The Shyft Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:SHYF) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript April 25, 2024 8:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Randy Wilson - Vice President, Investor Relations & Treasury
John Dunn - President & Chief Executive Officer
Jonathan Douyard - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Matt Koranda - Roth MKM
Tyler DiMatteo - BTIG

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to The Shyft Group's First Quarter 2024 Conference Call and Webcast. All participants will be in a listen-only mode until the question-and-answer session of the conference call. As a reminder, this call is being recorded.

And I would now like to introduce Randy Wilson, Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasury for The Shyft Group. Please go ahead.

Randy Wilson

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. Today, you will hear from John Dunn, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Jon Douyard, Chief Financial Officer. Their prepared remarks will be followed by a question-and-answer session.

Before we begin, please turn to Slide 2 of the presentation for our safe harbor statement. Today's conference call contains forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks that could cause actual results to be materially different from those expressed or implied. Primary risks that management believes could materially affect our results are identified in our Forms 10-K and 10-Q filed with the SEC.

We will be discussing non-GAAP information and performance measures, which we believe are useful in evaluating the company's operating performance. Reconciliations for these non-GAAP measures can be found in the conference call materials.

We will begin with a business overview from our CEO, John Dunn, followed by John Douyard's review of first-quarter performance and our 2024 outlook. We will then open the line for Q&A.

Please turn to Slide 3, and I'll turn it over to John Dunn, who will begin today's prepared remarks.

John Dunn

Thank you, Randy, and good morning. I would like to welcome everyone to our earnings call, and appreciate your interest in The Shyft Group. Through the first quarter, our team delivered results better than our outlook provided in February. Key financial highlights include: Our specialty vehicle team continued to perform well with another solid quarter that resulted in high-teens margin.

In addition, we saw early signs of commercial progress as the FVS team delivered the highest order level in nearly two years, resulting in their first sequential backlog increase since early 2022. While parcel order activity remained soft, as CapEx decisions continued to be delayed by fleet operators, our FVS sales team responded by focusing on other vocations, and Q1 order performance was highlighted by solid activity with utilities and food and beverage customers.