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ArcBest Corporation (ARCB)

Q3 2012 Earnings Call· Thu, Nov 1, 2012

$127.35

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Arkansas Best Corporation Third Quarter 2012 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded, Thursday, November 1, 2012. And I would now like to turn the conference over to David Humphrey, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Please go ahead, sir.

David Humphrey

Analyst

Welcome to the Arkansas Best Corporation Third Quarter 2012 Earnings Conference Call. We'll have a short discussion of the third quarter results, and then we'll open up for a question-and-answer period. Our presentation this morning will be done by: Ms. Judy R. McReynolds, President and Chief Executive Officer of Arkansas Best Corporation; Mr. Michael E. Newcity, Vice President, Chief Financial Officer of Arkansas Best Corporation. We thank you for joining us today. In order to help you better understand Arkansas Best Corporation and its results, some forward-looking statements could be made during this call. As we all know, forward-looking statements, by their very nature, are subject to uncertainties and risk. For a more complete discussion of factors that could affect the company's future results, please refer to the forward-looking statements section of the company's earnings press release and the company's most recent SEC public filings. We will now begin with Mr. Newcity.

Michael Newcity

Analyst

Thank you for joining us this morning. Our company's third quarter results reflect the effects of a weakening economy, the impact of business levels and profitability of both ABF and Panther. In addition, cost pressures at all of our subsidiaries affected profit margins. In spite of a challenging economic environment, we are pleased with the positive trends in our emerging, non-asset-based businesses. These companies experienced significant revenue growth and improving profitability during the quarter. The revenue diversification resulting from the acquisition of Panther and the growth of our other emerging businesses is a positive development for our company and in line with our strategic plan. Later, Judy will give her thoughts and perspective on our recent results. But now, I'd like to cover the details of our performance for the third quarter of 2012. Arkansas Best third quarter 2012 revenue was $578 million, compared to last year's third quarter revenue of $511 million. This year's figure included approximately $60 million of revenue from Panther, whose purchase was closed on June 15. Excluding Panther, Arkansas Best third quarter revenue was slightly above that of last year's third quarter. In the third quarter, we earned $0.24 per share compared to $0.46 per share last year. Third quarter earnings accretion associated with Panther was positive, yet minimal due to the reduced demand for Panther's services in the slower economic environment and higher than expected cost. Excluding the effects of adjustments to valuation allowances, as shown in the non-GAAP table of our earnings release, our year-to-date tax rate was 33%. The fourth quarter tax rate will depend on our financial result, particularly the proportion of nondeductible items to taxable income. We ended the third quarter with unrestricted cash and short-term investments of $119 million, an increase of $90 million during the quarter. Combined with…

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. Arkansas Best results reflect weakness in the economy that affected business levels and revenue at each of our business units. In addition, cost pressures impacted the profitability of all of our company. Customer uncertainties surrounding the outcome of the presidential election and upcoming economic events first began to be apparent in our July business levels and seemed to be more strongly of an impact in August. Moving through September, the impact on our quarter was set and our financial results were below historical third quarter trends, as well as below historical profitability relationships between second and third quarters. Despite the softness of the operating environment, our emerging non-asset-based businesses experienced revenue growth and improving profitability trends as a result of initiating new customer relationships. We continue to believe that over time, these smaller business segments have the opportunity to experience accelerating growth in both revenue and profitability. Thus, having an ever-increasing positive impact on our corporate result. I'm pleased to report that including Panther, Arkansas Best non-asset-based businesses generated over 20% of third quarter consolidated revenues. Following its June 15 purchase, the third quarter was the first full quarter that we have had Panther as a subsidiary of Arkansas Best. We continue to be excited about this acquisition and the opportunities it brings to our company to a more robustly respond to the changing demands of the transportation marketplace. The broad array of logistics services offered by Panther complements the asset-based core LTL services provided by ABF, and the many offerings of our emerging non-asset-based businesses. Customers have responded well to the broad array of services we now offer them. Panther's philosophy of providing a high level of specialized services in response to critical customer needs is consistent with our corporate philosophies and…

David Humphrey

Analyst

Linda, I think we're ready.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Justin Yagerman.

Justin Yagerman

Analyst

I was curious on Panther because that's where some of the shortfall was relative to our estimates in the quarter. How should we be thinking about incremental margins and variable cost in this business? It feels like maybe there was a bit more of a drag from economic activity in the quarter, than I think we would've thought. So when you guys look at this, how quickly can you react within the Panther business to falling economic conditions? It would seem to be a more variable business, but it didn't really show up the way we thought it would in Q3. So I'm just curious.

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

Yes. Well, Justin, we had, I guess, several factors to consider with respect to Panther's business in the third quarter and I really feel like the third quarter was unusual for some of these reasons. They have a variety of verticals that they work within. About half of those verticals had load growth and the other half didn't. Some of the areas where load growth was down were their government and high-value products verticals. And you can understand, given the uncertainty surrounding, as I mentioned, the presidential election and the fiscal cliff, how that's affecting those verticals. And you can also probably appreciate that those would positively impact margins if they were more normal in growing. The other factor to consider, it's a lesser portion of their business, but growing, is as Europe struggles and China slows, their global freight forwarding business was also hurt. And one of the impacts on the margin is the investments that they're making to grow that business was more of a long-term outlook about that growth in their business. So -- and then the last thing to mention, and this is going to happen at times, they have a large third-party casualty claim that impacted their margins in the third quarter that when we look at that, that's highly unusual. And so -- I mean, we've all been talking about Hurricane Sandy and the perfect storm, I think they had some of that in their business as far as kind of a number of negative factors impacting the third quarter. I don't see that as being normal and I do see some of those areas improving and being reconciled going forward.

Justin Yagerman

Analyst

How big was this casualty claim just in terms of thinking about [indiscernible]

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

It's $300,000. It ended up being $300,000. On their business, that's pretty significant. [Technical Difficulties]

Operator

Operator

Our last -- our next question, pardon me, comes from the line of Scott Group.

Scott Group

Analyst

Judy, I think I heard you say that yields were pretty much flat net of fuel in October and if you can just give us some color about why you're seeing so much pressure there, what's happening?

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

I really don't see it as that, Scott. When you look at the third quarter, even though our reported revenue per hundredweight increase was 1.5% increase, when you strip out fuel surcharges and profile effects, we had a mid to high single-digits increase in the third quarter. And what we're reporting to you in October doesn't have the profile effect stripped out. And so my assessment is that we haven't seen that much change in October. And so we're not experiencing what we consider pressure. We think that it's a pretty healthy environment as far as rates and yields go.

Scott Group

Analyst

Can you explain that, sorry. So you're saying that yields in -- I thought you said that yields x fuel were flat?

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

Well, that again has not been adjusted for profile effects on our business.

Scott Group

Analyst

So changes in mix -- so what do you think the underlying pricing is in October?

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

Well, I didn't say that it wasn't. I didn't -- I mean, again, 1.5% -- think back to third quarter, 1.5% increase, but when you remove the effects of profile, we are up mid to high single-digits in terms of pricing increases. It's the same. We haven't calculated that effect for you in October because we don't do that until we get to quarter end. But you have similar things going on there. It changes in weight per shipment and lengths of haul, that sort of thing.

Scott Group

Analyst

Okay. And then in terms of the tonnage, I don't know if you gave it, I don't think you did that. Do you have the monthly tonnages for the quarter and then how do you think about -- I think you said that Sandy caused about 2 points of volume at the end of the month in October. How do you think about potential for LTL to CNE tightening and improvement from Sandy going forward? I'm guessing there's an opportunity for Panther on the expedited side to see some benefit. How do you think about that?

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

Scott, I do think that there's an opportunity for it. It's -- at this point, it's hard to quantify. When you have an event like this, it's often difficult to see the improvement other than if you're able to look at those specific terminals but we have impacts of that across the system and so we'll be looking at that and try to quantify that as we see the impact and we get to the end of the fourth quarter, but I would expect that to be a positive. It's such a dramatic economic impact in that area of the country. They're going to have needs for a number of things. Rebuilding materials, just all kinds of needs in every part of business lives and in people's personal lives. Panther has seen an uptick in their call volume related to the business. One of the issues that was unclear for them was a number of people weren't back at work yet. And so they felt like that there would be additional call volume increases as people came back to work toward, I guess, later this week, which is now one more day after today and then early next week. So -- and David has the monthly tonnage numbers for you.

David Humphrey

Analyst

Yes, Scott, before we move along, let me give you those, this is total tonnage per day by month year-over-year. In July, it was down 2.6%. In August, it was down 1.9%. And in September, it was up 0.5%. And then for the full quarter, it was down 1.4%.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of William Greene.

William Greene

Analyst

We've got a lot of moving parts here for October. And even this quarter, I think you have an extra operating day. Can you give us any sense for given the tonnage decline and the yield commentary, could you be profitable in October?

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

Yes. I mean, that's a possibility, yes. I mean, it's hard to fully bake in the effects of the hurricane and the lost revenue. But we do have an expectation of profitability. We were profitable in every month of the third quarter.

William Greene

Analyst

Okay. So I guess the month's not quite closed but at this point, it's possible?

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

Yes. I mean, yes, just that we don't have the books closed, basically. We know the tonnage and pricing figures but we don't have the books closed.

William Greene

Analyst

Yes, okay, make sense. And then when you look at kind of the network overall, can you just sort of give us a sense for what percentage of your revenue comes from -- I don't know if you want to call it the Northeast or the affected states or whatnot, just sort of trying to get a sense for the impact on Arkansas Best as things start to recover, but also depending on how long this lingers in terms of the effect from the storm and lost economic activity?

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

Well, let me say this. It's very difficult to do that because there's effects in other regions of the country of what's happening up there. So it's really not a good way to look at that to just isolate the regions specifically or the regions that's specifically affected by that. So -- but to give you an idea, we have had more closures than this. But as of yesterday, we had 5 facilities closed. And the reports coming in from everybody in our transportation and our terminal operations area was things were pretty normal everywhere else. Not perfectly normal, but pretty normal everywhere else. And we have 277 locations in the company. And so it's -- and when you sort through that, it should be relatively small in terms of the impact on profitability for the quarter. But I can tell you, with some of the major hurricanes that we saw in New Orleans, when we sorted through the details of that, we had negative effects from lost business, but we also had recovery of that because of increased business in terminal facilities that were relatively close. And the net effect was not nearly as large as what people perceived it to be.

David Humphrey

Analyst

Bill, before we move on, I was just going to get you on your workdays, there's 61.5 workdays in the fourth quarter and there were 63 in the third quarter.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Tom Wadewitz.

Thomas Wadewitz

Analyst

Judy, let's see, so how would you look at, I guess, the environment in LTL? Do you think that it's kind of a blip here in October, and maybe things have kind of stabilized? Or do you think it's going to be pretty weak for the full quarter and does that challenge the profitability? I think, I'll ask you about October, but fourth quarter is a difficult seasonal quarter sometimes. And with weaker freight, I just wonder if you have confidence of being profitable for the quarter or not?

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

Well, typically, when we move from the third quarter to the fourth quarter, which, there's a lot of reasons that this relationship might not be typical. There's about a 4 point O/R deterioration or between 3 and 4 point, kind of leaning more towards 4. And so if we have a 98 O/R, we had a few unusual things in the third quarter, it is possible for us to have a loss in the fourth quarter. We will obviously be doing everything we can to try to work through that, but it's certainly possible. We -- as we look at October, kind of pre-storm conditions, I think, I mentioned in my comments at the beginning of the call, we were down about 2%. That changed to about 4% with the storm. But that 2% is a little softer sequentially than we would have expected. And so we are seeing some business weakening in October even relative to what we saw in September. Now some of that is calendar-related. It's the way that the calendar is made up in October. There's more days of the week that are lesser revenue days than you would have had, for instance, in September. So that's a part of it, and we actually expect, from a tonnage perspective, to see improvement as we go through the quarter. Some of that is better calendar, some of that is weaker tonnage trends from last year. And so there's a variety of things going on here. We don't see the business environment as very good right now. In my opinion, it's not very good right now. We hear that from customers and we've also seen the commentary from all the truckload carriers and some of our LTL competitors as well. So it's hard to say what will happen after the presidential election, if that somehow changes things or give the boost in activity, we hope so. But to kind of to look at what we can typically rely on, the ISM PMI index is the index that typically correlates well with our business. And we, in the past, I guess, in the summer months, that was running at about a 49. Typically, that works into our business with about a 4-months lag. So we saw that improve in September. And it was up to nearly 52, I think. And so -- and there are some predictions, I think, that suggests that that's going to continue to improve. If it does, our business correlates well with that and that is a bright spot and we're also encouraged by the commentary we continue to hear about housing. And then, I guess, the last comment is we hope to see some business boost as a result of the hurricane.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Jack Waldo.

Jack Waldo

Analyst

I have 2 questions. One, do you know what the amortization of intangibles number would be for Panther?

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

It's $2.5 million.

Michael Newcity

Analyst

Roughly, on the intangible, it's $8.7 million a year. And then all in, it's $2.5 million in the quarter, yes.

Jack Waldo

Analyst

Okay. And Judy, as you guys enter your next round of contract negotiations, are there -- I guess I'm wondering how your philosophy has changed relative to previous negotiation points. Are there not -- we would expect you to reveal your game plan, but are there certain things that you're focusing on more or less this contract negotiation than in past contract negotiations?

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

Well, our basic approach is going to be to obtain a contract that allows us to compete in the marketplace successfully. And we're also focused on protecting our employees' benefits. And lastly, we're working very focused on growing business. And so if we can accomplish those 3 objectives, that will be a success for us.

Jack Waldo

Analyst

Okay. But are there -- I would imagine that's kind of your theory going into all these negotiations to some degree. I'm just guessing if the characteristics that you think would make you successful have changed at all relative to [indiscernible]?

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

Well, one thing I comment about is we are negotiating a single employer national contract. This is the first time we've ever done that. And so, in our view, it's favorable for us to control all elements from the management side of that discussion. And it does make for a different process. We think it it'll be a smoother process, one that gets completed in a timeframe that allows us to move forward under the objectives that I laid out. We really feel like that this is going to be a better negotiating scenario, so to speak, for us, being in control of all the management-side elements. And in the past that's not been the case. It's been much more complicated and taken longer.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Ken Hoexter.

Ken Hoexter

Analyst

You mentioned that you're seeing it kind of weak right now. Are you seeing businesses hold their purchasing decisions to a post-election. Kind of are you getting that feel from the customers? And you also mentioned that the rest of the country not as impacted now post-hurricane you're seeing and I guess the rest of the 277 service centers, I guess, rebound to the same level or are you seeing any of that business pickup as they prep for any post-hurricane kind of service levels?

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

Well, the weakness that you described, we have had specific customer discussions about managing their businesses more conservative given the presidential election and the fiscal cliff. There's specific discussions really for both ABF and Panther on that point. And that's been going on since, as I mentioned, since July. We've been hearing that. And so that is a factor. We can't at this point really measure any activity level across the system relative to the hurricane. There might be a conversation you could have with some people up and for instance, Carlisle, about trying to figure out how to get some freight into those New York facilities, those kind of things. But the conversations that we could report to you are really relatively small. I do -- I think it'll take some time to see the business boost that could result from the devastation that's occurred up there. Again, I would expect it, but as I described earlier, most of the time, even on these large storms, when you sit back and you look at the impact on a full quarter, you have the loss of business and then you have the acceleration in some locations that occurs after that. It's just typically not that material. That's the honest truth. I wish it was different. We take business from wherever we could get it.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Christian Wetherbee.

Seth Lowry

Analyst

This is Seth in for Chris. If you could comment on your fleet count outlook heading into 2013 end of this year? You mentioned you've taken down CapEx a bit and new tracker replacements going to be down 8%. If everything remains status quo, can we expect similar declines next year? And also pertaining to that, does it makes sense to reduce it more if everything stays status quo with the Teamsters contract?

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

Well, first of all, we're not assuming status quo with the Teamsters contract, I can tell you that. But we do have to look at the amount of business that we have and the equipment that we need to serve that. That's why we're adjusting where we are this year. The other thing that's happening is there are evaluations being done of our network and in some cases, we're able to be more efficient than we once were or we're using a greater portion of rail, where we can rely on the service to be improved. You saw in the third quarter, we were up, I think, 15.8% rail, which was up from the previous year. And that enables us to have a smaller fleet. But it is certainly the case that we need the profitability of ABF to improve, and that has a direct impact on the amount of equipment that we buy.

Seth Lowry

Analyst

Okay. And then do you have a long-term target of percent of business that could go by rail? Do you think [indiscernible]?

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

Well, we don't necessarily operate from a target, but fairly consistently, over a long number of years, we've operated between, say, 10% and 11%, all the way up to, say, 18% to 20%. And again, that is a cost-effective approach for us in certain circumstances. And if the service is good, we're going to continue to use a good percentage of rail as a part of our total miles. And we like that optionality and some customers want you to do that. So it's a good thing to have as a mix or a choice in your equipment capacity. In your capacity that you use to serve the network.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Jason Seidl.

Jason Seidl

Analyst

Just to clarify something that you were, I think, talking to Scott [indiscernible] Signing new contracts in the quarter, signing them at mid single-digit pricing increases, how was that, I think, is I guess the best way for me to ask it?

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

Jason, you kind of cut out at the beginning of what you were saying. Could you ask your question again? I'm sorry.

Jason Seidl

Analyst

Sure. You talked about pricing a little bit with Scott and you mentioned that in the quarter, if you exclude mix and fuel and look at you said mid-single digits. But I guess, in the quarter, what are you signing new contracts at? Is it that mid-single rate?

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

3.6%.

Jason Seidl

Analyst

3.6% was the new contract rate?

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

Yes.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Tom Albrecht.

Thomas Albrecht

Analyst

I just had a question about your weight per shipment. It was up a bit. It had been kind of in a bandwidth closer to 1,350 pounds. It was up about 2.1% year-over-year to 1,376. Are you doing more either truckload shipments or are you seeing a lot more increase in business in that 5,000 to 10,000 pounds? And if you are, can you speak to the profitability of that versus sub 5,000 pounds?

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

Well, it's -- if you look at -- I've got a measure that I can look at here. We typically don't disclose because we don't give all the surrounding details. But of that 2%, there was also an increase in LTL weight per shipment for the quarter as well, compared to last year's quarter. There was some effect of those heavier shipments, in other words, it drove the number to be higher than it was. And from a profitability standpoint, you can look at those slices like that but really, what we're doing is looking at it on an account by account basis because you can have a variety of answers based on the shipment size as well. So it's just not that one way to look at it. But we did have -- I'll acknowledge this, we had a mix change in our business in the third quarter that was gross with less profitable accounts. And that's a negative to the quarter. We had our accounts that operate a little worse for us, grow more. And that's a factor in the deterioration of ROR for ABF.

Thomas Albrecht

Analyst

Okay. So to summarize then, there's not necessarily an intentional strategy behind that weight per shipment but on that less profitable comment you made, are they more resilient companies in the broader U.S. economy that -- I mean, what would cause them to grow more versus your more profitable? Or are you too expensive on the pricing?

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

No. Oh no. Yes, I think in this economic environment -- No, I don't -- I think that it's a mixture of things. One of the confusion points, I think, is the fact that we have raised prices significantly and we've had some account loss and some effect of that. But these are companies that are growing in this kind of environment and they obviously had growth in the third quarter. And so it was definitely a factor in the third quarter business.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Todd Fowler.

Todd Fowler

Analyst

Just a point of clarification in one of the earlier questions, I know that you don't give guidance going forward. But you talked about fourth quarter and you said that the sequential trends within the margins you could operate at a loss. Those comments were isolated to the ABF freight segment for the total company?

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

Yes.

Todd Fowler

Analyst

Okay, just wanted to make sure.

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

Absolutely. Actually, thanks for that clarification because when you look at the success that we're having in some of our emerging businesses and we expect that to continue in the fourth quarter, that -- those results will be a positive in the total picture.

Todd Fowler

Analyst

Right. That's what I was trying to get at. And then, I guess, for my main question, if I think about the second part of 2011 and the first part of this year, it feels like that, that was the period where there was a lot of pricing work that was done and you saw that impact on the yields, you also saw some impact on the tonnage. Going forward into 2013, would your expectation at this point be that you can grow tonnage in line with what the market's doing at this point? And you made some comments about some market share data and you're actually seeing some improvement there. But I guess, thinking about 2013, should we start to think that yields and tonnage are going to grow more in line with the market going forward?

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

Well, Todd, I think, once you get past the first quarter of 2012, where we were -- even then, we were continuing the larger price effort to get our base of business back where it needs to be. Once you're beyond that, I think you do start to see some more normal activity as far as comparisons, price improvements and that sort of things. We're -- it depends on the economy whether we will be able to grow tonnage levels. As we've seen in the third quarter, that is definitely a factor. It's my hope that we'll see something that is more encouraging than that in 2013. But most economists are not saying something along those lines. Typically, you have to have better GDP growth than we had in the third quarter to see more robust freight environment. And so 2013 will be a challenge as long as that's the case.

Todd Fowler

Analyst

Right, but from the company-specific standpoint, I think this was, again, one of the earlier questions. I mean, you're where you need to be from a yield standpoint with where your cost structures or you feel that and so there's not going to be...

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

Let me say this, on yields, we can -- we need to continue to increase yields. Our yields are not where we want them to be.

Todd Fowler

Analyst

But I mean, if the market is mid single-digit-type yield increases, obviously, I mean, you're going to be doing your own work to move that up as well, but there's nothing specific like we saw going back a year or so ago that you're thinking about, I guess, from a strategy standpoint going forward?

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

No, no. I mean, there's nothing that we can point to in 2013 that really makes it unusual from a kind of a customer negotiation business-as-usual standpoint. It's more about the economic condition that we will be facing in that year. And as you mentioned before, we expect our emerging non-asset-based businesses to continue to grow. We've seen some terrific growth in some of those companies and we expect that to really outpace kind of normal economic activity in 2013.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Anthony Gallo.

Anthony Gallo

Analyst

I just want to go back to the pricing comment. You just said that pricing was rational and stable and Conway said the same thing. And I'm curious, in a capital-intensive industry where the leaders are all operating at low single-digit margins, why capacity shouldn't be being pulled and why pricing shouldn't be pushed a lot higher? That would seem more rational to me.

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

We would support that kind of activity. It's -- well, I mean, you're going out there and it's deal by deal. You're working on each account deal and I think our people are as good as anybody in the market at getting the best that we can for that particular deal. But -- and I think that pricing is in a much better place than it was, but I think I commented a minute ago that it needs to get a lot better. And we're still, even with the accelerated price increases that we did last year and increases this year, we're still maybe at 2008 pricing levels, something like that and you know what our costs have done over the last few years since 2008. And so it's clear that prices for our company need to continue to move up. And we hope that we'll have market conditions that allow us to do that.

Anthony Gallo

Analyst

If you don't get the help that from the Teamsters that you need, will you think about or will you consider pulling capacity out of the market?

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

Well, you've seen what we're doing for this year. We're reducing our equipment by 8%.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Bruce Chan.

J. Bruce Chan

Analyst

It looks like we've got a fresh ISM number out of 51.7 which is encouraging.

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

Well, good.

David Humphrey

Analyst

What did you say it was again, Bruce?

J. Bruce Chan

Analyst

It looks like 51.7, so that's pretty good news. But unfortunately, soft freight levels are still something that we just had to live with the past couple of quarters now and may or may not resolve itself depending on what happens in the next week or so and obviously depending on some larger issues outside our control. A couple of your competitors have undertaken some cost management programs, some targeted productivity improvement programs, line haul optimization, sophisticated pricing software and continued tech rollouts to address some of these facts and maybe deal with new normal level of tonnage. And certainly, you've done a lot with yields and addressing labor cost is a big piece of the puzzle, perhaps more for you than for others. But can you remind us of how ABF specifically is responding to some of the other issues on the expense line. I know you have in-house software and you've talked about increased rail usage but are there any other specific targeted efforts that you can maybe call out or remind ourselves? What's the next step here?

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

Well, for many, many years, we have had effective use of technology in our company and it's interesting to see some of the others that we compete with begin to do some of the things that we've been doing for maybe 10 years. And we're glad of that, because a smarter marketplace makes things better. But we -- from a cost standpoint, we have, over the years, really in response to the recessionary environment, done a number of things to address our situation. That is not to say to say that we don't have many, many more. One of the things that we constantly do is evaluate the size of our network and whether it is appropriate for the business levels that we have. We look at freight flows, we study optimization models and that -- you may not have observed this, but for instance, whenever -- I first came to the company, 15 years ago, we had 311 facilities, I think, and today, we have 277. And so there was not any one big change in there, but it was just a constant evaluation of the right size for the company. You've also seen us talk about a balance of utilization of rail with our line haul network and the appropriate need and equipment levels that we have to serve our business. But on the non-union cost side, we've done a number of things to reduce cost. We have had to pass along more of our healthcare cost increases to our employees back several -- a few years ago. We had to freeze our defined benefit pension plan and put the people that began to work for us after that over into a defined contribution plan. We've suspended 401(k) matches at times and not -- unfortunately, not made contributions to our defined contribution plan. All in effort to try to lower the cost of the company. And there are other areas that we are looking at to accomplish even more cost reduction. I do commend our competitors, as well as our company, for approaching cost issues in more of a lean fashion because if we deal with these lesser levels of freight, for some period of time into the future, our company, as well as the companies we complete with, are going to be more efficient. And that's something that's going to be important to have a successful business model going forward.

David Humphrey

Analyst

Amanda, I think, we've got time for one more question.

Operator

Operator

And we have one more question on the line from the line of Matt Brooklier.

Matthew Brooklier

Analyst

I jumped on a little bit late. I heard that October tonnage or tonnage per day was turning down 4%. That was inclusive of the impact from Hurricane Sandy, is that correct? Did you -- are you given...

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

Yes. It was 2% before that. It's -- kind of before we had that impact, we were estimating about 2% decline.

Matthew Brooklier

Analyst

Okay. So pre-Sandy 2%, okay, that was the question. And just secondly, where are we with respect to cross-selling initiatives with Panther, I think that was part of the rationale for the purchase. Where are we in that process at this point?

Judy McReynolds

Analyst

Well, we have had some wins with that whole process, pretty quick wins. Just to give you a picture of some of those, Panther now covers about 85% of the x-Met, time-definite business that ABF has, which that -- moves that can't be handled within the ABF network because of time constraints and that sort of thing. And so Panther has really moved up and in terms of the solution there for ABF customers, just to make sure that we handle all of their needs. And again, these needs would be beyond what can be handled in the ABF network. We also -- FleetNet, our emergency roadside and preventative maintenance company is handling all of Panther's business there. And so that's been a good account addition for FleetNet as well. And there's a number of other areas, we're looking at sales strategies, global forwarding, best-in-class solutions for customers, and doing some LTL specialized services, even that Panther generates, that can move through the ABF network. And so there's a good list, both teams at ABF and at Panther, and then as well in some of our other subsidiary companies are working hard to try to get the best answer for our corporation and for our shareholders and I commend them for doing that. So it's been good.

David Humphrey

Analyst

Well, I think we're done. And I just want to thank everybody for joining us this morning and we appreciate your interest in Arkansas Best Corporation. This concludes our conference call. Thanks a lot.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude the conference for the call for today. We thank you for your participation and ask that you please disconnect your line.