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

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Fritz Holzgrefe: Yes, I mean, I’d say, primarily, we were really pleased with how we — to the extent we could how we control mix and revenue per shipment came in real positive, the ex-fuel revenue per shipment number up 4.8% in the quarter was really solid. I think we had a solid May, and then like I said the back half of June, you normally get that month and quarter and kind of step up, but it was it was solid, and we might not have baked that into our expectations. So to the extent that you got some more of that volume, and addition, from more shipments, at pickup from customers, things like that give you some opportunities to be more productive, and you get some cost economies in the network when you do things like that. So, you get some favorability here and there on some things, but I think primarily was just probably a little bit better activity and operational success than we might have seen four weeks into the quarter.

Stephanie Moore: Great, that’s helpful. And then just a quick follow up. You talked a lot today just about the ability to be opportunistic with terminal expansion here in the coming months. Any change in strategy opportunity between your decision to lease or buy this site, additional terminals.

Fritz Holzgrefe: Our first priorities if we find a market that we want to be in or an opportunity, we’d like to own it, if it’s cheap, strategic facility, it’s got sort of a maybe a 10-year life. We think about volume trends over 10 years when we make a decision to buy an asset. If for whatever reason we can’t buy the asset, there’s an opportunity to get an attractive lease, we’re willing to do that, it’s not our preference, but if we’re willing to do that, and attractive lease would be something that we can kind of we’ve got a view as to what the longer term costs are. And we can kind of build a business around it. But strategic assets for sure we want to buy those. Maybe ones in an NOI market, maybe it’s a little, it’s not available for sale, the investor would like to hold on to it. In that case, we’re finding the lease along the economics work?

Stephanie Moore: Great, thank you so much.

Operator: The next question is from Bruce Chan with Stifel, your line is open.

Bruce Chan : Hey, Fritz, Doug, good morning and congrats on the result here. Just want to follow up on an earlier comment where you mentioned the national accounts business. And I’m just curious on that topic, are you seeing any more I guess, early activity or early demand on the national account side on the field account side with three PL side? Or is it all been pretty balanced so far?

Fritz Holzgrefe: I think that it’s a little bit of color there. If we’re in an account that maybe we share across multiple providers, those big we saw, that volume come maybe a little bit more sooner. If it’s a field account, maybe that those accounts maybe don’t have multiple providers, I think we’re probably still seeing where that’s going to develop. So it’s still early on that we’re only two weeks or three weeks into this.

Bruce Chan: Okay, that makes a lot of sense. But when everything kind of settles out and the dust clears, you wouldn’t expect any outside share gain in any one of those categories, necessarily?

Fritz Holzgrefe: It’s way too early for me to make a call on something like that.

Bruce Chan: Okay, fair enough. And then just a quick follow up here, you brought up the nearshoring opportunity. And you also talked about planning for 10-year volume trends. As we think about nearshoring and potential expansion beyond your current plan, can you talk about and maybe what kind of cross border presence you have, and whether there’s any appetite to ramp that up?

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