J.B. Hunt (JBHT) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Image source: The Motley Fool.

DATE

Wednesday, April 15, 2026 at 5 p.m. ET

CALL PARTICIPANTS

• President — Shelley Simpson
• Chief Financial Officer — Brad Delco
• Executive Vice President, Sales & Marketing — Spencer Frazier
• Chief Operating Officer — Nick Hobbs
• Executive Vice President, People & President, Dedicated Contract Services — Brad Hicks
• President, Intermodal — Darren Field

TAKEAWAYS

• Revenue -- $8.1 billion, representing a 5% increase.
• Operating Income -- $761 million, up 16%.
• Diluted Earnings Per Share -- $7.14, an increase of 27%.
• Margin Expansion -- Operating margin grew 70 basis points compared to the prior-year period.
• Cost Reduction -- Over $30 million in structural costs were eliminated in the quarter; cumulative run-rate tracking above the original $100 million target, now close to or above $130 million.
• Capital Deployment -- Net capital expenditures guidance reiterated at $600 million-$800 million for the year, with Dedicated being the main variable influencing the range.
• Share Repurchases -- 380,000 shares repurchased in the quarter for approximately $80 million.
• Debt Reduction -- $700 million of notes retired at maturity on March 1; total debt ratio at 0.8 turns, below stated target of one turn.
• Dividend Growth -- 2% increase in the quarterly dividend, marking the 22nd consecutive year of dividend increases.
• Intermodal Volume -- Segment volumes up 3%; January down 1%, February up 1%, March up 8%; set company record for first-quarter and weekly volume (over 46,000 loads delivered in a week in March).
• Eastern Intermodal Loads -- Up 7% over a 13% prior-year comp; transcontinental (transcon) volume flat during the quarter.
• JBT (Truckload) Revenue and Volume -- Revenue rose 23% on 19% load growth; gross profit declined 5% due to higher purchased transportation rates.
• ICS (Brokerage) Volume -- Load growth of 10%, while direct expense decreased 1% and revenue per load increased by 9% year over year.
• Final Mile Revenue Headwind -- $90 million anticipated for the year due to previously disclosed lost business; partially offset by new business wins and a building sales pipeline.
• Dedicated Contract Services (DCS) Operating Income -- Up 9% on modest revenue growth, attributed to strong cost management despite weather-related impacts.
• Net Truck Sales (DCS) -- Approximately 295 trucks sold in the quarter; full-year target is 800 to 1,000 trucks, with record engineered design requests processed in March.
• Safety Performance -- DOT preventable accident rate beat prior-year's first quarter result by 14%, achieving a company record.
• Customer Retention -- Described as "very high" and a driver of share gains, with continued recognition via multiple Carrier of the Year awards.
• Fuel Prices Impact -- Noted as "dilutive to overall margins" but generally a pass-through; particularly highlighted in intermodal and Dedicated.
• Hiring Needs -- Driver hiring needs currently at the highest since June 2022, reflecting a tightening labor market.

Need a quote from a Motley Fool analyst? Email pr@fool.com

RISKS

• Increased weather disruptions, especially January and February, negatively impacted incremental margins and contributed to higher operational costs.
• Persistent inflation in insurance premiums, medical costs, and higher fuel prices continue to pressure margins despite cost savings.
• Higher purchased transportation rates reduced gross profit by 5% in JBT, highlighting increased cost pressure when outsourcing third-party capacity.
• Ongoing driver shortages and more challenging hiring environment as capacity rationalization in the market accelerates, with driver needs climbing to new highs and rising difficulty in certain geographies.

SUMMARY

J.B. Hunt Transport Services (NASDAQ:JBHT) reported broad-based financial and operational improvements, including record first-quarter intermodal volume and marked progress on cost-reduction goals, while navigating a shifting freight environment characterized by tighter capacity and structural market change. Management reiterated disciplined growth priorities, ongoing investments in people, technology, and capacity, and signaled acceleration in customer demand for Dedicated and mode conversion solutions as market conditions evolve. Notably, freight market tightness is viewed as principally supply-driven, with regulatory enforcement driving exit of non-compliant capacity and increased difficulty hiring qualified drivers, especially in key border geographies. JBI (intermodal) set a first-quarter record with more than 46,000 loads delivered in a week, while DCS executed nearly 300 truck sales and maintained a healthy sales pipeline fueled by diverse engineered design requests. Executives highlighted that all pricing gains have yet to fully offset inflation in costs, particularly in purchased transportation and insurance, but expect eventual price recovery to outpace core inflation as the cycle progresses. Earnings quality was supported by margin expansion, robust customer retention, and 22 consecutive years of dividend increases, while the outlook remains cautious but constructive given ongoing supply rationalization and latent demand tailwinds.

• Spencer Frazier said, "Capacity, I will just say this, has inverted, and it has changed rapidly as regulatory enforcement continues to be implemented. And we believe that enforcement is going to continue to accelerate. Also, there are multiple shipper and other surveys out there done by several of you that indicate that their perspective of capacity is now that pricing is going up with solid demand."
• Darren Field confirmed, "our network can support up to 20% more volume," emphasizing a strategy to grow into prefunded intermodal capacity rather than reduce it.
• Brad Delco stated, "we are sort of running at a pace north of $30 million a quarter. We targeted $100 million. You know, I think we are closer to running somewhere close to or just north of $130 million."
• Nick Hobbs highlighted, "our current driver need is the highest it has been since June 2022."
• Shelley Simpson affirmed margin targets have not changed, stating, "We have not changed any of our margin targets externally, but I will tell you, I think we have got a few opportunities. One is really around the work we are doing in our transformation work that I have talked about now here for the last several quarters. So using our technology and our investments—and that being a core foundation for us—and really how we are using the disciplined ROI-driven investment to lower cost to serve, how we think about AI and that really being a force multiplier across our entire organization. And so know that we are early on in that; we do believe that there is good opportunity for us to think about that differently." as technology and cycle normalization progress.
• JBT and ICS both experienced year over year gross profit declines despite revenue and load growth, attributed to higher purchased transportation costs.
• Management identified increased customer focus on operational quality, reliability, and network depth over price alone, a shift marked by more disciplined pricing conversations and recurring "mini bids."

INDUSTRY GLOSSARY

• JBI: The Intermodal segment of J.B. Hunt, involving rail and truck transportation of freight using company-owned containers and chassis.
• DCS: Dedicated Contract Services, offering tailored fleet and logistics solutions for specific customer needs.
• ICS: Integrated Capacity Solutions, the freight brokerage and multimodal logistics segment of J.B. Hunt, managing capacity and providing transportation alternatives.
• Final Mile: Segment focused on last-mile delivery and installation, often for large consumer items (appliances, furniture, etc.).
• JBT: Truckload freight services, using company-owned tractors and trailers for over-the-road transportation.
• Transcon: Reference to transcontinental routes servicing freight between West Coast and other regions, mainly within intermodal operations.
• Box Turns: Measure of trailer/container utilization based on the rate assets cycle through loads within a network.
• Routing Guide: The set of instructions or protocols companies use to allocate freight among contracted carriers; "breaking down" means carriers are unable to serve as planned, opening spot opportunities.
• Engineered Design Requests: Customer proposals requiring custom fleet and logistics service design, indicating demand for specialized Dedicated solutions.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Shelley Simpson: Thank you, Andrew, and good afternoon. I want to begin by thanking our teams for the work they continue to do every day for our customers. The year-over-year improvement we delivered both financially and operationally is a direct result of the focus, discipline, and commitment across this organization. We delivered strong results relative to the market in a still challenging environment, reflecting disciplined execution against the strategy we laid out. We are taking share driven by the strength of our execution and consistent service for our customers. As we moved through the first quarter, the freight environment felt meaningfully different than what we have operated in over the past several years.

When we spoke last quarter, I described the truckload market as fragile, and that we are testing the elasticity of supply. And that assessment proved accurate. Continued regulatory enforcement to improve safety in our industry has removed non-compliant capacity, and when combined with early signs of improved demand, resulted in a tighter truckload market throughout the quarter. While predicting inflection points is never precise, we believe we are on a path of recovery. We feel confident about how we are positioned. The operational discipline we have established over the past several years is showing up in year-over-year financial improvements and enhanced customer responses, enabling us to shift from a defensive posture to playing offense from a position of strength.

This confidence is grounded in results. We have delivered exceptional performance in safety and service, surpassed expectations on lowering our cost to serve, and maintained very high customer retention. Our strong execution has earned the company multiple Carrier of the Year awards as customers increasingly choose J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc. This opens doors to growth opportunities, and we are approaching them with intentionality and discipline. Let me close by outlining our key priorities for the year, and how they position us for success in this dynamic environment. First, we are focused on disciplined growth driven by operational excellence.

Customer conversations during bid season have become more constructive, though there is still work to do to fully restore pricing and margins to expected levels. We are pushing where appropriate and remain confident in the value we deliver. We are seeing increased traction in ICS and JBT, consistent with early cycle market shifts, and there remains opportunity in intermodal, which Darren will discuss. Second, we will continue to leverage our investments in people, technology, and capacity to drive sustainable, competitive advantages in our business. We consistently invest in our people who represent J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc. to our customers and are central to our operational excellence.

Our technology connects and empowers our people and helps us optimally utilize our capacity. And we are building on our innovative foundation to drive greater automation and productivity. We have prefunded our capacity needs, particularly in intermodal, at the bottom of the cycle. These remain the core foundations in our business and we expect to see future benefit from these investments. Third, we remain focused on repairing margins and driving long-term shareholder value. We are a disciplined growth company and equally disciplined in how we deploy capital. We have momentum in the business and we will continue to build on our strong start to the year. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Brad.

Brad Delco: Thanks, Shelley, and good afternoon. Let me start with the first quarter results. On a GAAP basis, revenue was up 5%, while operating income improved 16%, and diluted earnings per share improved 27% versus the prior-year period. We experienced strong demand for our service offerings as a predominantly supply-driven freight recovery continued to gain steam, coupled with some modest improvements in demand. During the quarter, we executed well across our service, safety, and cost-to-serve initiatives which continue to gain momentum. As we discussed during the first quarter conference circuit, this momentum was partially offset by the impact of weather, which negatively impacted incremental margins in the quarter. We also saw volatile fuel prices.

Our business and our industry have fuel surcharge programs that protect our operations from fluctuations in fuel markets. Admittedly, intermodal is a very fuel-efficient solution for our customers, so higher fuel prices enhance the value proposition of our leading intermodal franchise. It is worth reminding our investors fuel is generally a pass-through expense and typically has a small impact on profit dollars quarter to quarter; however, it is dilutive to overall margins. Let me turn to our lowering our cost to serve initiative. We have given an update each quarter since we announced our $100 million target to remove structural cost from our business.

In the first quarter, we continued to make additional progress, eliminating over $30 million during the quarter. Again, our intent is to make sure these cost initiatives are visible in our results and, despite further investments in our people, higher insurance premiums, medical cost, and fuel prices, and worse weather, we were able to expand margins 70 basis points year over year in the quarter with pricing that still did not cover core inflation. Going forward, we will continue to challenge ourselves on our structural cost without sacrificing our ability to capitalize on market opportunities to compound our growth ahead. The discipline across our company also extends to our capital deployment.

We continue to prioritize reinvestment in the business and will reiterate our guidance of a $600 million to $800 million net CapEx plan for the year. Success-based growth opportunities in Dedicated will continue to be the main catalyst to influence this range. We retired $700 million of notes that matured on March 1 and ended the quarter with 0.8 turns of debt, below our stated target of one turn. We repurchased 380,000 shares of stock in the quarter, approximately $80 million. Finally, back in January, the Board authorized a 2% increase in our dividend, which is also the 22nd consecutive year of increasing our quarterly dividend. Let me close with this.

First, we are executing extremely well across the organization on operational excellence in service, safety, and lowering our cost to serve. Second, without any meaningful tailwinds from price driven by this recent market inflection, we have already put ourselves on a path to restoring our margins, which we think is a differentiator in the market. Third, we have prefunded a lot of our growth while maintaining a significant amount of flexibility to deploy capital to drive long-term value for our shareholders. We are operating from a position of strength. That concludes my comments, and I will turn it over to Spencer.

Spencer Frazier: Thank you, Brad, and good afternoon. I want to start with what we are seeing from customers and across our network. Throughout the first quarter, there has been an evolving narrative from customers that tightening in the truckload market would be temporary in nature. Today, most customers understand there has been and continues to be a shift in industry capacity that is impacting the truckload market, and this is a structural change. Customers have not seen a capacity-led cycle change with the exception of when the industry implemented ELDs or experienced a constrained market since 2022. What we are seeing is a freight market that has fundamentally less slack than it did in prior cycles.

Capacity has been steadily exiting for an extended period driven by regulatory enforcement, rising costs, and financial performance that does not support capital reinvestment. Even if spot rates increase, capacity continues to leave the industry. You can look at most industry KPIs and they are either at their highest or lowest levels since 2022. Truckload rates, tender rejections, the ISM PMI, and several others are all at their highest levels since 2022, and trucking employment is at the lowest levels since 2022—all proof points of structural change. At the same time, customers' supply chains are leaner, agile, and more synchronized than they have ever been while their demand is solid and increasing. This combination matters.

It means the system is far more sensitive to even modest changes in volume or disruption. We saw that dynamic clearly late last year. As volumes increased around peak, conditions tightened quickly. Service became more valuable, and customers leaned into partners they trust to execute—partners who can honor commitments when it matters. This dynamic continued into the first quarter. For J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc., that environment plays directly to our strengths. We are seeing strong customer retention, continued share gains across all our services, an expanding pipeline, and much more disciplined pricing conversations. We are not chasing volume, but we are taking market share.

We are focused on freight that fits our networks, creates value for our customers, and at the right rate to generate durable returns. What is also different this time is how customers are behaving. We are seeing far less price-led decision making and far more focus on execution quality. They are adjusting to capacity challenges with frequent mini bids, they are consolidating freight with fewer, more reliable providers, and they are prioritizing scale, visibility, and execution. So while we remain mindful about the macro and recognize today's risks, we are confident in our positioning. We built this company for environments like this, where operational excellence, reliability, and network depth matter.

Our focus remains the same: execute at a high level, honor commitments when the market tightens, and use our platform to help customers manage volatility. That approach has driven share gains in the past and we believe it will continue to do so well into the future. I will now hand it over to Nick.

Nick Hobbs: Thanks, Spencer, and good afternoon. I am going to start with safety. We are coming off of three consecutive years of record safety performance as measured by DOT preventable accidents per million miles. I am proud to say that we continue to lead the industry and set new records for ourselves, besting last year's first quarter result by 14% despite a materially more challenging weather-impacted quarter versus prior year. This performance directly reflects the commitment of our drivers and broader teams to operating safe and secure every day. As we continue to grow with customers and take market share, we will bring on drivers and operations-focused employees to maintain our operational excellence our customers expect.

In fact, our current driver need is the highest it has been since June 2022. As the driver market has tightened, we have begun to execute various strategies that allow us to recruit to meet our needs and support our growth. As these new drivers are onboarded, our emphasis on safety starts day one, with our more tenured drivers reinforcing our culture through training and the sharing of best practices. Moving to the business, I will start with Final Mile. End-market demand has shown signs of stabilization across furniture and exercise equipment, with appliance replacement demand remaining solid. We continue to see strength in our fulfillment business driven primarily by off-price retail channels. Going forward, our focus has not changed.

We are committed to providing high service levels for customers and being safe and secure while continuing to lead the industry in background verification standards. Last quarter, we spoke to an expected $90 million revenue headwind this year from some lost business. Since then, we have secured new wins and see a strong and developing pipeline as we work to offset as much of that headwind as possible without sacrificing returns for the unique value we provide. Moving on to our highway businesses. Overall demand was better than normal seasonality with more spot opportunities as tender rejections remain high and routing guides were breaking down. On capacity, the truckload market remained unseasonably tight as market factors continued to pressure capacity.

We believe the market tightness was driven primarily by shortage of supply but with some positive elements of demand, which is a slight positive development from Q4 which seemed to be mostly supply-driven. In JBT, we reported our fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit volume growth as our focus on operational excellence is leading to additional opportunities for growth and market share gains. Execution remains strong as we continue to grow revenue while effectively managing controllable cost. However, the tight truckload market and rapid rise in fuel prices late in the quarter created challenges for independent contractors, leading us to source more third-party capacity to cover loads in the first quarter.

To put this in context, our revenue increased 23% on 19% load growth, but our gross profit declined 5%, primarily due to the higher purchased transportation rates. Going forward, our focus remains on disciplined growth of our trailing network while continuing to improve the utilization of our assets through improved box turns. I will close with ICS. We have positive momentum in this business that has not yet translated to improved financial performance due to continued gross margin pressure from higher purchased transportation costs. This margin pressure is normal at this point in the cycle as we balance honoring customer commitments and working with customers to reprice freight as needed.

So far in bid season, we are winning more volume and securing rate increases. While spot market opportunities have increased, they were not enough to offset the margin pressure on our contractual business. Going forward, we are encouraged by the momentum we have and remain focused on leveraging our cost as we scale the business. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Brad.

Brad Hicks: Thanks, Nick, and good afternoon, everybody. I will provide an update on our Dedicated business. Starting with the quarter, at a high level, our first quarter results continue to highlight the resiliency of our Dedicated business. Weather did negatively impact our operations during the quarter, particularly in January and February. As a result, we have not seen much of a spring surge with our lawn and garden customers across much of the northern half of the country, which could be delayed from the lingering winter weather. Regardless of this, the team did a great job managing our costs and continuing to lower our cost to serve while maintaining high service levels and delivering value for customers.

The combination of these factors, plus a record safety performance in the first quarter, allowed us to grow operating income 9% compared to the prior year on only modestly higher revenue. During the first quarter, we sold approximately 295 trucks and remain confident in our ability to achieve our full-year target for net truck sales of 800 to 1,000 new trucks this year. Our sales pipeline is strong and strengthening while also broad with a lot of diverse fleets from both a customer size and industry perspective. As the truckload market has tightened over the past several months, we have seen an uptick in interest from customers for a Dedicated solution.

I commented last quarter that we added a record 40 new customer names to the portfolio in 2025. Historically, we have been able to get in the door with customers and prove out the value of our differentiated service; this has led to additional opportunities for growth at new locations for these customers. This has been a large part of what has driven our success—operational excellence on execution and service.

We get the customer in the door, get our people involved in running and managing the business, get the equipment and drivers in position and stand up our processes and service standards, and a majority of the time customers realize our service truly is differentiated and new growth opportunities present themselves. I spoke last quarter about expecting only modest operating income growth in our Dedicated business in 2026, and I still believe that is the right framework for this year. I also spoke about needing to see a wave of truck growth for about six months before we see material increases in profit performance given the nature of starting up new accounts and incurring expenses there.

We are now on two consecutive quarters of strong truck sales and our pipeline has strengthened recently. I am confident this wave of new business is coming; just the timing was pushed out a little later than we anticipated. To wrap up, I want to hit on a couple of things that could impact our results for the rest of the year. First, as I mentioned earlier, we are seeing increased interest from customers for a Dedicated solution. Actually, during the first quarter, we had our second-highest month in the last five years of new deals priced.

This is encouraging for potential truck growth, but keep in mind the more successful we are at selling new trucks, the more startup expense we incur. Next, we have seen a significant increase in fuel prices over the past several weeks. While fuel is predominantly a pass-through in our business, it is dilutive to operating ratio or margin percent, but not dilutive to margin dollars. Finally, with the capacity rationalization that has taken place in the market, we are experiencing increased challenges in driver hiring that we have not seen in years. We are well positioned to handle these challenges; it is a notably different environment. With that, I would like to turn it over to Darren.

Darren Field: Thank you, Brad, and thank you everyone for joining us this afternoon. Our intermodal business executed extremely well on our strategy during the first quarter with high service levels to meet elevated customer demand despite some really harsh weather conditions in parts of the country. Our focus on operational excellence is resonating with customers and is leading to market share gains and continued road-to-rail conversion. I am proud of the team and encouraged by our strong start to the year. During the first quarter, demand for our intermodal service outperformed normal seasonality, and we set a record for first-quarter volume.

We also set a weekly volume record in March with over 46,000 loads delivered—an unusual occurrence in the first quarter when fall peak season is typically when we break volume records. The strength in demand was broad-based among customers and across the network. For the quarter, volumes were up 3% year over year, and by month were down 1% in January, up 1% in February, and up 8% in March. Despite facing difficult year-over-year comparisons in our Eastern network, we grew Eastern loads 7% against a 13% comp, while transcon volume was flat. We are seeing road-to-rail conversion continue in the East.

Also, with elevated truckload spot rates and rising fuel prices, the value proposition of our intermodal offering becomes increasingly more attractive for customers. We continue to see strong rail service from all of our rail providers, a trend we have seen for several years now. During a winter in which we saw several impactful storms across the country, the rail networks were able to quickly recover their service—a testament to the investments that have been made in their networks and service over the past few years. We and our rail providers know the true test of network resiliency will come once demand strengthens.

As we enter this prove-it time for rail networks, we and the railroads are confident service levels can be maintained even in a period of sustained volume growth. I will close with some comments on pricing. As we have said previously, but it bears repeating, given the nature of our bid cycle, we are living with the results of last year's bid season into 2026. Turning to the current bid season, we are in the final stretch and, as is our normal practice, we are not going to provide any updates on overall results or expectations until we wrap up this bid season. That said, I will give a few high-level thoughts and observations.

Early in bid season, we saw westbound backhaul freight reprice down year over year as the market for this freight was competitive, as it is every year. In the rest of our network, the emphasis on operational excellence has positioned us well to have conversations with customers in the bid season, leaning into the value we create with our differentiated service. In the Eastern network where we compete more directly with truck, our ability to push price and the reception from customers to price increases is different than the transcon market. So far in the transcon network, we have seen a more competitive bid season, particularly outbound off the West Coast, than we had expected.

Our strategy is to remain disciplined in our growth and our pricing, expecting the value we create for customers when we leverage our network to be realized in the returns we generate. My confidence in the strength of our intermodal franchise and the opportunities for growth that are ahead of us remains high. We have prefunded our capacity needs and are ready to meet our customer growth demand with our unmatched scale and density. Our focus on operational excellence and industry-leading service are competitive advantages that further differentiate us with customers. As we have stated before, we have long-term intermodal solutions for our customers in any operating environment and provide seamless coast-to-coast intermodal service today as we have for years.

With that, I would like to turn it back over to the operator to open the call for questions. Thank you.

Operator: We will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. The first question will come from Jonathan Chappell with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Jonathan Chappell: Question is for Spencer, but anyone can answer it. One of the big takeaways, I think, from the January call was the reluctance to call the inflection so much. And the one quote that really stood out was you are hesitant to suggest there is some big pricing opportunity this year. Sounds like a lot has changed in the last three months up to and including customers' willingness to kind of acknowledge the durability of this. So you know, Darren kind of talked on intermodal bid season.

I know you are not going to get into any more detail there; just broadly speaking for the business, does it feel today that there is a better pricing opportunity, whether it be for 2026 or 2027, than you maybe anticipated back in January?

Spencer Frazier: Yeah. Hey, John. Thanks for the question. I do think it feels quite a bit different today than it did in January. But as you mentioned, when we talked in January, we referenced we started to see some tightening both in demand and then also really tightening of capacity. That took place really around Thanksgiving and through the end of Q4. And that just continued through this quarter. Capacity, I will just say this, has inverted, and it has changed rapidly as regulatory enforcement continues to be implemented. And we believe that enforcement is going to continue to accelerate.

Also, there are multiple shipper and other surveys out there done by several of you that indicate that their perspective of capacity is now that pricing is going up with solid demand. And one other thing I just want to mention—really talking about how this cycle is a little bit different than in the past, but a little bit similar to the prior two cycles, the prior two up cycles, specifically the capacity-led one in 2017–2018 with ELDs, and then also the demand cycle and shock associated with 2020 through 2022. Here are the things that really are illustrated in our results but also match the patterns of those two cycles.

Number one, spot price always is your real-time indicator of change, and it changed rapidly in both of those up cycles first. What is happening today? Spot pricing has changed first. Then you typically see, say, a three- to six-month window of contract pricing changing on the highway. Then maybe even a six- to twelve-month window of contract pricing changing in intermodal. Look at our revenue per load that we just shared—ICS up 9%, JBT up 3%, and our intermodal changing just a little bit slower. But I can tell you things are structurally different. Capacity is continuing to exit the industry.

Customer demand is solid, and therefore, I think we are in this structural change and the first part of an upcycle.

Nick Hobbs: John, this is Nick. I would just add from the highway segments, we have clearly seen a big shift from the first half to the second half bid season, and customers more willing and coming back with different opportunities with a lot of mini bids and rate increases. So it is moving quicker on the brokerage side, but it is also following quickly just on the pure truckload side as well.

Darren Field: Yeah, this is Darren. I will chime in on intermodal. I just want to highlight that it is behaving a lot like we have seen in the past in that where we compete most directly with highway, we are going to see new opportunities for road-to-rail conversion, and that is happening. A 7% growth on top of 13% growth in our Eastern network a year ago is proof that those opportunities are presenting themselves. And so, again, as the season goes on, we will continue to look for additional pricing improvement opportunities as the market certainly makes that available. Look, customers are under a lot of pressure. And our customers are fighting the path up, and that is not new.

We have dealt with that for decades. We will continue to compete and we will continue to be disciplined with our approach on how we bring on volume.

Operator: The next question will come from Brandon Oglenski with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Brandon Oglenski: Hey, Brad. Maybe I will direct this one at you because I think you made a prepared comment about being on track to restore margins even though you have not really seen any material tailwinds from price yet. And I guess it fits in with the conversation on the last question. But can you talk about your cost-to-serve programs here and maybe the confidence you are seeing on the cost side as well?

Brad Delco: Yes, sure. Thanks, Brandon. So the announcement for this quarter was we are sort of running at a pace north of $30 million a quarter. We targeted $100 million. You know, I think we are closer to running somewhere close to or just north of $130 million, so I think we are outperforming. That was also included in Shelley’s comments. But I think the important point that I really want to make sure is when you look at the year-over-year change in margin performance—and I know you guys like looking at incremental margins in our business—we still have some pretty meaningful year-over-year headwinds in inflationary cost. And I think I called out insurance premiums, medical cost.

You know, we continuously invest in our people. I think we have called out weather being more material in this first quarter than the prior first quarter. And so despite all of those what I would say are sort of above-trend inflationary cost pressures, combined with the fact that I do not think if you aggregated our pricing performance over the last twelve months it would even exceed what I would consider core inflation, it sort of speaks to, okay, you have executed really well on your lowering our cost to serve. We have also executed extremely well on all the productivity we have seen in ICS and JBT and DCS and FMS and in intermodal.

And particularly, you know, the callouts to me—and I will just point out—we did add a little bit of incremental financial color on JBT and introduced the concept of gross profit dollars, right? Think of revenue and then purchased transportation cost. So with that sort of revenue growth both in ICS and JBT, our gross profit dollars were actually lower year over year, but you saw our operating expenses in each of those business units lower also year over year despite meaningfully more volume. And I think that has been the story across really all of our segments, other than maybe Final Mile who is dealing with the customer loss that we disclosed last quarter.

So without maybe giving a new number on cost to serve, I think it is probably really good for you and everyone else to think about how much productivity we have driven in our business combined with the structural cost removal to really put up what I think is meaningful improvements year over year with really without much tailwind yet from what we are seeing play out thus far in the market.

Operator: The next question will come from Chris Wetherbee with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Chris Wetherbee: Hey, thanks for taking the question, guys. We have talked a lot about capacity, but maybe I wanted to ask a little bit about demand. It does seem like you guys are getting more constructive about the demand environment that we are in right now. And I think intermodal sounds like it accelerated a bit as you went through the quarter. So I was wondering, if you think about the March improvement, how much is that related to the increase that we saw in fuel? I guess, how do you think about broadly the demand environment?

And then maybe as a second piece, how we should think about the knock-on effect of fuel driving volume to intermodal as we look forward?

Spencer Frazier: Yes, Chris, I will take that. Just a couple of things. I think—even associated with some of the comments around the consumer in your earnings release and several other banks—I think the consumer remains resilient. And you know, that has been proven time and time again. I think that there is strength there. And then again, our customers continue to compete and drive value for their customers in unique ways. And as we meet with them at conferences throughout the first quarter and have multiple conversations with our customer and sales teams on a daily basis, they are confident in their demand outlook. And I would just call it solid.

And, you know, to your point on fuel, I think fuel definitely is potentially a watch-out there. That is what we talked about—there are some risks that we are aware of—but also definitely big opportunity for customers when they look at optimization of their networks, which they consistently do. They are trying to optimize orders, shipments, modes, and fleets, and that really plays into the strength of our opportunity for mode conversion as well as fleet expansion. And I think that kind of one other thing—Brad, you mentioned this in your Dedicated remarks—talking about really a strengthening pipeline inside DCS. I would also say that is across the board in all of our services. Our pipelines are strong and growing.

That really kind of goes to the value proposition that we put out there related to some fuel nuances, but also mostly related to operational excellence and the value we create for our customers.

Darren Field: So I just want to comment real quick. This is Darren on intermodal. I think that while fuel certainly is a major headline and has been for a few weeks now, largely in the first quarter that was not present yet. And so a lot of success we were having in our Eastern network growth—I would not characterize our results in the first quarter as being very driven from fuel. It has certainly elevated the opportunity for discussions with our customers, and we have got some anecdotal examples where maybe a customer split a lane between intermodal and highway and they ran a little bit more intermodal or will continue to do that as the year goes on.

But I know that our operational excellence—as proven by 13% growth in the Eastern network a year ago in the first quarter without any fuel tailwinds—is driving the majority of our opportunity to continue to grow in the East.

Shelley Simpson: Chris, this is Shelley. I would just add also that if you think about what has happened here in the first quarter—really January and February plagued with weather, and then fuel prices here in March—our customers' routing guides and their budgets have not really gone as they had planned. And so any time that happens, for whatever reason, our customers become more interested in our ideas around creating a more efficient way of transportation. And so I think our pipelines are up as they are thinking about who can I go to, who do I trust? I think we are one of those names that come to the forefront of their mind when things like that are happening.

And as Spencer talked about, the structural change happening on the supply side, we continue to see customers leaning more into us to say, okay, let me think about you more from a conversion perspective. Let me get help building a Dedicated fleet. Let us think about technology and the platform with 360, with Mixteara [inaudible], and certainly Final Mile, and we differentiate the way we are going into home. So I think that those conversations are happening more today than they were at the first part of the year, and it is because of all of those things I have just mentioned.

Operator: The next question will come from Scott Group with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Scott Group: Hey, thanks. Afternoon, guys. So Darren, we have always seen intermodal price lag truckload price. That is very normal. I just want to get a little perspective about some of your comments. Like, when intermodal pricing does start to turn, do you typically see it first in the East and transcon lags? And what you are saying right now—is it very normal, or is this abnormal where East price is starting to turn positive but transcon is lagging? I just do not know if this is normal or not.

And then maybe just if I can broaden it out just a little bit—Brad, your comment at the beginning of the call that price not covering inflation yet—do you ultimately have visibility that we get there over the next, you know, couple of quarters?

Darren Field: Well, first of all, Scott, I will say that I think Eastern network pricing improving faster than transcon, I would consider very normal. That is because it is more closely related to highway rates and the customer buying patterns—shorter length of haul, cost to serve in those markets more impacted by certainly driver wages—that sort of thing can really push challenges in the East. Historically speaking, Eastern network would move faster than transcon. The transcon network is not competing head up against the highway to the degree that you do in the East. And so historically speaking, it certainly would lag a little bit longer.

Brad Delco: Yeah. And maybe, Scott, just to make sure the context of my comment was taken correctly, I would actually say, yeah—based on what we are seeing, the change in price, I think we will exceed core inflation. When I say core inflation, I am thinking, you know, ECI, CPI. I think the challenging part—if you want me to add a layer to that—would be, I do not know when the cost of purchased transportation might settle. And so as you know, in JBT and in ICS, even with what I think are some pretty meaningful increases in rates, a lot of those rates are being passed to carriers to cover loads.

And so I think you have seen that with margin compression in those two areas. And so if we wanted to say, hey, is pricing going to exceed core inflation? I would feel pretty confident the answer is going to be yes. The industry needs margin recovery—the industry needs better financial performance to support reinvestment. So I think that is probably the direction the industry is going to be heading. I just do not know at what point, you know, securing third-party capacity may set, because obviously the direction has been up and to the right.

Nick Hobbs: I would just say what we have seen so far is that it was really, really tight early on; March was very tight when I look at month over month. So it was kind of building, and then April was very typical—just kind of settled there. And that is what we are seeing—just typical, I would say, on rate and on the carrier side as well. Particularly when you get in flatbed and temp, it is still really, really tight there. In brokerage, we were clearly seeing double digits, and that is on some contract stuff as well, as spot is even higher than that. So it is driving higher.

Brad Delco: Yeah. I hope that helps, Scott.

Operator: The next question will come from Jordan Alliger with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Jordan Alliger: Yes. Hi. Just wanted to come back a little bit to the brokerage side. It is good to hear on the pricing front—obviously still a squeeze, still an impact on overall profitability. Can you maybe talk a little bit to how you are thinking about that profit profile for brokerage as you think ahead, given the puts and takes with purchased transportation versus selling price and maybe getting back to the black? Thanks.

Nick Hobbs: Yeah. I would just say I feel very good about where we are at. If we look at the volume that we have had—up 10% growth in ICS—very excited about that. The market was typically down, let us say 3% to 5%, and our direct expense was down 1%. So we think we are lining up very well from a cost and being able to leverage our platform, our technology, and our people. And we have got a great retention rate going on there. So our customers love our brand, love our operational excellence. And we have got the capacity with the carriers. We are safe and secure. So it is lining up very well for us.

We are excited about where we are going in the future.

Operator: The next question will come from Brady Lares with Stephens Inc. Please go ahead.

Brady Lares: Hey, great. Hey, Brad, great—thanks. You know, Brad, I wanted to ask about the Dedicated and specifically the impact of the administration's regulatory actions. You mentioned in your remarks a tighter market, more difficulty hiring drivers. Do you think this supply-driven nature of the tighter market could translate to a faster Dedicated sales timeline this cycle? And maybe on the other hand, do you expect any margin impact from the increased challenges hiring drivers and the subsequent potential increase to driver wages?

Brad Hicks: Yes. Thanks, Brady. Nick touched upon it in his prepared remarks—kind of what we are seeing on the driver front. I made a reference—we have definitely seen it tighten, certainly in some geographies more than others. But we absolutely do believe that the regulatory changes are playing through with respect to driver availability. Not so much in terms of how we have been directly impacted because our programs largely provisioned us to not have as much exposure. But we do see the overall market tightening. In particular, I might add we have seen abnormalities in Ohio, Michigan—those that are close to the borders. I think that cabotage is a factor in those particular geographies.

And then obviously English language proficiency as well as non-dom is really more generally across the entire United States. We have seen our total needs climb for driver needs, but we feel—and are very confident in—the strategy that we have in our corporate driver personnel strategy, and so we believe that we are positioned better than anybody to overcome those market obstacles. To the second part of your question, yes, we have already seen the acceleration, and that was part of the reason why I wanted to highlight the comment on the volume of pricing that we have seen come through.

And really pricing is after we do engineering work, and so we call that an engineered design request, and those were record volumes for us in the month of March in particular. And so we see our pipeline building. We feel great about how that looks both from diversity—it is really not getting propped up by big, big deals. Sometimes our pipeline, we could get some mega fleets that come through that will kind of artificially prop up our pipelines. But this is really with the volume of deals that are helping the overall health of our pipeline. So all those things add up to huge optimism from my perspective for Dedicated opportunities.

Now the trick for us is we have seen this play out before, and we want to make sure that we stay disciplined to not grow our business unit with what we would call capacity fleets—those that only want to have a guaranteed capacity at a guaranteed rate in these environments. We have got great businesses like ICS and JBT that can help provide customers solutions there. But we do see the acceleration. We do think that the combination of inflation, the risks that Brad referenced earlier—when you think about healthcare and insurance premiums—those are what will drive private fleets towards us. And those private fleets have particularly a more difficult time sourcing drivers than the success that we have.

So we think that recipe lines up nicely for us to have a really healthy growth year.

Operator: The next question will come from Analyst with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Analyst: Hi. So maybe a more longer-term oriented one for Shelley. Shelley, you commented on how you still have work to do to fully restore pricing and margins, even on the back of the third consecutive quarter of margin expansion despite what Brad keeps reminding us is limited help from price thus far—so pretty impressive. Just maybe talk to us about your line of sight on margins longer term. In the past, you have indicated 10% to 12% as a potential for your intermodal business. Is that still what you are targeting or, given the structural changes Spencer spoke about coupled with the efficiencies you are uncovering with all your technology and such, could it be higher?

And what do you think is a reasonable time frame to achieve that?

Shelley Simpson: Yeah, thank you for that question. And I will tell you we have talked a lot about our internal goals and the things that we want to get accomplished. We have not changed any of our margin targets externally, but I will tell you, I think we have got a few opportunities. One is really around the work we are doing in our transformation work that I have talked about now here for the last several quarters.

So using our technology and our investments—and that being a core foundation for us—and really how we are using the disciplined ROI-driven investment to lower cost to serve, how we think about AI and that really being a force multiplier across our entire organization. And so know that we are early on in that; we do believe that there is good opportunity for us to think about that differently. But part of our ability to get margins back in our margin target—we are going to have to have more help from a demand perspective. So there is a lot happening from the supply side.

The recovery is happening from that perspective, but we just need a more normalized environment from demand overall. Certainly, we have all been here a really long time. We have seen recoveries happen very quickly. Those tend to not work as well for us over the long term. And so if we can recover over the next one to two years, that is going to be healthier for our business over the next four to five years.

If it is a huge inflection with pricing changing significantly, very quickly in Darren's business—or really in any of our businesses—then when that settles back down, customers want to do something different there also, and it also means there is probably more inflationary cost stick over the long term. So for us, we have been patient, we have grown impatient, we are really trying to help our customers understand where we are at, and I think that they are hearing us on that. But I cannot really speak to if our margins would change. I will tell you, we want to get first inside the margin targets, but that is not a stopping point for us.

We will evaluate those as we get there.

Operator: The next question will come from Ken Hoexter with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Ken Hoexter: Hey, good afternoon. Hey, Brad. So you noted in the past about 30% excess capacity in intermodal. I do not know where that—maybe an update on where that stands now. But given that backdrop, how do you balance pulling out the capacity and your ability to get pricing? Does that maybe delay the ramp in pricing as you move here? And then given the contrasting rising driver pay given the tighter market, I think you mentioned you are hiring drivers and ops teammates. Does that up the incremental margins? I guess that is a margin question going back to Shelley’s last answer. But just how you think about the pace of it in this recovery?

Darren Field: Well, let me just highlight—we have not added any capacity in some time now. And certainly, we have highlighted we think our network can support up to 20% more volume, I think is what we have said in previous earnings calls. I do not know what I would call the industry excess capacity, but certainly most of the public competitors we fight with all talk about having similar excess capacity. And so I do not think we are necessarily talking about taking capacity out as much as we are talking about growing into our prefunded capacity investments that we have made. And so that has been our approach for some time now.

I think with the discipline that we apply to not just using a reduction in pricing to add volume at weaker margins is where we really would draw the line. And that has—and we have—maintained that discipline certainly over the last couple of years, have been very focused on improving our balance, looking at cost areas that we can attack in order to reduce our costs to serve and, in some ways, to allow us to be even more competitive on our price and get volume growth. And I think that is our approach as we move on.

There is not a capacity exit in the intermodal space like there is in the highway space given the intermodal capacity is largely containers. And certainly the drivers and the drayage community used to operate intermodal are impacted by higher driver wages, but certainly it is a lower percentage of the total cost. And so as everybody looks for ways to grow, that is our plan in J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc.—grow into our excess capacity.

Operator: The next question will come from Brian Ossenbeck with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Brian Ossenbeck: Hey. Good afternoon, everybody. Two kind of follow-ups here. Just the first—Darren, coming back to your comment on transcon competition was a little bit tougher than you expect, at least to start. I do not know if you have a sense as to why that is given it seems everybody else is facing similar inflationary impacts, maybe more so than you all? And then just maybe a quick update as we get into the spring and summer here. What is most impactful in your perspective from the regulatory perspective as it comes to even increasingly squeezing out more of the truckload? Are there any other step changes you are looking for?

Is it more of just increasing compliance and enforcement on a more gradual basis? Thank you.

Darren Field: Yeah, I think—appreciate it, Brian. When we think about the transcon pricing, I mean, you highlighted what is the surprise to us—that certainly, what appears to be depressed margins in the industry but yet a competitive environment out there, or at least what our customers are telling us and what they are willing to do in terms of put capacity at risk for their business based on pricing discussion. I want to be cautious and not over-highlight that issue. It is just—we have grown zero; we are flat in our transcon business, as we highlighted.

We are being very disciplined with our price so that we can achieve appropriate margin levels on that business, and in doing so this year, that has been harder than what we would have anticipated, given the environment that we are in. Also want to highlight that, look, we are pricing backhaul business—it is very competitive. That book of business actually repriced negative. Every headhaul segment we operate in is positive. Again, I think that it is not covering our inflationary cost, but certainly, we are getting price increases. But we are not getting to the level of price increases that would cover our inflation at this point in the cycle.

And as we continue to go through the summer, we will be looking for opportunities to grow with customers at returns that justify reinvestment in our business. I will hand the driver question off to Nick.

Nick Hobbs: I would just say continued enforcement. You are seeing states like Indiana that just made an announcement—took 1,800 non-doms out. You have seen the same thing in California. So you see a lot of states starting to enforce that. So I just think there will be continued enforcement. Then in May, you have got Roadcheck. I think that will be a big test there to see what supply looks like. They are going to really focus on ELDs and load securement. So it will be interesting to see what they do there. I just see this administration—with chameleon carriers and authorization—they are going to continue to tighten the enforcement around that.

They really want CDLs to mean something and have the right folks behind the wheels that are trained and certified. And so I think that is going to continue for some time.

Brad Hicks: I would just add, Brian, the volume of truck driving schools that have been shut down, the ELD providers that have been shut off—all of those are going to create a more challenging pathway for us to have growing capacity or new entrants into the marketplace. And then we have an administration that is looking to put more, I guess, controls in place for a carrier to even come into the industry. And so all those things, I think, are going to continue to add. It is hard to pinpoint which one is going to put more pressure on, but it is the collective that really is going to reveal itself.

Operator: The last question will come from Tom Wadewitz with UBS. Please go ahead.

Tom Wadewitz: Yes. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the question here. Hey, Brad—so wanted to ask you—go back to intermodal. The monthly progression was, you know, pretty notably favorable. I am guessing the January, February—some impact on the year-over-year volume, but the update in March is pretty strong. How do you think about the way we should interpret that for the go-forward intermodal volume growth, you know, relative to 3% for the full quarter? Is it reasonable to expect some nice acceleration given that 8%? Or was there something quirky about that? And then I guess another component on just how we think about intermodal volume growth—you know, it is less driver intensive, which is great for the environment.

But have you seen environments in the past where the driver market is so tight that you get squeezed on drayage and that is a constraint on your intermodal volume growth? Thank you.

Darren Field: Well, thanks for the question, Tom. I am going to hit the driver question first. Look, driver wages—in a tight driver market, it impacts every part of the transportation market that involves a truck driver. And so certainly higher wages is a challenge for intermodal. Do I think that drayage capacity has been a bottleneck for intermodal volumes in the past? Not to the extent that it shows up on the highway.

I do think that one driver in a local environment in intermodal can certainly execute multiple loads in a day, and so that ends up being—you know, the ability to add in intermodal drayage in the intermodal drayage market certainly offers an opportunity, and it is a career path for a lot of highway capacity as intermodal demand climbs and more of those jobs grow. We have a very attractive job to go recruit to. And so that certainly helps the industry. And in terms of the volume—look, you know us, Tom. Cannot give you guidance on that. Certainly, March was very strong.

We set a single-week volume record during the month of March that I am very, very proud of my team for their execution on. And we continue to see a strong pipeline and look forward to the remainder of the bid season. And as we head forward, we think the value of our business unit and the way that we provide our service to customers really gives us strong opportunity to keep growing in the future.

Operator: This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Ms. Shelley Simpson for any closing remarks.

Shelley Simpson: Thanks again for the time today. It was a strong quarter for us and our people delivered that through great operational excellence. We have been focused on that the last two years. I think you are seeing that really come forward and show in our results and not being reliant on the environment. And so we have had reliable service, strong safety performance, our customer retention is excellent, and we continue to make great share gains with our customers. But we know there is more work to do, particularly as we want to continue to improve our returns and performance across the portfolio.

But having said that, we like the progress that we are making, the investments that we have made in our people and our technology and capacity. I think that is clearly moving our business in the right direction. I am proud of the team and how they delivered this quarter. I am confident in our momentum and we are focused on continuing to build long-term value. Thanks for your time. Look forward to our discussion next call.

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

This article is a transcript of this conference call produced for The Motley Fool. While we strive for our Foolish Best, there may be errors, omissions, or inaccuracies in this transcript. Parts of this article were created using Large Language Models (LLMs) based on The Motley Fool's insights and investing approach. It has been reviewed by our AI quality control systems. Since LLMs cannot (currently) own stocks, it has no positions in any of the stocks mentioned. As with all our articles, The Motley Fool does not assume any responsibility for your use of this content, and we strongly encourage you to do your own research, including listening to the call yourself and reading the company's SEC filings. Please see our Terms and Conditions for additional details, including our Obligatory Capitalized Disclaimers of Liability.

The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.