though the supply-demand imbalance continues to buttress the current rate environment, we continue to face challenges in securing equipment in Q1 as the global supply chain also remains challenged. The capacity constraints due to equipment availability and driver shortages within our industry have only added additional cross-currents that further complicate the supply picture. As such, without a timely and meaningful correction to the demand side of the equation, we anticipate that this new flow on rates will hold for the foreseeable future, particularly as we enter our seasonally strong second and third quarters. With that said, this quarter's outperformance versus expectations was truly about our operational execution into a number of thriving end markets we service, creating opportunities to garner premium rates with our company assets while also capturing excess volumes through our brokerage service offering. Revenues this quarter are $421 million, a 26.1% improvement year-over-year, coupled with continuously improving profitability metrics despite facing strong year-over-year comps. demonstrates the earnings power of our unique model, which places meaningful emphasis on execution across all market environments. In the first quarter, Dasky converted this revenue growth into $49.6 million of adjusted EBITDA, a 38.5% improvement year-over-year. And adjusted diluted earnings per share was $0.24, a significant increase when compared to last year's first quarter of $0.04 per share. Before turning the call over to Jason to provide more detail around our financial performance and four-year outlook, I'd like to take a few moments to proclaim a modest victory for our company this quarter, that is the completion of our first acquisition. I'm pleased to announce that during the first quarter, we completed our first tuck-in acquisition, and while on the smaller side of things based on our internal M&A mandate, even for tuck-ins, this acquisition decisively exemplifies our strategic priorities for M&A. This acquisition expands our geographic footprint with existing customers in the industrial and hazardous waste end markets, while also providing an opportunity to expand within the specialty chemicals verticals. The target services niche, counter-cyclical, and defensible end markets that carry high barriers to entry will be a strong complement to the existing high-security cargo operations within our specialized segments. The target has been immediately accretive as several commercial strategies were identified during our due diligence efforts with additional low risk synergies on the horizon as we continue to integrate operations with our existing platform. We expect the post acquisition implied multiple in 2022 to be about 4.4 times with line of sight to a fully integrated run rate implied multiple of roughly 3.6 times. We remain committed to M&A as a means to supplement accretive growth and as a logical catalyst to drive multiple expansion and we remain diligently focused on identifying opportunities with the potential to improve our earnings and free cash flow profiles. With that, I will now turn the call over to Jason Bates to review our first quarter of 2022 financial performance. Jason?