Saia, Inc. (NASDAQ:SAIA) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Amit Mehrotra : Yes. And I guess just as a follow up, kind of very big picture Fritz, because over the last five years, the performance — the fundamental performance has been so great. And obviously, the equity value of the company has responded accordingly. If there are people that are new to Saia today, new to the stock, new to the company, new to you guys. What would you frame kind of the three, four, five-year opportunity to be from revenue perspective, from a margin perspective, because you guys have accomplished a lot, but you just you talking about the runway, hoping you can kind of like help us crystallize that a little bit in terms of where you think the opportunity is?

Fritz Holzgrefe: I think that opportunity for Saia is significant. And I think if somebody studies the industry and you study what the sort of margin opportunities are with best-in-class looks like, and you look at our progress over last couple years, and you look at our performance through a bit of a slower part of the freight cycle right now, we’re able to operate in the sort of low 80s, or that’s a significant executional accomplishment for Saia now, and I think in a market where maybe we see a little bit more economic growth. I think the opportunity for Saia to grow this business well into the 70s OR is meaningful. I mean, it’s something within our reach. What’s critical that and this is I mean, we talk about this all the time, it’s about taking care of the customer, customers got to get what they need from Saia.

And when those customers get that they understand what that value is, that helps our pricing story that helps us close our pricing gap versus the larger players in the industry. And I don’t see any impediment to us getting into the mid-70s OR or better, I mean we’re excited about that opportunity.

Doug Col: Hey, Amit. And I bring to note. Just close the loop, I know you know this and I know what you’re asking. But just for everybody on the call to be clear, Q2 to Q3, are usually deteriorates a little bit because of that primarily because of that wage increase we discussed. So when I said 100 to 150 basis points Q2 to Q3, that’s a degradation in OR. So, thanks Amit. We got to get on to the next one.

Amit Mehrotra: Yes, thank you. Bye-bye.

Operator: The next question is from Chris Wetherbee with Citi. Your line is open.

Chris Wetherbee: Thanks. Good morning, guys. Maybe just want to pick up on the shipment comment that you’re making about the month of July, just maybe if you could get a little bit more granular. It seems like with a run rate that the acceleration you saw somewhere in the 1,000 to 2,000 shipments per day type of level, just wanted to get a sense of maybe what the exit rate was here in the month of July, so you can get a sense of what that sort of market inflection might be looking like?

Doug Col: Like Fritz said, I mean, really the last couple of weeks looks a lot different than the first couple of weeks of July. But, normally seasonally, we see a little bit of a step down from June and July. And obviously, that hasn’t been the case this month. But, it’s hard to parse everything out the last week of the month should be better, and it was and then you’ve got some freight going on out there it’s coming into us news. So, it’s been a meaningful step up. But we’ll probably have to wait to get the full month trends in early September before we can really care to say anymore on it.

Chris Wetherbee: Okay, that’s helpful. And then when you think about facility openings, and obviously the potential for some assets maybe to be available, I guess, if you look out into the back half of the year, can you give us a sense of what your plans are? Do you have 3Q plans that are specific that you can run through? And maybe what the opportunity could be from a footprint expansion standpoint?

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