Old Dominion Freight Line Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

AlphaStreet
Provided by AlphaStreet
February 5, 2025
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Operator

Welcome to Old Dominion Freight Line, Inc 4th-Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on a touchstone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then 2. Please note this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Jack Atkins, Director, Finance and Investor Relations. Please go-ahead.

Jack Atkins
Director of Investor Relations at Old Dominion Freight Line

Thank you, Betsy. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the 4th-quarter 2024 conference call for Old Dominion Freight Line. Today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay beginning today through February 12, 2025 by dialing 1-877-344-7529 access code 37-55-692. The replay of the webcast may also be accessed for 30 days at the company's website.

This conference call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements among others regarding Oldominion's expected financial and operating performance. For this purpose, any statements that make -- any statements made during this call that are not forward-looking statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Without limiting the foregoing, the words believes, anticipates, plans, expects and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. You are hereby cautioned that these statements may be affected by the important factors among others set forth in Old Dominion's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and in this morning's news release. And consequently, actual operations and results may differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Please note that all prior-period share and per share data discussed on today's conference call have also been adjusted to reflect our March 2024 two-for-one stock split. As a final note before we begin, we welcome your questions today, but ask that you limit yourself to just one question before returning to the queue.

At this time for opening remarks, I would like to turn the conference call over to the company's President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr Marty Freeman. Marty, please go-ahead, sir.

Kevin M. Freeman
President and Chief Executive Officer at Old Dominion Freight Line

Good morning, and welcome to our 4th-quarter conference call. With me on the call today is Adam Satterfield, our CFO. And after some brief remarks, we'll be more than happy to take your questions. Old Dominion's 4th-quarter financial results reflect continued softness in the domestic economy. While our revenue declined 7.3% in the quarter due to a decrease in our volumes, our market-share remained relatively consistent, while we continued to strengthen our customer relationships. Although our 4th-quarter earnings per diluted share of $1.23 represents a 16.3% decrease compared to the same-period a year-ago. I'm proud of how our team continued to deliver superior service, while also operating very efficiently despite headwinds from lower density.

The past few years have been full of challenges with our industry, especially given the sluggish macroeconomic environment that has continued far longer than most of us would have anticipated. Through all of this, we have remained committed to the key elements of our proven long-term strategic plan, and I would like to thank our OD family of employees for unwavering dedication to our core strategic priorities.

While we have focused on what we can control, providing superior customer service, remaining disciplined in our approach to pricing and controlling our cost by maximizing our operating efficiencies and minimizing our discretionary spending. We have also continued to invest in our network, our technology and our people as we strengthen our balance sheet allows us to remain focused on long-term market-share opportunities. The consistency of our execution through the ups and downs of the economic cycle has been a key element in our ability to win market-share through the years. Our customers know they can rely on us to be there for them and help them keep their promises to their customers. I'm proud to report that once again, the case in the 4th-quarter as we provided our customers with 99% on-time service and a cargo claims ratio below 0.1%.

By consistently providing our customers with best-in-class service, we are adding value to their business, which in-turn supports our yield management initiatives. Our long-term consistent approach to pricing, which focuses on individual customer profitability is designed to help offset our cost inflation and support future investments in our capacity and technology. In the face of this challenging demand environment, our team has worked hard to control our cost and preserve our profitability by looking for ways to operate as efficiently as possible.

As a result, over the past two years, our direct operating expenses have declined as a percentage of revenue despite headwinds from lower network density and continued cost inflation. This shows the flexibility of our network as well as the commitment of our entire team to match our direct operating costs to our business levels. Importantly, our efforts to control costs have not prevented us from continuing to invest in our business for long-term. We spent $771 million on capital expenditures in 2024, which follows the $757 million in capital spending we executed in 2023. These figures include $664 million we have invested over the two-year period and the ongoing expansion of our service center network. We opened four new service centers in 2024 and we also have several other facilities under-construction or nearly complete that we can open quickly once the demand environment supports it.

We have over 30% excess capacity in our service center network, but we know-how quickly the market can change. These ongoing investments have created some short-term headwinds to our overhead expenses due to higher depreciation costs. That said, we are willing to incur these costs in the short-term so that we are in a position to grow with our customers and support them while the capacity and technology they will require in the years ahead. Thanks to the hard work and dedication of our OD family of employees, I'm cautiously optimistic as we start the fiscal new year.

While we cannot predict what we will see in the inflection in-demand, we are well-positioned to respond to an improved operating environment when it materializes. Over the past decade, our consistent execution and commitment to superior service has allowed Old Dominion to win more market-share than any other LTO carrier. We are confident that by continuing to implement our proven strategic plan, we are positioned to continue to win market-share and drive increased value for our shareholders over the long-term.

I appreciate you joining us this morning, and now Adam will discuss our 4th-quarter in greater detail. Adam?

Adam N. Satterfield
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Secretary at Old Dominion Freight Line

Thank you, Marty, and good morning. Old Dominion's revenue totaled $1.39 billion for the 4th-quarter of 2024, which was a 7.3% decrease from the prior year. Our revenue results reflect an 8.2% decrease in LTL tonnes per day and a 0.4% decrease in LTL revenue per hundredway. We also had one extra work day as compared to the 4th-quarter of 2023. On a sequential basis, our revenue per day for the 4th-quarter decreased 2.7% when compared to the 3rd-quarter of 2024, with LTL tonnes per day decreasing 3.0% and LTL shipments per day decreasing 4.6% for comparison, the 10-year average sequential change for these metrics includes a decrease of 0.3% in revenue per day, a decrease of 1.2% in LTL tonnes per day and a decrease of 2.9% in LTL shipments per day.

The monthly sequential changes in LTL tonnes per day during the 4th-quarter were as follows: October decreased 3.0% as compared to September. November increased 0.7% as compared to October and December decreased 4.0% as compared to November. The 10-year average change for these respective months is a decrease of 3.1% in October, an increase of 3.1% in November and a decrease of 7.2% in December.

For January, our revenue per day decreased by 4.2% when compared to January of 2024 due to a 7.1% decrease in our LTL tonnes per day that was partially offset by an increase in our LTL revenue per hundredweight. LTL revenue per hundreweight excluding fuel surcharges increased 4.5% in January. Our operating ratio increased 410 basis-points to 75.9% for the 4th-quarter 2024. The decrease in our revenue had a deleveraging effect on many of our operating expenses during the quarter, which contributed to approximately a 300 basis-point increase in our overhead cost as a percent of revenue.

Within our overhead cost, our miscellaneous expenses as a percent of revenue increased 110 basis-points due primarily to lower gains recorded on the disposal of property and equipment during the 4th-quarter of 2024. We generally expect our miscellaneous expenses to average approximately

Approximately 0.5% of revenue. So these costs were more normalized in the 4th-quarter of 2024.

Ur direct operating costs, which are generally variable in nature, also increased as a percent of revenue when compared to the 4th-quarter of 2023. Contributing to the increase in cost was a 100 basis-point increase in our insurance and claims expense as a percent of revenue, which was primarily due to changes in the adjustment recorded for our annual third-party actuarial review of accident claims. We were otherwise pleased with our team's effort to control our direct operating expenses in relation to current business levels, while also maintaining tight control over discretionary spending.

Old Dominion's cash-flow from operations totaled $401.1 million for the 4th-quarter and $1.7 billion for the year, respectively, while capital expenditures were $170.9 $370.9 million and $771.3 million for the same periods. We utilized $142.5 million and $967.3 million of cash for our share repurchase program during the 4th-quarter and the year, respectively, while our cash dividends totaled $55.4 million and $223.6 million for the same periods. We were pleased that our Board of Directors approved a quarterly dividend of $0.28 per share for the first-quarter 2025, which represents a 7.7% increase compared to the quarterly cash dividend paid-in the first-quarter of 2024. Our effective tax-rate for the 4th-quarter of 2024 was 21.5% as compared to 24.1% in the 4th-quarter of 2023, and we currently expect our effective tax-rate to be 24.8% for the first-quarter of 2025. This concludes our prepared remarks this morning.

Operator, we'll be happy to open the floor for questions at this time.

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Operator

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick-up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then 2. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster.

The first question today comes from Jason with TD Cowen. Please go-ahead.

Jason Seidl
Analyst at TD Cowen

Thank you, operator. Marty and team, good morning. Appreciate the time today. Marty, you guys talked about tonnage being down 7.1% here in January, but it's obviously been all over the news about the really bad winter weather conditions in parts of the country that quite frankly aren't prepared for bad winter weather. Yeah, how should we think about sort of that tonnage number going-forward as we move throughout the quarter? Should we expect that to get a little bit better or how much was weather impacted?

Kevin M. Freeman
President and Chief Executive Officer at Old Dominion Freight Line

Well, we go through bad weather every January and February, it seems like in my career. And we get most of that revenue back when customers are closed down due to bad weather because the carriers can't pick it up. It usually comes back-in a couple of days. Some of it could be move over to full truckload if they're able to be able to full load from the shippers dock. But most of that comes back. But to answer your question, it would depend upon what the weather is going-forward. I -- we had some unusual weather here in the South where we live and we've never seen cold temperatures like that. We had a couple of snows, but I don't look for that to be a big issue with us going-forward from a weather standpoint and so I'm optimistic we're almost out-of-the woods. It was 70 degrees here yesterday. So we love that.

Jason Seidl
Analyst at TD Cowen

Well, we're getting the bad weather up here. Do you -- you -- could you guys give us any numbers in terms of the amount of terminals that you guys had to close-down in January, maybe versus the prior January to give us a better feel?

Adam N. Satterfield
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Secretary at Old Dominion Freight Line

We don't normally get into that level of detail, Jason, but we obviously we had service centers that were disrupted, as Marty said. And I think we always think about trucking as an outdoor sport. And so when we look at things like our 10-year averages, we're -- there is going to be bad weather that's built into to those 10-year averages and so forth. And we had bad weather in there in January last year. But we were pretty pleased with how we performed and what our volumes looked like in January overall relative to December. Our tonnage was a little bit under -- we used the five-year average in December and January. We outperformed the five-year average in December by about 100 basis-points and we underperformed by about 100 basis-points at five-year average in January and usually look at the 10-year average going-forward. So tonnage 10-year average would be up about 1.5% in February over January and then the 10-year average in March would be a 4.9%.

So I think the key would be just we continue to perform and look and see how business levels build throughout the month of February. And obviously, we'll give our mid quarter update as normal. And then do we see this optimism we're hearing from customers and things like ISM finally going above 50 and do those things really translate into increased business levels and see the acceleration that you would otherwise typically see or what we have seen over the last 10 years.

Jason Seidl
Analyst at TD Cowen

Yeah, well, I got my fingers crossed for you guys. Appreciate the time.

Kevin M. Freeman
President and Chief Executive Officer at Old Dominion Freight Line

Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from Jordan Alliger with Goldman Sachs. Please go-ahead.

Jordan Alliger
Analyst at The Goldman Sachs Group

Yeah, hi. I guess maybe it makes sense to sort of ask since we talked about tonnage a little bit on the operating ratio and putting all the puts and takes together with tonnage and trends in January, how you're thinking about 4Q to 1Q seasonality on OR? Thank you.

Adam N. Satterfield
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Secretary at Old Dominion Freight Line

Yeah, from a an operating ratio standpoint, normally, we'd expect about 100 to 150 basis-point sequential increase in the fourth -- first-quarter relative to the fourth. For this year, I'm expecting that we'll probably be up kind of flat -- be flat-to-up 50 basis-points in the first-quarter relative to the fourth. And we've got that insurance that was called out in the press release. We should see some improvement in those costs as a percent of revenue. I'd expect those costs to be closer to about 1.5% of revenue in the first-quarter. So that kind of otherwise would offset the -- that normal sequential increase that we'd see. And so kind of that flat-to-up 50%, I still think we've got a little bit of risk to revenue in terms of -- we're not quite yet there. We haven't had a period where we've been at seasonality for a full-quarter. So we'll see what transpires as we continue to go through the rest of this quarter.

But if we have a little underperformance there, then that puts a little bit more pressure on our overhead cost. I'm also expecting that our op supplies and expenses as a percent of revenue will be a little bit higher in the first-quarter relative to the fourth as well. So -- but just like we did in the 4th-quarter, really pleased with our performance there, we outperformed on a core basis what otherwise that normal seasonality would have been despite the what the top-line dictated for us there. And I think that just is a testament to our team and the focus that we have every day-on managing our operating efficiencies and continuing to keep our belts as tight as we can in controlling discretionary spending. So had very good cost performance and control through 4Q and would expect that we'll see some of that continue into the first-quarter here until we really get back to more of a robust revenue environment.

Jordan Alliger
Analyst at The Goldman Sachs Group

Thank you.

Operator

And the next question comes from Chris Weatherbee with Wells Fargo. Please go-ahead.

Chris Wetherbee
Analyst at Wells Fargo & Company

Yeah, hey, thanks. Good morning, guys. Maybe if I could ask on pricing kind of get a sense of maybe how you're seeing the environment. 4th-quarter revenue per 100 weight came in reasonably good and it sounds like maybe a little bit of an acceleration in 1Q, but could you maybe help us sort of understand a little bit of what's going on from a pricing perspective, what you're seeing in the market?

Adam N. Satterfield
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Secretary at Old Dominion Freight Line

Yeah. We're still getting good price increases. The revenue per hundred weight came right in-line with pretty much that range that we gave for the 4th-quarter. It was up 3.8% excluding the fuel surcharge. And so we were right kind of in-line with where we thought we'd be from a normal seasonality standpoint. Starting out in good shape at the beginning of the quarter with what we've seen thus far in January being up 4.5%, but normal seasonality would be that we'd be up about 3.6% to 4% in the first-quarter. So we'll see -- we saw a little bit of a drop-in weight per shipment from December into January that kind of help that metric. I'm hopeful that we'll see that weight per shipment reaccelerate and that's pretty standard to see January's weight per shipment be a little bit lower, but hopefully, we'll see that accelerate as we go through the quarter that'd be more indicative of an improving economic environment. But -- but yeah, that's kind of what we've seen thus far and at this point through January, outperforming that range that we somewhat expect from a normal seasonality standpoint.

Chris Wetherbee
Analyst at Wells Fargo & Company

Okay. That's helpful. Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from John Chappell with Evercore ISI. Please go-ahead.

Jonathan Chappell
Analyst at Evercore ISI

Thank you. Good morning. Marty mentioned in his prepared remarks, several other service centers that are under-construction or near completion. As we think about the outlook for this year, maybe not identifying the inflection yet, do we expect four-service centers or less 2025? And if we do get that inflection in the second-half of the year, customer optimism seems to be on point. How many service centers are pretty close that you could bring on pretty quickly to kind of keep the spare capacity where you'd like for it to be?

Adam N. Satterfield
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Secretary at Old Dominion Freight Line

Yeah. A lot of that is going to be demand-driven, John. Yeah, we're at 261 service centers today and we continue to execute on our long-term capex plan really over the balance of the last couple of years like Marty mentioned. And so we had four openings overall last year. And as we look out this year, we're a little north of 30% from an excess capacity standpoint. So unless demand really dictates, we don't have to open any in that regard and we would be diligent in looking at the properties that we may finish construction on and making that decision operationally whether or not we want to turn that new location on, if you will. And there's a lot of cost that goes hand-in-hand with a service center opening, not just the facility cost themselves, but it's working them into an operational plan and the impact of linehaul operations and all the other incremental costs. So all of those would be factored into the decision as to whether or not we would want to open.

But we've got, I think, several that are near completion now and I think we would have several more. So that we could finish here in 2025. So that number that you mentioned, we could open that many if demand dictated, but we're just going to be sort of prudent with making those decisions. But what we can say is, I think we've done -- continued to execute according to what our long-term plan has been and that's making the investments ahead of the anticipated growth curve. We're confident in our continued opportunities ahead for market-share. And we want to make sure that we've prepared our network and our people to be ready when those volumes do in fact return to us and should return a very strong incremental margins. So that's -- that's something that we're in great shape for and we'll continue to evaluate those projects, but we can handle a lot of business right now and -- but we want to be prepared. You think back to how things changed quickly in 2021, 2022, we put on a cumulative $2 billion of revenue over that two-year period. So I think we're in a great spot from a network standpoint that we could go through a robust economic expansion and put on a lot of good strong revenue.

Kevin M. Freeman
President and Chief Executive Officer at Old Dominion Freight Line

And John, to add to Adam's comments, two of those facilities that we're working on now and trying to complete our hub facilities, which will actually lower our cost in the future from a linehaul standpoint. So we're still -- we're very excited that those things are near completion and that will give us some further savings down the road.

Jonathan Chappell
Analyst at Evercore ISI

Great. Thanks, Marty. Thanks, Adam.

Operator

The next question comes from Daniel Imbro with Stephens. Please go-ahead.

Daniel Imbro
Analyst at Stephens

Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking our questions. Adam, maybe to follow-up on an earlier comment you made. So demand has remained muted, but we did see PMI kind of return to expansion this month. Can you just talk about how long it typically takes for that to show-up in terms of more shipments moving to the network? And what are the earliest parts of your business that do typically inflect higher in the cycle? Are you seeing any encouraging demand from those customers when you look across your portfolio? Thanks.

Adam N. Satterfield
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Secretary at Old Dominion Freight Line

Yeah, we actually in the 4th-quarter, saw our industrial business for the first time in a while outperformed our retail-related business and the revenue performance with those industrial-related customers is actually a little bit better than the overall company performance. And I think that kind of goes hand-in-hand with the enthusiasm that we're hearing from customers today. And albeit, it's -- everyone, I think is being a little bit cautious with it. But we saw the acceleration in ISM in December and didn't quite break the 50 threshold, but we felt like based on customer conversations that we would see it bust through 50 in January, and that's where it ended-up being. So I think that we'll just continue to stay engaged with those customers and obviously be there for them when they need us. And we'd love to see increased business levels with our industrial-related customers. Typically, it's a couple of months lag when you see that performance with ISM in terms of the acceleration coming through, I'd say for the industry overall. But certainly, we're in a great spot to take-over those increased shipments if they materialize.

Daniel Imbro
Analyst at Stephens

Appreciate all that color. Best of luck.

Operator

The next question comes from Eric Morgan with Barclays. Please go-ahead.

Eric Morgan
Analyst at Barclays

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask another on the operating ratio. Just given the cost performance this year and where you see pricing trending and I don't know, maybe you see a little bit of DNA or less of a D&A drag with capex coming down. Do you think you can get to margin improvement this year if we are kind of in a steady-state macro or do you think you need to see some positive inflection here?

Adam N. Satterfield
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Secretary at Old Dominion Freight Line

Well, I definitely think that's going to be dependent on the top-line revenue. And we've talked about a lot of the OR degradation that we saw this past year that really was in the overhead expenses line. We actually generated a slight, but just a little bit of improvement in our direct cost as a percent of revenue for the full-year. So I was really pleased again with our ability to control what was controllable in a low-density environment while actually improving our service standards. So that's a testament to our operations team for how they handled and managed through this year. But so really pleased with that, but we did see the inflation there and those overhead costs and they've been averaging about $300 million per quarter overall, plus or minus kind of $5 million and when you go through that allocation. So we've got to get back to a point where we've got some top-line growth.

I think that if we can see some return to seasonality, then that's certainly possible. I think if you match seasonality or kind of trace it through the four quarters of this year, I can see back to or you get to the back-half of the year, in particular, 4th-quarter and you can see some nice improvement overall in revenue. And I think that if we do our job and continue to control our cost, you know, it's certainly possible to get back to an environment where we can have some improvement.

But I kind of look at this as it's going to be a multiyear type of story. And the sense of when I think we see the economy really rebound and you go back to some prior periods like 2017, 2018, you know, it's going to happen at some point and it's called a cycle for a reason, right? So whenever it does come through, what's the leverage can we get on the revenue growth and I think we can look at the breakdown of our operating ratio for the year and think that if our total direct cost for the year were between 52% 53% of revenue, overheads, 20% to 21% of revenue and you run the math, that's a pretty strong incremental margin if we can just manage those two components. And that's where we'd expect to get the most leverage. If our overhead costs are about 21% of revenue, they've been 16% 17% before. So we can swing that pendulum back to the lower-end of that kind of 500 basis-point range that we tend to trade-in and see some really strong performance that should get us right back eventually towards our goal of producing an annual operating ratio below a 70.

Eric Morgan
Analyst at Barclays

Appreciate the color.

Operator

THE next question comes from Brian Ossenbeck with JPMorgan. Please go-ahead.

Brian Ossenbeck
Analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. So I just want to come back to the NMSTA. They're working through some changes to the class system. The proposal was out late last week. So I got your thoughts on this last-time, but I want to come back to it. I know you dimension a vast majority of your freight already, but now that we've seen a little bit more on the table in terms of the proposal, what do you think the implications are for yourselves, your shippers and for the broader industry assuming this goes forward as proposed? Thank you.

Kevin M. Freeman
President and Chief Executive Officer at Old Dominion Freight Line

Yeah. I personally think it's a big to do about nothing really because you know, basically what they're wanting to do is go from a class rating system to a density and cube rating system you know. So that doesn't necessarily mean that the shippers have to do that overnight. They have the choice to go to that if they want. So I don't see that being a big deal and how that will affect the carriers. Certainly, we would like to work towards that because it gives the carriers a better system to rate the shipments and cost the shipments, but I think it's probably a lot of hype over nothing for the time-being.

Brian Ossenbeck
Analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Appreciate that, Marty.

Kevin M. Freeman
President and Chief Executive Officer at Old Dominion Freight Line

Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from Ken with Bank of America. Please go-ahead.

Ken Hoexter
Analyst at Bank of America

Hey, good morning Marty and Adam. Just maybe just sounds like a deceleration in the market if you're saying you're maintaining share volumes down 7%, 8% versus I think you were talking maybe more mid-single digits last quarter. Can you talk about that and your market-share? You usually maintain at this point in the downturn, you only get the pickup in the upturns? And then, Adam, just a real quick clarification. I think you mentioned OR up 50 to 100 basis-points. I thought last-time you had mentioned the normal 1Q seasonality was 100 to 150. So does that mean you're looking to beat historical trends or has the historical trend changed or just trying to get an update there. Thanks.

Adam N. Satterfield
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Secretary at Old Dominion Freight Line

Yeah, let me make sure I clarify that. So the normal increase is 100 to 150 basis-points. And I was saying that we should be flat-to-up 50 basis-points from the reported operating ratio in the 4th-quarter. And part of that is the benefit of that insurance and claims expense that was 2.9% of revenue in the 4th-quarter. We expect that to revert back to around 1.5% in the first-quarter. So you've got some benefit there and then some increases that I had mentioned earlier. But you're right, the normal average is 100 to 150 basis-points of an increase there.

In regards to your market-share commentary, I think that the thing that we've been looking at overall, obviously, there was a lot of disruption over the last couple of years. We're trying to look at share of just comparing the publicly-traded carriers. So we've had to try to look more at the entire universe and some of the data that we get that includes private carriers overall. And so we would say that in '23 and '24 as well, from all the information we get, it looks like we have maintained market-share and that's effectively what we target doing. In a weaker economic period, we want to maintain our market-share, continue to maintain discipline with regards to our yield management philosophy as well and then be in a good spot to start growing when the market does again. And I think that's what you see in the expansionary markets, we've outperformed the -- at least the public carriers by anywhere from 600 to 800 basis-points, if you will. So I think that we'll see that play-out again and only time will tell in terms of how the others are able to reshuffle capacity, if you will, and when the market continues to improve and the freight comes back.

Overall, we see the industry volumes are down probably about 15% versus where we were in 2021, 2022. So I think that's created some of this capacity that's out there, but that will be all about who can control it without any type of grilling pains and I referenced it earlier, but we put on $2 billion of revenue cumulatively over that '21 and '22 period. So I think we've got a proven team that can go out and execute and put on a significant amount of revenue growth. That'd be a top-10 carrier just putting it on organically if at least what we did in '21 and '22.

Ken Hoexter
Analyst at Bank of America

Great. Thanks, Adam.

Operator

The next question comes from Scott Group with Wolfe Research. Please go-ahead.

Scott Group
Analyst at Wolfe Research

Hey, thanks. Good morning. Hey, Adam, last quarter you sort of gave us a range of revenue outcomes. I don't know for the -- for Q4, I don't know if you have a similar thought around Q1. I'm just trying to understand if is revenue starting to outperform seasonality or if this is just sort of the OR comment is more about sort of the Q4 starting point? And then the yields ex-fuel are -- sounds like accelerating a little bit in January versus Q4. Is that a mix dynamic or is that pricing starting to reaccelerate again?

Adam N. Satterfield
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Secretary at Old Dominion Freight Line

Yeah, the -- so in the first-quarter this year, we -- for -- to start, we've got one less operating day, one of 63 days in the first-quarter of this year versus 64 last year. But I guess the way I framed up revenue last quarter, it was kind of creating, okay, if we performed that seasonality, what would that look like? And if we did that in the first-quarter, I think we'd be at $1.38 billion of all-in revenue in the first-quarter. But then kind of on the other side, I gave, if we -- in the 4th-quarter, I gave if we underperformed seasonality like we had in the third and the 4th-quarter, what would that lower-end of revenue range look like. And we did perform a little bit better in the 4th-quarter than we did in 2Q and 3Q relative to what our 10-year averages were. But if we underperform seasonality kind of at that same pace of the 4th-quarter, then first-quarter revenue would be $1.34 billion. So I maybe said more succinctly, somewhere $1.5 billion, $1.38 billion would put us somewhere in normal seasonality range to kind of consistent underperformance like we had in 4Q.

And I think that that's kind of like I was saying earlier. It's just we've -- typically you see a big acceleration in revenue. It starts here in February and then a big acceleration in March. And so that's still yet to-be-determined if we'll see that type of seasonal increase. And we're cautiously optimistic, I would say, in the sense that we felt like a year-ago when we were sitting here, we felt like we were going to see things turn to the positive. So we're being diligent and preparing for it, but we definitely want to see it transpiring before we get too far ahead of ourselves in terms of talking about what the top-line and the operating ratio might otherwise be.

Scott Group
Analyst at Wolfe Research

Thank you.

Adam N. Satterfield
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Secretary at Old Dominion Freight Line

Yeah, I think that yield question that you asked and just to kind of follow-on to what I had said earlier, it's up 4.5%. The normal seasonality would imply that revenue per 100 weight ex-fuel would be up 3.6% to 4%. And so it was a little bit of a drop-off in our weight per shipment from December to January. So a little bit of mix that kind of help that number. But like I mentioned earlier, I'd rather see our weight per shipment increasing and put pressure on that number naturally then and get us back into that range, if you will, because that'd be more of a sign-on the economy is getting better and we should see that follow-through both with weight and shipment velocity as well.

But -- but we continue to do our thing in terms of executing on our long-term yield management philosophies and looking at individual account profitability and just trying to achieve increases that offset our costs, but also continue to support the investments in new service centers and new technologies that ultimately are designed to improve our customer service or enhance operating efficiencies that ultimately will allow us to better serve our customers.

Scott Group
Analyst at Wolfe Research

Thank you guys. Appreciate it.

Adam N. Satterfield
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Secretary at Old Dominion Freight Line

Thanks, Scott.

Operator

The next question comes from Bruce Chan with Stifel. Please go-ahead.

Bruce Chan
Analyst at Stifel Nicolaus

Yes, thanks, operator, and good morning, everyone. Maybe just to get your thoughts around the big competitor spin-off that was announced at the end-of-the year last year. I know there's a pretty long runway on that, but maybe you could give us some color on how you see that affecting the competitive dynamic, if it's maybe increasing on the margins or if you're confident that there's enough opportunity for everybody with a potential cycle recovery?

Adam N. Satterfield
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Secretary at Old Dominion Freight Line

Yeah, I think that not to speak for another company, but I mean that company we've been competing with for years. And so it's something that we'll have to continue to keep watch of and see what their new go-to-market strategy might be if there is any change to it. But I think otherwise, as a standalone in a brighter light maybe shining your own business would expect to see a continued discipline there. And but I think that we've got to -- when you look at us compared to each of our larger national non-union companies, you look on the Mastio surveys and we've won the Mastio Quality Award for 16 years in a row and that's something that we continue to focus on. We want to stay as the industry-leader there in terms of total service, but better yet the ultimate value that we can deliver to our customers. And so I think it's that value proposition that really gives us the opportunity to keep gaining share as we look out into the future.

And we've won more market-share than anyone else over the last 10 years and we think we're better-positioned than anyone to win more market-share than anyone else going-forward. But I think the opportunity is there for the industry, like we've said time-and-time again, there's opportunity for more than just us to grow. And we've been competing with other carriers for years that have been trying to grow their business and we've been able to compete very effectively.

And I still believe that we're a capacity-constrained industry. I think it was commonly understood that our industry was capacity-constrained in 2022 and I think that's something that's almost like daylight savings time. You can't -- the old saying about taking two inches off a blanket and start sewing it on the other end-of-the blanket doesn't give you a longer blanket. And when you had a carrier that exited the business and only half of their service centers have been reallocated to other carriers just because the logo changed on the door doesn't mean there's more capacity in the, it's actually less. So I think when we see volumes actually normalize and start growing again and taking advantage of the e-commerce opportunities, nearshoring opportunities, freight that lends itself to the LTL movement, I think that's when you'll see the entire industry start to grow again and us winning more than our share of the market.

Bruce Chan
Analyst at Stifel Nicolaus

Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from Bascom Majors with Susquehanna. Please go-ahead.

Bascome Majors
Analyst at Susquehanna Bancshares

Thanks for taking my questions. You talked earlier about looking at your market-share from a broader dataset, including some of the private carriers. Can you talk about what segments of the market you think are gaining and losing share now that we've kind of settled out from all the noise of the yellow redeployment and the Este cyber attack that were in comps for a while?

Adam N. Satterfield
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Secretary at Old Dominion Freight Line

Yeah. I mean, it's kind of hard to parse through and we don't get that granular detail for us and the industry, but we get a lot of detail and continue to see consistent performance throughout each of our operating regions. And I think we've seen -- in some cases, the retail had been outperforming and that was somewhat related to the weakness of the industrial market. And ISM had been below 50 for 25 out of 26 months, I think. So we saw that reflected in our business levels over the last couple of years.

But -- but all-in all, as we've talked on each call, we've been able to maintain customer relationships and we've not really lost any major customer accounts. It's just our customers have had fewer shipments to tender to us. And but I think that that's probably allowed us to maybe see that better performance on the retail side.

As you go-forward, though, I think that we should see our industrial business start picking back up again. We have already started seeing business with -- that's managed by third-party logistics companies. That business is performing better over the last couple of quarters. And it's also -- we've seen an increase in weight per shipment with those 3PL customers as well. So we've talked before about -- we feel like Marty mentioned it about some consolidation of loads that have probably moved into the truckload world and shippers taking advantage of that environment where the capacity was there and the rates were really low, it seems like maybe the rate environment is improving a little bit in truckload. And so we'd expect some of that freight should swing right back into LTL. So I think we've got multiple fronts that should create some volume opportunities, be it continued growth with 3PLs, the industrial strengthening, the overall industry strengthening and that truckload market as it gets better, that's going to create ALTO opportunities. But also we've got a structural advantage against our other competitors.

Many of our competitors use an awful lot of truckload substitution for their linehaul network. And so when that rate environment starts increasing, their cost will be increasing. So they typically have to raise rates much higher than us in that type of environment. So I think that's going to create some volume opportunities for us as well.

Bascome Majors
Analyst at Susquehanna Bancshares

And if I could ask a brief follow-up, there's a lot of focus on the largest player in the space as they become a standalone business over the next 12 plus months. How do you make sure you retain your talent as they're looking for new leadership?

Kevin M. Freeman
President and Chief Executive Officer at Old Dominion Freight Line

I think I'll answer that question. I think that you have to maintain that doing the same thing we've done for years in SOD family culture. We treat our employees, our sales reps very well. We pay them well. They have quarterly incentives and I'm not overly concerned that that's going to affect us in any way.

Bascome Majors
Analyst at Susquehanna Bancshares

Thank you both.

Kevin M. Freeman
President and Chief Executive Officer at Old Dominion Freight Line

Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from Tom Wadowitz with UBS. Please go-ahead.

Michael Triano
Analyst at UBS Group

Hey, good morning, guys. This is Mike Triano on for Tom. So as we think about potential improvement in the macro, how do you view the impact of weight per shipment increasing on revenue per shipment? I imagine it's not a one-for-one impact, but is there a rule of thumb where you say 50% or 60% of the increase in weight flows through to higher revenue per shipment, all else equal, just wondering how we should be thinking about that? Thank you.

Adam N. Satterfield
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Secretary at Old Dominion Freight Line

Yeah, it's -- that's a hard one to answer when you're spreading it over 50,000 shipments per day. But I think generally speaking, obviously, the improvement that we'd see in weight per shipment leads to increased revenue per shipment. And so generally that's going to be better for the bottom-line, if you will. The cost, all things considered, if it's just a few more widgets on every pallet, the cost to handle might stay the same but I don't know that there's necessarily a one-for-one relationship that we can share.

Overall, it obviously will be a good thing and we've been suffering. Our weight per shipment has been pretty low. In January, we were at 1,489 and back-in the 2021, 2022 and prior expansionary type periods, we've been around 1,600. And so there's a lot of good things that come with that higher weight per shipment. It translates into the better line-haul efficiency. There's just a lot of efficiencies that come with that increased weight. So it's something that we certainly will continue to watch. And like I mentioned earlier, that's usually a good sign-on an improving economy overall, then typically will lead into increased shipments with customers as well. And so just all kind of works to our advantage from a leverage standpoint.

Michael Triano
Analyst at UBS Group

Makes sense. Thanks.

Operator

The next question comes from Ari Rosa with Citigroup. Please go-ahead.

Ariel Rosa
Analyst at Smith Barney Citigroup

Hi, good morning. So I wanted to ask about inflationary cost pressures. Maybe you could just discuss kind of what you're seeing across-the-board, particularly insurance, we've heard from a number of carriers that they're seeing a lot of pressure on that insurance line-item. And obviously, here in the 4th-quarter, you saw a little bit of a step-up there, which sounds like goes back-in first-quarter, but maybe kind of from a structural standpoint, you could talk about just where you're seeing inflationary cost pressures, level of confidence to get that back-in pricing?

And then just a clarifying question, if I could on Bascom's question. I wanted to make sure to -- I understand there are not non-compete clauses or anything like that with regard to any employees, whether senior management or salespeople or is it just a function of the culture and the comp being sufficient that you're confident you can kind of retain the talent that you have? Thanks.

Adam N. Satterfield
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Secretary at Old Dominion Freight Line

Yeah, let me see if I can keep up with everything there. But from an inflationary standpoint, we end-up last year about where we thought we'd be from a core cost inflation. We had anticipated that after a couple of years of increases that we would see things kind of revert back closer to our long-term average, which would be cost per shipment in the 3.5% to 4% range. So we were a little north of that overall in '24 and kind of expect to see a little bit higher-cost inflation in '25 as well. I'm thinking it may be more in that kind of 4% to 4.5% type of range. So just a little north of that longer-term average. But that's something that we'll continue to work on, obviously. But we've been seeing inflation in many items, healthcare cost, you have fringe benefit cost overall, I would expect to see a little bit increase there.

The insurance specifically that you had asked about, that's been a challenge for years in the transportation industry for large companies in particular, and I think it hits, you know, the entire LTL industry, but probably the large truckload carriers as well. It's been incredibly difficult to maintain the insurance levels that we like to have. We've taken increased premium cost in the double-digit range for probably the past six years and that's taken on a little bit more self-insured risk as well. And so -- but that's something that we always try to manage through and our team legal and risk has done a great job to be able to continue to maintain the insurance coverage that we do have in-place. But it's something where our accident frequency ratios are at an all-time best.

And we obviously invest in a lot of equipment on our trucks to try to mitigate accidents and we invest an awful lot of money in training our people as well for safe driving practices. So that's a -- that's definitely a key to our foundation for success, but that's something that I think continues to be a challenge until we can see tort reform in this country. And it's something that at some -- at some point has got to happen. It's just -- it's crazy some of the cases that you can kind of read about that have happened to some of the carriers out there.

Kevin M. Freeman
President and Chief Executive Officer at Old Dominion Freight Line

And our sales turnover to answer that question for you, is less than 1% a year and most of that comes from retirements or promotions into operations or management. And it's not unusual for us to have other competitors to seek our salespeople and they're smart to do that because our salespeople are trained to sell value, service and not price. And we're proud of that fact. So again, you know, we hang on to our salespeople. They love working at Old Dominion because we treat them fair and pay them well. So that's the least of my concerns is losing our salespeople to a competitor. The next question comes from Ravi Shanker with Morgan Stanley. Please go-ahead.

Ravi Shanker
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Great. Thanks. Maybe just a quick follow-up on the insurance question. Is there anything more you guys can do from a balance sheet deployment standpoint to maybe kind of do more of that in-house or have you sort of maxed out how much you can do there internally to maybe offset some of that inflation with third-party insurers?

And also quickly to follow-up, I think, Adam, you said earlier that you pointed out that only half of the yellow volume had come back online and so that's a net reduction capacity, but you have also seen a lot of organic capacity growth in the industry over the last year and into 2025. Are you concerned that might come in and backflow for the yellow capacity that's not yet come back online? Thank you.

Adam N. Satterfield
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Secretary at Old Dominion Freight Line

Well, I think it's something that obviously we'll continue to watch what's going on in the industry. And like we've said, I think it's going to take going through an upcycle to really prove. This is not the first time that in my career that I've heard that you know that other carriers are wanting to grow or they're adding capacity and that the growth story is going to be over. I can recall hearing that back-in 2016, and we've done a pretty nice job of being able to grow revenue from that point forward. But it's something that we obviously pay close attention to and but a lot of our confidence about market-share comes from customer conversations more than anything. Staying in front of our customers, knowing how their business levels are changing and what their strategies going-forward are going to be and how we can add value to their supply chains. And so we don't add capacity until we're confident that we're going to be growing in the markets where we're expanding and that's always been a key part of our expansion strategy.

So I think that let's get into the upcycle and then that's probably going to be the easiest answer to talk about where-is industry capacity versus what our industry volumes looking like. But -- but I don't see any change when we look-forward in terms of what our market-share potential might be now versus the thinking that we had in-place back-in 2021, 2022. So we still feel like we've got a long runway for growth and tremendous amount of opportunity out there ahead of us.

And in regards to the insurance question, I think we've done a really nice job. We -- in terms of managing those insurance costs. When you look at insurance and claims on the income statement, it's pretty much been anywhere from 1.1% to 1.3% of revenue if you look-back over the last kind of five, 10 years, if you will, and it's something like I mentioned that we have had to take on some increased exposure in terms of what our self-insured retention limits are. And that's something that we spend a lot of time going through and planning with our legal and risk teams to looking at and evaluating what type of risk do we want to take as we build-out our insurance tower and so there's a lot of strategy that goes in behind that. And obviously, there's no perfect answer.

You look at things in hindsight and say, okay, we did this and here was the result. This year, we just had a bigger step-up in terms of that the annual actuarial assessment that we complete in the 4th-quarter and it took a little bit larger entry, if you will to adjust those existing reserves on existing claims. So -- but we do expect, I think last year, we averaged about 1.2% of revenue for the insurance and claims and I think that's probably going to go up to closer to the 1.5% like I mentioned. So we'll see a little bit more inflation there. But all-in all, I think we've done a very effective job of managing our cost for our insurance program.

The other interesting thing that what goes in that line and where you've seen it improve over the long-term is that insurance and claims line, that's our auto accident claims as well as our cargo claims ratio. And our cargo claims ratio, we've talked about for years how we've generated improvement there and had got that balance down to 0.1, well, it actually rounds to 0.0 for this quarter. We just said below 0.1%, but we talked about wanting to be on-time and claims free. And in the 4th-quarter, we were essentially claims free. So very proud of that achievement for the for the team as well and it takes off a lot of investment in claims prevention and training and execution, but that's something we're really proud of.

Ravi Shanker
Analyst at Morgan Stanley

I want to ask you if you can get better than 0.0 but thanks for that.

Operator

The next question comes from Stephanie Moore with Jefferies. Please go-ahead.

Joseph Hafling
Analyst at Jefferies Financial Group

Great. Good morning. This is Joe Hoffling on for Stephanie Moore. Thanks for taking our questions at the end here. Maybe more of a thematic question. You mentioned maybe the tailwind of nearshoring. How you guys view the Old Dominion network in relation to potentially sort of nearshorter onshore production and manufacturing -- manufacturing facilities?

And maybe a curveball question, but we've been so focused on the organic growth front. Is there anything from an M&A standpoint as you guys look at the future of LTL that would maybe excite you in terms of beefing up your service offerings?

Adam N. Satterfield
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Secretary at Old Dominion Freight Line

Yeah. M&A hasn't been a priority for us. Our last acquisition was 2008. So we just feel like we've been able to grow organically with really strong return on invested capital. And so that will most likely be the focus as we go-forward of being focused on what we do best, which is LTL transportation. And again, like I've said earlier, I think there's a lot of opportunity for the industry. And certainly, we feel like we can benefit the most given the quality of our network, the quality of our service and the value proposition that's unmatched in our industry.

And to that end, we've got 261 service centers throughout the US so we cover all locations, all zip codes and so as plants are being built or expanded in the US, it creates an awful lot of opportunity. It creates opportunity on the inbound side, where we're hauling parts and pieces and chemicals and so forth, raw-material inputs for the manufacturing process. And then we've got the opportunity on the outbound side to take those finished goods and allow the shipper to leverage our LTL network.

We can drop a trailer at a customer location, they fill it and it's seamless through our LTL network to get it to all points around the US wherever their distribution centers or customer-base might be. So a lot of opportunity on both inbound and outbound as we see the potential for more manufacturing in the US or even from a nearshoring standpoint, if there is more of in Canada or Mexico or whatnot, we can get those goods as they come cross-border instead of goods coming into a port, it's more likely that we would get them cross-border and the freight could stay within an LTL network to get the final destination versus being in a railcar and being pulled maybe to the middle part of the country before we would get our hands-on it. So it just creates a little bit more opportunity across all fronts.

Joseph Hafling
Analyst at Jefferies Financial Group

Got it. Thanks so much. And just of topical, how much is cross-border as a percent of revenue for you guys? Could you remind me? Thanks.

Adam N. Satterfield
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Secretary at Old Dominion Freight Line

Yeah, it's a pretty small percentage overall, less than 5%.

Joseph Hafling
Analyst at Jefferies Financial Group

Thanks so much guys and congrats.

Adam N. Satterfield
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Secretary at Old Dominion Freight Line

Thanks.

Operator

The next question comes from Tyler Brown with Raymond James. Please go-ahead.

Tyler Brown
Analyst at Raymond James

Hey, good morning, guys.

Adam N. Satterfield
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Secretary at Old Dominion Freight Line

Hey, good morning.

Tyler Brown
Analyst at Raymond James

Hey, you guys obviously covered a lot. But Marty, do you think -- it's a little bit of an off-the-wall question, but do you think that the change in the administration could be an opportunity for the ATA or really the broader LTL industry to revisit the broader use of triples. I know that you use them out west, but that seems like a sizable opportunity. Linehaul is probably your largest functional cost bucket.

Kevin M. Freeman
President and Chief Executive Officer at Old Dominion Freight Line

Yes, I think that Tyler, I think that's yet to be seen by the new administration. I do see some positive things down the road for the new administration. Taxes is one of them. But as it relates to triples other than Pacific Northwest, you know that that's yet to be unseen. I think that's something that they talk about all-the-time at the ATA. I'm not sure how easy that will be to do. One of the hub centers I mentioned earlier that we're building now will be able to haul Rocky Mountain Doubles on the turnpike, which will help our linehaul from that aspect. But I think the jury is still out for triples in other areas. But hopefully, I would like to see that in some of the less congested areas in the future.

Tyler Brown
Analyst at Raymond James

Perfect. Thank you, guys.

Operator

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Marty Freeman for any closing remarks.

Kevin M. Freeman
President and Chief Executive Officer at Old Dominion Freight Line

Thank you guys very much today for your questions. We appreciate it. And please feel free-to give us a call after the call and we'll be glad to answer anything we didn't cover today. So thank you and have a good week.

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

Corporate Executives
  • Jack Atkins
    Director of Investor Relations
  • Kevin M. Freeman
    President and Chief Executive Officer
  • Adam N. Satterfield
    Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Secretary
Analysts

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