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

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Ravi Shanker: Thanks, everyone. So good traction with the service improvements. I’m just trying to get an understanding of what percentage of the fruit on this tree are low-hanging versus higher up? I’m just trying to get a sense of whether we can expect this traction of improvement to continue in the coming quarters? Or does it get incrementally a little bit harder from here?

Mario Harik: Yes. So Ravi, from our perspective, our top priority, one of the top priorities is to improve service and continue to improve service for our customers. And our goal is to be best in class and get to a 0.1% claims ratio over time. Now we’ve made tremendous progress. You look from end of 2021 through Q3 of this year, we went from 1.2% damage claims ratio down to 0.4%. However, the improvement from here won’t be linear, and it will take time. It’s not something that every quarter, we’re going to post a 0.3% improvement from 0.7% to a 0.4%. Now we have rolled out multiple new initiatives heading into 2024 with Dave coming on board and the operating team are implementing a number of initiatives, including higher-quality straps, new airbag systems that we are launching across all of our service centers, and Ravi, I’ll tell you here from the first couple of service centers we’ve launched, we’ve seen an incremental reduction of more than 20% of damages just with these new tools and programs that we launch that we’re very excited about.

And we’re also enhancing our training programs and how we load trailers taking it to the next level as well. And I mentioned earlier line haul in-sourcing. That’s another measure of service improvement because today, when we use a third-party carrier, they typically have 53 feet trailers that don’t have the bars in them. We call it the SaveStack system to separate freight from effectively having 2 decks of freight. But we have that in our equipment. So as we make progress on in-sourcing third-party line haul, we will continue to see these improvements in service as well as we all these things out. But again, the progress is fantastic. September was a company record in damage frequency. So how many damages do we cause versus the shipments that we move.

And October got even better than the month of September. So great trajectory ahead. But again, it won’t be linear over the quarters and years to come.

Ravi Shanker: Got it. Very helpful, Mario. Maybe just a follow-up on the same topic. And as you had said earlier that better service begets better pricing and better share. What does that conversion process look like? How does that take? Is that kind of immediate? Is that one contract cycle? Does that take a couple of years? Again just trying to figure out kind of what the longer-term trajectory of this improvement looks like.

Kyle Wismans: Hey, Ravi, it’s Kyle. So when you think about it, we’re going to go through all of our — again, about 20% of our customers are using a standard tariff really that will get impacted by the GRI. The other 80% will go through contract renegotiations. That cycle is fairly consistent, meaning we cover the same number of contracts almost every quarter. The fourth quarter is slightly higher. But we’ll see that improvement basically progress for the next several quarters to capture a lot of the service improvements that we’re seeing right now in the network.

Operator: Our next question is from the line of Jason Seidl with TD Cowen. Please proceed with your questions.

Jason Seidl: Thank you, Operator. Mario and team, good morning, guys. Congrats on the progress in the LTL 2.0. I wanted to focus a little bit on your cost per shipment. How should we think about the increases in the cost per shipment or the decreases as we roll into 2024, especially around you rolling out that airbag system throughout the rest of the network?

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