Hub Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:HUBG) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Brian Ossenbeck: Hey good evening, thanks for the time. So Geoff, you mentioned the big disconnect with the valuation the stock and versus peers. You’re active with the buyback in the third quarter, but it didn’t look like there was any activity on the fourth quarter. So maybe you can give us some thoughts on how you expect to deploy some of the extra capital going forward throughout the rest of the year with the still remainder on the recent program authorization?

Geoff DeMartino: Sure. Our priorities for capital deployment have always been invest in the business, first and foremost, through CapEx. We’ve been growing the container fleet 5% to 10% a year. We’ve had a really nice benefit from our tractor cycle upgrades. We’ve taken the average age from four years down to about 2.5 years now and a really nice return on that investment in terms of lower M&R and better fuel economy. So we’ll continue to do that. We’ve had a great experience with acquisitions really with TAGG, the most recent one, improving our offering, expanding our offering and allowing – with that, and we saw this with CaseStack a few years ago, too. Those companies are really good at what they do, which is operating inside the warehouse, and then we marry that up with what we do, which is managing transportation and really put together a really nice offering for the customer and take out some costs there.

So very pleased with that and the ability – and the cross-sell abilities that came with several of our recent acquisitions. So we’re looking to do more of that. M&A has been part of our growth path. We’ve been averaging one deal a year. We’d like to probably accelerate that. We think we have some good – a good pipeline out there now, and we’re working on that for 2023. So that’s kind of why we didn’t pursue – share repurchase in the fourth quarter as we wanted to kind of run out some of the M&A opportunities in the pipeline as well as invest in CapEx. But given the really strong financial performance for the last two years, we’ve got a balance sheet that is pretty much net debt zero. And so, we’ll look to deploy that capital in certainly probably all three of those channels in 2023.

Brian Ossenbeck: Okay, I appreciate that. So just to follow-up on maybe what’s also embedded in the guidance. You talked a lot about how this time is a little bit different in terms of flexibility with the rail contracts. Can you talk about how much of that is reflected in the guide you can get the full benefit of those? It did seem like maybe these aren’t really linear it will take a little bit of time, obviously, you have different partners. So I just wanted to see how much of a benefit you’d expect to get in 2023? And if there could be even a bit more in ’24 if the truck market continues to be as soft as most of us expect.

Geoff DeMartino: Sure. We have great rail partners, both of which I think you’ve seen you follow them and you know what they’re doing. We’ve really seen them embrace intermodal over the last few years, deciding to work with channel partners like us, investing in their fleets. I think UP invested $600 million last year in terms of new terminals and equipment. And then I think we’ve seen a really – we’ve seen them embrace better economics for us is a way for us to drive growth and convert freight off the road. And so, there is – to your point, there is more flexibility than we’ve had in the past. There is a little bit of a lag that’s built into the way those contracts reset. So that will carry through beyond 2023.

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