SAIA - Saia Inc. (SAIA) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript
2024-04-27 01:38:10 ET
Saia, Inc. (SAIA)
Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript
April 26, 2024 10:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Douglas Col - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Frederick Holzgrefe - President and Chief Executive Officer
Conference Call Participants
Scott Group - Wolfe Research
Amit Mehrotra - Deutsche Bank
Bruce Chan - Stifel
Tom Wadewitz - UBS
Eric Morgan - Barclays
Jordan Alliger - Goldman Sachs
Jonathan Chappell - Evercore ISI
Daniel Imbro - Stephens
Brian Ossenbeck - JPMorgan
Ravi Shanker - Morgan Stanley
Tyler Brown - Raymond James
Bascome Majors - Susquehanna
Jason Seidl - TD Cowen
Ken Hoexter - Bank of America
Stephanie Moore - Jefferies
Presentation
Operator
Good morning and welcome to Saia's First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' remarks, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded.
I would now like to turn the call over to Doug Col, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.
Douglas Col
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Saia's First Quarter 2024 conference call. With me for today's call is Saia's President and Chief Executive Officer, Fritz Holzgrefe. Before we begin, you should know that during this call, we may make some forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements and all other statements that might be made on this call that are not historical facts are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties and actual results may differ materially. We refer you to our press release and our SEC filings for more information on the exact risk factors that could cause actual results to differ.
I'll now turn the call over to Fritz for some opening comments.
Frederick Holzgrefe
Good morning, and thank you for joining us to discuss Saia's first quarter results. While underlying macro trends remain lackluster in our view, our year-over-year results in the first quarter reflected tremendous share gains made since last summer. In the quarter, we averaged approximately 33,000 shipments per day compared to approximately 28,500 per day last year or an increase of nearly 16%.
We've opened seven new locations in the past 12 months and our employee count has grown significantly, allowing us to staff the new locations and enabling us to handle the growth in volumes while still providing our customers with excellent service. I'm particularly pleased to see all of our key service performance indicators continue to trend positively as we continue our expansion.
Our first quarter revenue of $754.8 million increased from last year's first quarter by 14.3% and is a record for any first quarter in our company's history. Yield or revenue per hundredweight, excluding fuel surcharge, increased 10.5%, reflecting a constructive pricing backdrop despite a subdued demand environment in a traditionally slower period in our business.
Revenue per shipment, excluding fuel surcharge, increased 1.4% despite a headwind from weight per shipment, which was down 8.2% in the quarter and length of all also down modestly by 0.4%. Our revenue per shipment growth ex-fuel surcharge continues to be the result of positive pricing and effective mix management. With our continuing high-service levels, we actively review the performance of all of our accounts and are not shying away from having rate discussions when necessary based on profitability, not the calendar.
Our first quarter operating ratio of 84.4% improved by 60 basis points compared to our operating ratio of 85% posted in the first quarter last year and matches our best ever Q1 OR posted in 2022. As we continue to absorb the growth in volumes compared to the prior year, we've continued investing in our network to maintain our services while also optimizing how we provide the service with our expanding linehaul and driving teams.
Our plans to open 15 terminals to 20 terminals in total this year remain and we'll also continue relocating some existing terminals as we've done with four so far this year. Relocations are an important part of the story as these relocated terminals often offer us multiple benefits, including better strategic position in the market and added capacity to better serve existing customers and also perhaps put us in a better position to serve new customers....
Saia, Inc. (SAIA) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript