Old Dominion Freight Line, Inc. (NASDAQ:ODFL) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Marty Freeman: Yes. I don’t have my [indiscernible] magnificent happier handy to be able to predict when things are going to change, but that’s probably the most buzziest thing is when will the inflection point happen. We – obviously, it’s called a cycle for a reason, and we will get back into a robust demand environment at some point. And when we do, we will be able to take advantage of that. And we’ve built the company up. We’ve been growing our company for years and continue to believe that we’ve got a lot of growth opportunity as we look out into the future. So obviously, we put on a lot of growth. We were able to grow our revenues $1 billion in each of 2021 and 2022 and then ran into the slowdown in the economy. So we’ve been making our way through that very well.

I’m very proud of the operating ratio that we were able to produce last year in a challenging environment. And we’re still in an environment that we’re not out of the woods yet, if you will. We still had in the first quarter, a 3% reduction in tons per day and essentially had a flat operating ratio, but we’re able to produce positive earnings per share as well. So I feel good about the base level of operations where we are today and being able to build on what we’ve established. So there’s a long runway for growth out there when it comes to a top line standpoint that we believe for our business. And we’ve got further room to improve our operating ratio as well. And so that will allow us to achieve our vision of achieving long-term profitable growth that drives an increase in shareholder value.

So all those same elements are in place. There may be some different logos that have been moving around on service centers and different customers given all the disruption that’s taken place over the last 6 to 9 months, but OD stands ready, and we’ll continue to add value to our customer supply chains, and we feel like we’ll be able to drive significant growth in our business as we go forward.

Jeff Kauffman: As funny as you were talking about the service centers, I was just thinking you can add all the service centers you want, but that doesn’t make your service or your culture equivalent. Thank you for the answer.

Marty Freeman: And that’s a great observation.

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

Marty Freeman: Yes. I’d like to thank all of you today for your participation, and we really appreciate your questions. If you have anything further, please feel free to give us a call, and we’ll be glad to answer it. And I hope you have a good rest of the week. Thank you.

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