Saia, Inc. (NASDAQ:SAIA) Q1 2022 Earnings Conference Call May 2, 2022 10:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Fritz Holzgrefe - President & Chief Executive Officer

Doug Col - Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Todd Fowler - KeyBanc Capital Markets

Jon Chappell - Evercore ISI

Amit Mehrotra - Deutsche Bank

Ken Hoexter - Bank of America

Allison Poliniak - Wells Fargo

Scott Group - Wolfe Research

Jordan Alliger - Goldman Sachs

Bascome Majors - Susquehanna

Chris Wetherbee - Citibank

Bruce Chan - Stifel

Ravi Shanker - Morgan Stanley

Operator

And ladies and gentlemen, please standby. Good day and welcome to the Saia, Inc. First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded.

And now at this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Doug Col. Please go ahead, sir.

Doug Col

Thanks, Jake. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Saia's first quarter 2022 conference call. With me for today's call is Saia's President and Chief Executive Officer, Fritz Holzgrefe.

Before we begin, you should note that during this call we may make some forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements and all other statements that might be made on this call that are not historical facts are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties and actual results may differ materially. We refer you to our press release and our SEC filings for more information on the exact risk factors that could cause actual results to differ.

Now, I'll turn the call over to Fritz for some opening comments.

Fritz Holzgrefe

Good morning and thank you for joining us to discuss Saia's record first quarter results. Our first quarter revenue of $661 million surpassed last year's first quarter revenue by 36.6% and is a record for any quarter in our company's history. Shipments per workday grew by 5.7% and our revenue per shipment, excluding fuel surcharge, grew by nearly 20%, driven primarily by a 15.6% improvement in LTL yield.

We continue to execute our business plan at a very high level. Operational execution was a highlight in the quarter and our team did a nice job of managing around winter storm activity to minimize network disruptions. Our ability to quickly bounce back after weather-related closures put us in a position to respond quickly to our customers' needs. Not only do we respond to our customers' capacity needs but I'm thrilled that we're able to do so with excellent quality, evidenced by our first quarter cargo claims ratio of 0.57% and on-time delivery over 98%.