Saia, Inc. (NASDAQ:SAIA) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Bascome Majors: Fritz, Doug, you’ve probably spoken about yellow situation with investors in every meeting since the beginning of June. You’ve heard what we’re asking on conference calls this quarter, both within the LTL. And outside of it. I’m curious, from your perspective, what is the investment unit getting right on how this situation could and may impact your business? And are there places where we’re kind of missing the forest for the trees on short term, mid-term long term impacts from the way you see it? Thank you.

Fritz Holzgrefe: Well, I think at the highest level in the industry, when you have a potential top three player exiting, potentially, still waiting for the final verdict there. But I think that obviously that is — that freight is going to go elsewhere in the business it’s going to go to — it’s going to find its way not necessarily evenly to everybody it’s going to go to — it’s going to match the service requirement of the customer. And I think, maybe there’s a player that’s got a lower service level, they maybe they take an outsize percentage of that business potentially. Maybe it displaces a customer that has a bit higher expectation around service. And then that kind of makes its way around to other players in the market.

But I think generally people understand that, if you displace the — disrupt a large player, it’s going to get redistributed in the industry. I think the key thing to understand is that whatever the fundamental value proposition is of the remaining players, I think that will match to where the freight ends up. And I think for Saia, I think the fundamentals to Saia are quite straightforward. We have an opportunity to continue to maintain high levels of service, continue to get the pricing and margin structure right in the business, there’s a significant growth opportunity for us. In this environment, there’s probably an opportunity for us to grow at a bit faster rate than what we have been.

Bascome Majors: You’ve been so adamant in mentioning service and revenue quality in all of your answers to this situation, I mean, is the message that you probably rather take less than more of your pro rata share initially, and in hope some of that comes back when they’re not satisfied with the service they’re getting at brand X, is that really what we should take away here?

Fritz Holzgrefe: I think that if you follow Saia over time, I think the fundamentals of our business, we have never been one that are in business to chase market share, or volume, our focus has been on generating returns in this business. And so, we talk a lot about our internally around how we’re managing profitability. So this is exactly the same sort of scenario. Maintain a high level of service, customers expect that and the customers expect that we’ll be willing to pay for that service. And that’s the winning proposition for us. So it’s not necessarily who can get to be biggest, fastest, it’s about generating those returns and we see and it’s pretty apparent when you look at the other sort of public peers that are out there, you see what that level of performance looks like, and that there’s no reason for us not to try to pursue that. And that’s where we take the big value is in our business.

Bascome Majors: Thank you, Fritz.

Operator: The next question is from Stephanie Moore with Jefferies, your line is open.

Stephanie Moore: Hi, good morning. Thank you. I wanted to touch on actually the OR performance for the second quarter. I was hoping that maybe you could give a little bit more color on just the, I think, just given the week top line environment and it seems like it’s certainly exceeded our expectations. But I think a little bit better than you probably called out back in one Q2 with the performance falling more in line with the historical seasonal average. So maybe you can touch a little bit on the dynamics or levers that you guys pulled or what happened to kind of be more in line with seasonal trends, despite what kind of continued to be a weak top line. Thanks.

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