Arcbest Corp (ARCB) Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the ArcBest Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, we will conduct a question and answer session. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I will now turn it over to Ms. Amy Mendenhall, Vice President, Treasury and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to be here today with Judy McReynolds, our Chairman and CEO, Seth Runzer, our President, and Matt Beasley, our Chief Financial Officer. Other members of our Executive Leadership Team will also be available during the Q&A session. Before we begin, please note that some of the comments we make today will be forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, which are detailed in the forward-looking statements section of our earnings release and SEC filing. To provide meaningful comparisons, we will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures that are outlined and described in the tables of our earnings release. Reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP measures are provided in the additional information section of the presentation slide.

You can access the conference call slide deck on our website at ARCB.com in our 8K filed earlier this morning or follow along on the webcast and now i will turn the call over to judy thank you amy and good morning everyone i'd like to begin by expressing my sincere appreciation to our employees your unwavering commitment to our customers your pursuit of excellence and your ability to lead through change continue to distinguish arc best in a dynamic and competitive industry. Before we dive into the quarter's results, I want to take a moment to reflect on how we think about our business and how we lead through uncertainty. We are now three years into a soft-grade environment. When I compare today's challenges to those of 2008, a time many of us remember well, the strength and resilience of our best strategy are clear. Our forward-thinking, customer-centric approach combined with disciplined execution is delivering results. We remain focused on growth, efficiency, and innovation. These priorities guide our decisions and investments, enabling us to build agility into our operations and drive meaningful productivity gains. Every dollar we invest, whether in technology, talent, or infrastructure, is aligned with our strategy and aimed at creating long-term value for our customers, our employees, and our shareholders. This strong foundation has positioned us well to navigate continued headwinds. In the second quarter, the freight environment remained challenging with softness in manufacturing, a sluggish housing market, and added uncertainty around the future path of interest rates and tariffs. Despite these pressures, ArtVest executed with discipline and served our customers with excellence through our integrated logistics solutions. We generated just over $1 billion in revenue and $45 million in non-GAAP operating income for the quarter. Our investments in innovation and technology continue to pay off. For example, in our ADF business, we're leveraging AI and predictive analytics to optimize labor planning, delivery routing, and dock operations in real time. These tools are reducing costs, improving service, and enhancing flexibility across our network. As a result, the second quarter marked our most productive quarter since 2021. That same proactive mindset guided our response to the recent NMFTA classification update. We anticipated potential disruption and took early strategic action, collaborating with the NMFTA, engaging with customers, and applying our costing expertise and freight dimensioning tools to help them navigate the changes with confidence. Many customers also turn to our packaging engineers who are experts in optimizing freight to reduce damage, improve efficiency, and lower costs. Shifting gears, I'd like to update you on two recent changes to our Board of Directors. We're pleased to welcome Tom Albrecht to the Board. Tom brings over 35 years of transportation and logistics industry experience and currently serves as the Chief Revenue Officer at Reliance Partners. His deep expertise in finance, capital allocation, strategy, and insurance, as well as his recognition as a seven-time Wall Street Journal All-Star, will be a tremendous asset as we continue to execute our long-term strategy and deliver value to our shareholders. Also, after 14 years of dedicated service, Steve Spinner will retire from the ARCVEST board following our October meeting. Steve has been a valued advisor, serving as our lead independent director and a member of the audit committee, and I have thoroughly enjoyed working closely with him. His experience leading companies through transformational growth has been especially helpful as ArcVest has transformed into an integrated logistics company. On behalf of ArcVest and the board, I want to thank Steve for his service, leadership, and commitment. We continually assess our board size, composition, and balance of skills and characteristics to drive long-term shareholder value, and we expect to announce additional updates in the coming months. Finally, as I recently announced, I plan to retire as CEO at the end of the year. Seth Renser will succeed me as ARCBEST's next CEO. Seth and I have worked closely together for many years. He is a values-driven leader who consistently delivers results, and I have full confidence in his ability to lead ARCVEST into the future. I'll continue to support him and the company as chairman of the ARCVEST board. And with that, I'll turn the call over to our CEO-elect and president of ARCVEST, Seth Rensler, who will share more about our progress and priorities for 2025.

Thanks, Judy, and good morning, everyone. I'm honored to lead this incredible company and deeply grateful to Judy for her visionary leadership and to the board for their trust in me. Having been with ArcVest for nearly 18 years, I know this business and this industry well. My time as ABF president gave me a front row seat to the power of our strategy. And now, as ARC Best President, after spending time with our customers and teams across the organization, my conviction in that strategy has only grown stronger. As we've emphasized throughout the year, our 2025 priorities are clear. Driving profitable growth, advancing our premium service for customers, and focusing on optimization and efficiency. We're making meaningful progress on all fronts. Earlier this year, we realigned resources to better serve our customers and invested in our sales teams, particularly across LTL, truckload, and managed solutions. These changes are already delivering results. Our pipeline is stronger, with half of the opportunities tied to LTL and significant growth in both managed and truckload. Despite ongoing market headwinds, these internal efforts drove year-over-year shipment growth in our asset-based segment in the second quarter. We averaged 21,000 ABF shipments per day, a 6% increase. We added over 100 new core LTL accounts, positioning us well for future upside as the economy improves. In truckload, while shipment volumes declined year-over-year, we delivered stronger margins and improved profitability. This reflects deliberate strategic choices, focusing on small and mid-sized business customers and reducing lower margin freight. We're reallocating capacity towards more attractive opportunities, and it's paying off. Our managed business continues to gain momentum, with double-digit growth in both shipments and revenue second quarter managed revenue reached an all-time high this success stems from our ability to help customers adapt quickly whether by shifting distribution strategies optimizing modes or leveraging our technology and expertise and because manage feeds ltl truckload and other services it strengthens the entire arc best network this is the power of our integrated model We're also expanding our digital quote pool, a key enabler of our dynamic pricing strategy. With deeper integrations across TMS providers and 3PLs, we've grown daily quote volume to over 200,000 quotes per day. That gives us more opportunities to match the right freight with the right capacity at the right price, sharpening our pricing intelligence and driving incremental profit, even in a soft freight environment. Together, these results underscore the strength of our strategy, one built for margin expansion and sustainable, profitable growth. We're also driving measurable value through innovation and efficiency. Our city route optimization platform, now in phase two and active in over half of our service centers, uses AI and historical data to dynamically optimize routes. Planners can now adjust routes with a single click when conditions change. maximizing resource utilization, and improving service consistency. Phase 3, now underway in a dozen locations, introduces real-time pickup optimization using AI to predict demand and position drivers where they're needed most. We're also rolling out our dock management system built on Vox technology. This platform enhances visibility into dock operations with real-time dashboards and prioritization tools, streamlining workflows, and improving both speed and accuracy. As shipment volumes increased in the second quarter, our manpower planning tools helped us respond with agility, aligning labor with demand, while improving operational efficiency. These innovations are part of a broader ecosystem of proprietary tools that support data-driven decision-making, from workforce planning to customer service automation. We're embedding intelligence into every layer of our operations. We're also seeing strong returns from our investments and people. In the first half of the year, our compliance training teams visited 18 service centers, delivering targeted support that's already driving results. These efforts have contributed to $14 million in cost savings through better process adherence, smarter use of technology, and enhanced safety practices. Over 230 software installations were paired with in-person training to ensure employees are equipped to succeed. This reflects our broader strategy, invest in people to unlock value. By embedding best practices and ensuring consistent execution, we're building a safer, more efficient operation that supports both service reliability and long-term growth. Our strategy and optimization team, led by Christopher Atkins, continues to drive high-impact improvements. In the second quarter, the team performed a deep dive on truckload operations, where they identified inefficiencies tied to external load boards. While these boards improve buy rates, they also generate low-value inbound calls. To address this, we enhanced our automated call routing system using AI, prioritizing high-value inquiries, and improving carrier support. This boosts productivity and is scalable across the business. And importantly, our integrated approach to efficiency is amplifying the capabilities of our people, especially new hires. With intuitive platforms, embedded training, and guided workflows, they're ramping up faster and contributing sooner. As these tools continue to scale, we will see even greater opportunity ahead. Looking forward, we remain focused on disciplined execution, delivering long-term value for our customers, our people, and our shareholders. I'm excited to build on the strong foundation Judy laid and continue ARCBEST's legacy of innovation and service. With that, I'll turn it over to Matt to walk through the financials in more detail.

Thank you, Seth, and good morning, everyone. Despite ongoing softness in the freight environment, Art Best delivered solid second quarter results. We saw a sequential improvement in our asset-based operating ratio that was consistent with historical trends and achieved quarterly non-GAAP operating income in the asset-like segment for the first time since the second quarter of 2023. These results reflect our disciplined execution and focus on long-term value creation. Taking a closer look at our second quarter performance, consolidated revenue was $1 billion, down 5% year-over-year. Non-gap operating income from continuing operations was $45 million, compared to $64 million in the prior year. Our asset-based segment saw a $22 million decrease in operating income, while the asset-like segment's non-GAAP operating income of $1 million was an improvement of nearly $4 million over last year. Adjusted earnings per share were $1.36, down from $1.98 in the second quarter of 2024. Now, let's discuss our two segments in more detail. Starting with our asset-based business, second quarter revenue was $713 million, a per-day increase of 1%. ABF's operating ratio was 92.8%, an increase of 300 basis points over the second quarter of 2024. ABF's operating ratio improved 310 basis points sequentially, within the historical range of a 300 to 400 basis point improvement. In the second quarter, daily shipments grew by 6%, while weight per shipment decreased by 1%, resulting in a 4% increase in tons per day compared to the previous year. This growth was driven in part by onboarding new core LTO customers through the commercial initiatives Seth mentioned. However, softness in industrial production and housing continues to pressure weight per shipment and profitability. To support shipment growth, we proactively added labor and strategically used purchase transportation and local cartage to supplement network capacity during peak vacation season. Annual increases in contracted rates for union labor and purchase transportation also contributed to higher operating costs. Still, productivity gains allowed us to onboard new business efficiently and serve our customers with excellence. Despite increased costs, cost per shipment improved both year-over-year and sequentially. We remain disciplined in our pricing strategy, securing deferred increases averaging 4%, a strong outcome in a market where many shippers are focused on cost savings. This speaks to the strength of our customer relationships and the differentiated value we provide. Even as customers evaluate options, we're retaining business and winning new opportunities at rates that support long-term profitability. Revenue per hundredweight declined 3% year-over-year. Excluding fuel surcharges, the decrease was in the lowest single digits. This was driven by growth and easier-to-handle freight from core customers, which typically has a lower revenue per hundredweight profile but is operationally more efficient. Additionally, yields were also impacted by fewer shipments in the manufacturing vertical and continued softness in household goods moves due to economic and interest rate conditions. Turning to July 2025 trends in our asset-based business, daily shipments grew by 2% year-over-year, highlighting continued success and capturing new core business opportunities. The market backdrop drove a 2% decrease in weight per shipment, which resulted in flat daily tonnage levels compared to the same period last year. On July 14th, we announced a general rate increase of 5.9% effective August 4th. Historically, ABF's non-GAAP operating ratio improved by about 70 basis points from the second quarter to the third quarter, and we expect third quarter performance to be generally in line with that trend. Moving on to the asset light segment, second quarter revenue was $342 million, a daily decrease of 13% year-over-year. Shipments per day were down 7% as we strategically reduced less profitable truckload volumes, offsetting double-digit growth in our managed solution. Revenue per shipment decreased by 7% due to the soft rate market and growth in our managed business, which has smaller shipment sizes and lower revenue per shipment levels. Our non-GAAP operating income of $1 million was an improvement compared to last year's non-GAAP operating loss of $2.5 million. This improvement was driven by our focus on improving margins while reducing our operating costs. In July, asset-like daily revenue was down 7% year-over-year, primarily due to lower revenue per shipment from the soft freight market. Manage continued to show strength, though its smaller shipment sizes contributed to lower revenue per shipment. Overall volume trends have stabilized, with July 2025 shipment counts holding steady year-over-year compared to July 2024. Given current conditions, we expect non-GAAP operating income to range from break-even to $1 million in profit for the third quarter. We continue to take a balanced, long-term approach to capital allocation. Our 2025 capital expenditure guidance of $225 million to $275 million reflects maintenance spending to optimize total cost of ownership in strategic investments that enhance service, efficiency, and growth. We currently expect to be at the lower end of that range. In the first half of 2025, we returned over 47 million dollars to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends. We'll remain opportunistic with repurchases based on share price while prioritizing high returning organic investments and maintaining prudent leverage. Our balance sheet remains strong with approximately 400 million dollars in available liquidity while external conditions remain dynamic art best is well positioned for the future we're focused on what we can control delivering exceptional service operating with discipline and making smart strategic decisions that strengthen our business and create long-term value i'll now hand the call back to judy thank you matt i was recently asked what makes art best truly stand out.

There are many things that make this company special, but one defining trait rises above the rest, our ability to turn challenges into opportunities. We'll find a way is more than our motto. It's a mindset that drives how we operate, especially in uncertain times. In the softer freight market, we've leaned into that mindset by making strategic investments that position us for long-term success. We've enhanced our facilities to support future growth. We've accelerated innovation to improve efficiency and service quality. And most importantly, we've invested in our people, equipping them with the skills, tools, and support they need to deliver exceptional value to our customers. These actions not only strengthen our business, they create meaningful returns for our shareholders. Before we wrap up, I'm pleased to share an exciting milestone. ARC-BEST will host its first Investor Day in a decade on September 29th. This event will offer a deeper look into our strategic priorities, innovation roadmap, and long-term financial targets that will guide our next phase of growth. We're eager to showcase how ARC-BEST is delivering value today and building for tomorrow. That concludes our prepared remarks. I'll now turn it over to the operator for questions.

Thank you. And we will now begin the question and answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star 1 a second time. If you are called upon to ask your question and are listening via speakerphone on your device, please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question to be able to take as many questions as possible we ask that you please limit yourself to one question if you do have follow-up questions you may rejoin the queue again it is star one to join the queue and our first question comes from the line of Jordan Alger with Goldman Sachs your line is open yeah hi morning um question so if i believe you have some easier comps coming up in your trends year-over-year for uh august and september revenue per day tons per day

you know etc um i'm just curious uh do you think that could lead to sort of a step up in the trend line on a year-over-year basis as we move past july and the trends we're seeing there i mean could we even see some inflection on revenue per day? Thanks.

Yeah. Hey, Jordan. Good morning. This is Matt. So, you know, the trends that we saw when we moved from the first quarter to second quarter, you know, we certainly were ahead of history when we look at shipment per day versus the 10-year historical trend. I think, you know, as we look from the second quarter to the third quarter, you know, in large part just due to the commercial efforts that we have ongoing and the success that we've seen there, you know, I do think that there's some potential to outperform a little bit versus what historical seasonality has been on shipments per day.

And our next question comes from the line of Jason Seidel with TD Cowan. Your line is open.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, Judy. Good morning, Seth, team. First of all, Seth, congratulations. And then also I should probably give a little shout out to Tom. I think he's a great addition to your board. I wanted to look at sort of the push into the SMBs. We've heard that from a lot of other LTO carriers. You know, I was just wondering, is there becoming more price aggression in that area, or is that just sort of a market that is not as price sensitive as some of maybe the other larger national accounts? And then also sticking on that, is the freight profile different among the SMB customers, and how should we think about that in the model?

Hey, Jason, this is Eddie. Yeah, I mean, you know, we are remaining focused, especially with our field sales force on that SMB market. And that really kind of includes the middle market as well. You know, I wouldn't say that there's a different price point with that. You know, every customer is unique in terms of their business, their location, the competitors in those markets. You know, we like that business because we can build long-term, lasting relationships. It's stickier for us. You know, what we excel in from a sales perspective is those relationships. And so, you know, that's part of the focus. I mean, historically, SMB, middle market, you know, it is less price sensitive than what you would consider with big enterprise customers, especially in the retail space. So we like it from that perspective. Profile really is a mixed bag with those customers. And you can imagine there's a lot of verticals that are representative in the SMB and middle market spaces. So for us, It's good business that we feel like we have a value proposition for those customers that allow us to excel.

And our next question comes from the line of Chris Weatherby with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Yeah. Hey, thanks. Good morning, guys, and congrats to Seth and Judy. I wanted to ask about sort of your ability to kind of outgrow the industry. It's been, yeah, I think several months now where you've been able to sort of tap into this pool of freight that, you know, appears to be coming at a little bit of a different mix and sort of revenue per shipment dynamic, but it is driving outperformance relative to some of the, you know, volume numbers that we're seeing from the peers. So maybe you can talk a little bit about sort of, you know, what the freight kind of looks like, where you're getting it from, how deep the pool you think it is, and sort of how sustainable kind of this outperformance can be over the next couple of quarters. That'd be helpful.

Yeah, thanks, Chris. This is Seth here. When we look at our active accounts and cross-sold accounts, they continue to grow, and that's great to see. I continue to have conversations with customers, and they're looking for more solutions. So I think we'll grow across the board in a lot of the areas because our strategy is really based on finding ways to say yes to customers. So when I think about the dynamic mix, we mentioned last quarter we were over 200,000 quotes per day. We really haven't changed our strategy there on how much we're bringing into the network. What you saw in the second quarter is what you're going to see in the third and fourth quarters. Well, really where we're seeing the outperformance is on the core business mix. We've added over 100 new accounts, and we feel like that's just going to continue to improve as we move forward because the pipeline's strong, and we just continue to have success by providing that value that eddie just talked about to our customers so we remain disciplined on on profitable growth and improving efficiency to help improve our margin and that really starts with the service we provide our customers and we feel like we've made progress there as well so and we think when we look longer term ahead we think as demand grows and capacity tightens we'll be we'll be well positioned to uh improve even more with further rate increases and just the business we're bringing in, but we're not waiting on the market to turn. There's just a lot of noise out there, but we're focused on our initiatives, and we're seeing success around all those three pillars that we mentioned in our prepared remarks around growth, efficiency, and innovation. So, we're positioning ourselves to service our customers with excellence, and we think that's going to continue to lead to growth opportunities.

And our next question comes from the line of Daniel Imbrow with Stevens. Your line is open.

Yeah, good morning, guys. Yes, congrats on the promotion, and Judy, congrats on retirement. Maybe a follow-up on the LTL pricing side. So, you announced the 5.9% GRI a couple weeks ago. Can you talk about the strategy of maybe why implement that a month earlier this year? What has early customer feedback been since it has been a couple weeks? And then how much of your business does the GRI cover? Can you just remind us? Thanks.

Yeah. Daniel, this is Eddie again. Yeah, you know, this is kind of our typical cycle for general rate increases um you know i think if you go back far enough you know i think there was a general idea that would happen every year but you know on average it's 10 to 11 months that this cycle is happening you know we really do believe that the timing is right for this increase we're providing exceptional service uh value to our customers obviously costs continue to go up and we have to get better increases to cover those inflationary costs. We feel like we're well positioned with our customers through the solutions we provide them to meet really any of the challenges that they're facing. And so we anticipate this will go off pretty much as our history has shown to be pretty successful.

And our next question comes from the line of Robby Schenker with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Good morning, and allow me to chime in. Judy, end of an era. We will see you on the investor day, but congratulations and congrats to you as well. Just kind of on that same point, if I may, just in your conversations with your customers, do these volumes you're picking up right now, do they feel sticky? Do they feel transitory and somewhat opportunistic?

And also, I suspect your competitors are not going to be sitting back waiting for you to take more share from them so are you seeing them potentially loosen the purse strings on price and maybe try and come off with some of these volumes as well thank you hey ravi it's set i appreciate the the kind words there and uh there's no doubt the macro remains challenging and there's a lot of uncertainty out there but we feel confident in our ability to grow and provide that service to our customers we feel we're better positioned with our multiple solutions to respond in any environment and that's exactly what we're seeing in these customer conversations. We act as a strategic advisor, navigate those uncertain times, and that's really what differentiates us from the competition. So what we're seeing in our pipeline numbers and the continued growth, like Eddie mentioned, not every opportunity makes sense for us to bring on. We need to focus on the right price to provide value over the long term, but I've spent a lot of time with customers throughout this year, and it's apparent that they're looking for companies who they can trust and partner with that navigate all these challenges. So I do think a lot of this business is sticky. A lot of what they're talking to us about as well is cost efficiency and supply chain stability. And that's really what we bring to the table with our solution set. So I've been encouraged that we've been adding new business across all solutions, not just LTL.

And our customers have had confidence in our service offerings so we view markets like this as opportunities and we think as we provide that value to customers it's going to be sticky over the long term so and our next question comes from the line of brian awesome back with jp morgan your line is open hey good morning thanks for taking the question um maybe just uh can you expand a little bit more on kind of your service levels and performance um tying into the receptivity and stickiness of some of this new freight growth and the GRI that just came out. And then also, Judy, I think you made a few comments on the NMFTA transition with some disruptions and perhaps some other issues that you were anticipating. It'd be great if you could give a little bit more color on that. Obviously, we saw one of the larger competitors kind of push out the – compliance is not the right word, but at least the implementation of that. So we'd be interested to hear your further thoughts on that and the impact for you guys and also the industry. Thank you.

Good morning, Brian. This is Matt Godfrey. I'll start on the service side. And, you know, we have a long history of being resilient regardless of the macro, which Judy talked about earlier. We looked to turn challenges into opportunities, and you've seen that with the results that we had around efficiency and service in the second quarter. And it's really a collaborative effort, not only internally. You know, our leaders visit our field locations. We hear from our teams on the tools they need, how they can be more efficient, how we can service our customers better. But it's also collaborative with our customers. I just heard a story this week. We had a customer site visit, walked through a situation they were experiencing. A suggestion was made, and the customer is looking to implement that. and it's really going to be a win-win for all parties and so that's the approach we take on the collaborative side and then we're also continuing to invest in our optimization initiatives around manpower planning network visibility and we continue to deploy our teams of operational experts around the company and we've seen savings with that group in 2024 we built on that with over $14 million in savings in 2025. So we have our robust portfolio. We mentioned some of those initiatives earlier around city route optimization. I'm very excited about what phase three will bring on the pickup side, giving our frontline leaders better tools to service our customers. And so the dock software is a big step forward for us, and we're very excited as we continue to roll these out in 2025.

Hey, Brian, this is Seth on the NMFC change. Really, we view this as a positive for the industry. When you condense commodity codes, that will give us the shipment's actual characteristics, and that's going to provide our customers more accurate freight rates up front. So, we already dimensioned about 98% of our freight, and we really saw this coming. So, throughout the first half of this year, we partnered with our customers, talked about the change made made changes to pricing or whatever we needed to do to make sure so when the change was implemented uh i believe it was last weekend on july 19th our customers weren't surprised so we saw this change coming years ago that's why we started developing box vision because that allows us to dimension freight in real time uh and also why we did space-based pricing a long time ago as well because we we view the industry continuing to go towards this route So as far as the actual implementation, we have minor hiccups, but nothing that I would call material in any way, mostly just old built ladings that just weren't updated with the new NMFC. But really, it's been a non-event because of the way we've prepared our customers.

And our next question comes from the line of Scott Group with Wolf Research. Your line is open.

Hey, thanks. Good morning. And again, congrats, Seth, Judy, and Tom. Um, the 5% sequential drop in tonnage in July, any, any context of how that is versus normal and then just following up on the GRI, right? So there's two months of the GRI in Q3 this year. I think last year was one month and typically it's, it's not been in Q3. So how much does that help the margin in this year versus that normal seasonality? And is that sort of baked into your view of the margin for Q3 and any other sort of puts and takes to think about that margin versus normal seasonality? Thank you.

Yeah, so Scott, this is Matt. on the sequential move if we look just versus history um in july you know i would say that what we are seeing is generally in line with the historical performance maybe just slightly ahead of it and then i'll let seth take the next part yeah and i i would say scott when you when you think about just what happened throughout the second quarter there was a lot more variability in the daily business volumes than normal.

So we saw surges at certain points in the quarter and then kind of lighter weeks following that. So we're confident, hopefully, if all the trade policies go smoothly, like we've seen some of the announcements recently, that we'll see some of that stuff settle down. So as we move into the rest of this quarter, we believe that it's going to be more normalized to match some of those statistics that Matt just said.

So we want to make sure that we're evaluating our mix and our labor and make sure that we're in line to move with those freight flows but we see a more normal seasonal pattern as we move into third quarter as some of those trade policies start to start to get resolved yeah and this is eddie you know the timing of the gri you know again as i kind of mentioned earlier on the call you know this is kind of part of our normal cycle of when we take it i mean obviously the timing of it in the third quarter with historical freight volumes increasing due to peak. I mean, it's a good time to take it, but ultimately it's because we're providing the value to our customers that we believe they're willing to pay for that. In terms of the impact to the quarter, again, our volume of our business subsidiary is not as great as it was in previous years. So we don't think the impact will be overly great. But obviously it's needed from a deflationary cost standpoint.

Okay. Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Bruce Chan with Stiefel. Your line is open.

Hey, thanks. And good morning, everybody. Congrats to the entire team here. You know, maybe on the asset light side, it's good to see you back in the black, I know, you know, you've been working hard and you gave us some good color on some of the measures that you're taking. I guess my question is, you know, where do you think we are in that process in terms of innings? And can you continue with the double digit, you know, growth numbers that you're seeing in that shipments per employee per day metric? And then, you know, we don't have as much clarity on the historical kind of quarter to quarter trends in this business given the changes. So, you know, maybe some color on our trajectory in the business in the back half would be helpful as well.

Yeah, this is Seth, Bruce. Well, when you think about what's going on with asset light, we continue to be affected by the soft freight market and just the excess truckload capacity, and we've talked about that in the past. We have been encouraged with our managed business, and now it's continued to hit all-time highs for revenue and shipments, and that is operationally good for us and also producing operating income. But we continue to act to strategically reduce some of those less profitable lanes within our truckload segment. We think most of that work is done, but it's going to be a continual optimization process that we go through. And we saw improved margins, reduced employee costs, and we improved productivity by almost 15% within asset light. And we think there's a lot of opportunity ahead as well. Sequentially, it's a lot of the same story with what's going on with the market conditions as we see moving into the third quarter we think it's going to be just continued excess capacity but we're going to be focused on what we can control and that's why we we're happy to be back in the black but we're nowhere near satisfied with where we're at so we got a lot of different things that we're working on to improve profitability not only the account base but also our mix we talked about the smb space earlier i know eddie was referencing ltl but we're also attacking that within the truckload segment we've added a lot of sellers in the smb space within truckload and we're seeing that them hit their ramp and actually exceed expectations but we're kind of early innings there and then really around productivity we got a lot of different things going on around productivity with ai and optimizing some of the you know less value calls uh categorizing emails there's just a lot of different things so i think we're still early stages on on productivity improvements and i feel like we can we can make even greater strides and then if you fast forward january a little bit longer term i'm excited about matt coming on because he just has a perspective and the experience leading the largest brokerage in the United States that I think that's going to benefit us to have that experience on board to take it even further.

And Bruce, it's Matt. I'll just chime in as well. So like Seth said, we're very proud of the team and the execution in the second quarter, the operating income result. You know, the forward look that we put out today is, you know, we expect to be generally in line with that result in the third quarter as well. We put out a range on an on-gap basis for operating the income for that business from flat to a million dollars in operating the income for the third quarter.

And our next question comes from the line of Stephanie Moore with Jeffries. Your line is open.

Hi. Excuse me. Hi. Good morning. Good to hear everybody and looking forward to seeing you all in September. And Judy, I guess wishing you an official bon voyage, but all good stuff. I wanted to, if it's possible, we could talk a little bit about the puts and takes of costs in the second quarter. I mean, I know that it's been an ongoing investment journey in terms of efficiency tools around manpower planning, et cetera. We also saw higher shipments per day. So I just wanted to think about how you're managing staffing in this environment. Any thoughts on labor costs into the third quarter?

I ask only because the OR improvement was very good, but it was a little bit on the lower end of kind of the range that you that you laid out so just trying to kind of walk through those puts and takes um again anything that can be learned from the second quarter that we should think about into the third thank you yeah good morning stephanie this is matt godfrey and as we've talked about a little bit you know as part of our normal cadence of operations we we manage the use of our internal labor along with outside resources to make sure we optimize service and efficiency for our customers. So, as we said, we really like the growth we are seeing, especially with our core LTL customers, and we'll continue to align our resources to continue to service that business at a high level. So, on the network side, we're using our mixed management tools, and we make dynamic changes within our operational network to meet those targets, and we've been able to improve our cost per shipment operationally both year over year and sequentially in the asset based network and so in addition to that we continue to invest in those optimization tools we've talked a lot about our hiring strategy to build flex within our network the ability to flex up to say yes to customers when they approach us and we hire in line with that we've already talked about city route optimization phase two um it kind of given one click optimization tools uh to our planners so they can deal with real time uh conditions phase three uh focused uh on the pickups um and again working to make our planners better make their jobs easier augment their decision making process while servicing our customers at a high level so we saw our productivity metrics continue achieved multi-year highs with the second quarter of 25 being our best quarter since 2021. And we've made a lot of progress and we know we have more work to do, which is why I continue to be excited about the portfolio of optimization projects we have coming in the pipeline.

And Stephanie, this is Matt. I'll just chime in. Matt Beasley, I guess I should say. That was Matt Godfrey. So So definitely proud of the ABF team, the execution there, the continued work and the compliance campaigns and the optimization projects. It was great that we've been able to highlight some of that this year, just all the different work, including the technology projects that we've been doing there. I would say certainly we did see a nice step up in shipments as a result of our commercial efforts. That was well executed efficiently on the ABF side. We laid that out in the presentation. You can see that just visually how that's trended over time and certainly good performance, but just as you would expect with the step up in shipments. You know, we've of course had a step up in cost to serve, but on a cost per shipment basis, that performance was great. And then just one other note, we did have approximately $3 million year over year increase in workers' comp costs as well that impacted costs in the second quarter.

And our next question comes from the line of Ken Hexter with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Good morning, all. And Judy and Seth, congrats, and Tom, on the next phase for each of you. Just want to revisit the messaging here a bit, right? So you've got a big drop in tons per day in June, slowed down to 2.8%. Now it's flat in July. Again, somewhat easy comps, right down double-digit volumes a year ago. So are you suggesting, is the market getting more competitive? And then Seth, we've seen a shift where you've taken on dynamic freight, you've moved to unloaded, taken it on. Where are we in the mix that you view in the need to take on the dynamic freight versus the core freight? And if Matt, you said earlier volumes are outperforming and you're taking yields earlier, why are we not seeing the margins outperform?

Yeah, so again, it's Matt, I'll maybe take the first parts of the the question there you know as it relates to the development of the quarter you know you're right so if you look i mean overall we were up for the quarter you know versus historical seasonality on a sequential basis both for tonnage and shipments per day you know we did see in april and may you know if you just look versus the trend you know a lot of that outperformance is driven by the performance that we saw in April and May. And so, yes, when you look at June, I mean, certainly that's a peak vacation month. We were prioritizing service in the network just as normal course of business. You know, we're always looking at yield and profitability of accounts. You know, we took some action that had some impact on shipments there, but we think was the right decision from an overall yield and profitability standpoint. And then, you know, just given where the housing market is, you know, certainly we didn't see the step up in shipments in June on the UPAC side that we would normally see just given the softness there.

Hey, Ken, this is Seth. On the dynamic question, I just want to make sure that it's clear that the majority of our business is core business, LTL. What we try to do with the transactional business, Dynamic, and you can include UPAC and the volume loads in there as well, is we try to maintain consistency in the network and fill that empty capacity and make sure that we're well positioned when the market turns as well. So as our core business starts to increase and we feel great about our pipeline, we want to make sure that we're focused on that profitable growth and the mixed management. But what you've seen with Dynamic in the second quarter is the same thing we've been doing for the past year and a half. We don't expect that to change in the future. So what really is important to understand with what we do at Dynamic is we optimize our mix on a daily basis. And in turn, it's based on profit maximization. And that's based on market prices and available capacity we have that's already moving that would otherwise be empty. So peers use, when you look at our peer group, they use 3PLs to make those adjustments. We are of the 3PL. And I think that's the way we go to market. And we believe that's the winning formula.

Yeah. And then maybe back to your question on pricing. I mean, we feel great about where we are from a pricing perspective. We've got a long history of pricing intelligence and pricing discipline. We continue to focus there. Certainly, we felt like that the 4% increase in contract and deferreds for the quarter was a great outcome in the current environment. You know, we just assessing the market, you know, felt confident in moving forward with the 5.9% GRI. I mean, I think generally you're just seeing just some of the impacts of the market that we find ourselves in. And so certainly when you look at business coming out of the manufacturing vertical, which tends to generally carry, you know, higher revenue per hundredweight and, you know, makes up a good portion of our business. we serve that business well you know that market that has softened you know as we move through the year and as the pmi moved back under 50 and so you know we're adding good new good new profitable business to the network you know some of that comes in a little bit higher revenue per hundred weight but we still have the highest you know revenue per hundred weight revenue per shipment metrics and like we talked about before we're executing that well on the cost side too as a reminder, it is star one if you would like to ask a question.

And our next question comes from the line of Tom Wadowitz with UBS. Your line is open.

Yeah, good morning. And also, you know, Judy and Seth and Tom as well. Congratulations to all three of you. Let's see, I wanted to get, I don't know if there's been a lot of comment on demand. I know it's kind of tough to read and it continues to be soft, but are you getting any feedback from customers that is a little more optimistic, whether that be related to just getting beyond, you know, getting some trade deals in place and maybe getting a little bit more stability related to tariff or related to the, you know, the tax bill and some of the, you know, kind of quickly realized cash tax savings? I'm just wondering if you're getting any feedback, you know, industrial or retail customers or wherever that's just a little bit more optimistic, or is that something you wouldn't necessarily expect to hear? Thanks.

Hey, Tom, this is Eddie. Yeah, we've been talking to our customers a lot about, you know, the, you know, kind of current environment that they're facing, whether it's tariffs, whether it's just the uncertainty of interest rates and investment, you know, from, it really continues to be kind of a mixed bag. I mean, we have some customers that are still experiencing disruption across their industries. They're having to spend a lot more time and resources to understand the impacts of tariffs specifically. But some common themes is continued softness, some uncertainty, and when you get to the tariff side, there's been a lot of work to determine, you know, is there a better country to outsource their business? You know, some are having to cancel orders because of the tariffs. And so it's really important for those customers to, you know, be nimble. And that's where I think we come in and we offer great solutions that allows them to handle this environment from a day-to-day standpoint. You know, I think when you start talking about long term with the bill that has recently passed, you know, customers perspective is it's still wait and see, you know, is this going to, you know, when is the investment, when does the tax breaks hit? You know, you know, I think it's still out in the future in terms of what those impacts would be.

And Tom, this is Matt. I'll just add on here. I mean, I do think that there is good potential in terms of stimulus from the impacts of the I'll just highlight what we're seeing. So if we look at the first six months of the year and the capital spend that we've had from mid-January through the end of the second quarter, and then some of the benefits that are going to flow through on some immediate expensing of R&D, which will have impacts both on capitalized software and some of the spending that we have in the box area you know we see potential cash tax savings from just the first six months of the year of around 25 million dollars and so certainly we're encouraged about you know where that um where those changes where the bonus depreciation may drive spending and then of course a knock on freight impacts from that as well and that concludes our question and answer session i'll now turn the conference back over to

Ms. Amy Mendenhall for closing remarks.

I just wanted to thank everyone for joining us today. We certainly appreciate your interest in our best. Have a great day.

And ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call, and we thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.