Q4 2022 US Xpress Enterprises Inc Earnings Call
Speaker 1: Thank you for standing by. Today's conference is scheduled to begin momentarily. Until that time, your lines will again be placed on music hold until the call begins. Thank you for your patience.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 3: At this time, I would like to thank everyone to the US Express Apprises Inc. 4th Quarter Earnings Conference Call.
Speaker 4: All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any noise.
Speaker 5: After the speaker remarks, there will be a question and answer session.
Speaker 6: If you would like to ask a question at that time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question again, press star one. Thank you. It's my pleasure to turn today's call over to Mr. Matt Garvey.
Speaker 7: Vice President of Investor Relations, sir, please go ahead.
Speaker 8: Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the US Express 4th quarter 2022 earnings call. Eric Fuller, US Express's president and CEO , will lead our call today, joined by Eric Peterson, RCFO, who will discuss our financial results.
Speaker 9: Our discussion today includes forecasts and other information that are considered forward-looking statements.
Speaker 10: While these statements reflect our current outlook, they are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that can cause actual results to differ materially. These risk factors are described in US Express's most recent form 10K filed with the SEC. We undertake no duty or obligation to update our forward-looking statements.
Speaker 11: During today's call, we will discuss certain non- GAAP measures , which we believe can be useful in evaluating our performance. The presentation of this additional information should not be considered an isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with U.S. GAF. A reconciliation of these non- GAAP measures to the most comparable GAP measure can be found in our earnings release.
Speaker 12: As a reminder, a replay of this call will be available on the Investor section of our website. We also have posted an updated supplemental presentation to a company today's discussion on our website at investor.usxpress.com. We will be referencing portions of this supplement as part of today's call.
Speaker 13: And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Eric Fuller. Thank you, Matt, and good afternoon, everyone.
Speaker 14: Today I'd like to discuss high-level results across our business in the fourth quarter. What gives me confidence that we are moving in the right direction?
Speaker 15: following Eric Peterson's financial commentary on the quarter, I will provide our current outlook for the freight market.
Speaker 16: 2022 was a year of transition for US Express. As we executed our realignment plan, transitioned our OTR operations back to a more traditional model focused on ensuring freight is delivered on time and in a cost-effective manner for our customers and recently transitioned all truckload and brokerage operations under one leader.
Speaker 17: Justin Harness. Having lifting associated with our realignment plan is complete, and we began to see cost savings in the fourth quarter from the actions we have taken since early September .
Speaker 18: Overall, I was pleased with the progress we made in our OTR division and with our cost takeout initiatives from our rear alignment plan.
Speaker 19: Improvement in underlying metrics, including suite availability, service level, and utilization give me the confidence that we are moving in the right direction.
Speaker 20: From a financial results perspective, our spot market exposure more than offset these operational gains and cost savings from our realignment plan.
Speaker 21: Conversations with our customers continue to evolve. Our back to the basics message and our progress to date continue to resonate well with them and has been instrumental in helping to add some incremental load volume despite the weak freight market.
Speaker 22: Feedback from our customers indicate that many are still working through some level of inventory de-stocking.
Speaker 23: Our pipeline of OTR-FRAIT opportunities is extremely robust, and we expect to make meaningful progress reducing our spot market exposure as we navigate through bidsies.
Speaker 24: and begin to service new awards.
Speaker 25: Our customer base is heavily focused on industry-leading companies and defensive segments of the economy, including discount retail, consumer non-derables, and retail grocery which positions us well in the current market.
Speaker 26: The value we deliver for our customers is evident from the fact that many of our top customers have partnered with us for over a decade or longer and use more than one of our service offerings.
Speaker 27: Our business development team continues to proactively add new logos to our customer base.
Speaker 28: and we're excited to support these new customers and demonstrate the value proposition of partnering with US Express every day. we're.
Speaker 29: Turning to our truckload segment, we generated truckload revenue net a fuel of $397 million, a sequential decrease of approximately $5 million.
Speaker 30: primarily due to the spot market rates declining sequentially.
Speaker 31: Consistent with what we said on our third quarter earnings call, we exited the fourth quarter with the fleet that was approximately the same size as that which we exited the third quarter. We will continue to be focused on improving the mix and profitability at our current fleet size.
Speaker 32: Turn into our OTR division.
In the fourth quarter, Although Peak didn't materialize.
We continue to make progress driving accountability through our OTR fleet. Our service levels continue to improve.
Our percentage of empty miles decreased.
and we continue to improve the overall quality of our OTR professional drivers as sourcing qualified professional drivers continues to ease.
Exiting the fourth quarter, the structure and discipline has been implemented into our fleet operations, and we are seeing the benefit of this in our current utilization levels.
While we still expect some modest incremental improvement utilization from these efforts, to mediate the need to improve our utilization, we need to add more freight to our network.
As I mentioned earlier, our ability to service the freight we do get from our customers at a high level is critical to adding more contracted freight.
Turning to our dedicated division. Our dedicated division exited the year with another strong quarter. This service offering continues to resonate well with customers due to its unique value proposition, which includes exceptionally high service levels.
As we said last quarter, we want to work closely with our customers to identify additional opportunities where our dedicated offering is a good fit for them.
For 2023, we are targeting approximately 2,800 tractors in this fleet, but could increase that depending on customer needs.
Turn into brokerage.
Our brokerage segment generated revenue of $78 million and sequentially performance was similar in the fourth quarter compared to the third quarter.
Adding more freight turn network will not only benefit our assets.
but should also benefit the top line and brokerage.
Our margin performance is benefited from a lower capacity acquisition cost, with gross margins of 20% plus for the last three quarters.
In addition,
Margins in the fourth quarter benefited from some project capacity that we provided customers, which helped contribute to our 92 operating ratio in the quarter.
In the first quarter of 2023, we could see some margin pressure as we won't have the benefit of this project work.
Looking ahead to 2023, I am confident.
that we are moving in the right direction as our operational issues were concentrated in our OTR division.
We spent much of 2022 putting the building blocks in place to correct these issues.
As I said earlier, the heavy lifting has been completed with fleet ops and we are seeing improvement in our underlying metrics including service level, driver availability, percentage of empty miles and utilization.
The market remains challenging, but it will turn, and when it does, we expect our financial results to reflect the work we put into the business in 2022.
With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Peter Simpson.
Thank you, Eric, and good afternoon, everyone. This afternoon, I would like to discuss our financial performance in the fourth quarter, as well as capital allocation priorities, and provides some financial guidance before returning the call back to Eric to provide our freight market outlook.
Turning to our performance in the fourth quarter. We generated revenue excluding fuel surcharge of $475.2 million, a decrease of 0.5% compared to the third quarter of 2022. Consistent with the last few quarters, we are focused on the sequential progress of the business.
and therefore my commentary will focus on comparisons to the third quarter of 2022 unless noted otherwise.
and are improved results in both dedicated and brokerage. Our spot rates declined another 20 cents per mile sequentially, which contributed to a 6 cents per mile decrease in our overall over the road rate per mile. In addition, in our rising fuel environment, this business also has an adverse impact on our net fuel expense as most of these spot loads don't have fuel search or revenue associated with them. As a result, our net fuel expense increased in additional 2 cents per mile compared to the third quarter. This combination led to an overall $7.7 million per mile per mile per mile per mile per mile. The spot rates continued to be at record discounts compared to the contractual rates.
about $25.6 million.
Keep in mind, we believe the headwind from our current spot market exposure is transient. As one, we add more contracted loads to our network through the current bid season, which is well underway, and two, the spot market rates recover from record discounts as compared to contractual rates.
In terms of positive sequential contributions in the fourth quarter, re-enlimit plan-related cost savings totaled $8 million, and included reduced office wages of $5.5 million, and an additional $2.5 million in other fixed cost savings. On an annualized basis,
This represents $32 million in fixed cost and savings, which compares favorably to our prior expectation of $28 million, which we disclosed on our third quarter call. In addition, incremental brokerage operating income of $2.4 million and the 4% per mile increase in dedicated rates were also positives in the quarter.
Turning to capital expenditures.
For the full year, net capital expenditures, which primarily relate to tractors and trailers, was $153.1 million compared to $97 million in 2021. The year-over-year increase was due primarily to anticipated equipment deliveries in 2021, which were delivered in 2022.
as well as fewer proceeds from the sale of used equipment. In our earnings supplement, we have provided a slide which includes our NAT CapEx by category.
Looking at the other two categories, both General and other, which primarily relate to renovations in our terminal network, and technology, which is primarily capitalized wages from our IT development efforts decreased year over year.
Our technology-related CAPEX was $24.5 million, a decrease of $7.9 million compared to 2021.
Keep in mind that our realignment plan, which included a meaningful reduction in the size of our IT organization, didn't commence until September . And therefore, we expect our 2023 technology-related cat-backs to decline on a year-over-year basis. Once again, as our leaner tech org will focus on concentrating their efforts.
on fewer higher value projects. For 2023, we are currently expecting net capital expenditures to be less than $75 million. Our equipment is currently in excellent condition and the average age of our tractors is approximately two years old. Given our equipment is in such good condition, we are expecting net capital expenditures to be less than $75 million.
and well maintained primarily through our in-house preventative maintenance program, we believe that we will not require significant capital expenditures during 2023. As we have said in the past, the per mile increase in maintenance costs from aging our fleet in a disciplined manner is significantly less than the incremental per mile cost of new equipment.
We intend to take advantage of these to pay down that and lower our leverage profile in 2023.
Turning to net debt. At the end of the fourth quarter, net debt, which we defined as long-term debt, including current maturities, less cash balances, was $481.9 million, compared to $369.8 million at the end of 2021. Over the next year, we expect to pay down debt and decrease our leverage.
through a discipline capital allocation approach. Investitures of non-core real estate assets in improved earnings is the market terms.
After the close of the quarter and not reflected in our fourth quarter results, we saw the terminal, which was previously being leased to an unaffiliated company, the sale generated cash proceeds of $6.5 million, which we used to pay down debt.
Turning to liquidity. At the end of the fourth quarter liquidity, which we defined as cash plus availability under the company's revolving credit facility, was $106.1 million and we generated $43.5 million and cash from operations for the pool year.
Our overall liquidity position, Exe in the fourth quarter, remains strong, providing us with ample liquidity to fund our business and serve our customers.
As a reminder, we use cash generated from operations together with our revolver to fund day-to-day operations and use separate loan financing and lead arrangements to fund our equipment obligations.
In 2023, we expect cash flow and liquidity to improve as a result of lower net cap ex. Improved operating profitability and cash flows and debt repayment.
Turning to guidance.
To assist with your models, we expect the following. Flat overall truck count as we focus on improving our mix and profitability at our current fleet size.
moderate sequential improvement and utilization in our over the road fleet for at least the first half of the year.
Further sequential improvement in the second half is dependent on adding more freight to our network.
In addition, for the full year, we expect the following. Interest expense between $26 and $28 million, and net capital expenditures of less than $75 million.
Looking ahead to 2023, our priorities are clear. One, we must add more freight to our network to take advantage of our significant operational improvements.
Two, reduce our spot market exposure in our over-the-road business. And three, we must continue to manage expenses, deploy capital in a prudent manner, and reduce our overall debt levels.
With that, I'd like my turn the call back to Eric Fuller for our outlook.
Thank you Eric.
Looking out to 2023, we are anticipating a soft market for at least the first half of the year as shippers continue to work through higher than usual inventory levels.
and there's too much capacity in the market relative to demand.
In terms of capacity, although we haven't seen evidence in the spot rate.
We continue to expect smaller carriers to exit the market in the coming quarters as spot loads are less profitable Due to lower spot rates and increase delivery related costs including higher fuel equipment maintenance and insurance costs
We continue to have an easier time sourcing qualified professional drivers and we have observed prices continue to soften in the used equipment market both of which suggests some capacity is leaving the market albeit slowly.
As far as how these dynamics would influence rates in 2023, there is still a lot of uncertainty about the rate environment.
From our perspective, we will continue to price business in a manner that reflects the value we deliver for our customers.
and we are aggressively adding more contracted freight to our network, which should help to alleviate some of the volatility in our OTR rates as we progress through the year.
In terms of 2023 priorities, we will continue to focus on what we can control, which includes one, continuing to execute on the basics.
2. servicing our customers at a high level and 3. Reducing our spot market exposure.
We expect the benefits from these initiatives combined with cost savings from our realignment plan.
to positively impact our financial results as the market turns.
And with that operator, we are ready to take questions.
At this time I would like to remind everyone in order to ask a question, press star, follow the button number one on your telephone key.
If you'd like to withdraw your question, again press star 1.
Your first question comes from Ken Hostro with America. Your line is open.
Hey, good afternoon. Hey, good afternoon. Hey, it's Ken Hachter from B of A.
Eric, I want to talk a bit about this drive from spot. First of all, where do you see spot versus cost of operations now? Maybe tell us how that is relative to cash costs. Then do we fear that you're converting to contract at the bottom? Is there a drive to say, hey, we want to get all this stuff on?
If you look at where we started this down cycle, I mean, we were in a different mode, we had a different strategy, and unfortunately we had too much exposure to spot relative to our overall truck count. And so we have gone through this period with way too much spot exposure.
And if you look at the gap between spot and contract at times, it's been as much as a dollar a mile. And so as we look at converting over into contract, we can get a big pickup even if we have to get a little bit lower than we would like.
from a contract perspective. So we're being selective on what contract business we're taking. We're trying to partner with people that we value from a relationship standpoint and those that we think have value long term. But we do think that switching from spot to contract will have a meaningful impact to our results.
Yeah, Eric, I don't know if we, uh, we disclose that.
Yeah, we hadn't talked about it, but what Eric just said is at times it was a dollar per mile. But he wasn't saying that it was a dollar per mile lower for the entire quarter, but just saying it reached levels as low as a dollar per mile.
No, no, I meant the mix. What per you know, I think in the past you said what 30% of the base is spot exposed It did you talk about what percent is spotverse contract now?
Yeah, it's approximately, yeah, I think we disclosed that in the last quarter. We said approximately 30% of that over the road fleet and it's slightly higher than that in the fourth quarter, but relatively consistent.
Okay, and then Eric, you talked about not growing the fleet and I thought you said in your commentary it was flat, but I thought it was up, and I'm talking OTR, right? Wasn't it up 200 sequentially in third quarter from second quarter and then another almost 200 in the fourth quarter?
So it seems like you have been growing it or is your commentary that we're going to not grow it going. I'm just trying to understand the difference there between...
you have been growing it or is your commentary that we're going to not grow it's going, I'm just trying to understand the difference there between what I'm seeing on the numbers.
Yeah, I can either. I was going to say those are averages is what you're seeing to the average fourth quarter is higher than the average third quarter, but the exit rate of the third and the exit rate of the fourth were consistent.
So that means you added and then removed, so what is that, just deliveries and then you get rid of them through the quarter? No, I mean if you look at how managing a truck count is, I mean when you're talking turnover anywhere from 80 to over 100%, there is a lot of
truck count kind of moves around. It's not something that I can sit here and say we're gonna be at this truck count and we're gonna stay flat to that all the way through the quarter. It moves around. It could move around as much as 150 to 200 trucks in our size. And so that's typical in any quarter and we try to manage that in flow and outflow, but if you hit
Say for example, if you were to have a weather event or something like that, we could not get the drivers in for orientation that week. And that could greatly impact our truck count. And in some cases, a single week like that could impact your truck count by 40 or 50 trucks. And so you can have a big impact on that with some small movement. It's also...
We're always trying to manage it to this level. We're not over the last two quarters and going forward. We have no plans to change our truck count or try to grow or shrink. But if you look at the average on a quarterly basis, it may look like it's moving around 100 or 150 and that's just normal operations.
So that's more seated truck count, right? So you're not counting the non-seaters that out of look at it? Well, because we're kicking that non-seated. We're usually trying to if we don't see that we're typically trying to do the best of it.
Got it and then 1 last 1 for me just to understand the math or you were Peterson you were saying.
We're moving kind of from catbacks, right? So reducing catbacks, but the liquidity available But you're putting more of the I'm trying to understand what you were saying there the catbacks Is not might not be cash catbacks. It might be more leverage But that doesn't count near total leverage or did I not catch that in the right way
Yeah, I'll just recap to be completely clear. What we're disclosing is that we have net cat-backs, you know, for 2023 will be less than $75 million dollars. And just to clarify there too, we also have still have some non-core real estate assets on the market. And so to the extent we sell and execute those transactions.
We'll give you another update and it will be even lower than the $75 million we're anticipating. Now, liquidity, that's what we're talking about. We're really just talking about the availability in our revolver. And since our CAPEX is so low, we'll generate some cash. We believe in 2023, which will increase our overall liquidity. So...
saying liquidity was $106 million at the end of the year. I'm saying my liquidity at the end of 23, we believe that it's gonna be a number higher than that and we won't burn through our liquidity during the year. Overall leverage, we had a challenging year in 2022, particularly the third quarter.
with over a $20 million operating loss, so we believe that we're not gonna have losses to that extent during 2023. So as those quarters roll off, not only will we have lower debt or earnings to be better, which will improve our overall leverage. I mean, that's really our focus during the year is just try and get as efficient as possible with the capital that's already deployed and not throw new capital out.
Thank you for giving me my question.
Hey, I also want to circle back to the spot contract mix. As you guys think about targeting more of that contract rate, is there a particular mix that you're looking to target either your end or even longer out that you think is kind of the right balance going forward? And as you look to do that this year.
Any thoughts on the ability to kind of keep the contract rate, you know, either up or limit kind of how much price you have to give away to get that volume into the contract side of the business?
Yeah, I mean, you look at from a mixed perspective, we would like to be below 20% as a percentage of mix of the over the road division or around 10% overall revenue. And that's probably going to take us, you know, into that next up cycle before we can accomplish that. But...
That is our focus right now. It's slow and like I said, we're not just giving rate up just to get contract. We're doing it methodically and we're doing it very targeted. And so it really, it's gonna be a slow, slow build through the next couple of quarters until we get a more favorable market and then that will allow us.
you know, we're willing to give up a decent amount of rate on a contract side. It just depends on the lane and it's got to be something that's going to be a direct trade one for one. I wouldn't want to go and add a contract lane and not be able to reduce a spot lane, but if we can make that switch and it.
still benefits our network and hopefully benefits our network from an efficiency and utility standpoint favorably, then there's some give that we're willing to give on rates. I can't really say what it would be in certain lanes. I mean, it could be, we could be willing to close the gap by 15-20 cents and in some cases, it may not be as much. Just really depends.
Got it. Okay, I really appreciate the detail on that. Maybe switching gears a little bit on the utilization if I could ask a follow-up. Just one point of clarification when you mentioned that the utilization is sort of improved, but if I look through the supplemental deck it looks like the...
total number of miles actually declined sequentially. So is that just like a per day comment given you called out kind of number of holidays or an exit rate comment and you can just clarify sort of, you know, what the improvisation comment was pointing to.
Yeah, this is Eric Peterson looking at our sequential utilization third to fourth quarter. When I look at a normal working week, we're seeing absolute improvements in our over-the-road fleet and we're doing that by managing our drivers better and availability. If you look at the year over year comps, say fourth quarter to fourth quarter, you can see that in the numbers better.
significant improvement in our utility. And that's in what I would argue is potentially even a less favorable freight market. So we've gone from Q4 to Q1 with a significant weakness in the market, less volumes available to us, but we've actually increased utility. And I think that's a significant
I think that shows that we've made some significant improvement in our model and we're really set up for when the market really turns to take full advantage of the additional volume.
Got it. That's really helpful and maybe actually brings to the second question on the utilization front. I think in the opening remarks, you noted that the second half, any sort of further improvement in utilization the second half would be your contingent on getting some freight back into the network. Is the implication of that? That the first half of the control improvement is more...
idiosyncratic, sort of in your control, even in the context of the software market, maybe you can just kind of parse it out a little bit more for us.
Yeah, I think we can make some small incremental improvements on a week by week basis now, you know, how the calendar falls and all that may create some noise in a quarterly, quarterly basis. But for our purposes, operationally, I see improvements on a pretty much sequential basis.
increase in utility to the tune of 10% or something like that. We're going to have to wait until the market turns before we see something to that magnitude.
Got it. Understood. Really appreciate all the time. Thanks very much. Thank you.
Thank you.
Again, if you would like to ask a question, press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad.
Your next question is from Ann Olsenbach with JP Morgan. Your line is open.
Hey, good afternoon guys, thanks for the time. Hey, Brian , Eric Fuller, just a...
To follow up on that last comment, just make sure I understood it sounded like you're saying conditions were actually a bit worse currently. Maybe it may be coming out of the fourth quarter, so maybe I just didn't catch that right, but either way, if you can just give us an update on kind of where things stand versus the week peak and your level of confidence.
You know, we might have actually seen the worst of this cycle from a demand perspective. Obviously, the recovery is still need to be determined, but we know where to think Stan right now in January .
Yeah, I think that comment was probably more of a seasonal type comment. Anytime you're going from Q4 into that January low, you typically see a little bit of a dip. We've seen that from a ball. You perspective. I think if anything, things the bottom down, I don't see it getting necessarily worse.
We see that rates of kind of bottoms. We've seen that, uh, uh, uh, uh, ball use and demand seems to have bottoms at this point. So we, uh, you know, we believe that there is a market, the market will turn and a likelihood, um, given.
you know macro conditions and I think that that's the big unknown will give a macro conditions that there's a good likelihood that we could have a turn in the second half of this year. You know demand actually is decently strong and could get will get stronger when we get through the inventory correction. I think that we have some of our retailers that have over inventory and as they work
different vendors. We're hearing from a number of people in the industry. We're hearing it. We're seeing it our brokerage division and so we know capacity is coming out but unfortunately right now it's not coming out quick enough. I think there's a lot of what I call zombie trucking companies out there that are kind of barely staying alive and kind of making it through the day but they're not they're not
improvement utilization, bottoming out of conditions here. Do you think in the cost savings you outlined earlier, do you have visibility to profitability for the truckload business in the first quarter? Would that take a little bit longer? Maybe it's back half of the year.
What are you thinking about a return to profitability and the confidence around that or the conditions you need to see to really turn back into the green?
Yeah, so we have too much exposure to spot and that creates a big headwind from a rate perspective. As we mentioned in our release, had spot rates just been equal to contract, we would have had additional, roughly additional $25 million in income this quarter. So that would have, you know,
favorable rate market. We don't need a rate market where spot running a dollar above contract or anything like that but if we can get to a closer to equal riverium where spot starts to come up closer to contracts then we can start making money and we're really well positioned we've got our cost and in the right place we feel like our costs are very much in line with our peers.
and we're really set up to really take off as soon as this market takes off, but we do need a little bit of that rate to come back.
One quick follow up for Eric Piusen. Just on the divestments, you mentioned the one that happened after the quarter. Is there a way to decide what's up for sale in terms of either buildings or other pieces of real estate? And then I think even in the slides you mentioned there's maybe some cost reduction opportunities around that as well.
I don't know if that's meaningful or not, but some commentary on that would be helpful.
Yeah, if you look at our corporate headquarters, which is in Chattern, New Gat Tennessee, we have our main building and then we had an auxiliary building across the street, meaning full, and that's what's on the market right now, and we anticipate being able to generate...
some cash to pay down debt during this year. And as if there's a transaction and it becomes, you know, once it gets executed, we'll be sure to give everyone an update on that and let everyone know what we did with the funds and what that did with the liquidity in our debt levels. We're officially sure that the money can be signed and not being 100% just started- March
And is there an expense component of that or is it just more cash and liquidity?
Yeah, well, you know, the expense report, I mean, you see where interest rates are right now. So to the extent you have, you know, a meaningful property that you're selling and we're a net debt organization, you know, there could be a couple million dollars a year and annualized savings and on the interest line item, you know, then, you know, property and real estate tax is your no longer pain, you know, utilities, your no longer pain. And so...
I'd say in the grand scheme, those are probably a smaller number than the overall interest expense, but still a number. The point is on the cost savings is that's our focus now. We're not trying to build an infrastructure that can house double the revenues of where we are now. We're looking at our current footprint. We're looking at our current footprint.
and trying to be as efficient as possible. And as we do that, the mindset really changes of the organization. We'll be able to, you know, I think, you know, continue to identify waste. And it'll just be, it'll just be a process. Maybe not big numbers from quarter to quarter, but the point is with the mindset there will be a number from quarter to quarter of cost savings.
Okay, understood. Thank you for the time. Appreciate it.
Thanks, Brian . There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back to Mr. Eric Fuller.
Great, really appreciate everybody attending the call. We're focused and we believe we have the plan in place to get this thing turned around. We do admittedly need a little bit of the market to help us, but we've got the right strategy, we've got the right team, and we've got a plan in place that we are executing and we see the results. So we're really excited to share those.
over the next couple quarters as we start to see the market turn back positive. We appreciate it and we'll talk next quarter. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating. This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.
some capacity is leaving the market, albeit slowly. As far as how these dynamics will influence rates in 2023, there is still a lot of uncertainty about the rate environment. From our perspective, we will continue to price business in a manner that reflects the value we deliver for our customers. And we are aggressively adding more contracted freight to our network, which should help to alleviate some of the volatility in our OTR rates as we progress through the year. In terms of 2023 priorities, we will continue to focus on what we can control, which includes, one, continuing to execute on the basics, two, servicing our customers at a high level, and three, reducing our spot market exposure. We expect the benefits from these initiatives, combined with cost savings from our realignment plan, to positively impact our financial results as the market turns. And with that operator, we are ready to take questions. At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star, followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, again, press star 1. Your first question comes from Ken Hostra with America. Your line is open. Hey, good afternoon. Hey, it's Ken Hostra from B of A. So Eric, I want to talk a bit about this drive from Spot to, well, first of all, where do you see Spot versus cost of operations now? Maybe tell us how that is relative to cash costs. And then do we fear that you're converting to contract at the bottom? Is there a drive to say, hey, we want to get all this stuff on contract? And then do you make a push that we're just doing this to get freight on the network, and therefore we lock in the wrong rates? Maybe walk me through that thought process so we see how you progress in 23.