4/24/2025

speaker
Conference Call Operator
Operator

conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. Callers will be limited to one question and a follow-up. Again, that's one question and a follow-up so that we can get to as many callers as possible. Further instructions for entering the queue will be provided at that time. Please be advised that this conference call will contain statements that are forward-looking in nature and subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. I would also like to remind everyone that this conference call is being recorded on April 24, 2025. Joining us on today's call are Elaine Bedard, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, and David Saperstein, Chief Financial Officer. I'll now turn the call over to Elaine Bedard. Please go ahead, sir.

speaker
Elaine Bedard
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

All right. Well, thank you. Thanks for that, operator, and we appreciate everyone being on our call today. After market close yesterday, we reported our quarterly results amidst continued economic uncertainty and the resulting slowdown in freight volume across the industry. Despite cyclical challenges, we're pleased to have again generated strong free cash flow of over 190 million. which, as you've heard me say many times, is a primary focus of ours. Over time, it's this free cash flow that allows us to maintain a strong balance sheet and strategically invest in both organic growth and attractive M&A, while returning excess capital to shareholders whenever possible. Taking a look at our consolidated results, we generated total revenue before fuel surcharge of $1.7 billion, up from $1.6 billion a year earlier, supported by the Dasky acquisition a year ago this month. The industry-wide slump in volumes, however, resulted in operating income of $115 million or an operating margin of 6.7 percent relative to $152 million and a margin of 9.4 in the prior year period. quarterly adjusted net income of $56 million was down from $93 million and adjusted EPS of $0.76 was down from $1.24 a year earlier. Our cash generated by operating activity came in at $194 million down marginally from $201 million in the first quarter of 2024. Our free cash flow, as I mentioned, was a solid 192 million, which was up meaningfully from 137 million benefiting from favorable working capital, strong management of capital expenditures, and of course, the hard work of our talented team members across the organization who continue to focus on operational excellence, especially during slower times for the industry. I'll next provide an overview of first quarter results for each of our three business segments, beginning with LTL. LTL was 39% of segmented revenue before fuel surcharge, which was down 13% year-over-year to $679 million, operating income of $47 million compared to $85 million in the earlier period, with margin reflecting typical Q1 seasonality consistent with what we saw the prior year. The LTL operating ratio came in at 93.1 versus 89.2 in the first quarter of 2024, and our LTL return invested capital was 14.4%. Turning to truck load, we generated $666 million of revenue before fuel surcharge, or 38% of the segmented total, and this was up from $398 million a year earlier due to the Dasky acquisition. Operating income for truckload was $49 million, up from $41 million in the prior year period. Our truckload OR was 93.7 relative to 89.6 a year earlier. And our industrial and market are exposed to tariff-related uncertainty, which was evident during the first quarter before the April 2nd announcement. However, we saw improvement in our Canadian OR while Specialized was in line with normal seasonality. Our return invested capital for truckload was 6.7%. Wrapping up the business segment overview, logistics is 22% of segmented revenue before fuel surcharge, or $385 million for the quarter, down from $442 million in the first quarter of 2024. Logistics operating income was $31 million compared to $40 million the prior year, and that's an operating margin of 8.1% versus 9.1%, while our return invested capital was 17%. Moving right along, the solid free cash flow of $192 million during the first quarter helped us maintain our strong balance sheet, which is always a focus of ours. We ended March with a funded debt-to-bid ratio of 2.21%. During the quarter, we repurchased 56 million worth of shares, which combined with the dividend payout equates to $94 million of excess cash returned to our shoulders during the quarter, which has always been an important objective of ours. Lastly, turning to our business outlook for the second quarter of 2025, We currently expect CPS in the range of $1.25 to $1.40 based on trends we've seen so far in Q2 and assuming no major change in the macro environment. In addition, for the full year, we expect the capex to be approximately $200 million. And with that, Operator David and I would be happy to take questions. If you could please open the lines.

speaker
Conference Call Operator
Operator

Thank you. And we will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press the star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, you may press the star followed by the number two. With that, our first question comes from the line of Ravi Shankar with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

speaker
Christine McGarvey
Representative for Ravi Shankar (Morgan Stanley)

Hey, great. Good morning. This is Christine McGarvey. I'm for Ravi. Thank you, guys. Very helpful. Appreciate that. Can you just unpack a little bit more high-end, low-end of that? I know it's not a massive range, but just how you guys are thinking about that. And then any thoughts on full year? Clearly, macro visibility is quite limited, but any sort of scenario analysis you guys are thinking through, particularly on the recession side of things, if that comes to fruition, how the business might perform?

speaker
Elaine Bedard
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, well, what I could say is that, guys, because of all this uncertainty, the best we could do is to provide a quarterly, you know, kind of guidance, okay, which we just stated between $1.25, maybe at the higher edge of $1.40 with what we know today. I mean, you have to understand that, you know, when you look at our specialized truckloads, in North America, we've been really affected because our end customers are sitting on the fence waiting to see where this is going to all go, right? Where are we going to go with that? So this is why it's very difficult for us to predict the year until we have a much clearer picture of what's going to happen with those tariffs. We know that there's lots of discussion going on, but so far we have not seen any results of all these discussions. So this is why, based on what we know of April, Okay, that's why we're in a position to say, well, we believe that TFI can attain an EPS in that range of $1.25 to $1.40. We also confirm reduced capex, right? Because we're not using, okay, our trucks to the full extent because the volumes are not where they should normally be. So this is why our capex now are going down from 300 on a normal yearly basis to about 200 million, right? And you look at our Q1, our capex was minimal, right? It's always the same. You know, last year was more, but, you know, we'll have the next three quarters, okay, we're going to be going back with more capex, okay, to get that $200 million range for the full year.

speaker
Christine McGarvey
Representative for Ravi Shankar (Morgan Stanley)

Very helpful. Appreciate that. And if I could just ask one more, maybe just digging in on the US LTL a bit more, can you just parse out to the extent you can, you know, how much of some of the year-over-year pressure we're seeing in operating income is idiosyncratic versus, you know, the market maybe being a bit more challenging? And, you know, if it is idiosyncratic, kind of any updated thoughts on trajectory of OR improvement there?

speaker
Elaine Bedard
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

You know what? If you look at our Q1 results, which are very disappointing, I mean, You know, we had a very difficult month of January, very difficult month of February, but we made some change in the leadership at that time. Mid February, we made some changes because, I mean, we were not heading in the right direction. What I could say is that when I look at April, when I looked at March, I mean, I could see some very important change. the morale of the troop has never been so good. I mean, the guys are working hard, and under the leadership of Cal and Chris and Keith, I feel pretty good about where we're going. I mean, the name of the game, and I said that on Q4, okay, we've lost so much, the small and medium-sized account, and we replaced that with more like a you know corporate accounts with lower margin or maybe sometimes negative margin I mean that trend is reversed right now okay so we're starting to see growth on the small and medium-sized account okay at the same time we are replacing some major accounts where we lose money, right? So I feel really good. The guys now are very well focused. And that's also based on what we're seeing so far in April. Okay, we see a change over there. The guys are really working hard on the cost side at the same time on the revenue side to head this company in the right direction. You know, I've always said that there's no reason why this company cannot be a sub-90 OR, and we've not done that so far. I understand. I get that after four years of buying the company, but I think that we're on the right track with this leadership, the plan that these guys are working on. I feel really good.

speaker
David Saperstein
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, and Christian, I would just add that When you look at Q1's OR in the US LTL, it's 160 basis points deterioration relative to Q4, which is exactly the same as the seasonal deterioration last year, Q4 to Q1. So you can think about this quarter as the same as last quarter. But we've made changes, and we're seeing those changes start to show some green shoes.

speaker
Christine McGarvey
Representative for Ravi Shankar (Morgan Stanley)

Great. Really appreciate the thoughts.

speaker
Unknown
Company Representative

Thanks, guys. Thank you. Your next question.

speaker
Conference Call Operator
Operator

Oh, sorry. Your next question comes from the line of Jordan Alliger with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

speaker
Jordan Alliger
Analyst at Goldman Sachs

Yeah. Hi. Just two follow-up LTL questions. One, can you maybe perhaps update some of the operational improvement efficiency plans that you guys have talked about in the past, whether it be technology or other efforts? to improve things? And then secondly, how do you think about your pricing strategies now and the industry's pricing strategies given the ongoing softness in manufacturing, et cetera? Thanks.

speaker
Elaine Bedard
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. Very good question, Jordan. So in terms of technology, we've made a lot of progress within technology. know t-force rate over time so one of the last leg that we're working on right now is we we've implemented Optum for our Lionel planning okay so we're not done with this uh improvement in technology on our Lionel but at the same time okay we're looking at something similar probably Optum for our P&D so we're going to be starting okay this project of Optum P&D operation in Canada first And then we'll move that to the U.S. sometimes in 2025. So that's going to be helping us do a better job on the planning and on the execution of our P&D operation. And the connection between Lionel and P&D at that time will help us do a better planning for the Lionel. That's number one. Number two is that our software for pricing and master file management, that's been a rock in our shoe for so long, okay? We've started the implementation of that early 25, okay? And this is moving along. It's taking us a little bit more time, okay? But during the course of 25, we should be done with that. Now, for sure, our pricing department right now, because our sales focus is Okay, is growth now, okay, with our team, our pricing guys are very busy going back to the sales team with a pricing proposal for customers. Because, you know, we've adjusted our approach to customer in the sense that, you know, we have to go back to the small and medium size account. And these guys, you know, they represent about 2% of our volume more today than they were just three months ago. So we are growing those small and medium-sized accounts. And for sure, that requires better pricing, better price, okay, strategy for our pricing department, which these guys are working on. Anything you'd like to add on that, David?

speaker
Unknown
Company Representative

No. Good. Thank you.

speaker
Conference Call Operator
Operator

And your next question comes from the line of Walters Franklin with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

speaker
Walters Franklin
Analyst at RBC Capital Markets

Yeah, thanks very much. Good morning. You mentioned uncertainty and macro uncertainty in your outlook and that giving a little bit of difficulty in planning. I'm just curious whether you're seeing in the quarter meaningful shifts in buying patterns among your customers and that are a result of that uncertainty and any color around that and a little bit on as well on your market share. Do you see any of those shifting buying or any of that customer adjustments is leading to them moving to lower price competitors? Are you losing share or are they just holding back on orders and volumes as a result of the current environment? Just curious as to what you're seeing kind of in the near term and what those patterns are in terms of your competitive environment.

speaker
Elaine Bedard
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. You know what, Walter? It's a very good question. You know, think about if you are a U.S. farmer right now, you don't feel pretty good because your main customer, China, is just saying we don't want your product. Our customers are industrial based, so our customers are manufacturing tractors, they're manufacturing agricultural equipment, et cetera. Those guys don't sell a lot because their customer, the farmer, are insecure right now. They don't know what's going to happen, right? So that's just one small example of what we're going through right now in our U.S. truckload operation, our specialty truckload, which is a lot of it is flatbed. Our industrial-based customers are just waiting, okay, because their customers don't know what's going to happen, right? So this is, if you look at our miles, okay, Q1 in the industrial sector in our flatbed operation, in Q1 we were down, you know, like 10% to 15% depending on the week. Today, in April, still a lot of insecurity or instability, but now we're down to about, you know, high single digit, 8, 9%, okay, still down year over year. Now, the only good thing that we're seeing so far is the rate per mile, okay, has improved. Okay, strange to say that in a difficult environment, normally, okay, you would say that the rate per mile will also be under pressure, but we're not seeing that. We see our rate per mile improving since, I would say probably mid-March, that we're starting to see improvement year over year on the rate per mile. But the activity is down. So that's what we're seeing. In terms of what the market is doing, we don't see pressure on rates. Would it be either in Canada or in the U.S.? ? You know, for sure, Canadian guys perform really well, except in certain sectors like steel. As we know, there's a huge tariff on Canadian steels. So our steel market is under pressure for sure in Canada. But there again, I mean, globally, our U.S. truckload operation has been affected also by too much equipment, right? So if you remember, we had huge capex in Q2 and in Q3 and also in Q4 for our U.S., specialty truckload operation and and also now the miles are down so we have way too many trucks way too many trailers and that affects also our depreciation but that will be corrected during the q2 and q3 okay of 25 because as i said we are lowering our capex to a normal level based on the activity level that we have today anything else that we may add on that david no good

speaker
Walters Franklin
Analyst at RBC Capital Markets

Just a second, final question here on M&A. Can you update on what you're kind of budgeting in terms of any total tuck in M&A for the year? And just any comment on, you know, there was some activity here this morning with NLR being taken up by UPS in your community market. Just any update on whether there's opportunities that are popping up now and is it something that you're actively looking at?

speaker
Elaine Bedard
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

You know what, Walter? I mean, on the M&A side, we just closed to a very small deal in Q2. Okay, that, I mean, very small transaction. We have one transaction that we really liked, but because of all this uncertainty on tariff, we had to walk away from that deal. It was a transaction that we were really happy to do, but because of all this uncertainty, we said, no, forget about it. We can't touch that. Maybe later on, we'll see down the road. once we have better clarity. So this is why our M&A in 25, Walter, is going to be minimal. So our M&A is more buying back TFI, which we did in Q1. which will also buy back another half a million shares in April, okay? And cautiously, this is going to be the M&A for us in 25, because we're buying something that we know that is very undervalued, okay? Because, you know, we have to turn this US LTL ship around to bring back confidence, okay? And we'll do it. But in the meantime, okay, nothing major for us in 25, except, okay, the two small D's that we've done and the buying back of TFI stock. I mean, we want to keep our leverage, okay, in a conservative fashion. We don't want leverage to go higher than 2.5, which we've always said. So right now we're at 2.2. So, I mean, this is where Q2 and Q3, we can come up with 75 cents of EPS. This is why when we look at the trend of April, we feel pretty good about the $1.25 to $1.40, which is going to help bring our leverage down, okay, hopefully in the next few quarters. Thank you very much for the time.

speaker
Unknown
Company Representative

Walter, pleasure, Walter.

speaker
Conference Call Operator
Operator

And your next question comes from the line of Ariel Rossa with Citigroup. Please go ahead.

speaker
Ben Moore
Analyst at Citigroup

Hi, good morning. Alan and Dave, thanks for taking the call. This is Ben Moore at Citigroup for ARRI. I wanted to just ask if you could share some thoughts on your US LTL-OR outlook. for 2Q and full year 25 and similarly your EPS outlook for maybe full year 25 considering the 2Q 125 and 140?

speaker
Elaine Bedard
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. Yeah. You know, based on our forecast right now, we believe that, you know, sequentially Q2 should improve by about 200 basis point, right? So we're at 99, so we should go down to 97. But on top of that, we believe that there's also another at least 100 basis point of improvement from better market okay better better freight etc etc and also better cost management on costs on on the pnd side and on the line all side to a certain degree so i mean from let's say 99 we go down probably into q2 to a 96 or on the way okay down to closer to a 90 or hopefully 92, 93, something like that by the end of 25, right? So that's the trend that the guys are working on. And let me tell you that the morale at T-force rate has never been as good as what it is today. We've made some changes and the leadership. So our friend Keith that used to run all of T-force rate, now he's focused only on the operating side of it. Chris, one of our EVPs at TFI, is helping on the commercial side. And Cal, one of our senior EVP, is taking over everything else, which is finance, IT, fleet, and the operation for sure working with Keith. So I feel pretty good where we're at, okay, with this change in leadership and also the focus on growing those small and medium-sized accounts. That killed us in Q3 and in Q4 in terms of profitability. And so the guys are on the right track. They're focused on the right thing. And I think that we're going to start to see some improvement there.

speaker
Ben Moore
Analyst at Citigroup

Great, thanks. And also, maybe as a follow-up, thanks for sharing that you're replacing your S&V accounts with enterprise accounts. And it sounded like you just mentioned S&V. No, it's the other way around.

speaker
Elaine Bedard
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

It's the other way around. We're replacing the big account, the corporate account, with the small account, which is completely the opposite of what we were doing in Q3 and in Q4 of last year. Right.

speaker
Ben Moore
Analyst at Citigroup

Great, great. Thank you for that. Yes. And it sounds like it's up 2% sequentially. Can you discuss in more detail how you're doing this? Any progress in reducing the SMB customer attrition? And are you growing new accounts? Is it bringing back the same accounts, the same lanes or different lanes? And are there any other customer segments similar to SMB that could be at risk of customer attrition and what you might be doing to reinforce customer retention in those segments?

speaker
Elaine Bedard
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. So one of the first thing that the new team has done is that, let's say that you go with a GRI of 5% and you have an account that runs an 8500 and the guy just walked, right? He's an 85 OR and you had 5% and the market is soft, so the guy walks. So you lose an 85 OR account. So what the new team has said is that this is a little bit stupid in this kind of an environment. Okay, so instead of going with a GRI of 5% on an 85 OR account, how about if we just go with a 1 or 2% so that we don't lose this business, right? And we don't end up with a major churn, which happened to us in Q3 and in Q4. And we just hack smart. And then by keeping those accounts and growing the small, medium-sized account, because our pricing is more a reflection of the profitability of the account instead of being just stupid and going ahead with a 5% global. And don't forget that all the large accounts will always negotiate that 5% down to 1% or 2% anyway, right? So let's be more smart and let's be more focused on keeping those small guys and growing that, which is completely the opposite of sadly we did in Q3 and in Q4 of last year, right? So in terms of better pricing for those small guys, for sure our pricing department, there's some things that they've been addressed, like the weight per shipment. So if you look at our trend, our weight per shipment is about stable at about 1,200 pounds, which is acceptable but you know we would prefer to get closer to 1300 so this is where we made some some small adjustment and at the same time our gfp which is terrible i mean what we've done there i mean we've lost revenue like there's no tomorrow okay we've refocused our sales team our local sales team to to be part of the solution instead of being part of the problem so that's also another area of major change in the approach of our sales team under this new leadership is gfp we have to stop degrading the revenue on that and we have to start recapturing growth because if you go back in time okay let's say in 22 gfp's revenue was 100 million in the quarter and now we're down david we're down to what 30 33 33 but i will note that this is the first quarter in a long time

speaker
David Saperstein
Chief Financial Officer

where GFP is flat sequentially. Yeah. Well, we need to grow. For sure. But we're starting to see, you know, a little bit of the benefit of this refocus in Q1.

speaker
Elaine Bedard
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, because that's a fantastic product that we have. And, I mean, nobody has that, except now UPS announced that they will have the kind of similar product. But, I mean, this is a great product for our customer. It's just like, I mean... We have to do a better job in selling it. And I think that the refocusing, okay, under this sales leadership shakeup, okay, is going to help us.

speaker
Unknown
Company Representative

Great. Thanks very much.

speaker
Conference Call Operator
Operator

And your next question comes from the line of Conor Kupta with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

speaker
Conor Kupta
Analyst at Scotiabank

Thanks, operator. Morning, Ellie and David. I hope you're doing well. Morning.

speaker
David Saperstein
Chief Financial Officer

Morning.

speaker
Conor Kupta
Analyst at Scotiabank

Great. So, Alain, you talked about, and thanks for sharing the guidance for Q2, actually, it helps, you know, obviously. But in terms of the T4s, you mentioned the leadership changes in MidFab, but Keith, Kel, Chris, you know, I understand, you know, leadership changes are important, but what I'm trying to figure out is how quickly the employee morale is changing, but just, you know, some changes at the top. Was it just about the top? Or is there something else structurally in the business, be it unions or some other employees down the value chain where there's an issue in terms of culture or morale? Is there a low-hanging fruit that you can resolve with more changes down the road in this business?

speaker
Elaine Bedard
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

You know what, I mean, it's got to start with the top, right? So the approach that now we have under Cal and Chris is that we want to build the company, right? We want to grow this T-force rate. And you can't just squeeze costs and keep losing top line because this is not the way that you're going to grow and have shoulders that's going to be happy with what's going on, right? so the start of this new team is that guys let's roll up our sleeve and let's focus on growing this company again instead of just backpedaling in in reducing volume every month every quarters okay and trying to get more money from an 85 or when already an 85 or is great within within t force rate so You're right, Kunar, that at some terminal levels, okay, well, for sure down the road, okay, we have to make some changes. Already, okay, we already started to make some changes. I know that in certain terminals, OK, we've made some changes. Now, as I said, the last two or three quarters on the call, we have financial information by terminal. OK, so we know which terminals costs are great and we know which terminal costs are an issue. Right. So now the guys are really focused. And now, like I said, keep. job is not being running the full T-force rate. He's focused on operation with his regional VPs and get this cost okay, better everywhere. At the same time, on the commercial side, okay, our friend Chris is, you know, is motivating the sales team, okay, focus on, guys, we have to grow the small, medium-sized account because we need to have a bigger share of our portfolio of business with the small account versus the 3PL or versus the corporate account. We also need to refocus on GFE because, you know, we've been working four years okay on that gfp and like i said we we've been going down every quarter and david just added that for the first time we stopped going down okay and now okay guys this is the floor and now we have to start creeping up again right so we have a product that is second to none that nobody has so there's no reason why we you know we've lost revenue the focus was not there So the morale is great. The guys, they see that it's not just a cost gain. It's a global growth in terms of growing the top line at the same time doing a better job on cost.

speaker
Conor Kupta
Analyst at Scotiabank

That makes a lot of sense. Thanks so much. And if I can follow up with respect to the competitive landscape in the US LPL market, are you noticing any big changes there? Like maybe we can clearly see some of the data points We try to like, you know, some of the competitors like SIA, they're ramping up volumes where volumes are down for the market overall. Are you seeing any changes in terms of, you know, like with your culture and morale improving, there is an opportunity to kind of regain some of the market share that you may have lost or you did not lose any market share at all. Like, you know, was it all market that was soft and you held your market share?

speaker
Elaine Bedard
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

No, no, we, we, we've lost market share. Okay. So this is why another leg on that chair is the quality of our service. So we've talked a lot about missed pickup. So the goal is, like in Canada, in Canada, missed pickup does not exist for us. I mean, in the U.S., our missed pickup is 1.7% today, okay, of our total shipment. it's not good okay now the guy will tell you that two years ago nobody looked at that a year ago people woke up and they started looking at it it was like four percent now we're down to 1.7 the goal of the team is to bring that down closer to zero like we do in canada that's number one number two is the quality of our service okay so you know you could always say i'm 98 on time with a list of 45 different excuses Right? This is the past. Us, we look at the reality now and our service is improving in real term, not with all these excuses because we said, forget about the excuses because, you know, we can't We can't grow the business if we're not providing the service which we said that we would provide. So at the same time, we're moving more freight away from rail onto the road because we control the road, whereas we never control the rail. So the rail, you just live based on what these guys will do, right? So all this is also at the same time providing comfort to our sales team that, hey guys, we're serious, that we're going to meet, okay, and be there walk the talk what we're saying to the customer we will deliver so we are improving in real terms not just in in in the fantasy line land okay we are improving the reality of our service the next day and also on let's say the multiple day transit time we're not where we should be okay but we are improving and that's going to help us conard with customer, with protecting our customer base, with reducing the churn of our business because if I compare the churn we have in the U.S. versus the churn we have in Canada, I mean, this is like day and night, okay? Our Canadian, you know, if you look at our results in Canada, we're second to none. Nobody is approaching us at all in Canada, right? But in the U.S., our service is not up to par, and that's also a reason why we have too much churn. By fixing the service and improving the service, which is really a big focus of Keith and his operating team with Cal, it's going to help us reduce the churn and start growing the shipment count, and this is the goal.

speaker
Unknown
Company Representative

I get it for sure. Thanks so much for the time and all of that. Thank you. Thank you, Kunar.

speaker
Conference Call Operator
Operator

And your next question comes from the line of Daniel Imber with Stevens. Please go ahead.

speaker
Reed C
Representative for Daniel Imber (Stevens)

Hey, guys. This is Reed C on for Daniel. I'm just going to follow up real quick on that last question. On service, you've talked a lot about Keith focusing on operations. Yeah. improving service in the near term. Can you provide maybe some examples of what Keith and the team are working on to improve that in the near term?

speaker
Elaine Bedard
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, yes. You know, the line haul, okay, it's an issue, right? So if you load the trailers and, you know, you have a line haul provider, okay, would it be a rail or a third party that's not delivering the freight on time? Well, everything in that trailer is going to be late, okay? So the biggest issue, okay, that we have in the U.S. in terms of service is providing the line of service. So this is why we're moving away as much as we can, as fast as we can away from the rail, because we have no control on rail. I mean, you give them the freight and you hope that it's gonna be there on time. When it's road, when it's us, I mean, if we make a mistake, this is something that we can manage and we can correct. So this is the big thing that the guys are working on, number one. Number two is, like I said many, many times, mispickup is a disaster in a sense that the customer is waiting for you to pick up the freight and you don't show up. That doesn't help your reputation. That doesn't help the churn into your business. So this is why a major emphasis has been put on mispickup. Okay, and also improving our line all the next day service, you know, when the line all is only for 400 miles, which is next day service. I mean, we're doing quite well. It's when you have to move, okay, with two or three days connection, there we need to improve. And one way that we're doing that is we're moving away from rail as much and as fast as we can, number one. And number two is also the third party that we're using, you know, they have to deliver based on the commitment, like we have commitment with customers.

speaker
Reed C
Representative for Daniel Imber (Stevens)

Got it. Thank you. And on the rate side, obviously, it's been a little bit challenge for a few quarters here. I assume some of that is from the shift to enterprise in the back half of last year. As you've refocused the company. Yeah. When do you expect to have visibility to yield flipping positive year over year?

speaker
Elaine Bedard
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Listen, what we're seeing so far in April is there's an improvement in trend, but it's still early in the game. But for sure, the focus is there. I mean, we can't do business with an account that runs at 115 OR because we lost so much medium-sized account that runs at 85 OR, right? So this is nonsense that we went through in Q3 and in Q4, like I said on my last call of Q4, and this has to change, and this is why we made some change in T-force freight leadership. I mean, there's no way and we have to reduce the churn and this goes back to the operation. We have to meet commitment that we have with customer. So we will start to see improvement. And this is why, like I said earlier, 99 OR in Q1 is really, really bad. Okay, but we believe that sequentially we will improve 200 basis points just because of the cycle. But we're also going to reduce at least 100 basis points based on quality of revenue, reduced churn, better service, etc etc so this is why we feel that we can say to the market on q2 we believe that this company would deliver between a dollar 25 to a dollar 40 of vps okay this is based on better results at T-force rate. And also our U.S. truckload operation, specialty truckload operation, will do better in Q2. We are unloading excess assets over there that are penalizing us on depreciation and interest costs. So this also will help us participate in that $1.25 to $1.40 down the road. Got it.

speaker
Reed C
Representative for Daniel Imber (Stevens)

Thank you, Alain.

speaker
Unknown
Company Representative

Pleasure.

speaker
Conference Call Operator
Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Benoit Poirier with . Please go ahead.

speaker
Benoit Poirier
Analyst

Yeah. Good morning, Alain, and thanks for the great answers about the USTL. Now, if we move on DESECI, it looks like that the OR was closer to 99% in Q1. You mentioned a lot of details around the weaker economy, especially on the industrial side, but I would be curious whether there's also some question mark or issues around the culture and the management team and what we should expect from Dasaki in the coming quarters?

speaker
Elaine Bedard
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, well, Benoit, Dasaki's OR in Q1 is closer to a 96 than a 99, right? So that's number one. So it's the level of activity, Benoit, in Q1 that killed us with our specialty truckload in the U.S. Our miles were down, depending on the week, up to 15%. So just a disaster in terms of the fact also that we had excess trucks and excess trailers, right? But that will correct over 25, the excess assets will correct it over 25. Now in terms of the culture of the truckload in the U.S., the specialty truckload in the U.S., you know, it's not an issue like we had that T-force rate a few years ago. The trend, what you'll see us do more in the U.S. is we will drive less miles and have more revenue, right? That's the goal. And so our asset light operation, if you look at the way we report logistics revenue, right, So you'll see in our US specialty truckload operation, we will grow our asset light operation. Okay. And probably, let's say the asset side of our business will stay about the same size, less assets. Okay. But better revenue, better miles per truck, better revenue per truck. And if I remember correctly, David, Our revenue per truck in Q1 is better in our U.S. specialty truckload. We have more miles per truck, a little bit less of revenue per mile in Q1, but that is reversed in Q2 where we have better rate per mile in Q2 in our specialty truckload so far. Okay, and and we have a little bit more miles per truck again. Okay in q2 so far So the trend is going to improve over time and the desky acquisition. I'm telling you I mean we have a fantastic operating team there it's just like you know, we have, like I said to Steve at TFI, Steve Brookshaw, I said, Steve, we have very good truckers there. It's just like we have to transform these guys as very good business guy. Okay? It's all about making money, right? It's all about the bottom line. Yes, we are in business to service customer, but we service customer if we make money. If we don't make money, I mean, what's the sense of servicing customers? So, for example, one of our businesses, Wiley, okay, those guys are big into a sector of the industry where, you know, we look at the number of trucks we have there. We have 150 trucks, 600 trailers, 600 trailers. Why do we have 600 trailers? Well, that's that's that's right. So we have way too many trailers and even 150 trucks for that segment of our business. We have 50 too many trucks, right? Because we are hauling a product that is You know, difficult to hold, where you could be subject to claim, okay? And she said, oh, guys, we can't hold that for two points to the bottom line. Might as well put our capital into, let's say, a bank. Okay, we're going to get 4% dividend. Why would you invest capital for that? So for sure in that division, the 600 trailer will go down to 300 during the course of 25. Okay, it may be down to 200. And the number of trucks will go down from 150 to 100, where it makes sense. So that's a little bit of a change, where Steve is working hard with the team there to turn a trucker's business into a business, a trucking company into a business about making money. So we said a 96 OR in Daski in Tijuana, it's not acceptable. Everybody knows that. I mean, you know, four points to the bottom line. No. Okay. So the guys know, hey, specialty truck load. I mean, look at our van world in Canada running a 90 OR. Okay. If you exclude the gain on asset. A 90 OR in Canada where we are competing with the driver in shift. And those guys are able to get to a 90 OR and our specialty is 94. Not acceptable. okay globally uh dasky is 96 something right so we know what to do we'll keep working at it and and for sure i mean we see until that that tariff uncertainty and fog whatever you call it okay for sure we'll be under pressure in terms of of miles in terms of volume but i think that in six months, three months, six months, okay, we'll have a better visibility and then people will start, okay, buying again in the industrial sector that is core to us.

speaker
David Saperstein
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, exactly. I think that's so important to remember the context of this quarter. I mean, the specialized end markets are, our customers in the specialized end markets are the ones specifically affected by the trade situation, the trade uncertainty. So, of course, they're easing off on production and easing off on orders and as they wait to see how things are going to play out. So that's the very, very near term. But the long term is we believe in North American industrialization. We believe in North American production. And this is the way that the economy is moving. That's why we want this exposure.

speaker
Benoit Poirier
Analyst

Yep, absolutely. That's great, Collier. And just in terms of follow-up quickly, guys, we've seen a lot of headlines about cargo volume that is expected to be down significantly in the second half given the reduced imports from China. So comments from the ports and RF could be down somewhere 10% to 20%. So I understand that it's pretty foggy out there, but any thoughts about how this could impact China TFI and whether this could make the typical second asset pickup maybe a little bit less pronounced than it has been historically.

speaker
Elaine Bedard
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, well, that's a very good question. And we know that the port activity, okay, will be less because there's less ship coming from Asia to the U.S. in Q2. We know that. But if you go back to what we're saying, Benoit, about our specialty truckload, what we're moving has got nothing to do with Asia, right? It's industrial activity in the U.S. That may be affected a little bit, okay? It's more like the retail stuff, okay, that probably will be affected. And until that they fix this tariff situation with Asia, I mean, there could be some pressure in Q2 and in Q3. But in our specialty truckload, I mean, when we talk to our customer, okay, that's not the reason why they're slow. The reason they're slow is that nobody knows. If you're a farmer in the U.S. today and you're a crop, you don't know who's going to buy your crop because the Chinese are saying, you know what, we're going to buy from Brazil. We're not buying from the U.S. anymore, right? then you're not going to buy a tractor, you're not going to buy a combine, you're not going to do anything until you have better visibility. So this is what's affecting our volume today. When we talk to yellow hiring, all this construction material, where you have interest rates that are quite high still in the US, I know Mr. Trump wants them lowered, but so far, I mean, they're still high, right? So it affects construction. Construction is us. I mean, we're moving building material. We're moving all this related to industrial activity. It does not affect whatever China shifts to the U.S. that much, okay, for us. Maybe a little bit on our LTL side, but not that I know of, Benoit. But for sure, I mean... Q2 could be for our world, okay, more difficult in the U.S. based on the number of ship that are not coming to the U.S. because of what's going on.

speaker
David Saperstein
Chief Financial Officer

And I think the best way to try and quantify that is to look at page four of the MD&A where we actually list out our end markets by percentage of revenue. You can see the retail is 19%. The remainder are various mostly industrial end markets. And so that can help people get a sense.

speaker
Elaine Bedard
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

And also if I may add, if you look at that, the automotive is mostly us. Okay. So in the automotive, we have GHD moving trucks. Okay. We have a contracts with, uh, you know, I would say that 90% of our automotive revenue is us based. So it's not Canadian based and et cetera, et cetera. It's mostly us base. You know, stuff that we do at TA dedicated for some customers that we have there. Everything that we move from GHT is mostly for the U.S. market out of Canada. Well, Canada, it's a small plant. And a little bit of Mexico as well. But it's mostly for the U.S. domestic market.

speaker
Benoit Poirier
Analyst

Okay. That's very good, Collar. Thanks for the time.

speaker
Unknown
Company Representative

Thank you, Benoit.

speaker
Conference Call Operator
Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Scott Group with Wolf Research. Please go ahead.

speaker
Scott Group
Analyst at Wolf Research

Hey, thanks. Good morning. Just a quick follow-up on specialty truckload. Relative to that 94 OR in Q1, how do you think about the progression there into Q2 and the guide and maybe back half of the year? Yeah, thanks.

speaker
David Saperstein
Chief Financial Officer

Go ahead, David. Yeah, embedded in the guide is a 9192 for specialized in Q2.

speaker
Scott Group
Analyst at Wolf Research

Okay. And do you think, is there more self-help there with respect to Dasky, or is sort of improvement beyond that sort of going to be more dependent on cycle and trucking? Yeah.

speaker
Elaine Bedard
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, it's got no push for sure. There's some improvement on the side on the financial side. I mean, all the admin and the system, the safety. Okay. Which is a big issue for us because of all the claims of accidents, et cetera, et cetera. So there's a huge focus on that in the part of the guys over there. The culture that an accident is the problem of the insurance company. Well, it's not. No, it's our problem. So safety first. So these are all changes that should help us. Also, we have a business unit that did not perform really, really well in Q1 in the U.S. where, you know, we're on our last leg, okay, with that business. If we can't fix it, we're just going to have to do something else with it. And it's not part of DASCI, right? So the only business unit that we made some changes that was part of DASCI was Bulldog, which was very small that we shut it down. So overall, I mean, we know what to do there. The other thing, as I said, Scott, many times, we have way too much asset in that business, thanks to Dasky's previous management team, where they were a big fan of buying trucks. So today we have way too many trucks for the volume. Okay, we have way too many trailers. So this excess asset will come out of our books, will reduce our depreciation. And at the same time, we're going ahead with smart capex. on our truckload again going back to the philosophy that the balance between asset light and asset okay in our specialty truckload in the US has to change okay and this is one also of our goal is to improve or increase, I would say, the asset-light revenue, okay, and keep the asset-side revenue about stable, but the growth has to go to our asset-light operation.

speaker
Scott Group
Analyst at Wolf Research

And then maybe just last quick one. I saw a few weeks ago UPS announced a expanded version of their own GFP business, maybe on some bigger size shipments. Is there any

speaker
Elaine Bedard
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

impact to you from from ups making a bigger push into gfp no not at all scott not at all i mean they've always been in that position okay they've always been there okay and it's never been big for them uh and probably they're trying to to grow it okay but at the same time us we didn't do our job i mean you know when you look at that i mean Now, we're going to be doing our job on GFP, and we're going to grow that business again. Because for sure, if you're UPS and you look at what T4 Straight has done over the course of the last four years, you say, what are these guys doing, right? But we had some issues with some customers that our partner UPS doesn't want to deal with, okay, some resellers. So that's one of the reasons why our revenue dropped so much. But there's also a fact that we didn't do our job, right? So now the morale is through the roof over there. The guys are really up and and running and like david was saying for the first time we we were flat quarter over quarter on gfp but for sure we're gonna our focus is to grow this business again and there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to grow that because we have a product that is second to none for small shipment that could be conveyable okay with ups quality of service so there's no question about this the quality of service of ups okay so i mean guys let's sell it let's uh let's move okay thank you guys appreciate it thanks sod and your next question comes from the line of ken hoxter with bank of america please go ahead hey hi elena david thanks for taking my question this is adam roszkowski on for ken hexter

speaker
Adam Roszkowski
Analyst at Bank of America

I guess going back to US LTL, how much time do you think before you start seeing material improvement in the claims ratio? Is that 0.9% this quarter, flat, and a little worse year over year? Anything that's happening right now that's starting to move the needle on that? And I guess I ask because it sounds like the small business share you were winning is being done more or less with price. So just any kind of thoughts on the service side?

speaker
Elaine Bedard
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

No, I wouldn't say that. But on the claim side, okay, for sure we're at 0.9% of revenue, which is terrible, right? And there's a lag, okay? There's a lag. So when I talk to the team there, they say, hey, you know what, we'll do a better job in Q2. We're still paying, okay, for mistakes or issues that were not addressed in Q2. in 24, right? So there's a lag. So you should see us improving. 0.9 is completely unacceptable. If you look at our Canadian operation, if I remember correctly, we're about 0.2, okay, which is best in class. I mean, if you look at our US peers, best in class are about 0.2. And this is the goal. This is where we have to be. But, you know, we used to be in a way better position at T-force rate if you go back maybe a year, a year and a half ago. We went as low as 0.4, 0.5. Now we're back to an unacceptable level of 0.9. You should see us improve during the course of Of twenty five in terms of the new business that we're bringing in. Okay. The small medium size. It's not on based on price. Okay. Our price is competitive. Our price reflects the market. Okay. And we're not trying to gain. Okay. Shipments on the back of. stupid pricing and losing money about it. The problem that we had in Q3 and then Q4 is we were losing the small, medium-sized quality freight, and we've replaced that with guys, major account, that are slow paying you, And you lose money with those guys. So this is a major change of the sales team there under the management of Chris and Cal and on the commercial side. and you should see some benefit, okay? Like I said earlier, cyclicality, we should improve to 100 basis point from the disastrous 99, and then we believe that our improvement also will also reduce another 100 basis point to closer to a 96 OR in Q2 and walking closer, okay, slowly to at least a 90 OR at one point and then break that famous glass ceiling for us that's been the 90 OR.

speaker
Adam Roszkowski
Analyst at Bank of America

Thanks for the caller. I guess then just on maybe the pace of contractual pricing renewals. I mean, you previously noted pricing at the lower service end of the US LTL space has been competitive. So any update on just the kind of quarterly contractual pricing renewals run rate, particularly as you have started to make these shifts over these past couple months?

speaker
Elaine Bedard
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, I think that everything is normal on that side.

speaker
David Saperstein
Chief Financial Officer

Hey, David, I mean, what we're seeing. Yeah, we're seeing, look, the renewals are taking place in the mid-single digits. The problem is our revenue per shipment is down because the mix has deteriorated in the way that we've described with the shift from SMB to larger customers.

speaker
Unknown
Company Representative

But the renewals are in the mid-singles. Got it. Thanks for the time. Pleasure.

speaker
Conference Call Operator
Operator

And your next question comes from the line of Brian Olsen back with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

speaker
Brian Olsen
Analyst at JP Morgan

Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking the question. So just to ask SMB maybe a different way, I guess what we're, the market's concerned with additional competition in an area that everybody seems to be wanting to grow when volume is down pretty significantly just across the board. So maybe you can help me give a little bit of answer there. Maybe you can help elaborate with a little bit more of maybe milestones for service improvements or is this going to be, you know, better density and then for better service with some of the information you got with the terminals? You know, maybe you can help provide some, I don't know, cutovers from the systems or perspectives from the actual operations that would help kind of catalyze this service gain or this share gain, rather, as opposed to, you know, just looking from the outside and thinking, well, this just looks like more competition in a pretty tough market. So anything there would be helpful.

speaker
Elaine Bedard
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, you know, when you look back at this company, T4 Street, I mean, we had issues with mix everywhere, right? So if you look at our lino, okay, our mix was way too much rail miles versus truck miles. So we've been addressing that to improve the service. The other thing also that was not good in the mix was the small and medium-sized account versus the 3PL versus the corporate account. Our mix is not normal because we went the easy way with the 3PL and the corporate account, etc. So the mix that we have today is not normal. So let's say that the normal mix of small, medium-sized account is 45% of your business. We're not there at all. So that's why we're having a tough time. So our peers probably have better mix than us, I would say. And this is why for us, okay, it's got to be a focus of rebalancing the mix on the linoleum, okay, like I've talked earlier. And at the same time also, the trend that we were going in 24 was really, really bad because we were just making the balance even worse than what it was, okay, prior. So the guys are working and it's showing results, okay, as we are seeing it now. Okay, the small, medium-sized account. part of our business is increasing instead of the way it used to be, let's say two or three quarters ago, being reduced. So it's a question of balancing. Now, versus our peers, okay, what we're seeing is that, you know, sometimes what is good for us, maybe it's not that good for one of my peers, right? So it's just to focus on the right stuff, okay? And for sure, like I said many, many times, down the road, we have to improve the density. So again is, well, everybody wants to improve density. But my density, because this is where I'm situated, maybe is not the same as one of my peers, which is 40 miles away from me. So it's just having the right focus. And we've been working at it for a long time. But on the sales side, we went the opposite way of improving. We went the wrong way. Now we're correcting that on the sales side. And on the upside, I mean, missed pickup, we're doing a better job today than a year ago, but we're still not doing the job that we're supposed to do, right? And on the just on time, yes, on the short haul, we're there, but on the long haul, which is a lot of our freight is long haul, Uh, we're not there, so we have to keep improving that with our hub. Okay. With our line provider and as much as we can reduce the rail miles. Okay. As fast as we can so that we are in control of what's going on because when you get that to rail, you have no control. right so that will also help us reduce the churn so when you reduce the churn you stop losing customer and losing freight from customers so that puts less pressure on your sales team okay that's always running like a dog that's running uh to his tail right running in circle trying to chase his tail So all that is part of that global strategic plan that we established with Cal, Chris, and Keith over there. And like David was saying earlier, I mean, we're going to see some improvement there.

speaker
Brian Olsen
Analyst at JP Morgan

Okay, thanks, Lane. I appreciate that. And then just a quick question on cross-border activity. I don't think it's necessarily a huge part of your business, but just wanted to see, given all the volatility in the headlines and on and off again tariffs if you see a big surge there and then drop and I guess to the extent that you've got any visibility what's embedded in the guidance there for 2Q. Thank you.

speaker
Elaine Bedard
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, very good question, Brian. On the truckload side, we follow every day the number of load that goes to the border. Okay, so what's happening now is that there's no issues with volume. The problem we have is that there's nothing coming back to Canada right now. So it's an issue. The backhaul is killing us right now on the truckload side. On the LTL side, yes, we are a big player on the trans-border freight between US and Canada. We see some softness there, some softness from our partner. With TST, we see some softness, okay, from our own operation with T-force freight, U.S. and Canada. Nothing very important. I would say probably we're down about 10%, 15% so far. Again, this is based on a lot of insecurity. A lot of it is based on I don't know where I'm going, okay, so I'm just waiting to see what's going to happen next. So a little bit on the LTL side, not so much. And on the truckload side, everything that comes from Canada to the US, the float is normal. I mean, aluminum, I mean, I think we're doing more aluminum now than we used to do six months ago, right? Steel is down. No question about that. Steel is down out of Ontario. But aluminum out of Quebec, I mean, we're still running like crazy, even with the 25% tariff. And we know why. I mean, Canada manufactures, what, 4 million tons a year. U.S. manufactures not even a million tons a year. And the market is, right now from Canada, is 75% of the U.S., I think. And nothing has changed. And if you remember what the president of Alcoa was saying, I mean, aluminum has to come from Canada, unless, you know, there's another market that could be, but Canada is very close to the U.S. I mean, it's like the car. It's like the automotive industry. It's very, it's like the truck. It's all integrated, right? So, yeah, make a long story short of your question. It's not that significant so far. We could do better, okay? And this is going back to what David was saying about this sector of our business that relates to industrial. A lot of our customers are sidelined, waiting to see what's going to happen.

speaker
David Saperstein
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, and Brian, to address your question about how it's taken into consideration in the guide, the guide, as Mr. Vidar said in his opening remarks, is based on the first three weeks of April and what we've seen in actual results And what we've done is we've extrapolated that, taking into consideration the trends that typically occur between April, May, and June. And so we've extrapolated that in an appropriate way, taking that into consideration. And so what we're saying is if things continue in Q2 the way that they started, this is what we'll do. And if there's some major change in the macro, related to trade, then that'll have an implication up or down.

speaker
Unknown
Company Representative

Okay. Thanks very much, guys. Pleasure, Brian.

speaker
Conference Call Operator
Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Bruce Chen with Steeple. Please go ahead.

speaker
Bruce Chen

Hi, Elaine and David. This is Matt. My last call for Bruce this morning. Thanks for taking a quick one from us here. Just on the PNC side of the house, U.S. market's getting a bit more competitive on the B2C side. I know B2C is a smaller portion of the business. Would you be able to give a sense of what percentage that is now, and maybe comment on if you're seeing some increased price competition in that market, or is it stable? Thank you.

speaker
Elaine Bedard
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

A very good question. On package, our B2C is growing, okay, because our B2B is not growing, right? And for sure, B2C is one stop, one shipment normally, right? So it affects our density, if you want to call it like that. So it's a little bit of a headwind for us, okay? But if you don't beat them, you have to join them, right? So this is where we have no other option than to grow our share of B2C okay versus our b2b in our pnc in canada now and and also the pricing is is very aggressive because there's lots of guys that have done okay major investment in canada on on b2c and a lot of this b2c business is managed by you know the large player okay which is uh which is amazon in canada as well now The thing is, also talking about Amazon, if they decided to shut down their Quebec operation, they went with all kinds of small guys. Maybe they're talking to a big player to help them. I mean, we could see that down the road. We'll have to see that. Keep in mind, though, that because of our density in our PNC and in our LTL in Canada, Fuel is a tailwind for us. And the Canadian government, with Mr. Carney now in charge, although there's an election at the end of the month, but still, Mr. Carney decided to get rid of the carbon tax, which is lowering the fuel costs in Canada, except Quebec. Those guys, I mean, they're, I would say, late to the party. But that has also an influence on fuel costs for us. So we reduce our fuel costs, but it also reduces our fuel surcharge. And because of our density, okay, this now is a little bit of a headwind for us. But this is something that we're going to have to manage because carbon tax in today's environment In North America, I think this is dead. I mean, so it's going nowhere. So, our guys are working around this. Okay. But there again, I mean, this is, you know, part of all this change in the macro environment that TFI is adjusting to.

speaker
Unknown
Company Representative

Excellent. Thank you. Welcome.

speaker
Conference Call Operator
Operator

And your next question comes from the line of Cameron Dorkson with National Bank Financial. Please go ahead.

speaker
Cameron Dorkson
Analyst at National Bank Financial

Yeah, thanks. Good morning. Really just one question from me. I just want to talk a little bit about free cash flow. You sort of indicated that you're going to be pretty light on CapEx for 2025. I'm just wondering, obviously there's a cloudy outlook here with the business, but I'm just wondering if we look at 2024 free cash flow kind of in that $700 million to $800 million range, is that Could that be a reasonable expectation for 2025, given the fact that you're going to have lower CapEx?

speaker
Elaine Bedard
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

You know what, Cameron? I think that maybe, David, you could comment on that, but I think that what we will generate in 2025, what we know so far, okay, based on what we know, I mean, we should be in the same kind of zip code, okay? Yeah. That's the plan so far. Now, for sure, Q1 pre-cash flow was through the roof because we have very little capex, right? But going into Q2, Q3, and Q4, we'll have more capex, absolutely, but we'll also generate more cash, right? So this is why, you know, You know, what can we add to that, David?

speaker
David Saperstein
Chief Financial Officer

Well, listen, I would say that we were really strong in free cash flow because of the CapEx and Q1, but also because of working capital. There was a release of cash that was over $30 million from working capital. So those are the three variables that drive your free cash in the year, Cameron. The most important one is earnings. That's the most important one, okay? So that underpins it all, and we'll see. We've given the guidance based on the visibility that we have at this time for that. And then the other two are CapEx and working capital.

speaker
Cameron Dorkson
Analyst at National Bank Financial

Okay. And on working capital, I mean, how does that trend, I guess, through the remainder of the year?

speaker
David Saperstein
Chief Financial Officer

Well, so working capital is an interesting one. Working capital provides a release of cash when conditions deteriorate. So as revenue declines, And in particular, as fuel price declines, because fuel is the most working capital intensive thing that we have. Because remember, our DSO is 39 days across the company, but we pay the fuel providers in seven days. So when you have decreasing revenues from lower activity and decreasing fuel, that releases a lot of cash from the working capital. And that's part of what we experienced in this quarter. And then you have the reverse, of course, which we saw, for example, during the pandemic as things ramped up, activity ramped up, fuel prices ramped up, you had a drain. So the way that I would think about working capital is as really an offset to some extent to the earnings, meaning when earnings are climbing higher, typically that's a drain on working capital. And so you'll have increased cash flows from the operations being offset somewhat by working capital needs. And then when conditions deteriorate, it's the reverse. You'll have earnings coming down, partially offset by a release of working capital.

speaker
Elaine Bedard
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

And over and above that, because the carbon tax in Canada, okay, being eliminated, fuel costs in Canada has dropped. Yeah. Okay. And that's going to help us again, because our customer pays us in on average 40 days, 39 days. Yeah. And we pay fuel every week, right? Correct.

speaker
Cameron Dorkson
Analyst at National Bank Financial

Right. Okay. No, that makes total sense. Appreciate the color.

speaker
Unknown
Company Representative

Thanks very much. Pleasure, Cameron.

speaker
Conference Call Operator
Operator

And your next question comes from the line of Elliot Alper with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

speaker
Elliot Alper
Analyst at TD Cowen

Hey, great. Thanks. Yeah, this is Elliot Alper, Jason Seidel. Maybe just one on the logistics side. Can you discuss maybe the moving pieces within that segment in the first quarter? Was that primarily the truck moving business, driving the weakness, and should we expect that to persist given the tariffs, or are there any businesses within that segment helping offset some of the broader weakness?

speaker
Elaine Bedard
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, if you look at the OEMs, I mean, the OEMs volumes, I mean, Packard and Daimler are two major customers. I mean, they produce 20% to 30%. less trucks today than they used to a year ago. So for sure, this is affecting our business at GHG big time. So if you look at our revenue in our logistics, I mean, the drop in revenue comes mostly from that, right? On our logistics side in Canada, we're doing really, really well. On our logistics side in the US, a little bit of a weakness in Q1. But the guys are addressing that, and we believe that if you look at the year 25, excluding the truck moving business at GHC, we should do really, really well. So, the Canadian side, the U.S. side will improve, no issues. The truck moving, according to the discussion we're having with the OEM, in Q4, we should do better Q4 25 than we did in Q4 twenty four and two four twenty four was really the first quarter that we start to see a drop in in that business okay and it continue into one it will continue into two and two three and according to our guys two four whoops for the first time we'll do a better better revenue in Q4 year-over-year, 25 versus 24. Now, 26, if you listen to the OEM, it's going to be a boom year, okay, and to a certain degree, 27, because of all the changes, unless Mr. Trump's administration makes some changes in the requirement of environmental requirement on the truck manufacturers. I mean, 26 is going to be a boom year, and 27, maybe more quiet.

speaker
Unknown
Company Representative

We'll see. I appreciate it. Thank you. Pleasure.

speaker
Conference Call Operator
Operator

Sorry, your next question comes from the line of Baskin Majors with Susquehanna. Please go ahead.

speaker
Baskin Majors
Analyst at Susquehanna

David and Mr. Bedard, good to hear you guys both on together here today. About a year ago, Mr. Bedard, we talked about kind of what you wanted to see through, and you talked about digesting Daske and potentially another big acquisition and, and, and, and, you know, the spinoff plans that were maybe more prominent or near term when we discussed that a year ago, uh, can you give us an update on, on, you know, what you'd like to accomplish in your role here, uh, before you feel like you've done everything you wanted to do, just given everything that's changed in the last nine, 12 months here.

speaker
Elaine Bedard
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

So, yeah. Yeah. Hey, listen, I mean, Like I said, 25, we can't do anything of size on M&A, right? We had to walk away from a transaction that was a great transaction for both parties, the seller and us, and we had to walk away because of all of this environment, okay? But that doesn't change the plan. The plan is for sure, if it's not going to be 25, it's got to be 26. We need to do another acquisition of size. in the U.S. And that's number one. And the spinoff, okay, in our mind, it still makes a lot of business sense. But there again, I mean, there's always been a question of size. So when you have a market cap that is now down to six or seven billion U.S., I mean, any spinoff doesn't make any sense. Also in the global environment. So we have to wait. So it's not going to happen in 25. probably in 26, we'll have to see depending on where we're going. Okay. But it makes a lot of sense to have our truckload division stand alone. Okay. Because the return invested capital is not the same. Okay. The liquidity is not the same. So it makes a lot of sense. And I think everybody agrees that this is the way to go. It's just the timing. Okay. We thought that You know, a year ago, the timing would be within two years and within two years, it would be like twenty six. I don't think it's going to happen in twenty six. I think it's more like maybe a twenty seven issue. OK, the market has been tough for truckload guys. OK, if you look at our peers. They've been suffering badly 23, 24, and even 25. Okay. I think it's going to be a tough year. Maybe things will start to improve in 26. And then it makes lots of sense for us if we have the size. Okay. Because don't forget our truckload operation running today at 90 some or 93, 94 globally with the van world. I mean, we don't want to do a spinoff with a 93 or company. I mean, we got to bring that or down to any closer to an 85, which is best in class. Okay. And this is, this is the goal. Okay. For 25, 26. And after we get to that goal, then maybe it makes sense. But again, if our market cap is still $6 billion at the time, it's going to be tough to do. So there's still a lot of, uh, of things to do before we do this kind of spin-off, but we're getting ready for it. I mean, we're taking action, okay, every day that we can to be in a position when it's time to say go. I mean, we are in a position to go, right? There's some assets that needs to be transferred. There's some technology that needs to be addressed, et cetera, et cetera, which we are working on, okay, in order to be ready when the right time comes. And in terms of M&A of a sizable deal, it's going to have to wait 26 because we have to show to the market that, you know, we've been talking about T4 Street for four years now. We bought T4 Street four years ago and we used to do okay. And in 24, we just did worst, right? So we got to turn this thing around okay, before doing anything of size in the U.S. Until we don't turn T-force rate back to closer to a 90 EOR or under 90 EOR, which I think is feasible. I mean, don't forget that we run an 80 EOR in Canada today in our Canadian LTL, which is unionized, right? So there's no reason union, no union, no, no, no.

speaker
Unknown
Company Representative

It's just us, okay, that we have to do a better job. Thank you for that.

speaker
Conference Call Operator
Operator

Presenters, I am not showing any further questions at this time. I would like to turn it back to Mr. Alain Billard for closing remarks.

speaker
Elaine Bedard
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

All right. Well, thank you, operator, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today and for your ongoing interest in TFI International. So we look forward to keeping you updated as we move through 25. And as always, please reach out if you have any additional questions. Stay safe, enjoy the day, and thank you again.

speaker
Conference Call Operator
Operator

Thank you, presenters. And ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

-

-