Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Forward Air's First Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. With us this afternoon are Shawn Stewart, Chief Executive Officer; and Jamie Pierson, Chief Financial Officer. By now, you should have received a press release announcing Forward Air's first quarter 2025 results, which was also furnished to the SEC on Form 8-K. We have also furnished a slide presentation outlining first quarter 2025 earnings highlights and a business update. Both the press release and slide presentation for this call are accessible on the Investor Relations section of Forward Air's website at forwardair.com. Please be aware that certain statements in the company's earnings release announcement and on this conference call are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. This includes statements which are based on expectations, intentions and projections regarding the company's future performance, anticipated events or trends and other matters that are not historical facts, including statements regarding our fiscal year 2025. These statements are not a guarantee of future performance and are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. For additional information concerning these risks and factors, please refer to our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the press release and slide presentation relating to this earnings call. Listeners are cautioned not to place undue influence on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of the call. The company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless required by law. During the call, there may also be a discussion of financial metrics that do not conform to U.S. generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP. Management uses non-GAAP measures internally to understand, manage and evaluate our business and make operating decisions. Definitions and reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in today's press release and slide presentation. I will now turn the call over to Shawn.

Good afternoon, everyone. Before I get into the substance of today's call, I want to take a moment to thank our customers for their trust and loyalty during this unprecedented time in the global logistics market. We have always prided ourselves in solving our customers' problems, and it is during these times when we can add the most value to their supply chains. So with that, thank you. I appreciate you entrusting us with your business. I also want to thank our employees around the world for their dedication to meeting our customers' needs on such a consistent basis. Our employees set the industry standard for exemplary service and commitment to best-in-class service. To our shareholders and lenders, thank you for investing your time and money in our company. We communicate with you on a regular basis, and I sincerely appreciate your belief in our team and in the transformation journey that we are on. As you have heard from us in the past, we are committed to increasing transparency into our business. We are excited to share our new investor slide presentation that matches how we view the new combined business which also provides direction on how we intend to report on the business by the end of the year. Continuing on the theme of transparency, as we look to the remainder of 2025 and into 2026, we expect to have fully integrated the two legacy companies and be progressing down the path of transforming the company from a tangled web of global legal entities with multiple and sometimes duplicative technology systems to a more streamlined entity with the appropriate level of support and simplicity to grow the business. With this backdrop, our goal is to double the business over the next five years, going from the $2.5 billion revenue entity that it is today to $5 billion. Obviously, that assumes that we return to a normal freight environment and the macro headwinds do not persist for an extended period. While we are in uncertain times, what is certain is the tremendous opportunity we have ahead of us. It is an exciting time to lead our company as we continue to transform Forward Air into a global logistics leader. With that, I want to cover three topics on today's call. First, review our first quarter consolidated results; second, share an update on the actions to improve the Expedited Freight segment; and third, provide an overview of our sales by service and by region before turning the call over to Jamie to cover the financial results in more detail. Starting with the results, we had a solid quarter and reported a consolidated EBITDA of $69 million compared to $63 million a year ago. On a sequential basis, the results are consistent with the $69 million we reported in the fourth quarter of last year. With the year-over-year improvement, the last 12 months consolidated EBITDA was $313 million. Importantly, we generated positive free cash flow during the first quarter, and increased liquidity by $11 million to $393 million. Second, a key area of emphasis has been on correcting the previous pricing strategies at the Expedited Freight segment that focused more on growth than profitability. As previously communicated, we began taking corrective pricing actions during the fourth quarter of 2024 and finished implementing the improvement strategy in February of this year. We're pleased to share that in the back half of the quarter, we began to see the improvement that we were anticipating. As expected and shared on the last earnings call, we shed some of the poorly priced freight from our network as a result of our pricing actions, which led to some additional capacity in our network. What is incredible was the team's ability to cut costs in line with the decrease in volume on an almost real-time basis, which led to a 10.4% reported EBITDA margin for the quarter, up almost 400 basis points from last quarter. I have been very clear that it usually takes months to rectify a single poor pricing decision and shedding unprofitable freight is part of the process. While we all know that there was additional opportunity in the Expedited Freight segment's margin, I am very proud of how our team reacted and handled a very difficult situation, especially when you consider the incredible volatile environment in which they did it. This quarter's results affirm my view that the fundamentals are intact. The Expedited Freight segment includes one of the largest expedited LTL networks in North America and is an industry leader in serving time-critical and high-value freight. We believe the quality of service we provide will be the driver of customer retention, growth, and ultimately pricing and profitability. The third topic is providing additional detail on our revenue, both in terms of service provided and customer region. With the first year as a combined company behind us, we plan to go to market and eventually transition to reporting our financial results by service as we move away from the legacy legal reporting structure. The four main products consist of ground transportation, air and ocean forwarding, intermodal drayage, warehousing, and value-added services. Based on our 2024 consolidated revenue, approximately 70% of our business was attributable to ground transportation business in North America across our legacy Forward and omni businesses. This includes less than truckload, pickup and delivery, and truckload brokerage services. Approximately 12% of our 2024 revenue was from air and ocean forwarding, with another approximately 9% from our intermodal drayage business. The final product category is warehousing and value-added services, which also is approximately 9%. Supplementing these products is our customs brokerage that we're able to integrate as needed. You can see the summary of the product breakout on Pages 7 and 8 of the slide presentation issued today. As for our revenue by region, utilizing 2024 calendar year customer billing data, we estimate that approximately 88% of our revenue is attributable to customers billed in the United States. Another estimated 7% of our revenue is from customers billed in the Asia Pacific region, while approximately 4% is from customers billed in North, Central, and South America, excluding the United States. Finally, less than 1% of our revenue is from customers billed in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. You can see a summary of the estimated revenue by region on Page 9 of the slide presentation. Please note that we do not have information on our customers' shipment points of origin, especially as it pertains to our Intermodal segment. In pursuit of continuing to improve the transparency of our disclosures, I hope you find the additional information helpful to your understanding of what this combined business is capable of. When you combine the services we offer with our global reach, we believe Forward Air is uniquely positioned and separates us from the competitors and sets the stage for growth. We have more than 250 facilities in 21 countries and can offer our customers one-stop shopping and a single point of contact with end-to-end international services for specialized products. As we look ahead, I am very excited about our sales opportunities to drive growth and margin expansion. With that, I will now turn the call over to Jamie to go through the results for the first quarter.

Thanks, Shawn, and good afternoon, everyone. As Shawn already stated, we reported solid results in the first quarter of this year with $613 million in revenue, which was a 13.2% or $71 million increase on a required GAAP basis compared to the first quarter of the prior year. The increase in revenue was primarily driven by the Omni acquisition that closed on January 25 of last year. Since we did not own Omni for the entire first quarter of '24, I will also include comparisons for the Omni segment on a sequential basis. The good news is that this is the last time that I'm going to have to say that next quarter will be our first fully comparative period. However, back to the point and on a more sequential and comparative basis, consolidated revenue decreased 3.1% or $20 million from $633 million in the fourth quarter of last year to $613 million this quarter. As for our three reporting segments, Expedited Freight, Omni Logistics, and Intermodal, revenue at Expedited Freight decreased $24 million or 8.8% to $249 million from the previous year's comparable quarter of $273 million. The decrease was driven by a 10.9% decrease in year-over-year tonnage per day and one less business day in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the first quarter of 2024. And that was partially offset by a 2.5% increase in revenue per hundredweight, excluding fuel. You can see the revenue per hundredweight by quarter on Slide 14 of today's presentation. The 2.5% increase outperformed the LTL industry average on a year-over-year basis, as did the 4.3% sequential increase from the fourth quarter to the first quarter. At Omni Logistics, revenue in the first quarter increased by $99 million to $323 million compared to the $224 million a year ago. Again, the increase was primarily due to the 24 days of less ownership in 1Q 24 compared to 1Q 25. More relevantly, however, on a sequential basis, the first quarter revenue of $323 million was essentially flat to the fourth quarter 2024 revenue of $326 million. Revenue in the Intermodal segment in the first quarter increased $6 million or 11% to $62 million compared to the prior year's comparable $56 million. The increase is attributable to a 7.4% increase in revenue per shipment and a 2.9% increase in the number of trade shipments. As you heard from Shawn, consolidated EBITDA as defined in our credit agreement was $69 million or 11.2% margin compared to the $63 million or 10.2% margin on a pro forma basis a year ago. With the Omni acquisition closing in the first quarter of last year, there were a ton of transaction-related expenses. And as promised, we are now seeing the quality of earnings improve when compared to last year's comparative period. To that end, and as usual, we have detailed the information used to build up the consolidated EBITDA results on Page 28 of the presentation. Turning to cash flow, cash and liquidity, we reported $28 million in positive cash flow from operations in the first quarter, which was a $79 million improvement compared to the $52 million of cash used by operations a year ago. On a sequential basis, that same $28 million in positive cash flow from operations in the first quarter is a $51 million improvement compared to the $23 million in cash used by operations in the fourth quarter of last year. As for liquidity, we ended the fourth quarter with almost $400 million in total liquidity, specifically $393 million, which was comprised of $116 million in cash and $277 million in availability under the revolver. This represents an $11 million improvement compared to the end of the fourth quarter of last year. And as usual, and commensurate with my past practice, I would like to leave you with a few additional thoughts for the quarter. The first of which is an update on our consolidated first lien net leverage ratio. As one of the only financial covenants in our credit facility, net debt to consolidated LTM EBITDA was 5.3x compared to a maximum reliable level of 6.75x. The good news is both cash and LTM consolidated EBITDA were up sequentially, which led to a $66 million cushion at the end of the quarter. This is an improvement of $7 million when compared to the $59 million of implied cushion at the end of the fourth quarter of last year. Point two is our continued focus on cash conversion and liquidity. We generated cash flow from operations, and thus cash increased quarter-over-quarter, leaving us again with a little less than $400 million in total liquidity at the end of the quarter. Given our cash flow performance and our current $393 million liquidity, we believe we're in very good shape today. Point three, as provided by Shawn in his opening remarks, you now have an overview of our sales by service and by region around the world. We know that you've been asking for more details on what the combined company looks like, and I think this quarter's earnings presentation is a huge step in that direction. And as for the potential impact of tariffs, I'm going to still align with one of my peers and say that you would have to be Nostradamus to actually know what the future holds. However, we do not believe that we're overly exposed to any one region around the world outside of the United States, with approximately 1% of our 2024 revenue coming out of customers billed in Mainland China and approximately 5% from customers billed in Hong Kong. In my opinion, the real impact of tariffs will not be from the inflationary impact of the tariffs themselves, but rather the impact the headlines have on consumer confidence and the downstream impacts purchasing has on volumes. And given the daily news out of Washington, including this weekend, we may not know what those impacts may or may not be for another 60 to 90 days. Finally, as everyone knows, we filed an 8-K on January 6, indicating that we are launching a strategic alternatives review process. Since the announcement, we have completed a significant amount of work with our advisers and have recently commenced discussions with potentially interested parties. There is no guarantee that we will enter into a transaction of any kind and do not plan to update the market on the details of the process as it progresses. If and when there is anything of substance to update, we will let you know. Until then, just know that we will continue running the business and providing the same best-in-class services and solutions as we did before and plan to provide in the future. I will now pass the mic over to Shawn for closing comments before Q&A.

Thank you, Jamie. I will wrap up our comments with a focus on the remainder of 2025 and early 2026. Right now, some market participants are narrowly focused on either last quarter's historical results or even the current quarter's tariff results. As for our company and more specifically our leadership team, we are focused on our employees and our customers knowing that if we get those right, they will take care of our shareholders. In closing, I would say that in the face of a very challenging industry and equally volatile macro environment, our team has made tremendous progress since the transaction closed. As you have heard us say before, we do not expect progress to be linear; however, we also do not intend to let the recent market noise slow us down as we look ahead and focus on the rest of the year and into 2026. Either the investments have been made or the plans have been developed and are in the process of being implemented, and I remain confident in our ability to execute our strategy, grow the company, and enhance shareholder value. Finally, before we begin the Q&A, I want to acknowledge the public disclosure this morning from one of our investors. As you just heard from us, the Board and management team are entirely focused on taking deliberate actions to maximize shareholder value. The Board is actively engaged in leading the strategic review process, which, as we noted, is underway and the continued oversight of our transformation strategy. We firmly believe that all of our directors are vital to these efforts. We look forward to filing our definitive proxy materials in the coming days. Beyond that, we're not going to comment any further, and we ask that you keep your questions focused on our earnings results. I will now turn the call over to the operator to take questions.

Our first question is from Bruce Chan with Stifel.

This is Andrew Cox standing in for Bruce. I appreciate the breakdown of the consolidated revenue and acknowledge the uncertainty surrounding some intermodal shipments. However, we wanted to get a sense of whether expedited services might be more influenced by international end markets compared to some of the LTL peers. Do you believe that assessment is accurate? Additionally, could you provide an estimate or insight on how much of the revenue or volumes in that division may be connected to inbound shipments from China or Asia?

Yes, this is Shawn. That's a great question. When we provided our guidance of 10% to 15%, it’s actually below 10%, and we included a buffer. In expedited LTL, mainly coming from a U.S. distribution center, we often don’t know the original country of origin, which is a common uncertainty in the industry. We added a buffer based on our knowledge of the customer and whether we know they are importing. While it’s not entirely precise, we believe it offers decent coverage of that exposure.

Okay. That's helpful. And as a follow-up here, there's been kind of mixed opinions on whether the numbers this quarter have been a result of pull forward, not just at Forward but across the space. We just kind of wanted to get a sense of maybe conversations you've had with customers and how much you think there might be some pull forward in the numbers here? And maybe if you have any detail what categories or divisions have you seen it in? And then are you baking in an air pocket potentially coming through starting here soon?

Yes. We didn't see a whole lot of pull forward. I won't say there was not any, but towards the end, the last two weeks of March, there was quite a significant uptick but we don't know how much of that was truly a pull forward versus just project seasonality projects that we had hit and it wasn't just us. It was some of our indirect customers as well through our network that had the same project. So I can't really comment that it was so much of a pull forward, but I can tell you, I hope there's more coming in Q2.

I wanted to discuss the pricing performance in Expedited for the quarter. I'm trying to better understand the run rate as we move through the rest of the year. There was very strong yield performance in Q1, benefiting from the corrective actions you've implemented. However, considering the timing of those actions, which you mentioned didn't fully take effect by the end of the first quarter, should we anticipate a significant increase in Q2 and for the rest of the year as those actions fully impact the results?

Stephanie, welcome back. The pricing actions we've taken regarding our class-based tariffs are effective, and we are seeing the results we anticipated. To provide some context, the final action occurred on February 6, meaning that half of February and all of March were impacted, so we can say that about half of the quarter was affected. Additionally, while we did experience some volume loss, most of that decline was due to the overall market rather than just our pricing decisions. As mentioned earlier, we also need to focus on reducing network costs and optimizing that network according to volume, which can be influenced by customer declines, market conditions, or our pricing strategies. It's not solely about pricing; we must also adapt our network and optimization models to lower costs when revenue is lacking. This situation is complex as we aim to maximize margins through these actions.

And Stephanie, it's Jamie. If I can add, since the previous pricing action that led to the situation was taken in late 2023, 2024 should be, all else being equal, a fairly easy comp. So you compound the fact that, as Shawn said, only half of the impact was captured in the first quarter with the fact that the pricing action happened in late '23 carried throughout most of 2024, I would anticipate fairly easy comp. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't do better, but this pace on a year-over-year basis, we should see fairly good performance.

Got it. Can you share some insights on the margin expectations for this year? Jamie and Shawn, you've both discussed the potential for improving the expedited margin profile and how it compares to other LTL peers. What can we expect in terms of OR improvement for 2025?

Yes. Well, Stephanie, what I would say on that is if you look at Page 25 of the...

I'm on the slide.

If you think about a billion-dollar business on the LTL side of the house being a billion-dollar business, if you just do simple math, the average is 18.5%, at 9.8%. So that's about an 8.7% gap; and then if you go back even 5 to 7 years ago, not recently, and I'm leaving COVID out for a very specific reason, we were at 15% to 17% range. So this network and this company is capable of they have. It's not that they're capable of. We actually have hit these numbers before. And I don't mean this offensively to our peers, but I think we have a far superior service and product offering. So there's no reason why we shouldn't be at least average.

And maybe just a follow-up to that. We discussed the impressive results from the pricing side. You just mentioned your superior service, which I would agree with. So, what more needs to be done to close that gap, if anything?

Yes. For me, and I'll let Shawn as the closure kind of clean up, we took these pricing actions in those pricing actions, we created excess capacity in the network. And you know as well as anybody else how the operating leverage works in this space. So from my perspective, we need to be disciplined on pricing and simply add volume to the network. We've created space in the network that already existed in the network. So now going forward, if priced appropriately, there's no reason why every incremental dollar shouldn't have that additional operating leverage included. So we just got to grow, Stephanie. The network is good. The pricing is solid. The service and solution is solid. We just got to grow.

Any chance you can give us the monthly tonnage trends throughout the quarter in April? And I just want to make sure I'm getting the message right just near term, right? We've got a full quarter benefit of the pricing actions in Q2, so that will help, but there's this sort of import cliff or whatever you want to call it, that I imagine impacts the airport-to-airport business. So sort of do you think we should expect to see sequential improvement in expedited revenue and margin and earnings in Q2? Or is that too much to ask? I don't know.

Of course, there's too much to ask, Scott, but I wouldn't expect anything other than that from you. And I mean that lovingly. So the way I would answer that is if you look at Q1 '25 as the baseline, if we can anchor Scott on Q1 '25, what we're seeing are similar trends as our peers as they have pre-released, and what historical patterns would imply, which is very directly a little softer in April and a little stronger in May relative to April. So it's following similar trends to what our peers are pre-released to and also similar trends of what we've historically performed at. Right now, we are prioritizing and myopically focused on the broader transformation plan and the longer-term profitability of the company, and I mean this to say, the last quarter is in the rearview mirror. The current quarter is turbulent, it's noisy, it's full of headlines more than it is really actual performance. And we're focused on making really the necessary investments and the decisions to fundamentally improve the operating characteristics of this company, especially in the back half of this year moving into 2026. I think I can speak for the entire ELT that we're looking forward to putting points on the board and reporting our results in the next quarter here in a few short months.

And then I think you had a comment that $2.5 billion of revenues growing to $5 billion of revenue. Is that an organic comment? Or is there some assumption of M&A? And then just like the other strategic question, at least to me, this talk about bonded warehousing is somewhat new. Just how big of a market is it? How big of a business is it for you? And do you have any color you can share because I think it's interesting to the market overall, like is the activity in these bonded warehouses like going through the roof right now? Or is it sort of just business as normal?

Yes, it's a significant amount. I would say that organic growth by enhancing and expanding our customer relationships is also a focus. We haven't effectively cross-sold our products and services to our current and future customers, which means we need to offer our full range of services instead of just one, as we previously did with legacy companies. Additionally, we need to enhance our sales force effectiveness and improve their sales pipeline. These are the primary areas where we see potential to grow from our current position to reach $5 billion in five years. To answer your next question, bonded warehouses and foreign trade zones in the United States are very important now and will be even more so in the future. We currently have decent coverage of bonded warehouses across the U.S. and are in the process of expanding our foreign trade zones within those warehouses to strategically capitalize on market opportunities based on our customers' needs.

Do you have any insight into how significant this business is for you and how quickly it is growing?

I can't. I would be linking my finger and holding enough to catch the wind. So it's not fair to really comment on that one.

To follow up on some of the mix disclosure here. Within that 12% of air and ocean forwarding, can you give us a rough breakdown between the air and the ocean contribution? And if we look at that plus the warehousing value add, as really the legacy Omni contribution to that, call it, 60-40 Air Ocean warehousing value add on the revenue top line, how does the bottom-line contribution differ from that 60-40 split?

Yes, we're cautiously starting on this topic. We're going to begin with revenue disclosures and plan to expand them as the year progresses. However, at this moment, we're not ready to separate air, ocean, and warehouse services beyond what we've already shared. I do agree that air is slightly larger than ocean within that segment. However, it's well known how our warehousing operations relate to ocean volume specifically, as well as air.

And I appreciate the guidance approach here, but we really don't have a baseline of what seasonality looks like in the combined business. Could you just give us a high-level view of what a normal environment might directionally look like in some of the broad-stroke business lines in a typical Q1 to Q2 and I guess we can do our own work on where we think it might diverge for what's happening.

Seasonality, as you mentioned, seems to be less relevant now. Typically, Q1 is weaker compared to the other quarters, but March usually ends strong. Q2 starts off light in April but improves in later months. Thus, Q2 is generally softer, while Q3 and Q4 usually ramp up. However, we may not be following this pattern this time. We lack clarity on how the recent 90-day reprieve will impact us. We did observe significant destocking, reaching about 14%. Recently, our sources indicated that stock levels are returning to post-COVID 2023 standards, suggesting increased forward stocking. We still need to monitor consumer confidence, which we view as a key performance indicator since it influences everything else. If consumer confidence rises, it should lead to positive developments for analysts like you, but we will need to see more signs of that happening.

Yes, best on a better way. Normal, who knows, but if you just look at pages, I would say, '13, '16, and '17 in the materials you'll see the shape of the curve. And I'm going to work backwards on this one. 17 is intermodal. It's like a pad dispenser. You hit the button, $10 million comes out. If you look at '16 on Omni, going into the beginning of 2024, there's probably some transaction-related, what I'd say, headwinds there, but the shape of the curve there looks about right. And then on '13 for expedited freight, we all know that Q4 shouldn't be that low. So if you were to extrapolate a little bit better for a fourth quarter, that probably is not too dissimilar to what I would say, outside of a tariff-related industry and a weak freight environment would be probably not too dissimilar to what I would expect.

It sounds like so an expedited revenue decline, I think you said was largely due to the market. Some is due to that shedding poorly priced freight. Do you expect that to continue as the year progresses? Or have you shed most of that freight?

I believe we have mostly addressed that issue. We have continued discussions with some customers to revisit their needs, not to change pricing, but to keep communication open. If their requirements shift, we will see how we can respond. Overall, it really depends on the market situation if that's your main concern.

Yes, that's helpful. So, do you think it's possible that some of these customers might return considering your service level compared to the alternatives?

I'm a pretty humble guy, so I don't want to come off as overconfident, but I believe our service is tough to surpass whenever someone tries something different. I'm expressing pride while remaining humble. So yes, I do think that. However, we are not complacent; we are continually working to enhance our network every day. Our exceptional team is striving for perfection rather than settling for the status quo. As we keep improving, making our services faster and enhancing quality, it's challenging to get better from an already excellent standard. Yes, using our services is hard to resist.

Okay. And then you've taken the costs out. You've done a good job there to offset the volume loss. Do you think, though, that you have enough capacity if we're all hoping volumes come back?

Yes, there's no doubt that we can quickly adjust our scale due to our fleet owners, partners, independent contractors, and our own employee drivers. So, that won't be an issue for us. It will be a beneficial situation, not a challenge.

Yes, exactly. Just lastly, it's small, but the intermodal business, what is the impact of the lower West Coast imports? And will that actually benefit from some East Coast imports picking up again as the Red Sea situation is alleviated?

And you're like my top sales guy for intermodal right now. So yes, you'll love this. Our intermodal team, which is a fantastic group. We pretty much are focused up and down the East Coast into the Gulf, and then we have one operation in Seattle-Tacoma. So that's where our sweet spot is. We catch most of our West Coast traffic in the intercountry rail yards from an intermodal standpoint, and that's where we grab the containers. So we're not heavily focused ourselves on the West Coast, L.A., Long Beach ports. And so we feel that we're in the right sweet spot for grabbing as much as we have today and increased off the East Coast because that's where we are.

And there are no further questions in queue at this time. Let me turn the call back over to Mr. Stewart for any final remarks.

All right. Well, I want to personally thank everyone for joining the call today. Really appreciate it and look forward to connecting with you soon. If you have any questions, please follow up directly with Tony, and he'll get back to us if needed or take your calls. Really appreciate it. Take care.

This concludes Forward Air's First Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Please disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful evening.