Schneider National, Inc. (NYSE:SNDR) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript - Page 4 of 9 - InvestingChannel

Schneider National, Inc. (NYSE:SNDR) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Mark Rourke : Well, I would character — I think your question is more July versus second quarter. We have seen…

Thomas Wadewitz : June or July, improvement in either of those months, yes.

Mark Rourke : Yes. I would say there was an atypical trend in July to be a bit — I’ll use the word a bit stronger in both the truck and the intermodal volumes and a little higher fulfillment rate coming in from our customer community on the allocation. And so it’s generally atypical, but it’s coming off some smaller bases as well and maybe a sign of, as what we’ve talking about, of moderate restocking. But — so the trend is there, but it’s not pronounced. But it’s also atypical to have something larger in July and building from a June level.

Operator: Our next question comes from Jack Atkins with Steves.

Jack Atkins : Okay. Great. So I guess maybe going back to the Dedicated M&A discussion for a moment. I mean, as you sort of think about the decision to allocate capital towards building the fleet organically versus buying it, I mean, could you maybe give us a little more color on why you would decide to maybe buy a fleet versus slowly over time, building it out? Because it would seem like there’s such a large addressable market there that you could grow your fleet by 500 trucks organically maybe cheaper than it would be to buy it. So maybe talk about post deal the opportunity to maybe grow faster than you would have otherwise.

Steve Bruffett : Yes, Jack, thanks for the question. And certainly, with our balance sheet and our health financially, we don’t see that as an either or. We just see that as an and. And that as I mentioned, we expect a couple of hundred units at least of implementation here in the second half organically. And that will continue to be our focus. And so we don’t feel constrained that we have to do acquisitions in lieu of growing organically. I think it’s a healthy approach to do both. And particularly, when you get access to perhaps some deep relationships with new customers that you have not had the opportunity either because of its regional nature or because it’s just a different vertical or a different segment of the market that you don’t have a large presence in.

And so that’s the attractiveness to us. And just like we find in our dedicated businesses, these are long-term deep relationships that are very deeply intertwined within the customer supply chain. And there’s a real commitment and a real value that’s exchanged between the two companies. And so — and that’s consistent with our strategy on how we like to position ourselves with customers. And so, Jack, I wouldn’t have it as a — our first priority will always be organic for the reasons you described. But I think we can augment in a way that adds great value to the business and to our shareholders organically or [excuse me] with liquid acquisitions.

Jack Atkins : Okay. No, that makes complete sense. Just — appreciate that additional color. And then within the Intermodal operations for a moment, and Jim, I’d love to get you to chime in on this if you’re interested in addressing it. But when we think about box turns there, just continue to see pressure on this for the last few years. I guess at what point do you feel like we can begin to see some improved asset efficiency? I know the cycle, at least to this point, has not been your friend, but do you feel like we’ve kind of reached a bottom here in the last couple of quarters? And how should we be thinking about that in the back half of the year?

James Filter : Yes. Thanks, Jack. So you’re right. We have everything that we need to be able to improve our box velocity with the exception of customer demand because we have the train performance, the rail performance is at all-time high levels. Customers are unloading at levels that were similar to pre-pandemic. And as we spend time with them, they’ve made some changes to their warehouse operations, structural changes to prevent the type of backlogs that we experienced previously. We have the dray — company dray and dray providers in place as well as chassis have normalized as well. So we have everything we need to at least get back to 2018 levels. It’s really a matter of when do we start to see the normal restockings begin to occur, and we believe that there will be a moderate peak season that we’ll experience here later in the year and as we go through next year, opportunity to have over-the-road conversions as we go through that next bid cycle.

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