Old Dominion Freight Line, Inc. (NASDAQ:ODFL) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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James Monigan: Hey, guys. Thanks for squeezing me in. Actually, I want to follow-up on Scott’s question. Like, about sort of the yields versus seasonality and pricing versus seasonality. You’ve mentioned that the market sort of moved pricing up and your competitors have been aggressive on that. And you have improved or have strong service. And so has that like sort of fair price moved away from where it is now? And is there a bit of a catch-up trade on price across the remainder of the year relative to service, based on where everybody else is in the market?

Adam Satterfield: I’m not sure that I fully understand your question, but like I mentioned before, that we anticipated that, that metric would eventually compress back to longer-term averages. And for us, it’s 100 basis points to 150 basis points positive spread, which by the way, reconciles to the average operating ratio improvement, we’ve been able to generate over time as well. And so we’ll continue to do our best to manage our cost and to continue to ask for necessary increases on our customer accounts to offset the cost inflation that we’ll have in the business and to support the wage increases that we give to our employees to allow us to retain the employees that we have, but continue to attract new employees to our business as well, which we’ve been able to do over time to support the consistent growth that we’ve been able to produce.

So it takes a lot to keep growing the company year in and year out. And to be able to keep our cost inflation as we’re doing so as well. So try to keep that cost under control and keep asking for that same positive spread over time, that’s what our focus is going to be.

James Monigan: Yes. And just real quick on a percentage basis, how much do you expect to grow doors this coming year or any other measure of capacity?

Adam Satterfield: Well, we’ve probably got line of sight into adding four or five service centers. As Marty mentioned, we’ve got several that have been under construction. But a lot of that will really depend on the volume environment as well. In the past, we’ve finished service centers and may complete the construction, we have to start depreciating them and incurring other overhead-type costs with them, but if the volumes don’t dictate the opening, then we might sort of keep them in ready reserve, if you will, and wait until volumes are stronger to start incurring the cost because with growth, that’s another incremental cost, every new service center that we opened. You’ve got incremental line-haul cost and other expenses that we’re going to incur as a result of that opening.

In addition to just the general depreciation and overhead. So that will be something that we’ll be mindful of as we go through the year. And hopefully, the volume environment will be such that we’re ready to open them and turn them on day one as soon as we’re finished.

James Monigan: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the call back to Marty Freeman for closing remarks.

Kevin Freeman: Thank you all for your participation today. We appreciate your questions, and please feel free to give us a call if you have anything further. Thanks, and have a great day.

Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect your lines.

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