Knight-Swift Transportation Holdings Inc. (NYSE:KNX) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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And so I think you’re going to continue to see LTL rates have to go up because their largest expense continues to be inflationary. On Logistics, Logistics is going to be volatile. But the reality is our Logistics business, if I look at just this most recent quarter, it produced $23.5 million of operating income, of the which we’re grateful for all of it. But in terms of moving the needle on our entire nearly $8 billion parent company, that isn’t the one that — that isn’t the biggest lever.

Adam Miller: Yes. And I’d add on the Logistics front, Bert, I mean we do have that moving up from the mid-80s, which we accomplished in 2022. And we note here in the guidance, high 80s, low 90s shift. If you look at the absolute performance for 2023, it would be very good compared to really anybody else in the market. It’s just we’re coming from such a strong position in 2022. So we do expect to give up something there. Now I mean, as you know, in Logistics, your largest cost is purchase trends. That’s going to be variable and move with rates. And generally speaking, when you’re doing power-only loads that — those rates are less volatile too, typically hold in stronger because there’s less competition in the brokerage market, yet you’re buying capacity in the open market. So the gross margins there are a lot more resilient than your pure live load, live unload opportunities.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Amit Mehrotra from Deutsche Bank.

Amit Mehrotra: I guess I just had a couple of quick ones. One, Dave, how likely is it do you think for Knight to do another acquisition this year, kind of like a meaningful acquisition like AAA that can really move the needle in terms of earnings contribution? And then, Adam, if we look at the fourth quarter results, I want to go back to maybe Jack’s question around the first quarter. Because in the fourth quarter, we didn’t really see crack in yield on a loaded-mile basis. It was down by 1% sequentially. And it’s probably going to be down by 10% sequentially in the first quarter. So I’m trying to reconcile that dynamic with Dave’s comments initially, saying that you should see like not much of a seasonal — a very counter-seasonal move 4Q to 1Q?

Because if I look at 4Q, we just didn’t see the crack in yield that we may be expecting in the first quarter. So it would be just helpful, Adam, I think if you could help us frame like what is the actual decline you expect in Truckload profits from 4Q to 1Q just given that dynamic on yield.

David Jackson: So Amit, from an M&A perspective, we sit here right now at about 0.97 leverage ratio. So we’re well positioned to act. Our number one priority clearly is LTL. Those take time and you have to have the right timing in some cases for that to work out. And so in between those, we look at a variety of companies. And as we alluded to in our last quarterly call, truckload carriers are attractive to us and — because we had so much comfort. We have, we think, an enviable track record with that and we know it, we love it, and we wouldn’t be afraid to do truckload deals as well. So we think we have the bandwidth to be able to do both. And so we remain very interested, and I would say, very active in the M&A world.

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