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

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So it’s really important for us in this time, and this sort of — is to find that freight that makes the most sense for Saia. And we’re not in the market to chase volume, we’re in the market to find profitability, and to drive returns. And I think that will be our focus. And I think what you would see is that as we pick up freight, if we think it makes sense, over time, we’ll keep it if we think we need to make adjustments to rate or make sure that we get all the historical charges that are required, we’ll do that. And if that works, that I think that benefits us over time.

Thomas Wadewitz : Right. Okay. And then I appreciate that. And I guess for the second question would be, it seems like you’re from a balance sheet perspective, you have very little debt, you got a lot of cash. That’s despite having a pretty strong CapEx program this year. I’m wondering if you said, well, okay, that ‘24, they’re just a bunch of attractive terminals, and we really got to hit the gas on this, would you consider kind of ramping up further and issuing debt to kind of go beyond what your strong cash generation allows? Or how aggressive could you be in terms of being opportunistic on terminals maybe in ‘24, not necessarily ‘23?

Fritz Holzgrefe: Tom, it’s a great point you bring up. I mean, listen, this balance sheet is positioned to grow, right. So we’ve we generated a fair amount of cash, we have cash position right now. The idea with that is they provide us sufficient powder, if you will, to accelerate our growth if we see that opportunity. So if the opportunity was attractive enough that it perhaps warranted leverage, we’d certainly consider that. But at the same time, we’re generating cash, we found that we’ve been able to fund and find facilities and build facilities, frankly, out of our cash generation, what we have right now is really an eye to not only the real estate that we’d have to purchase, but also the equipment that we’d have to supplement our fleet to be able to match that with growth.

Thomas Wadewitz : Okay. Yes, great. Seems like you’re really well positioned. Thanks for the time.

Operator: The next question is from James Mulligan with Wells Fargo, your line is open.

James Mulligan : Hey, guys, good morning. Just actually wanted to sort of talk about some of the volume trends, you’d call out. Any idea sort of how much of that might have been cyclical versus sort of what just sort of like essentially more of the market driven part of it with yellow. And then also, as we go sort of like think through this sort of reallocation of share from little bit, its been a source of share over the past decade and a half as we think past it, do you sort of think that the LTL environment or will have to slow its growth a little bit, given that there will be that source of share? Or there still sort of opportunities in modal share or other weaker competitors, where sort of volume growth can continue to grow at an impressive rate?

Doug Col: Yes, it’s, Doug. The current environment in terms of the competitive landscape, and certainly fuels this pickup we’ve seen there’s no question. I mean, we’ve got some internal Saia focus opportunities this year that we think we’re starting to materialize in terms of new customers and some different verticals, and we think we’re starting to get a foothold. Remember, we’ve opened 22 terminals in the last three years, and some of those in middle markets where we’ve had selling initiatives that we’re gaining traction on. So, we’d like to think some of our initiatives are starting to fuel the volume we’re seeing and kind of offset some of that cyclicality you mentioned. But in terms of green shoots, and the economic backdrop, we were seeing over the last couple of months, we haven’t been calling out any bright spots on the underlying industrial economy.

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