Old Dominion Freight Line, Inc. (NASDAQ:ODFL) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Greg Gantt: Not that I know of, Basc, and don’t think so. I think it should be fairly normal from that standpoint. We certainly had some good experiences in the recent past with our benefit cost and those kinds of things. So, you just hope that those things continue to be consistent and don’t turn the other way for some or no reason.

Bascome Majors: Thank you, Greg.

Greg Gantt: Sure thing.

Operator: Our next question comes from Tom Wadewitz with UBS. Please go ahead.

Tom Wadewitz: Yes, good morning, and congratulations also to both of you Greg and Marty. And Greg, yes, just a remarkable run. So, congratulations on the great performance over time. Let’s see — I think — I guess just in terms of the view on tonnage. I know you have a large customer base. So, maybe it’s tough to pars it out. But what would you say about I guess dynamic in terms of volume from retail customers and volume from industrial customers? It seems like probably there has been a lot of weakness and focus on inventory reduction with retail customers. Maybe little less clear what’s happened with industrial? So, just trying to think about is there potentially some weakness yet to come with industrial? Have you seen pretty big difference in the volumes from those two groups? And so, kind of any thoughts on that topic would be helpful. Thank you.

Greg Gantt: Good morning, Tom. I would say during the fourth quarter we saw a pretty consistent revenue performance with both our industrial customer base and our retail customer base. I would say earlier part of the year we had seen a little bit stronger performance on the industrial side. And those two kind of converged, if you will, in the fourth quarter. Obviously, our customer bases leans more industrial than retail. We are still 55% to 60% industrial overall and 25% to 30% or so on the retail side. In longer term that retail business has been growing faster than the industrial. And I think that reflects some of the ecommerce trends and the effects of those on our customer supply chains. And we certainly continue to believe that that will be a longer term tailwind for us.

And I think that as we start working through 2023. And we believe that we will start seeing customer’s orders for their products picking up and some inventory rebalancing if you will. And I think that’s why we’ve seen in some of the prior slow period that I spoke of earlier why you start seeing that orders and freight flows kind of leading the other macroeconomic indicator. So, we believe that the freight cycle will starting turning. And we will start seeing some pick up. And it’s through these customer interactions and conversations that, that support our belief that we’re going to start seeing freight flow, and again, as we get into March and into the second quarter.

Tom Wadewitz: Yes, but it sounds like you haven’t seen a big difference, maybe over the past, in 4Q or even 3Q, in performance from industrial and retail, and I guess looking forward, you think maybe both of them kind of bottom and improve at the same time.

Greg Gantt: And maybe we start seeing retail outperform again, while I assume, and some of the industrial numbers look a little bit weaker, we start getting some of that retail performance as an offset, leading us out and eventually we’ll start seeing the industrial picking back up again.

Tom Wadewitz: Right, okay, great. Thanks for the time.

Greg Gantt: Thanks, Tom.

Operator: Our next question comes from Chris Wetherbee with Citigroup. Please go ahead.

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