Brent Yeagy
Analyst · Stephens. Your line is open
Thanks Ryan. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Because we're wrapping up a record quarter on top of a record year, while starting another calendar year with very bright prospects, it feels like an ideal time to review our strategic choices and recall how we've arrived at this juncture where our company is performing very well in the midst of soft freight market conditions. Rewinding the last several years, we've added critical new legs to the stool that have enabled Wabash to grow in capability and performance. The addition of truck bodies to the Wabash portfolio has positioned the company to serve customers across product classes and also, maybe more importantly, broadened our perspective and allowed our team to get closer to trends and transportation, logistics and distribution like the disruption to logistics models caused by e-commerce and home delivery, rapid growth in cold chain or trends in power only brokerage. I am delighted that those who were part of that decisions still surround and support me in my current role as CEO. Our organizational journey has taken us from a siloed product-centric approach to a customer-centric model that prioritizes ease of doing business across our suite of products and services. This model has brought us closer to our customers, evidenced by the commercial progress we've made over the last 18 months. The deployment of the Wabash Management System philosophy has given us the process driven and problem solving culture that was required to meet the challenges of a dynamic environment we find ourselves in today. One of the key process improvements derived from the use of our management system tools has been our long-term agreement construct, a new vision of supply chain engagement and the rapid deployment of recurrent revenue generating initiatives. The modification of our pricing construct to a pass-through model allows us to better serve our customers with transparent pricing. Our improved pricing construct also forms the groundwork for our longer-term agreements which would have been unworkable under a fixed price construct. These longer-term agreements prioritize capacity for our customers to be able to forward conviction around their equipment needs to engage in collaborative multiyear demand planning. Beyond removing these strategic customers from the annual game of musical chairs for some customers are inevitably left without a seat at the table, these strategic relationships will be additive as we collaborate on product development and R&D efforts to jointly address unmet equipment needs. We are very pleased to have an innovative organization like JB Hunt as our inaugural partner. As we demonstrate the visionary leadership required to structurally improve relationships with major customers, we have successfully attracted the attention of key industry suppliers. As our 10-year supply agreements with both Hydro and Ryerson show, suppliers recognize the moves Wabash is making and are aligning with us to combine our respective strengths in order to support our customers. As our organization continues to leverage its - more streamlined collaborative structure to create value for customers, shareholders and our communities, a major strategic focus is our parts and service initiative. Quickly spinning up Wabash Parts, our parts distribution joint venture to developing innovative new offerings like trailers as a service for the power only brokerage space, we're excited for the potential to grow this more recurring revenue business that will act as a synergistic support mechanism for our transportation equipment. Our Board of Directors has been incredibly supportive of the organization evolution and the Board has continued to keep pace with us by adding new directors with capabilities that will further support Wabash in strategic direction. After the September edition of Trent Broberg, CEO of Acertus, an automotive logistics-as-a-service platform, our Board welcome Sudhanshu Priyadarshi as our newest Director. Mr. Priyadarshi is a global finance and operations leader with extensive experience in the tech, logistics, e-commerce, retail, consumer packaged goods and pharmaceutical industries in the U.S., Asia and Australia. He currently serves as Chief Financial Officer for Keurig Dr Pepper and previously served in roles at Vista Outdoor, Flexport, Walmart, Cipla and PepsiCo. We're excited to continue driving our strategy forward with the support and contributions of all of our Board of Directors. Moving onto our fourth quarter financial performance, our team delivered record EPS of $0.84, which exceeded our expectations for the quarter. Between the increased volumes and improved pricing, revenue increased 37% from the same quarter last year to an all-time record of $657 million. Profitability also continued to sequentially strengthen as we achieved 14.4% gross margin and 8.8% operating margin. I like to call out that our operating margins expanded by 680 basis points relative to the same quarter last year. For 2022 as a whole, I believe we've demonstrated improvement across any indicator of financial performance you can look at. We're very encouraged as our strategic choices shine through to enhance financial performance capped by record revenue of $2.5 billion and record EPS of $2.25. Moving onto market conditions and our backlog. We are mindful of freight rates that have been indicative of the ongoing correction in freight markets. For numerous reasons, we have not seen this reduction in rates impact underlying trailer demand. Between cyclical and structural influences, we agree with third-party forecasters that equipment demand is likely to remain strong. With under buys in prior years and supply chain remaining as a constraint into 2023, implied demand for this year is still very likely to outstrip supply just on those specific factors alone. Adding structural influences like the demand from formation of trailer pools to support drop and hook activity or power only brokerage, and we believe substantial scarcity remains in the marketplace, that's before we consider what would be another significant tailwind for trailers coming from the ramp of autonomous as that technology continues to advance. Turning to our backlog, total bookings ended the fourth quarter at approximately $3.4 billion, up sequentially by approximately $1.1 billion from the end of Q3 despite an outflow of record revenue. This implies net order inflow of $1.7 billion during Q4. And for full transparency although not announced until January, our long-term agreement with JB Hunt and a to be announced additional agreement are reflected in this backlog figure. Given the addition of multiyear orders, we are adding disclosure on the portion of our backlog we expect to ship within the next 12 months. Ending Q4, that subset of our backlog was $2.8 billion which implies somewhere in the range of $600 million worth of orders that reside beyond 2023. Given the excellent visibility provided by our backlog, we are initiating our 2023 financial outlook with a revenue range of $2.8 billion to $3 billion and an EPS range of $2.70 for $3. I'd like to reiterate that we are looking at 2023 as a year where we can achieve significant revenue, operating income and EPS generation even if the supply chain shows no improvement. As our backlog indicates, we do have the upside to our outlook if supply chain conditions improve. I'd like to conclude my comments by reiterating my excitement for the pace of strategic progress that we've been able to achieve. This is a testament to abate and level of engagement of our Wabash team who has trusted in our organizational and strategic moves and is executing incredibly well on our day-to-day business while driving structural improvements in the fundamentals of the business. With a record backlog and evidence throughout 2022 of great execution on margins, we are positioned to set a new bar for the financial performance during 2023. With that, I hand it over to Mike for his comments.