Adams Resources & Energy, Inc. (AMEX:AE) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Kevin Roycraft: Yeah, a few things. Obviously, we’re monitoring internally what our volumes are both on the barrels per day count and then on Service Transport the load counts we’re seeing. But outside of what we look at internally we’re also monitoring what our major shippers are saying. And so they have been saying over the last couple of quarters I haven’t heard what they said for their fourth quarter results yet. They expected to bounce along the bottom until about mid-2024. Admittedly, I don’t know what their optimism is towards a turnaround what causes their feelings that way. We have seen a bit of a spike in Q1. We’re not 100% sure at least on the chemical side if that’s from customers refilling inventories. So we don’t want to get out too far ahead and say that’s a recovery at this point.

Another thing we monitor especially on the Service Transport side is sort of the overflow loads that our major shippers have. So that means that capacity is getting tight and that shippers or carriers are turning down lanes. It means they don’t have enough drivers to cover the loads that are out there. Throughout the course of 2023 there were virtually zero overflow lanes available. We have seen some overflow tick up early in this year not to a huge extent, but that list is getting populated which is an encouraging sign too. So while I don’t think the turnaround is here I think we’ll have some signs of when it’s happening. Again, we’re seeing some early signs of that but I’m not quite ready to say that turnaround’s begun to — needs to see some consistency.

Jason Ursaner: Understood. And appreciate all those details. Thanks.

Kevin Roycraft: Thank you, Jason.

Tracy Ohmart: Thank you.

Operator: This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Kevin Roycraft for any closing remarks.

Kevin Roycraft: Thank you for your continued interest in the company, and we look forward to updating you on our progress when we report the first quarter earnings in May. Thank you for joining us.

Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation and you may now disconnect.