RXO, Inc. (NYSE:RXO) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Brian Patrick Ossenbeck: And just the timing of the renewals, is that going to be similar to what it’s been in the past? Do you think that could be a little bit slower, maybe even faster?

Drew M. Wilkerson: I think it will be Q1 and the early parts of Q2.

Brian Patrick Ossenbeck: Okay. Thanks, Drew. Appreciate it.

Drew M. Wilkerson: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our last question comes from Bascome Majors from Susquehanna. Please go ahead, you line is open.

Bascome Majors: Jamie, with the post quarter end debt paydown, it looks like you’ve gotten yourself a bit of breathing room with the 3.5x leverage ratio covenant. Can you speak to that a little bit and whether or not you expect just cyclical draws on the credit line to put you back kind of closer to that?

James E. Harris: Yes. So the capital work we did, again, the big picture is we saved $1 million – over $1 million of cash interest, kept the same liquidity. Derivative benefit, it did change the calculation of our covenant. But we had adequate headroom already. It gives us even more headroom. We will have some more – a couple more cycles that we’ll have to cycle through, but we feel very good about where we are on our covenants. In terms of draws, we’ll use that revolver from time-to-time intra-quarter cyclicality of cash flow and cash outflow is not always perfect. So we do expect to go into the revolver occasionally. But we feel really good about the optimization work we did. And again, our liquidity is exactly the same as it would have been.

Bascome Majors: Thank you for that and on the transaction, integration, restructuring costs, you have seen that come down sequentially like you guys promised it would. Does that tail off close to 0 next year? What are the early thoughts on how much of the long tail we have on that?

James E. Harris: Yes, it will go down. As you said, it has gone down significantly already this year. If you separate the two, the transaction and integration will continue to decelerate rapidly. There will be some P&L into ’24, but it will be down significantly. On the restructure side, we have, as Jared mentioned earlier, $31 million of annualized cost savings. We spent for that $31 million, approximately $11 million. So the return on the investment of that is significant. And again, if you go back to long term, we’re trying to position ourselves on a cost structure when marketing flex, if we really can leverage a lot of flow-through. So we do see the restructure go down significantly in ’24. But if we have an opportunity to have that type of annualized savings, we’re going to go for it because it’s a good return.

Bascome Majors: Thank you for that. And lastly, I’ll close big picture here. A few people have asked about this, but if I look at the second half of this year, if you come in, in the fourth quarter where you think you are, that’s maybe $55 million to $60 million in EBITDA, call it, run rate with no seasonal lift $110 million, $120 million. If I look at sell-side consensus for next year, it’s roughly $200 million, but the range is really wide, $140 something to $220 something. And I certainly wouldn’t be eager to guide if I were in your seat 3 months earlier than I had to, but is there any sort of book in you can put around what a reasonable expectation could be for next year or what a too-high expectation could be for next year and just hope of having folks expect more of the same and be pleasantly surprised by the better rather than expect better and be disappointed by more of the same. Thank you.

Jared Ian Weisfeld: Hey Bascome, it’s Jared. Good morning. You’ve covered us for a while, we don’t give annual guidance. We wanted to give you some color into Q4 in terms of expecting positive seasonality and roughly 20% sequential adjusted EBITDA growth despite being in a soft market and despite being an expectation for a muted peak season. Heading into 2024, I think Drew summed it up perfectly earlier. We are prepared in the near term in terms of staff for growth to the extent that a peak season emerges, heading into 2024, how we think about the business is over the long term, right? So we’re making strategic investments now. We are focused on delivering the commitments that we gave at Investor Day, the $475 million to $525 million of adjusted EBITDA. No matter what the market throws at us over a 12-month period, we are confident on sustained volume growth outperformance with best-in-class margins.

Bascome Majors: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. We have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I’ll hand the floor back to Drew Wilkerson for closing remarks.

Drew M. Wilkerson: Thank you, Synthu. In the third quarter, RSO performed well in a soft freight environment with 18% brokerage volume growth and strong gross margins. We’ve got experience with this stage of the freight cycle, and we’ve got a winning strategy that positions RXO for future growth. We have a strong balance sheet and a disciplined focus on cost. At the same time, we continue to invest in our people, our service offerings and our technology. We’re staying close with our customers and providing them with unique solutions that help solve their toughest freight challenges. Thank you all for your time today. I look forward to seeing many of you in the coming weeks, and I hope you all have a great holiday season.

Operator: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. [Operator Closing Remarks].

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