XPO, Inc. Q4 FY2023 Earnings Call

Welcome to the XPO Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. My name is Sherry, and I will be your operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Please note that this conference is being recorded. Before the call begins, let me read a brief statement on behalf of the company regarding forward-looking statements and the use of non-GAAP financial measures. During this call, the company will be making certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws, which by their nature involve a number of risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. A discussion of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially is contained in the company's SEC filings as well as in its earnings release. The forward-looking statements in the company's earnings release or made on this call are made only as of today, and the company has no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements, except to the extent required by law. During this call, the company may also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures as defined under applicable SEC rules. Reconciliations of such non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measures are contained in the company's earnings release and the related financial tables or on its website. You can find a copy of the company's earnings release, which contains additional important information regarding forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures, in the Investors section of the company's website. I will now turn the call over to XPO's Chief Executive Officer, Mario Harik. Mr. Harik, you may begin.

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining our call. I'm here in Greenwich with Kyle Wismans, our Chief Financial Officer, and Ali Faghri, our Chief Strategy Officer. I'm pleased to report that we had a strong year for the quarter that exceeded expectations, and we've carried that momentum into 2024. Company-wide, we reported fourth-quarter revenue of $1.9 billion, which is 6% higher year-over-year. We grew adjusted EBITDA to $264 million for an increase of 28%, excluding real estate gains in 2022. Our adjusted diluted EPS for the company was $0.77, which was also better than expected. I want to thank our team for delivering these great results in a soft freight environment. Looking at our North American LTL segment, we reported our strongest progress since we launched our LTL 2.0 plan in 2021. We grew adjusted operating income year-over-year by 51% and improved our adjusted operating ratio by 380 basis points. We delivered the best damage claims ratio in our history at 0.3%, as well as a record level of employee satisfaction. We significantly accelerated our year-over-year yield growth, excluding fuel, to 10.3%. We also improved cost efficiency for the fourth consecutive quarter with further increases in labor productivity and linehaul sourcing. We continue to deploy capital efficiently as we reinvest back into the business. All of these are proof points that our plan has strong traction. The 28 service centers we recently acquired from the Yellow Network will build on this momentum. This acquisition is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to integrate prime locations into our network to support yield growth and margin expansion. When the market recovers and industry capacity tightens, we'll be in a stronger position to serve our customers and drive profitable growth for years to come. Now, I want to share some details of the quarter, starting with the first pillar of our LTL 2.0 plan, service improvements. We improved every major component of customer service quality in the quarter, including our customer satisfaction rating, which has risen by more than 40% since 2021. Our on-time performance was three percentage points better than in the prior fourth quarter. I mentioned that our damage claims ratio of 0.3% is a new record for us. To put that in context, it's a vast improvement from 1.2% when we launched our plan. These are metrics our customers watch closely as an indicator of service quality. Our top priority is to become the customer service leader in our industry, and we're continuing to equip our team with the tools to make this a reality. One example is the new freight airbags I spoke about on our last call. The rollout has been going well, and this solution is now installed at over 50% of our doors. The airbags have reduced damages by more than 20% at those locations, and the benefit will spread across our network. We expect to finish the installations by the middle of this year. The second pillar of LTL 2.0 is to invest in our network to drive long-term growth. We added more tractors and trailers in 2023 than any year in XPO's history to grow and refresh our fleet. This resulted in record network fluidity and supported our strategy to in-source more line-haul miles. On the tractor side, we purchased more than 1,400 units in 2023. This reduced our average fleet age to five years at year-end, compared with 5.9 years in 2022. On the trailer side, we manufactured over 6,400 units at our in-house facility in Arkansas, exceeding our production target. For 2024, we expect our LTL CapEx level to be in the low-teens as a percent of revenue, and primarily allocated to our fleet. The impact of the 28 service centers we acquired from Yellow on our capital strategy is timing. We've put forward dozens of real estate investments for the next several years. I'll add some strategic color to my earlier comments on the acquisition. These service centers will deliver important benefits to the business for years to come. First, they'll get us closer to customers and give us larger facilities in major metro areas. This should drive substantial cost efficiencies across our line haul, pickup-and-delivery, and dock operations. Second, they'll enhance our yield growth by further improving our service with fewer freight three handles, reduce damages, and better on-time performance. Lastly, they'll give us more capacity in key metros like Indianapolis, Columbus, and Las Vegas. These are markets where we are currently turning away profitable customers because we don't have enough door capacity. We plan to start bringing these locations online in April and have all of them operational within the next 12 to 18 months. We expect the transaction to be accretive to EPS and our LTL operating ratio in 2025. This assumes no underlying recovery in industry volumes. Any market rebound would represent an upside to our baseline forecast. The third pillar of our plan is to drive above-market yield growth, which is our single biggest lever for margin improvement. You can see this dynamic in the fourth quarter when we drove yield, excluding fuel, higher year-over-year by 10.3%. This helped us deliver nearly 400 basis points of adjusted operating ratio improvement. We got there by executing on service improvements, accessorials, and volume growth within our local customer base. These are the three levers for our long-term pricing opportunity. The exciting trends in our service metrics translate to value for our customers, with a direct correlation to the price we earn. Increasingly, our customers see XPO as a high-value business partner with the resources to help them succeed. This was reflected in our contract renewal pricing, which was up year-over-year by 9% for the second consecutive quarter. Accessorials are another opportunity to grow our yield by delivering more value through premium services. We plan to expand our range of offerings this year. We saw an early impact in the fourth quarter with the introduction of our retail store rollout offering. We already have over a dozen customers using this service to distribute critical product launches for retailers. And with our local channel, we grew shipment counts by double digits for the third consecutive quarter. Our local sales team at year-end was over 20% larger than in 2022, reflecting the importance we place on this high-yielding, margin-accretive business. We have a lot of avenues leading to yield growth, and each step forward helps align our pricing with the value we deliver. The fourth and final pillar of LTL 2.0 is cost efficiency. The main opportunities here are with purchase transportation, variable costs, and overhead. In the fourth quarter, we reduced our purchase transportation cost by 22% year-over-year by in-sourcing more miles and paying lower contract rates to third-party providers. We ended the quarter with less than 20% of linehaul miles outsourced, a year-over-year reduction of 290 basis points. On a sequential basis, we reduced our reliance on outsourcing by 190 basis points. We've come a long way since the beginning of 2022 when we were outsourcing about 25% of our linehaul miles. Today, we're well on the way to bringing down that percentage to the low teens by 2027. Lastly, a quick update on our initiative to add driver teams and sleeper cab trucks for long hauls. The goal here is to increase the efficiency and flexibility of our linehaul network. We started putting these teams in place last quarter, and we currently have over 50 teams in operation. We expect to have a few hundred long-haul teams on the road by the end of this year. This should help to accelerate our in-sourcing plan. We're also continuing to manage our variable labor costs effectively, growing our volume by more than our headcount year-over-year for the fourth consecutive quarter. The spread in the quarter was substantial. Our shipment count was up 5.7%, while our headcount was up just 1.7%. This is a credit to the team's operational discipline, supported by our proprietary technology for labor planning. In summary, in 2023, we made significant progress on our plan across the board, while laying a solid foundation for the future. We improved our operations in all four quarters of the year by generating record service levels, making strategic investments in the network, further accelerating yield growth, and operating more cost-efficiently. As a result, the business performed above expectations with robust margin expansion, earnings growth, and strong forward momentum. Now I'm going to hand the call over to Kyle to discuss the fourth-quarter financial results. Kyle, over to you.

Thank you, Mario, and good morning, everyone. I'll take you through our key financial results, balance sheet, and liquidity. It was a strong fourth quarter overall. Revenue for the total company was $1.9 billion, up 6% year-over-year. This includes a 9% increase in our LTL segment. Excluding fuel, LTL revenue was up 14% year-over-year. Salary wages and benefits for LTL were 10% higher in the quarter than a year ago. This increase primarily reflects wage and benefit inflation as well as incentive compensation aligned with our strong fourth-quarter performance. These impacts were mitigated by our productivity gains. We've now improved our labor hours per shipment on a year-over-year basis for four straight quarters throughout 2023. We were also more cost-efficient with purchase transportation through a combination of in-sourcing and rate negotiation. Our expense for third-party carriers was $83 million in the quarter, which was down year-over-year by 22%. Depreciation expense increased year-over-year by 23%, or $13 million, as we continued to reinvest in the business. This remains our top priority for capital allocation in LTL. In the fourth quarter, our CapEx was primarily allocated to our fleet as we purchased new tractors from the manufacturers and built more trailers in-house. Next, I'll add some detail to adjusted EBITDA starting with the company as a whole. We generated adjusted EBITDA of $264 million in the quarter, up 28% from a year ago, and improved our adjusted EBITDA margin by 230 basis points. These metrics exclude the impact of real estate gains in the fourth quarter of 2022 to give you a like-to-like comparison. We had no real estate gains in the fourth quarter of 2023. Our fourth-quarter corporate expense was $5 million, for a year-over-year savings of 44%, or $4 million. We're continuing to rationalize our corporate structure for the standalone business and expect to report further reductions this year. Looking solely at the LTL segment, we grew our adjusted operating income by 51% year-over-year to $160 million. We grew adjusted EBITDA to $233 million. The gains we achieved through revenue growth and cost efficiencies more than offset the non-operational headwinds from lower fuel surcharge revenue and pension income. In our European transportation segment, adjusted EBITDA was $36 million for the quarter. Company-wide, we reported operating income of $119 million for the quarter, compared to $4 million in the prior year. Our net income from continuing operations was $58 million for diluted earnings per share of $0.49, compared with a loss of $36 million or $0.31 a year ago. This represents an improvement of $0.80 in diluted EPS from continuing operations, driven by significant year-over-year reductions in transaction and integration costs and restructuring charges. On an adjusted basis, our EPS for the quarter was $0.77, which is down 21% from a year ago. This primarily reflects the impact of real estate gains in 2022, as well as lower pension income and higher interest expense in 2023. Our acquisition of the 28 service centers closed on December 20 and did not have a material impact on our operating results in the income statement. Lastly, we generated $251 million of cash flow from continuing operations in the quarter and deployed $151 million of net CapEx, excluding spend related to the acquisition. Moving to the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with $412 million of cash on hand. Combined with available capacity under committed borrowing facilities, this gave us $920 million of liquidity. We had no borrowings outstanding under our ABL facility at quarter-end. In December, we raised $985 million through a combination of $585 million of senior notes and $400 million of term loans. We used $870 million of proceeds to complete our acquisition of 28 LTL service centers and refinanced our existing senior notes due in 2025. We now have no funded debt maturities until 2028. We also maintained all corporate and issue-level credit ratings. Our net debt leverage at year-end was three times trailing 12 months adjusted EBITDA. The investments we're making in the business will enhance our earnings trajectory for a high return on capital consistent with our long-term goal of achieving an investment-grade profile. Before I close, I'll summarize the full year 2024 assumptions we provided in our investor presentation to help you with your models. They are as follows: Gross CapEx of $700 million to $800 million, interest expense of $240 million to $260 million, pension income of approximately $25 million, and adjusted effective tax rate of 23% to 25%, and a diluted share count of 121 million shares. Now, I'll turn it over to Ali to cover our operating results.

Thank you, Kyle. I'll start with our LTL segment, which reported another quarter of profitable growth. On a year-over-year basis, we increased our shipments per day by 5.7% in the quarter, led by 12% growth in our local sales channel. This resulted in growth in tonnage per day of 2%. Our weight per shipment was down 3.4% year-over-year, which was a notably less decline for the second consecutive quarter. On a monthly basis, our October tonnage per day was up 2.5% year-over-year. November was down 0.5%, and December was up 3.6%. Looking just at shipments per day, October was up 6.2% year-over-year, November was up 3.7%, and December was up 6.6%. In January, our tonnage per day was down 1.1% year-over-year, while shipment count was up 1.4%. The transportation industry was disrupted by weather events in January, but we saw a rebound more recently and ended the month with stronger volumes. Sequentially, both our tonnage and shipment count increased from December to January, outperforming seasonality. We also outperformed on yield in the fourth quarter, delivering a second consecutive quarter of acceleration. We grew yield, excluding fuel, by a strong 10.3% compared with the prior year. Importantly, our underlying pricing trends are strong as we continue to align our pricing with the better service we're providing. Our contract renewal pricing was up 9% in the quarter compared with a year ago. Turning to margin, our fourth-quarter adjusted operating ratio was 86.5%, which was an improvement of 380 basis points year-over-year. Our strong margin performance was primarily driven by yield growth and underpinned by our cost initiatives and productivity gains. Sequentially, our adjusted OR increased by 30 basis points, which outperformed seasonality by 280 basis points. Moving to our European business, we delivered revenue growth of 2% year-over-year, despite ongoing challenges in the macro environment. This growth was supported by strong pricing, which outpaced inflation. In some regions, like the UK, we grew adjusted EBITDA versus the prior year, reflecting disciplined cost control. While our volume declined slightly year-over-year, we outperformed the industry and mitigated the decline with new customer wins as the quarter progressed. This trend improved in January. The team is executing well and earning new business from high-caliber customers. This momentum, together with the growth of our sales pipeline, should continue to strengthen our position in key European regions. I'll close with a summary of the three main achievements you heard from us this morning, as they relate to our expectations for a strong 2024. First, we're continuing to deliver more value for customers in the form of service quality with our metrics at record levels, and we're on an excellent trajectory. Second, we accelerated yield growth to double digits as we exited 2023, and we expect to deliver another robust yield performance this year with a direct benefit to profitability. Third, we're showing that we can operate more productively by leveraging our technology and improving our cost to serve. In short, we've taken major strides with our network operations, and we're still in the early innings of significantly improving our operating ratio. Now we'll take your questions. Operator, please open the line for Q&A.

Thank you. Our first question is from Scott Group with Wolfe Research. Please proceed.

Hey, thanks. Good morning. Any thoughts on how to think about the OR from Q4 to Q1 and maybe full-year margin improvement? And then bigger picture, Mario, you made a comment that all this terminal growth is additive to yields and margins. I guess, why it should be good for volume, but maybe some thoughts on how it actually helps yield and margin as well?

Sure, thanks Scott. First, starting with the first quarter outlook. We typically give tonnage yield and what OR would look like. Starting with tonnage, following the gains we had in the fourth quarter, we do expect to outperform seasonality in Q1. Typically, a normal seasonality for us calls for flattish tonnage sequentially from Q4 to Q1, and we expect to do better than that. We anticipate Q1 tonnage should be up low single-digit, somewhat in the same range as where we were in the fourth quarter on a year-on-year basis. Now, on the yield front, we expect strong performance across the board this year. We do expect yield to be up on a year-on-year basis in the first quarter, somewhere in the same range as we were in the fourth quarter year-on-year. Typically, we see OR deteriorate about 40 basis points from Q4 to Q1, and we expect to do better than that. How much better will depend on how the rest of the quarter plays out. Usually, Q1, as you know, March is the big month of the quarter. But that implies roughly 300 basis points of OR improvement year-on-year. For the full year 2024, we expect a strong year for us in terms of OR improvement, given all the things we're doing in yield and tonnage, cost, and efficiency improvement, and service improvement. We expect OR to be up in the 150 to 250 basis points range for the full year. There’s a path for us to do better than the top end of that range depending on how the year plays out. On your question about service centers and how they impact yield: there is a big cost benefit first, and that cost benefit comes from higher efficiency and having bigger break bulks that lead to cost savings in line haul. Having service centers closer to the customer leads to lower D&D costs and also lowering dock-handling costs. Larger service centers help improve your service product, and service product in a tight yield. We mentioned premium services, and when you think about premium services in some markets, for example, like Las Vegas, we’re tapped on capacity. By having now the largest service center in the biggest market, we’ll be able to launch new offerings like trade shows, which also comes at a higher yield and higher margin.

Thank you, guys.

Our next question is from Ken Hoexter with Bank of America. Please proceed.

Hey, great. Good morning. Congrats on some solid performance here on the OR. Maybe just digging into that though. Talk about the ramp of the 28 facilities. How should we anticipate the drag versus your forecast? And I guess with that, it seems like you're bumping up against your kind of long-term targets now of the 600 basis point improvement. How – does that shift – or the speed with which you can get there start changing in your thought process?

Thanks, Ken. Well starting with the ramp of the service centers, we expect to get them up and running over the next three to six months. The next dozen over the next six to 12 months, and the remaining four or five will go live next year, call it 12 to 18 months. We don't anticipate an OR drag from them that would be material to our numbers. The majority of the service centers are in markets where we already operate. If you think about it, there's one case where we move our team from a smaller service center to a larger service center. The carrying cost of real estate is fairly low on a per-door basis, but we get the immediate benefit of cost efficiencies and cost savings associated with having a larger facility to operate from. In markets where we are adding a service center and keeping the existing one, in that particular case, we split the team between the two service centers based on volume, and we only step up if there is an inflection in volume. We don't anticipate the service centers to have a drag on OR this year. We expect them to be accretive to EBITDA and expect them to be accretive on all these KPIs in 2025 and beyond. In terms of the long-term targets, we've always said at least 600 basis points, and there's nothing magical about 600 basis points or 2027. With all the momentum that we have here and with all the new service centers, the pricing, and the service improvements, we expect to outperform and I would hold us to get to the 70s and well into the 70s over time from an OR perspective.

Thanks, Mario.

Our next question is from Jon Chappell with Evercore ISI. Please proceed.

Thank you. Good morning. I'm not sure if Mario or Ali wants to take this, but this is the second straight quarter now with contract renewal pricing up 9%. Where do you stand on the book of business, as it relates to kind of marking to market for the new service? Do you still have a couple more quarters, where you think that kind of high single-digit contract renewal is on the agenda? Or are you kind of close to marking it to market and you think maybe that moderates a little bit to maybe mid-single digits kind of in line more with the GRI levels?

Hey, Jon, it's Kyle. If you think about contract renewals right now, we did accelerate heavily in the back half from 5% to 9%. So far in the year, or in the back half, we negotiated 50% of the book. So there are still some more to work through. I still think we're in a favorable market for renewals, and we should expect positive momentum to carry forward here in 2024.

Just to be clear though it's kind of like if you're done with 50%, is this the first half higher end of that range, reacceleration similar to the back half of 2023, and then kind of more of a normalized level in the back half? Or do you think that what you've done over the last six months as you continue to improve service kind of leads you more towards what you've done in the last six months or so as a percentage basis?

I think renewals are probably going to follow where we see yields for the first half. So we're expecting strong yield to continue. If you think our Q1 yield guide, we think Q1 yield is going to be up high single-digit in line with what we saw in Q4. That should carry forward into our contract renewals at the start of the year.

Our next question is from Chris Wetherbee with Citigroup. Please proceed.

Hey, thanks. Good morning, guys. I guess I want to talk a little bit about some of the initiatives that maybe you guys are thinking about for 2024. So, we've talked about the team drivers and the in-sourcing of line haul. Curious how you start to think about adding those up in the context of the 150 to 250 basis points of OR improvement, how much you get from that versus maybe what would be kind of core pricing above cost inflation and maybe a little bit of leverage on the volume? I don't know if you can unpack that, but any detail you can give us would be great.

I'll talk on the initiatives. Our plan involves substantial yield improvement. It does involve continuing our great service momentum or service product improvement momentum. Tonnage improvement—we do see tonnage going up for the full year, but we expect it to be up low single-digit because our goal is to drive more yield than it is to drive volume. Similarly, our goal is to drive cost efficiencies. Our plan is to in-source more of the third-party linehaul miles, which comes both at a cost and service benefit. we're continuing to improve that service product, which will come with cost savings here in 2024. Our expectation is to continue to see insourcing—290 basis points here in the fourth quarter year-on-year. We're at less than 20% at this point, and we're going to drive that down to the low teens and beyond that as we ramp up these teams as well.

Okay, that’s helpful. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Our next question is from Fadi Chamoun with BMO Capital Markets. Please proceed.

Yes, good morning team. So, my question is you mentioned the double-digit growth that you're seeing in the local account, I guess. I'm thinking this has been a pretty decent tailwind for density, cost per shipment, and ultimately the yield. Where are you in this kind of trajectory of improving local account penetration? Are we in the first innings of that? Is there an opportunity that is of significant size still in front of you?

When you look at the local account strategy, Fadi, that is a segment we plan to grow over the years to come. In 2023, we were run-rating at roughly 20% of our volume and revenue generated from that channel. What we have done is increase the size of our local accounts. We hired more than 20% more local sellers through the course of 2023. Our goal for 2024 is to add roughly another 10%, so all-in to be 30% higher in overall sales force size that is selling to that channel. Whenever we onboard new people, it usually takes about six months for them to be fully productive and up and running. In the fourth quarter, we grew our local shipments in that channel by 12% on a year-on-year basis. We expect to continue to see those strong gains in that channel since we've onboarded 20% more sellers. In terms of the inning, we’re still in the early innings in terms of results, but we are well underway in having the team and them seeing productive ramp in 2024 and beyond.

Appreciate that. Thank you and congrats on the strong results.

Our next question is from Stephanie Moore with Jefferies. Please proceed.

Hi. Good morning. Thank you. I wanted to maybe touch a bit on the pricing discussion here. I think pricing accelerated over 10% in the quarter. I think you guided to more high single digits. Can you maybe walk through the drivers of the upside? What you're seeing and your thoughts for 2024 for further pricing acceleration, especially your view of what can happen if the macro actually turns?

Sure, Stephanie. We're seeing very strong pricing trends as we enter 2024. For the first quarter in particular, we expect our yield on an ex-fuel basis to be up somewhere in the similar range as we just delivered in the fourth quarter, so roughly about 10% growth. Now on a full-year basis, we expect yield to be up somewhere in that mid to high single-digit range. There’s still a path to do better than that. A lot of that yield growth and the outperformance versus the industry is driven by our internal initiatives. If you think about our service improvement—record levels here in the fourth quarter—we're continuing to lean more into premium services. We rolled out our retail store rollout here in the fourth quarter; we have a lot of traction there. So, overall, we feel very good about the yield outlook for 2024 and expect it to be a strong year for us overall.

Great. Thank you. Maybe just a follow-up to that, but a little bigger picture, as you think about incentive comp across the organization, maybe talk a little bit about what metrics have been possibly realigned just to align interest across the organization yield, margins, EBIT, what's the major metrics we should be focused on based on incentive comp changes in 2024?

In 2023 first and 2022, we used to compensate predominantly our field based on EBITDA growth and EBITDA performance. We have added a good portion of the comp plan to be focused on service quality. So as service centers and group service quality and on-time service, they effectively had a good chunk of their incentive comp based on that. Now in 2024, it will be the first year where we switch from compensating our field from EBITDA and EBITDA growth, and have it be focused on OR improvement. It’s focused on how can we expand our margins over time, because as you know, we want to incentivize effectively driving that better service product that yields to higher yield while managing costs effectively, which would lead to OR expansion at the service center level and ultimately at the network level as well.

Our next question is from Tom Wadewitz with UBS. Please proceed.

Yes, I just had I guess one kind of quick one on the D&A and maybe how we think about the ramp-up in that given you are spending a good level of CapEx. On that, a broader question would be on how you think about the terminal network and what's your excess capacity from a door and a terminal perspective? And as you bring on more terminal capacity, kind of where do you want to get to?

When you look at our network today, before the 28 service center acquisition, we were run-rating in the mid to high teens in terms of excess capacity in the current environment. If we roll forward, we are adding 28 service centers, roughly half will be additive and the other half will be ones where we’re relocating from a smaller service center to a larger service center. We acquired about 3,000 doors, and we would be adding a net 2,000 doors post-integration, which is a 10% to 15% expansion in capacity. Once we get these service centers online, we will be in the 25% to 30% excess capacity in our network. That’s a great place to be as an LTL network, especially in a soft freight market, enabling us to flex up whenever demand returns. So this is how we look at currently where we are, and as we open up those service centers, where we'll be from a capacity perspective.

When you think about the D&A ramp, we are going to see increased CapEx within the LTL segment, expecting about $74 million to $75 million a quarter for LTL, reflecting the increased CapEx spend.

Our next question is from Bruce Chan with Stifel. Please proceed.

Yes, thanks, operator and good morning everyone. Maybe just to start, Kyle, can you remind us of what your target leverage range is? And then, I know in previous quarters you pulled back on some of the commentary around the sale of the European business. But with the need for more debt paydown potentially with these new facilities, is there any more urgency to sell that business now?

When you think about our long-term leverage outlook, our intention is one to two times trailing 12 months EBITDA. We think we're in a great spot with the investments we made and the EBITDA we can generate to really make a lot of progress on that here in the next couple of years.

Our long-term plan remains to be a pure-play North American LTL carrier, and selling the European business is one of our strategic priorities. But we're going to be patient. Our goal is to maximize the return we get on that business. This is a business that has a scarcity value to it. Our revenue was up in the quarter. We've improved volume every month of the quarter and further improved in January. So, it’s not a matter of if, but a matter of when. Credit to the team's strong execution.

Our next question is from Jason Seidl with TD Cowen. Please proceed.

Thank you, Operator. Mario, I think you talked about accessorials and that there are about 12 different things that XPO was doing to drive them higher. Can you help us understand the timing and your ability to implement these accessorials and the impact we should expect?

On these accessorials, they are predominantly what we call premium services. These are services our customers are asking for, that go beyond your typical pick up freight and get it delivered. Examples include the retail store rollouts offering. If a customer needs us to ship many shipments in a short time window, they need someone to coordinate all of those offerings, and that leads to a higher price. We have a number of other offerings, like trade shows and working with retailers that must arrive by date type. We expect to get them launched, but they won’t all be launched within a few quarters. Some will take a bit longer, such as expedited service as an example. We expect them to be accretive to yield over time. Currently, our accessorial as a percent of revenue is in the low double digits, and our goal is to grow that to the mid-teens as we launch these programs.

That's great color. I wanted to also follow-up on the overall pricing discussion. LTL pricing this quarter has been very strong. Your renewals are at 9%, is almost at 9%. ArcBest is the best they've reported since the quarter in 2022. This is all in a very sluggish demand backdrop and super cheap LTL pricing. As the economy recovers and capacity tightens overall, is it crazy to think about double-digit pricing going forward for you guys?

We had double-digit pricing here in the fourth quarter, and we expect a strong first half of the year as well. There is an environment. If you look at our industry, it's been historically capacity constrained. Before Yellow ceased operations, we didn't have enough capacity versus the demand. We are currently in a sluggish freight environment where demand is down. When there's any form of inflection in demand, there won't be enough doors and service centers in our industry. You will see pricing accelerate accordingly. We also have company-specific initiatives we're driving, such as better service, which comes at a premium, along with driving premium services and expanding our local channels. All of these would be accretive to yield as well. So, double-digit pricing is not out of the question.

Fantastic. Appreciate the time.

Our next question is from Bascome Majors with Susquehanna. Please proceed.

Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to go back to the incentives focused from earlier. Can you talk more specifically about how you're tactically incentivizing your salespeople, and if that has changed at all as the business has evolved over the last 10 months? And separately, from a long-term senior executive management incentive approach, how might those look different this year than they have over the last few years? Thank you.

So first, starting with sales compensation, it depends on what type of salary you are in the organization. We changed the comp plan accordingly. If you're in the local channel, the goal is to grow your book as opposed to handling larger accounts where you'll focus on profitability more. The general theme is that, for a service center, they are compensated based on the OR improvement for that specific service center. If you're handling larger accounts, then the lion's share of your compensation is around OR and profit improvement as well. In terms of senior exec compensation, that’s typically part of our proxy. We incentivize senior executives based on a combination of OR growth, EBITDA growth, and TSR associated with holder value creation as well.

Our next question is from Jordan Alliger with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed.

Yes, Hi, morning. Just sort of curious, thanks for the layout in terms of the door opening timing, etc. In the context of your thoughts on the economy and the new door openings, is there a way to think about tonnage or volume trajectory as we go through the year sort of like year-over-year growth potential or how you expect it to sort of ramp up? That would be the first question. Thanks.

For the full year, we expect a higher contribution from yield and volume. We’re being disciplined on the type of volume we're onboarding to the network and should expect that to continue through this year. Overall for the full year, we should expect tonnage to be up somewhere in that low single-digit range, and yield somewhere in that mid-to-high single-digits or better. We do have tougher comps in the second half of the year. It’s still early in the year, and obviously, the macro can be a swing factor. In terms of the new service centers, we don’t expect meaningful contribution from volume this year, likely under 1%.

In the near-term, ahead of any macro inflection, there is a significant benefit from cost savings associated with larger facilities. We purchased some of the largest service centers. For instance, we have facilities in key markets that will improve efficiency significantly. This capacity looks great as an LTL network, especially in a soft freight market, whenever there’s a freight market recovery. We see demand holding and slightly improving, for optimism towards the back half of 2024.

Our next question is from Brandon Oglenski with Barclays. Please proceed.

Hey. Thanks for taking my question. Mario, maybe we can follow-up on that one there. I know, you're talking about cost efficiencies of opening new terminals in the network. And it sounds like potentially, you're going to move staff from one to the other. But covering transports for 20 years now, when you open new nodes in the network, especially scheduled network, isn’t there like a small uptime on capacity efficiencies, especially on line haul and walk up, pick up, and delivery that we should be anticipating? Because it sounds like what you're guiding to is you can instantly match efficiency, if not even get better with these new facilities.

Whenever you open those sites, you do have a small headwind in cost, but that will be short-lived, and you’re talking about 30 to 90 days of cost headwind as you move into a larger facility. The cost of a door in our P&L is sub 5%. The immediate efficiency gains in pickup and delivery and line haul pieces provides a significant return on investment quickly, meaning each service center we’ve opened over the last couple of years is beneficial, usually exceeding our return hurdles. We feel good about our ability to get those on-boarded with minimal drag.

Appreciate. Congrats on the quarter.

Our next question is from James Monigan with Wells Fargo. Please proceed.

Hey, guys. Thanks. Just wanted to come back to pricing a little bit. Of the pricing gap to peers, how much of that pricing gap is attributable to service level differences? And you've improved service a good fit here. So of that gap, how much is accessible to you given where service is today?

Overall, we see roughly about a mid-teens pricing upside opportunity in the years to come, primarily driven by three levers. First and foremost, it’s driven by service and as we continue to improve service quality, we can better align the price with the value we're delivering. That gap accounts for about half of that mid-teens pricing opportunity, around 700 to 800 basis points of pricing opportunity as you continue to improve service. There's about 500 basis points tied to accessorials and premium services, and lastly, the local channel pricing is roughly another 200 to 300 basis points. There are numerous levers we can pull to grow pricing, expecting strong yield growth as we move through 2024.

It’s going to take time. Service improvements don't immediately translate to premium pricing, but we are seeing it play out gradually. Our damage claims ratio has significantly improved, and improving our service quality will earn us a premium over time.

Our next question is from Brian Ossenbeck with JPMorgan. Please proceed.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions here. So, Mario just to come back to the additional terminals and door counts. Can you give us a sense of what incremental margins overall you're assuming? It sounds like they're reasonably high for not expecting any real OR dilution. There’s obviously a big D&A component from this as well. Can you share a bit about that?

We expect that to be in the 30% to 40% incremental margin range. I'll turn it over to Kyle for more on D&A. We do expect increased CapEx related to the service centers, expecting about $74 million to $75 million a quarter for LTL due to the increased CapEx spend.

When you think about the D&A ramp, so we are going to see increased CapEx within the LTL segment. So we’d expect about $74 million to $75 million a quarter for LTL, reflecting the increased CapEx spend.

We have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the call back over to Mario Harik for closing remarks.

Thank you, operator, and thanks all for joining our call today. As you can see from our results, our plan is working, and our service improvements are delivering revenue growth, margin expansion, and earnings growth. Soon we're going to start integrating the acquired service centers into our network, which is now more productive and more cost-efficient. We have a strong momentum as we start 2024, and we look forward to updating you on the next quarter. Operator, you can now end the call. Thank you.

Thank you. This will conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time and thank you for your participation.