Daseke, Inc. (NASDAQ:DSKE) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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So getting those trucks out, keeping them out longer. So being willing, a little bit more willing to take a more moderated rate per mile load if it has kind of length of haul with it. So we’re really thinking about a lot of those things and collectively we think that’s going to allow us to hold the line. We also have a few million dollars net of some incremental reserves we took this year. A few million dollars of headwinds in insurance that we, knock on wood, that we hope we don’t see. So that also provides a little bit of a downside support in keeping EBITDA flat this year.

Bert Subin: So maybe just a follow-up on that. We don’t have great data for the last downturn. If we’re having this conversation in 12 months and EBITDA was, let’s say, sub $200 million, which part of that do you think would have been most — would have been the driver of that and the only reason I ask is doing 235 again or something in that range would clearly be a good outcome. But I am sure there is some assessment of what’s the potential downside. It sounds like the cost program is pretty solid and that should be savings from what you’re seeing today. Specialized is resilient and there’s some strength in particular end markets. And so then it comes down to what happens in the rate side and what happens to productivity. If we’re looking at this in 12 months and you didn’t hit those marks and it was a little worse, what are the things that are maybe a little more exposed or just, what’s your assessment of the risk?

Jonathan Shepko: Yeah, I mean I think you hit it, it comes down to rate. I mean, I think that’s at the end of the day, for all of us in this industry, I mean rate is the biggest thing out of our control that will kind of make or break things. Again, we have a lot of these we mentioned self-help business improvement initiatives that we’re going to be working on that’ll offset that. We also had, we talked about it as really a headwind the last two quarters of 2022, which we think will be a tailwind going into 2023. And that’s really the shift away from owner operator drivers, LP drivers, to more company drivers. The last few weeks of 2022 and certainly strong into 2023. So far we’ve seen a marked shift in our ability to seek company trucks which have a much better margin profile.

And I think that if the rates continue to stay moderated this year, that trend will only continue. I think a 200 or something certainly below 200 is a pretty draconian assumption or target to suggest we might hit to. I think that the Daseke business model today is much stronger than it was in the last downturn, the last trough. And so I think that we are fundamentally — we fundamentally have just a different range of earning profile, operating profile in our business today. I think that if you look at, if you look at where we’re at in the cycle, and I know everybody’s kind of talked about this, but we have — these are typically 36 to 48 month cycles and we had 18 months or so, 18 to 20 months of expansion, really 2021 and into 2022. And then for the better part of 2022 at least, the spot rate since January has been slowly falling away, we started to see some shakiness in our contract rates in July or August of this year and kind of a more pronounced leg down in our contract rates.

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