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

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That could be — we estimate it to be in the year plus range for them to get back into the industry. And they will get back into the hands of more premium priced operator. So you’d have a rising tide for pricing across the entire industry. And the last thing I’ll say also, Ken, that capacity went out at a time where shipment count in our industry is down, the underlying demand is down 10% across all the different carriers. So whenever the macro tightens again, you don’t have enough capacity in LTL to handle all of that freight. I’ll turn it over to Kyle to discuss yield.

Kyle Wismans: Yes. From a renewal standpoint, Ken, the cadence for contract renewals is pretty level across the year. We have a disproportionately slightly higher amount in Q4 that will cycle through here in the quarter. But it’s fairly even across the year.

Operator: Our next question is from the line of Fadi Chamoun with BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed with your questions.

Fadi Chamoun: Thank you. Good morning, Mario and team. Just a question on yield. You mentioned double-digit pricing opportunity in coming years from service, accessorial and local customer base. When you look at this kind of past quarter, third quarter, where are you having more success? It sounds like you’re getting some decent penetration in the local customer base side? And what’s the kind of areas where you’re seeing greater contribution to the year? Accessorials, local customer base or is fairly spread across the three kind of levers of pricing?

Mario Harik: So Fadi, when you look at the three of them, the biggest impact in the third quarter was the improvement of service because when you look at our claims ratio, I think 0.4%, customers seeing the trend of improvement and those relationships with our customers to keep on improving over time as well. This is where we’re seeing the most amount of success that these contract renewals are coming in, and customers understand that we are investing in the network, we’re investing in people and to be able to support and service them the right way, and that’s leading to higher yield and price gains. On the accessorials side, we’re still early innings, and we believe these over the quarters to come as we launch the premium services we mentioned and as we sell them to existing customers and new customers, we see that’s going to happen again over the quarters and years to come to bridge that accessorial gap.

On the local side, we’re making a lot of progress. I mean, here in the third quarter, we increased our shipment count in the local channel by 13% on a year-on-year basis. However, this channel is more impacted by the softer macro. So the weight per shipment is still significantly down in the local channel, so although we’re making progress on it, we’re still not seeing the impact on yield, but as we start seeing tonnage in that channel improved because we’re gaining market share, you would see that becoming a tailwind for yield over the quarters and years to come as well.

Fadi Chamoun: Okay. Thank you.

Operator: The next question is from the line of Tom Wadewitz with UBS. Please proceed with your questions

Thomas Wadewitz: Yeah, good morning, and congratulations on the strong progress on the OR and service and pricing, all those things that I think are really positive. Wanted to see, Mario, if you could comment a little bit on the kind of underlying trend in freight and how you kind of weave that in? It seems like the, I guess, the monthly tonnage numbers are I don’t know if it’s kind of stabilizing or how you want to view it, but they’re a little bit lighter maybe at the end of the quarter. So I don’t know if you think underlying freight market is stable or if you could offer some trends, some thoughts on that. And also, how do you think about that change in weight per shipment looking forward? Does that become more neutral? Or should we think about that even into ’24 that that’s maybe a bit of a continuing reduction in weight per shipment?

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