Knight-Swift Transportation Holdings Inc.

Good afternoon, my name is JP and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Night Swift Transportation First Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. All lights have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. Speakers from today's call will be Dave Jackson, President and CEO, Mr. Adam Miller, CFO. Mr. Miller, the meeting is now yours.

Thank you, JP. And good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining our first quarter 2023 earnings call. Today we plan to discuss topics related to the results of the quarter, provide an update on current market conditions, and update our full year 2023 guidance. We have slides to accompany this call, which are posted on our investor website. Our call is scheduled to go until 530 p.m. Eastern Time. Following our commentary, we'll answer as many questions on these topics as we receive. We're going to limit the questions to one per participant. And if you have a second question, please feel free to get back into the queue. We'll answer as many questions as time will allow. If we're not able to get to your question due to time restrictions, you may call 602-606-6349. To begin, I'll first refer you to the disclosures on slide two of the presentation And note the following. This conference call and presentation may contain forward-looking statements made by the company that involve risks, assumptions, and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. Investors are directed to the information contained in Item 1A, Risk Factors, or Part 1 of the company's annual report on Form 10-K filed with the United States SEC for a discussion of the risks that may affect the company's future operating results. Actual results may differ. Before we get into the slides, I want to turn the call over to Dave Jackson for a few opening remarks.

Thanks, Adam, and good afternoon, good evening, everyone. Appreciate you joining our call. I wanted to begin by acknowledging that we recognize that we cannot entirely escape the cyclicality of the full truckload industry. but we have taken intentional steps for years to maximize our performance in every phase of the cycle. This has included truckload acquisitions, the development of technology and a business strategy to create maximum value for our customers in strong times and to diversify our income streams to mitigate the downside pressure through the bottom of cycles. When looking at cycles over the last decade, we've performed with higher highs and higher lows in each sequential cycle. And we are on pace to do that again this cycle and are already preparing for increasing the high of the next cycle. LTL or less than truckload dedicated and an appropriate strategy of moving away from the spot market well in advance of the downward truckload rate pressure have been major factors in our business continuing to perform in the mid 80s operating ratio range during this current challenging freight market. The most recent strong cycle experienced in 2021 enabled the cash flow to make the strategic investments in LTL in large part to prepare us for the bottom of the cycle, which is where we find ourselves now. We expect the recently announced acquisition of US Express to be one of the factors that enables us to achieve, yet again, another higher high in the strengthening phase as supply attrition makes way for a correction. We have modified our 2023 earnings per share guidance, and we'll provide details later in this call on how that change was calculated. As we near the trough of this current cycle, our revised earnings guidance below $4 per share is still significantly higher than the previous cycle trough experienced in the first quarter of 2020. Now I'll turn it back to Adam for slide three.