Operator
Operator
Hello and welcome to the Hub Group, Inc. Second Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. I am joined on the call by Dave Yeager, Hub's CEO; Mark Yeager, our President and Chief Operating Officer; and Terri Pizzuto, our CFO. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. In order for everyone to have an opportunity to participate, please limit your inquiries to one primary and one follow-up question. Any forward-looking statements made during the course of this call represent our best good-faith judgment as to what may happen in the future. Statements that are forward-looking can be identified by the use of words such as believe, expect, anticipate and project. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in these forward-looking statements. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to your host, Dave Yeager. You may now begin. David P. Yeager - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you, and good afternoon. We appreciate you joining Hub Group's second quarter's earnings call. Second quarter business levels continued the positive momentum we experienced in February and March. Intermodal volumes increased and pricing continue to be strong. And although still below historic norms, rail service is showing incremental improvement. Unyson Logistics did take a slight step back due to the loss of a large customer, but our sales pipeline has strengthened and we look for that business unit to regain its footing in the second half of the year. The highway business has posted growth that was better than forecasted despite the current difficult truck brokerage environment. And last but not least, Mode continues their streak of increasing revenue and margin. So overall, we had a solid quarter that reflects positive momentum in our various businesses. And with that, I'm going to pass the call on to Mark to guide you through the specifics. Mark A. Yeager - Vice Chairman, President & Chief Operating Officer: Thank you, David, and good afternoon everyone. I'm pleased to report that while we still face challenges, we made real quantifiable progress on a number of fronts this quarter starting with intermodal. This quarter consolidated big-box intermodal volume increased 6%. Hub segment volume grew 6% with our strongest growth coming in the local East market, where volume was up 14%. Local West volume was up 3%, while transcon volume was down 3%. We continue to see good growth in Mexico with 35% volume growth in Q2. Despite the industry slowdown, we remain confident that the Hub segment will hit the previously discussed 3% to 7% volume growth range for the year. Most volume was up 9% in the second quarter with growth in transcon and local West and a slight decline in local East volume. As predicted, rail service has yet to fully recover. While LOGs improved sequentially for our Eastern partner, they deteriorated in the West. Rail on-time performance followed a similar pattern with sequential improvement in the East and sequential deterioration in the West. Thus far, July numbers are more encouraging showing sequential and, for the first time in quite a while, year-over-year improvement in on-time performance for both of our rail partners. In addition, we maintained on-time performance in the mid-90%s for our customers throughout the quarter and into July. We continue to see success with pricing in the second quarter. Interestingly, pricing improved the most in local East where we also grew volume and the least in transcon where we experienced volume declines. We've maintained pricing discipline, consistently secured increases with existing customers and improved mix. With about 70% of the bid season completed, we are pleased with the results thus far. Fleet utilization came in at 15.1 days for the quarter, 0.5 days better than Q1, but 1.4 days worse than Q2 of 2014. Progress continues with satellite tracking. We have now installed the devices on over 5,000 of our containers. They've performed well and the majority of our fleet should be similarly equipped by the end of the year. Driver count closed out the quarter at 2,724, a net decline of 16 drivers as the hiring environment continued to be a challenge. We have stabilized the situation in California and our dray sourcing initiative is helping us achieve the most cost-effective mix of in-house and outside power for our network. We are currently rolling out this initiative in other critical markets and should have the implementation completed in time for peak. Our truck brokerage division, Hub Highway demonstrated strong performance with 14% volume growth. We are seeing positive results across the board, including an increase in our core business, an uptick in high value-added work and even stronger spot volumes despite a somewhat lackluster demand environment. The team's commitment to carrier development, its more focused marketing efforts and its improved execution are producing solid performance as highway continues to make progress. Units and logistics experienced a slowdown in the quarter with an 8% revenue decline. While we anticipate continued onboardings and have a number of opportunities in the pipeline, we are likely to see decelerating revenue, but solid bottom line contribution from Unyson for the remainder of the year. We are happy to report that Unyson has once again been selected as one of the top 10 North American logistics companies by Inbound Logistics. This is the seventh year in a row that Unyson has received this honor. We remain bullish on Unyson's growth prospects over the long term. As a result, this year, we will be investing further in our transportation management technology. This investment will enable us to enhance our analytical and executional capabilities, create a more scalable and responsive product and further differentiate our services in the marketplace. Mode Transportation continued its solid performance in the second quarter. Despite a somewhat sluggish industry environment, Mode delivered a quarterly revenue increase of 1% and posted a 12% growth in operating income. All product lines including intermodal, truckload, LTL and international experienced volume growth versus the prior year. Mode added 289 new customers, onboarded five new independent business owners and brought in three new sales agents. Existing IBOs also continue to expand, adding 12 salespeople to their organizations. And with that, I'm going to pass the call on to Terri for financial highlights. Terri A. Pizzuto - Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer & Executive VP: Thanks, Mark, and hello everyone. As usual, I'd like to highlight three points. First, Hub Group's gross margin as a percentage of sales improved 30 basis points and gross margin increased $3.1 million. Second, Hub truck brokerage had a strong quarter with growth in volume, revenue and margin. And, third, Mode continued its solid performance with the 12% increase in operating income. Here are the key numbers for the second quarter. Hub Group's revenue increased 1% to $900 million. Hub Group's diluted earnings per share was $0.51 which is the same as last year. Now I'll discuss details for the quarter starting with the financial performance of the Hub segment. The Hub segment generated revenue of $686 million, which is a 1% increase compared to last year. Let's take a closer look at Hub's business lines. Intermodal revenue increased 2%. Intermodal volume was up 6%. Price and mix were also up. These increases were partially offset by a decline for fuel. The price increase this quarter was slightly higher than last quarter. Loads from durable goods customers were up 24%, loads from retail customers were up 7% and loads from paper customers were up 20%. Truck brokerage revenue was up 8%. Truck brokerage handled 14% more loads, and fuel mix and price combined were down 6%. Logistics revenue decreased 8%. This decline is due to losing a customer in May and one customer taking a portion of their business in-house. Hub's gross margin increased by $1.5 million. Gross margin as a percentage of sales was 10.5% or 10 basis points higher than the second quarter of 2014. Intermodal gross margin increased because of a 6% increase in loads, price increases and more favorable mix. We're excited about this margin expansion since it's the first time in two years that Intermodal margin has grown. We overcame headwinds including utilization being 1.4 days worse than last year costing us $2 million and loaded miles deteriorating slightly. These headwinds caused intermodal gross margin as a percentage of sales to be down 10 basis points. Truck brokerage gross margin increased because of growth with targeted customer accounts which included some seasonal business. Truck brokerage gross margin as a percentage of sales was up 60 basis points due to more value-added services, price increases and better purchasing. Logistics gross margin decreased due to loss of business. Logistics gross margin as a percentage of sales was up 40 basis points due mostly to purchasing more cost effectively. Sequentially, the Hub segment gross margin as a percentage of sales increased 70 basis points. Intermodal gross margin improved 90 basis points and truck brokerage increased 60 basis points. Hub's costs and expenses increased $3.7 million to $50.1 million in 2015 compared to $46.4 million in 2014. The increase relates to a $3.2 million increase in salaries and benefits and a $400,000 increase in general and administrative expense. Salaries and benefits are up because of higher head count, annual employee raises and an increase in commission. General and administrative costs are higher because of software maintenance expense and personal property taxes. Finally, operating margin for the Hub segment was 3.2% which was 40 basis points lower than last year's 3.6%. Now, I'll discuss results for our Mode segment. Mode had a solid quarter with revenue of $234 million, which is up 1% over last year. The revenue breakdown is $118 million in intermodal which was up 4%, $83 million in truck brokerage which was down 4% and $33 million in logistics which was up 6%. Mode's gross margin increased $1.7 million year-over-year due to growth in all three service lines. Gross margin as a percentage of sales was 12.6% compared to 12% last year due mostly to a 70 basis point improvement in intermodal yields and a 60 basis point improvement in truck brokerage yields. Mode's total costs and expenses increased $860,000 compared to last year because of an increase in agent commission. Operating margin for Mode was 3.2% compared to 2.9% last year. We're proud that this is the first time Mode's operating margin has been north of 3%. Turning to head count for Hub Group, we had 1,575 employees excluding drivers at the end of June. That's up 20 people from the end of March. Now, I'll discuss what we expect for this year. We believe that our 2015 diluted earnings per share will range from $1.85 to $2. This guidance has been adjusted to exclude the one-time costs in the first quarter. We think we'll have 36,100,000 weighted average diluted shares outstanding. Our goal is to improve gross margin as a percentage of sales from the 11% that we had in the first half of the year. We anticipate rail service will improve and that utilization will be about a half a day better in the second half of the year. We expect gross margin as a percentage of sales for the second half of this year to be between 11.3% and 11.8%. The main drivers for improvement are better rail service, customer price increases, savings from the initiatives that we've discussed and truck brokerage growth. We think that our costs and expenses will range between $73 million and $75 million a quarter for the rest of the year. Our tax expense this quarter was approximately $400,000 lower than normal because of a change in Missouri income taxes. We expect our effective tax rate to be about 38% in the last half of the year. Turning now to our balance sheet and how we used our cash. We ended the quarter with $157 million in cash and $117 million in debt including capitalized leases. We spent $9 million on capital expenditures this quarter. This includes $7 million for tractors, which we funded with debt. This brings total year-to-date capital expenditures to $24 million. We expect our capital expenditures to range between $85 million and $95 million in 2015. We committed to purchase at least 300 tractors for $43 million. We also have an option to purchase another 75 tractors. We're purchasing 1,000 containers and investing in technology projects, including transportation management systems and satellite tracking. We intend to fund the 2015 tractor and container purchases with debt. And to wrap up on a positive note, in July, we paid $4.4 million to purchase 114,352 shares of stock. We have $39.1 million remaining on our share buyback authorization. Dave, over to you for closing remarks. David P. Yeager - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Great. Thank you, Terri. To sum up the call, the second quarter built on the positive momentum of Q1, the pricing environment continues to be moving in the right direction of both our intermodal and highway volumes are showing signs of improvement. Lastly, we continue to see incremental service improvement by rail partners and look for that trend to continue for the remainder of this year. And at this point in time, we'll open up the line to any questions.