Is Saia (SAIA) a Cyclical Stock?

Wedgewood Partners, an investment management company, released its “Focused SMID Cap Strategy” first quarter 2023 investor letter. A copy of the same can be downloaded here. In the first quarter, the fund returned 2.5% compared to a 3.4% return for the Russell 2500 Index. In addition, please check the fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2023.

Wedgewood Focused SMID Cap Strategy highlighted stocks like Saia, Inc. (NASDAQ:SAIA) in the first quarter 2023 investor letter. Headquartered in Johns Creek, Georgia, Saia, Inc. (NASDAQ:SAIA) is a transportation company. On June 6, 2023, Saia, Inc. (NASDAQ:SAIA) stock closed at $301.81 per share. One-month return of Saia, Inc. (NASDAQ:SAIA) was 6.24%, and its shares gained 45.30% of their value over the last 52 weeks. Saia, Inc. (NASDAQ:SAIA) has a market capitalization of $8.008 billion.

Wedgewood Focused SMID Cap Strategy made the following comment about Saia, Inc. (NASDAQ:SAIA) in its Q1 2023 investor letter:

“As we continue to familiarize our clients with our SMID portfolio’s holdings, we would like to discuss our significant exposure to the U.S. Transportation industry. We currently have three transportation holdings and have been substantially overweight the industry in comparison to the Russell 2500 index for several years. While these undoubtedly are cyclical business models, we see many long-term tailwinds for the domestic Transportation industry, which will provide attractive growth levels and will allow these companies to improve their returns on investment over time.

Saia, Inc. (NASDAQ:SAIA) is one of the country’s largest providers of less-than-truckload (or LTL) transportation. LTL transport involves picking up multiple small loads at the sources of shipments, carrying them to sorting, or cross-docking, facilities, then reallocating all of these loads to different trucks that will deliver these multiple small loads per truck to their destinations. Less-than-truckload transportation is a much more complicated business than truckload and involves greater capital intensity than the truckload business. Whereas a truckload business requires little more than one human and an old truck, an LTL business requires a greater degree of logistics, sorting/cross-docking facilities, as well as humans and trucks…” (Click here to read the full text)

States with the Worst Roads and Infrastructure in US

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Saia, Inc. (NASDAQ:SAIA) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 20 hedge fund portfolios held Saia, Inc. (NASDAQ:SAIA) at the end of first quarter 2023 which was 20 in the previous quarter.

We discussed Saia, Inc. (NASDAQ:SAIA) in another article and shared Artisan Small Cap Fund’s views on the company. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q1 2023 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.