Yellow Corporation

Good afternoon, and welcome to Yellow Corporation's fourth quarter 2022 earnings call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. After today's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Tony Carino, Senior Vice President of Treasury and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Yellow Corporation's fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Joining us on the call today are Darren Hawkins, Chief Executive Officer, and Dan Olivier, Chief Financial Officer. During this call, we may make some forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities law. These forward-looking statements and all other statements that might be made on this call, which are not historical facts, are subject to uncertainty and a number of risks. And therefore, extra results may differ materially. The format of this call does not allow us to fully discuss all of these risk factors. For a full discussion of the risk factors that could cause the results to differ, please refer to this afternoon's earnings release and our most recent SEC filings, including our forms 10-K and 10-Q. These items are also available on our website at myyellow.com. Additionally, please see today's release for a reconciliation of net income or loss to adjust the EBITDA. In conjunction with today's earnings release, we issued a presentation which may be referenced during the call. The presentation was filed in an NK along with the earnings release and is available on our website. I will now turn the call over to Darren.

Thanks, Tony, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining our call. In Q4, we saw a notable drop in demand for LTL capacity as the economy continued to cool down. With fully stocked inventories, the retail sector had already begun to require less capacity from the supply chain prior to Q4. During the quarter, the manufacturing sector also began to slow down following several quarters of growth. In response, we kept our focus on meeting our customers' needs while adjusting our cost structure to help mitigate the near-term headwind. The adjustments including reducing the size of our workforce to align with demand in addition to closely managing the use of purchased transportation. We also benefited from a gain on the sale of an excess terminal no longer needed as a result of the efficiencies from phase one of our network transformation. We used the net proceeds from the sale to pay down a portion of the term loan. Even in the face of an economic slowdown and declining tonnage, This is one of the most stable LTL pricing environments we have experienced in many years. We have stayed consistent with our strategy of improving yield on the freight moving through Yellow's network to improve profitability and offset inflationary cost pressures. In Q4, year-over-year LTL revenue per hundred weight, including fuel, increased 21.1%. For the month of January, yellow averaged between 5% and 6% on contract negotiations. Despite the economic slowdown later in the year, the company made significant financial improvement in 2022 and reported its best operating income and operating ratio since 2006. Turning to phase one of the network optimization in the western U.S., The realigned and optimized terminal coverage positioned us closer to the customers, which has enabled us to make pickups and deliveries more efficient and timelier, both of which are critical to the yellow customer experience. Concerning the Phase 2 network optimization in the eastern U.S., we are following the same contractual process as Phase 1. The Phase 2 recommended changes have been mailed to the local unions and we are in process of meeting with those unions to field any questions or concerns around the optimization. We plan to communicate externally when an implementation date is determined. Looking ahead, our priorities in 2023 include continuing to enhance our customer experience with technology investments to provide new transactional capabilities and self-service features on our website. We also plan to provide a streamlined suite of service offerings utilizing the speed of our super regional network. Serving our customers in a first-class fashion will help us grow shipment count and profitably grow our company. Thank you again for joining us today. I will now turn the call over to Dan, who will share additional details about the quarter.