J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc.

good day and welcome to the jb hunt transport services inc first quarter 2024 earnings call today's call is being recorded i would now like to turn the call over to brad delco senior vice president of finance please go ahead good afternoon before i introduce the speakers i would like to provide some disclosures regarding forward-looking statements this call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the private securities litigation reform act of 1995. words such as expects and or similar expressions are intended to identify these forward-looking statements. These statements are based on J.B. Hunt's current plans and expectations and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause future activities and results to be materially different from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. For more information regarding risk factors, please refer to J.B. Hunt's annual report on Form 10-K and other reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Now I would like to introduce the speakers on today's call. This afternoon, I'm joined by our CEO, John Roberts, our President, Shelly Simpson, our CFO, John Kula, Nick Hobbs, COO and President of Contract Services, Darren Field, President of Intermodal, and Brad Hicks, President of Highway Services and EVP of People. I'd now like to turn the call over to our CEO, Mr. John Roberts, for some opening comments. John?

Thank you, Brad, and good afternoon. I will be brief with my comments, but want to hit on a few topics before I turn it over to our team to give you their updates and to address your questions. Last quarter, we said goodbye and good riddance to 2023 and welcomed the new year with some reservations and concerns, but nonetheless confident in the strength of our organization and the journey we are on to build an even bigger and better company. Over the last several years, you have heard us talk about how we manage the business for the long term, remain focused on being financially disciplined, and being for our people who have the knowledge and talents to help us execute for and on behalf of our customers. From that perspective, nothing has changed, and we remain committed to staying the course. Over that same time, we have faced challenges, have taken some calculated risks, and made some strategic decisions that I remain confident will positively impact our company and our future growth. To be fair and somewhat critical, the current environment we are in has remained persistently challenging and for longer than we had predicted. But what I remain confident in is the strategic decisions and the direction and course we are on is well charted. Our conservative nature, financial discipline, And coming from a position of strength has afforded us the opportunity to invest throughout this period to better prepare us for the eventual turn. We stand ready. Our company and our teams are working hard. To use a sports analogy, we are putting in the work, exercising the muscles, becoming more lean, challenging the playbooks we know, and better preparing ourselves for our future state. While it's hard to see that in light of what I would characterize as a disappointing financial performance against our standards, I remain appropriately metered with optimism. Elements that support that view should and will be revealed in the following discussion from our leaders. Finally, as recently announced, this will be my last earnings call as Chief Executive Officer. It has been a tremendous honor to serve in this capacity for the last 13 years. Our board of directors has taken a very thoughtful approach to succession planning and has tremendous confidence in my successor and our entire leadership team. So now, I'd like to turn the call over to our president and incoming chief executive, Ms. Shelley Simpson.

Thank you, John, and good afternoon. As John made pretty clear, the market continues to be challenging. We remain focused on what we can control, and how we position our business to deliver exceptional value for our customers and shareholders over the long term. The challenge we face today as an organization is managing the business to best prepare us for future growth while balancing the need to manage and control costs in the near term. To be clear, the strategic opportunities we have across our business segments gives us great confidence in our future success. Last quarter, we introduced our priorities for 2024. Our focus as a management team and an organization is to execute on these priorities, which as a reminder are, one, to deliver exceptional value to our customers through operational excellence. Two, scale our long-term investments in our company foundations, which are people, technology, and capacity. And three, drive long-term compounding returns for our shareholders. Markets are always hard to predict, even more so over the last several years given the wild swings we have seen on both the supply and demand side of the equation. One thing we know for sure, markets ultimately return to some balance after overcorrecting on one side or the other. We continue to view the market as out of balance, and customers have been and are taking advantage. We've been surprised by the competitiveness in the bid season thus far. We can't predict when the current rate environment will change, and as a result, we remain committed to our efforts to control our costs. Importantly, though, we are doing this without sacrificing the long-term opportunities for our company to grow and generate greater returns for our shareholders. In fact, I would argue we've only enhanced it during the first quarter with some of the investments we've made. most notably our purchase of the Walmart intermodal container fleet. We are also adapting in how we approach our customers and contracts in terms of our commitment. We will always be long-term focused and strategic. That said, we will have to be thoughtful in how we work with our customers. Our management team and business leaders are intensely focused on our cost efforts while maintaining discipline on our long-term growth and return on capital thresholds. In closing, I remain confident in our strategy and approach to manage through this part of the cycle. We continue to make thoughtful and disciplined investments that will only enhance the future performance of our company. While the magnitude of this part of the cycle has certainly been more severe, both in terms of depth and duration, we strongly believe in our ability to outperform the market on service quality, value, and growth. We have and will continue to prove our ability to deliver outperformance for our people, our customers, and our shareholders. Our confidence is in our people, our experience, our complementary businesses, our scale, and our financial strength, which uniquely positions us for our future. As we've said in the past, we remain committed to discipline investments in our people, technology, and capacity. but we will continue to challenge ourselves on our costs. I am confident that we will be better positioned as a result coming out of this part of this cycle as we continue to pursue our vision to create the most efficient transportation network in North America. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to our CFO, John Kulo. John?