Saia, Inc. (NASDAQ:SAIA) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Fritz Holzgrefe: Listen, we’re all about finding customers that value are fantastic, what we see is a very strong service proposition. So if there are opportunities for us to go sell and available capacity on it. And in fact, we have several initiatives around that. But we’re not in the game of leading price that. Frankly, that’s not what is appropriate. What is appropriate is to find a customer that understands that you’re going to get a great product from Saia. And they’re going to pay accordingly and that’s going to fit. Maybe in some markets that there’s an opportunity for us. But we don’t — you won’t see us participating in simply price — working on leading with price. That’s not our game. We’ll find the customers up, but that’s certainly an opportunity as we build capacity.

Andrew Cox: Understood. Thanks for the detail and congrats on the results.

Operator: Our final question comes from Jack Atkins with Stephens.

Jack Atkins: Okay, great. Thanks for the follow-up. Doug, I just wanted to circle back real quick to make sure everybody is on the same page on the operating ratio kind of thoughts for the first quarter. If I heard you guys correctly, you’re kind of talking about flat operating ratio quarter-to-quarter sort of fourth quarter to first quarter, which would be in line with seasonality. Is that what you guys said? Or did I misunderstand that?

Doug Col: Yes, that’s right. That’s what we’ve seen historically. And then Fritz gave a lot of color on Amit’s question about could it be better than that, potentially, but you hate to get out too far over your skis given the weather challenges have come up in February a year ago. I think it was a pretty tough comp for us. So I think it’s mid-teens kind of shipment and tonnage growth last February. So we got to get a clean run through there to think that we try to forecast something better. So yes, flat out of Q4 into Q1 would make a lot of sense to us.

Doug Col: Okay, okay. That’s what I thought, wanted to clarify that. Thank you very much.

Fritz Holzgrefe: Thanks, Jack.

Operator: There are no further questions at this time. I’ll now turn the call back over to Fritz Holzgrefe.

Fritz Holzgrefe: Thank you for everyone that’s called in. You heard the latest update on this Saia performance. We’re excited about the opportunities in front of us this coming year and look forward to providing you an update in the next quarter. Thank you.