Pat Keslin
Analyst · D.A. Davidson. Please go ahead
Thanks, Brent. Beginning with a review of our quarterly financial results, in the fourth quarter, consolidated revenue was $417 million. During the quarter, we shipped approximately 6,770 new trailers and 3,010 truck bodies. Gross margin was 10.3% of sales during the quarter, while operating margin came in at 0.9%. In the fourth quarter, adjusted EBITDA was $21.1 million or 5.1% of sales. Finally, for the quarter, net loss was $1 million or negative $0.02 per diluted share. Moving on to our reporting segments. Transportation Solutions generated revenue of $370 million and operating income of $17.9 million or 4.8% of sales. Parts & Services generated revenue of $48.6 million and operating income of $4.5 million or 9.2% of sales. Full year operating cash generation amounted to $117 million, aided by working capital released during the year. Free cash flow for 2024 was $38 million as traditional capital expenditure reduced from peak levels in 2023, a trend we anticipate continuing in 2025. Regarding our balance sheet, our liquidity, which comprises both cash and available borrowings, was $422 million ending December 31. We finished Q4 with a net debt leverage ratio of 1.7 times. Turning to capital allocation during the fourth quarter, we invested $21 million via capital expenditure and invested $6 million in revenue-generating assets for our trailers as a Saervice initiative. We utilized $8.6 million to repurchase shares and paid our quarterly dividend of $3.5 million. For the full year, we invested $72 million in traditional capital expenditures, invested $7 million in revenue-generating assets, allocated $64 million to repurchase shares and returned $14.8 million to shareholders via our dividend. I'd like to take a moment to drill down on share repurchases as we're proud of our consistent track record of repurchase activity. We took out approximately 2.9 million shares during 2024, which equates to a reduction of about 6% of diluted shares. Zooming out further, over the last five years, we've repurchased over 12 million shares, which has reduced our share count by 22%. Our capital allocation framework will continue to prioritize capital expenditure above and beyond our annual maintenance CapEx spend of $20 million to $25 million in order to support our organic growth initiatives. We are also committed to maintaining our dividend, and we'll continue to evaluate opportunities for share repurchase alongside of bolt-on M&A. As you may recall, we recognized an aggregate liability of $462 million in Q3 2024, after a jury ruled against us in the product liability trial in St. Louis. The trial related to a 2019 motor vehicle accident in which a passenger vehicle traveling at least 45 miles per hour struck the back of a near stationary 2004 Wabash trailer. The plaintiff claims that the rear impact card on the trailer was defective, even though the rear impact guard was designed and developed in full compliance with applicable federal regulations. Among other errors committed at trial, the judge erroneously excluded all evidence regarding the driver's intoxication and plaintiff's failure to wear seatbelts at the time of the accident. For these and other reasons, Wabash maintains that the verdict in this case is not supported by the facts or the law. The company has filed post-trial motions available on the public docket and we continue to evaluate all legal options. We did incur an incremental $1 million of legal spend relative to our prior guidance within fourth quarter SG&A related to our activities around this verdict. And we are baking in continued elevated legal spend in our 2025 SG&A outlook. We'll continue to provide regular updates as they become relevant for this verdict as well as call out any deviations in anticipated legal expense. Moving on to our outlook for 2025, we expect revenue of $1.9 billion to $2.1 billion with a midpoint of $2 billion. We continue to expect truck body tank trailers and parts and services to serve as sources of relative strength in 2025. We expect meaningful revenue growth in our Parts & Services segment as freight market conditions stabilize. Additionally, it's worth calling out that our truck body business is poised to benefit over the coming two years from 2027 EPA mandates that will impact engine economics. From an operating income perspective, we expect to generate $80 million at the midpoint or approximately 4% operating margins. We expect to see about $5 million of expense for our Wabash Marketplace joint venture run below operating income during 2025. Assuming a tax rate of roughly 25%, this results in an EPS outlook of $0.85 to $1.05 with a midpoint of $0.95. Moving on to capital deployment expectations for 2025, we anticipate traditional capital investments to be between $50 million and $60 million in 2025 as a result of planned expenditures to support our strategic growth initiatives. We anticipate that investment in our TaaS fleet will increase from 2024, and we'll give further granularity as that figure comes into focus. As a reminder, it's typical for Q1 to be our lowest quarter in terms of revenue and EPS generation. In addition to some SG&A expense that runs through the P&L in Q1, we believe that seasonality will be more pronounced this year as you've likely heard commentary from carriers related to relatively modest first quarter expectations. We believe our demand patterns in 2025 are likely to play out in a similar fashion and we expect first quarter revenue to come in between $420 million to $450 million and EPS to be in the range of negative $0.20 to negative $0.30. As Brent mentioned, 2024 has been an important year for Wabash, both in demonstrating the improved resilience of our business portfolio as well as continuing to generate strategic progress that will allow Wabash to deliver value to customers by combining innovative equipment offerings with a growing set of value-added services. By executing against our strategy, we believe we will be able to enhance the company's financial performance at cycle trough, cycle peak and all phases in between. I'll now turn the call back to the operator, and we'll open it up for questions.