Saia, Inc.

Hello and thank you for standing by. My name is Regina and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to SIA Inc's first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I would now like to turn the conference over to Doug Cole, SIA's Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thanks, Regina. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the call. With me for today's call is SIA's President and Chief Executive Officer Fritz Holzgreif. Before we begin, you should know that during this call, we may make some forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements and all other statements might be made on this call that are not historical facts are sub subject to a number of risks and uncertainties and actual results may differ materially we refer you to our press release and our sec filings for more information on the exact risk factors that could cause actual results to differ i'll now turn the call over to fritz for some opening comments good morning and thank you for joining us to discuss size first quarter results well it's always more exciting to discuss

Robust shipment trends and record margins. Today's call will be more about how our team managed through a challenging volume environment and produced what I view as solid results in the first quarter of 2023. In the quarter, we averaged approximately 28,500 shipments per day, or about 7.1% fewer shipments per day than in the same quarter last year. We experienced an increase in the average weight per shipment, so tonnage fell by only 5.5%. The mixed shift to a heavier average weighted shipment along with positive pricing drove a 6.3% increase in average revenue per shipment, excluding fuel surcharge, and total first quarter revenue was $660 million, essentially flat with last year despite the fall off in volumes. Our revenue per shipment ex-fuel surcharge continues to be the result of positive pricing and effective mixed management. Our yield or revenue per hundredweight excluding fuel surcharge increased 4.5%, reflecting a constructive pricing backdrop. We saw some of the benefits of our geographic expansion in the quarter. As West Coast volumes were down significantly year to year, we're very pleased with the results in some of the middle markets that we have entered or invested in the last several quarters. Further evidence of A stable industry pricing was seen in our average contractual renewal increase of 7.5% in the first quarter. We're committed to providing excellent service to our customers and are investing heavily in the business to expand coverage and is gratifying to see that our customers see value in our service offering. Our first quarter operating ratio of 85 deteriorated by 60 basis points compared to our operating ratio of 84.4 posted in the first quarter last year. Doug will provide some details around the specifics of our margin performance, but I'd like to highlight the operational execution in the core. We're able to adjust our line haul infrastructure and quickly adapt to the changing macro environment across our network. We saw productivity improvements across all of our major terminals. The net result of these changes allowed us to manage operating costs quickly. Most significantly, these changes had no impact on the customer experience In fact, in some cases, we actually reduced transit times. I'll now turn the call over to Doug for more details from our first quarter results.