In dedicated, improved driver availability and lower recruiting and turnover costs have benefited 2023 earnings, but have been a headwind for new sales and revenue growth. As the freight cycle strengthens, and driver availability becomes more challenging, we expect to see incremental sales opportunities and improve revenue growth in DTS as private fleets seek solutions to address this pain point. In Supply Chain, weaker volumes in our omnichannel retail vertical have been headwinds to revenue and earnings during 2023. We continue to believe in the long-term growth prospects of our e-commerce fulfillment and last mile delivery of big and bulky goods and have invested in technology as well as an expanded footprint to support this business. We expect supply chain results to benefit as omnichannel volumes recover and the incremental footprint is leveraged.
We’ve been pleased with the improved resiliency of the model and outperformance during a down cycle and are appropriately positioning all three segments to benefit from the up cycle. Turning to Page 16. We’re raising our full-year 2023 comparable EPS forecast to a range of $12.60 to $12.85, up from the prior forecast of $12.20 to $12.70. Our increased forecast reflects better-than-expected performance in used vehicle sales, ongoing maintenance cost improvements and supply chain automotive performance, partially offset by weakening conditions in rental and omnichannel retail. We’re also providing a fourth quarter comparable EPS forecast of $2.60 to $2.85 versus a prior year of $3.89. Our 2023 ROE forecast is 18% to 19%, which is at the high end of our long-term target of high teens and above our prior forecast of 17% to 19%.
Our strong 2023 earnings reflects the transformative changes we’ve made in the business model. The year-over-year decline is primarily due to weaker market conditions in UVS and rental relative to prior year’s elevated levels. As a reminder, our full-year 2023 GAAP EPS forecast includes approximately $3.96 from the cumulative currency translation that was recorded in the second quarter. Turning to Page 17. We believe Ryder is well positioned to increase shareholder value. We see significant opportunities for profitable growth supported by secular trends, our operational expertise, and ongoing momentum from multiyear initiatives. We’ve made transformative changes to our business model and continue to demonstrate strong execution on our balanced growth strategy, which has enabled us to achieve our long-term targets, increased business model resiliency and outperform prior cycles.
We remain committed to investing in products, capabilities and technologies that will deliver value to our customers and our shareholders. That concludes our prepared remarks. Please note that we expect to file our 10-Q later today. We had a lot of material to cover today, so please limit yourself to one question each. If you have additional questions, you’re welcome to get back in the queue and we’ll take as many as we can. At this time, I’ll turn it over to the operator.
Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And we’ll go first to Jordan Alliger with Goldman Sachs.
Jordan Alliger: Yes, hi. Good morning. So you guys get to see the economy from a pretty broad array of businesses, lease, supply chain, rental, et cetera. You maybe give a bit of an assessment of what you’re thinking in terms of a bottoming in turn in the freight cycle?
Robert Sanchez: Yes, hi Jordan. Listen, I think as we see it now, as we see things have continued to decline, the freight cycle is probably nearing a bottom here over the next quarter or two. We’re assuming that it will remain soft probably through the middle of next year. And then as we get into the back half of next year, we would expect things to start to come back up. And also, I would tell you, as you mentioned, that we do have visibility across a lot of customers. And this quarter, we saw again, continued softness with the transports. Apparel retail still seems to be relatively soft and housing is probably not a surprise. Things like furniture and housing support type products are down. But we do still see strength, and we did see strength in the CPG sector.
In automotive, we saw automotive production really strong in the quarter. And also in industrial. Industrial is a little bit of a mixed bag, but the industrial customers that we have still saw some good strength.
Jordan Alliger: Thank you.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] We’ll go next to Jeff Kauffman with Vertical Research Partners.
Jeffrey Kauffman: Thank you very much everybody. Congratulations. More of a bigger picture question here. A lot of different views about what’s going on. And I know Jordan just asked you when you see things improving. We’re getting some other people say, hey, does this retail inventory destock is done. We got other companies saying, hey, I don’t know what’s going to happen because of this UAW situation. We’re all trying to figure out kind of what’s going on underneath, right, everything that’s happening. Kind of along Jordan’s question, if I look beyond the noise and the headlines, some of the oddities moving around. Is your sense that we are bottoming here and things feel a little bit better. I think you said you don’t see it getting better until later next year. But what’s different about this cycle from your perspective? And if I cut through the noise, what do you think is really happening in our economy right now through your eyes?
Robert Sanchez: Jeff, it’s a good question. And I think it’s important to remind everyone that 85% of the revenues at Ryder are contractual. So yes, I’m not saying that the cycle is not important for Ryder because the cycle clearly impacts our used vehicle sales in our rental business. But the core business of Ryder, the contractual ChoiceLease, Dedicated and Supply Chain, I’d say still remains strong. Certainly, from an earnings perspective, as you know, in the third quarter, every one of the segments hit their earnings profit targets. We had a strong beat to the forecast, maintenance costs came in really stronger. We just delivered $100 million of maintenance cost savings. We’re doing even more than it was evident this quarter.
Supply chain automotive came in stronger than we had expected and even used vehicle sales, which we know is impacted by the cycle came in better than what we had forecasted. We delivered 21% return on equity even in that type of an environment, which as you remember, our peak return on equity in the past was mid-teens. We’re now saying that’s going to be our trough return on equity. So we’re in a different trajectory than we have been in the past. We announced the acquisition, our plan to acquire IFS, which is again, consistent with our strategy to grow our asset-light and higher-return supply chain business. It’s going to give us new capabilities in contract packaging and contract manufacturing that we can then sell to other customers within our supply chain portfolio.
And then we also announced two share authorization of two share buyback programs, again, continuing to return money to shareholders, we had recently announced a 15% increase in the dividend. So there’s a lot of really good things happening at Ryder even in a declining and really soft freight market. And that is, I think what distinguishes Ryder’s portfolio of businesses and business model from some of the other product transports that are there. So having said all that, I would tell you, we expect those parts of our business, which are impacted by the freight cycle, which are used vehicle and rental, we expect those to continue to be soft, probably going into the first half of next year and then probably beginning to pick up in the second half.
It’s still too early to tell. It could come in a little bit sooner, could come in a little bit later, but that’s sort of what we’re planning out right now.
Jeffrey Kauffman: Okay, thank you for that answer. That’s all.
Robert Sanchez: Thanks, Jeff.
Operator: We’ll go next to Scott Group with Wolfe Research.
Scott Group: Hey, thanks. Good morning. So when I just look at the fourth quarter guide, the Q3 to Q4 drop, a bit worse than normal seasonality. Is there anything of note driving that? Is that the auto strike? Or is there just conservatism in there? Just any color there. And then usually around now, you give us some high-level thoughts about next year, just — what are the puts and takes you see for 2024? Gains on sales? Any other drivers, how do you think about normalized earnings next year? Thank you.
Robert Sanchez: Sure. Sure, Scott. Well, as you mentioned, the Q3 to Q4 earnings number, you normally have a seasonal decline in Q4 sequentially because a lot of slowdown in the back half of the quarter. So you think last two weeks of December, things really slowed down. We also, as you know, in supplies are in the auto sector and there’s typically shutdowns for the holiday. So you have the normal seasonal decline Q3 to Q4. I think the additional decline that we have in the forecast here is primarily our rental business. We are right now expecting rental to be down more than we had expected in the prior quarter — in our forecast in the prior quarter. And again, that’s just our pick right now from what we’ve seen in the market.
