Wabash National Corporation (NYSE:WNC) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

John Joyner: Okay. Excellent. And then maybe just one more quick one I think here. In the release, you called out the strength in tank trailers and truck bodies. Maybe could you offer some more color around these product lines and what you’re referring to?

Brent Yeagy: Well, without giving like total specifics, our tank trailer business is – has basically hit an all time volume level in production in the context of the last five years substantial improvement. I mean, Mike, what’s the actual for tank trailer?

Mike Pettit: It was up 29% year-over-year.

Brent Yeagy: 29% year-over-year with room to continue to expand as we go in the 2024, we added capacity to our plants in Mexico, continues improvement in our plants in So with extending some of our customer-centric commercial strategy into the tank business with good reward, and we’ve seen efficiency gains just within the business itself. Truck bodies, we have been working through the chassis constraint for multiple years. We’re now at a point where that is beginning to abate, now that gives us a runway for Class 1 through Class 6, primarily growth over the next two years. We’re seeing that begin to pick up and we’re seeing the inefficiency caused by the overall supply chain disruption diminish. And that’s been a significant drain on margins in that business for three years. All that’s just at the extreme early innings that will allow, gives us a nice tailwind going over the next two – next, I’ll say next couple of years.

Mike Pettit: Yes. And truck bodies you’re seeing mid-teen to almost 20% improvements in production rates. And you can’t – our production exceeded our shipments for truck bodies in Q1. So we’re seeing some nice pull through there that as Brent mentioned with some supply chain disruption easing, and that, that gives us a nice tailwind along with tank trailer and also parks and services too, all should be a nice benefit to the overall margin profile of the enterprise going forward.

John Joyner: Okay. Excellent. That’s impressive. Appreciate the time.

Brent Yeagy: Thanks, John. Glad we could squeeze you in.

Operator: Our final question comes from the line of Felix Boeschen from Raymond James. Please proceed.

Felix Boeschen: Hey, good morning, everybody. Congrats on the quarter.

Brent Yeagy: Thanks, Felix.

Mike Pettit: Thanks, Felix.

Felix Boeschen: Hey, I was hoping we could follow-up on the dry van capacity expansion and I’m just curious if you could comment on sort of the anticipated build rate increases through the year within that expanded capacity. And then just secondly, Mike, I imagine there’s just some startup costs associated with ramping capacity. I don’t know if you could talk about that. Maybe what’s in the numbers and how you expect that to track?

Mike Pettit: Yes, there is. So effectively, the line will launch here in Q2, in the next couple weeks really we’ll start to see some production. So there’ll be some startup costs in the early first half of the year in Q2, but not anything above what we’ve guided to. We saw some in Q1, which we talked about the year-end call. And then what you’d expect to see is significant improvement in line rates through the end of the year, but still we finished the year at in that facility at approximately a third to half of what a full output profile would look like for that plant. So the full benefit of that capacity would be felt in 2024. So a very little output in Q2, pretty good ramp in Q3. And then we’ll be close to full line rate in Q4, still depending on exactly when we add second shifts and things like that that will be a decision we make as we go a little bit closer.

But you’ll see a full impact to that facility, which we’ve previously said. It’ll be a net improvement to what we did before 5,000 units from the reefer plant into next year.

Felix Boeschen: Okay. Got it. That’s helpful. And then just I wanted to follow-up on the strong gross margins in the quarter. I know you talked about sort of input costs coming down as well as efficiency going up. I don’t know if you could size those two buckets for us, but then my bigger picture question for the second half of the year is, I know you changed the way that you price your dry van trailers. Could you maybe just talk about how you’re thinking about that raw material margin into the back half of the year of maybe things somewhat normalized, just kind of trying to think through the puts and takes here?