Knight-Swift Transportation Holdings Inc.

Good afternoon. My name is Sarah and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Knight-Swift Transportation first quarter 2026 earnings call. All lines 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 Adam Miller, Chief Executive Officer, Andrew Hess, Chief Financial Officer, Brad Stewart, Treasurer and Senior VP of Investor Relations. Mr. Stewart, the meeting is now yours.

Thank you, Sarah. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining our first quarter 2026 earnings call. Today, we plan to discuss topics related to the results of the quarter, current market conditions, and our earnings guidance. We have slides to accompany this call, which are posted on our investor website. Our call is scheduled to last one hour. Following our commentary, we will answer questions related to these topics. In order to get to as many participants as possible, we limit the questions to one per participant. If you have a second question, please feel free to get back in the queue. We will answer as many questions as time allows. If we are not able to get to your question due to time restrictions, you may call 602-606-6349. To begin, I will 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 discussion of the risks that may affect the company's future operating results. Actual results may differ.

Now, I will hand the call to Adam for some opening remarks. Thank you, Brad, and good afternoon, everyone. These are certainly interesting times, and there are now more reasons to be optimistic about our industry than we have seen in over four years now. We operate one of the largest fleets in the truckload industry. Roughly 70% of our fleet is deployed in one-way or over-the-road service. It is true the one-way market has been the most difficult place to be over the past three years plus. as this market has felt the brunt of the influx of capacity over the last several years. Much of that capacity may not have been playing by the rules that we play by, and therefore operating with a different cost structure, with distorted pricing behaviors and cyclical patterns. The ongoing efforts of the FMCSA and the DOT to prevent and revoke invalidly issued CDLs shutdown non-compliant CDL schools, and address our service abuses are in the early stages and are already having an impact on the market. This cleanup effort should, in our view, have an outsized impact on not just the one-way truckload market, but on the lowest price capacity in this market. The market that was the hardest hit over the past few years is now benefiting the most from the removal of capacity and a dynamic which we expect will continue. As we mentioned last quarter, the market has progressed to a point where even small changes can cause disruption, and we saw evidence of that during the first quarter as the severe weather in January led to acute tightness and an elevated spot market almost overnight. We were able to leverage our one-way, over-the-road capacity at scale to provide solutions across multiple brands to help our customers recover from the storm when others in our space were not able. Following the recovery from the storm, the tightness in the truckload market has continued to build, largely due to declining capacity, though some indications of improving demand are beginning to emerge. Broad truckload market indicators show improving trends for load tenders, tender rejections, and spot pricing. Our business is experiencing even stronger levels on these metrics as our leading presence in the one-way market grows increasingly valuable to shippers. So late in the first quarter, we began to see the outcomes from early first quarter bids, which showed our volumes generally holding steady or growing while achieving mid single digit percentage rate increases. For reference, That is better than last year at this time when targeting slightly lower price increases often led to lower volumes. Pricing activity is very busy now. In addition to bid season being in full swing, mini bid activity has increased indicating incumbent carriers are unable to or perhaps unwilling to service freight at existing rates. Turn-back bids are happening more frequently as bid awards are being at least partially rejected by the awarded carriers as networks have shifted or the market has moved well past rates that were proposed even one or two months ago. Unlike the past few years, shippers are generally not issuing off-cycle bids opportunistically to improve service or drive prices lower, These actions are driven by a need to secure capacity. At the same time, previously deep discounts in the spot market have evaporated, further encouraging shippers to align with quality asset capacity. This is on top of a trend of shippers favoring asset-based relationships that have formed late last year in response to the regulatory enforcement efforts. Whether for these reasons or because of expectations of improving demand, we have already had a number of shippers initiate discussions about peak season demand support, which is not typical this early in the year. As we navigate a busy and rapidly evolving bid environment, we have shifted our bid targets to a range of high single to low double-digit percentage increases on current pricing activity as compared to our low to mid single-digit target one quarter ago. Across our truckload brands, we are reviewing business that is not subject to current or near-term bids and addressing rates that are below market. Aside from the market developments and our position in one-way service, we believe our work over the past two years structurally cutting costs out of our business with ongoing opportunities for further progress sets us up for greater incremental margin as business conditions improve. As the market improves, recruiting and retaining quality drivers have and will become more challenging. We believe we have an advantage with our terminal network and academies to source and develop drivers. However, we expect this to be a challenge for the industry in the back half of the year. While the LTL sector is not seeing the same sharp tightening as truckloads, we are seeing our freight mix improve and rate renewals continue at a mid-single digit pace. Shipment volume trends have been directionally in line with normal seasonal patterns, though somewhat understated until late in the first quarter. However, we saw a notable improvement in weight per shipment for the first time in years, with this measure progressively growing throughout the quarter. This is a result of bringing on more industrial customers who can leverage our expanded network footprint to move heavier and longer length of haul shipments. We believe we are in the early stages of our network transition from regional to national. We expect that over time, growing into our network investments, a maturing freight mix, improvement in network density, and continuously refunding our operational and cost execution will allow us to drive sustained methodical improvement in operating margin. We remain committed to thoughtfully deploying capital intentionally leveraging our strengths and creatively unlocking synergy opportunities across our businesses. And with that, I will turn the call over to Andrew and Brad to review the results and our guidance.