C.H. Robinson Worldwide's (CHRW) CEO Bob Biesterfeld on Q1 2022 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

C.H. Robinson Worldwide’s (NASDAQ:CHRW) Q1 2022 Earnings Conference Call April 27, 2022 5:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Chuck Ives - Director of Investor Relations

Bob Biesterfeld - President and Chief Executive Officer

Arun Rajan - Chief Product Officer

Mike Zechmeister - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Todd Fowler - KeyBanc Capital Markets

Jordan Alliger - Goldman Sachs

Scott Group - Wolfe Research

Jack Atkins - Stephens

Bruce Chan - Stifel

Chris Wetherbee - Citi

Ken Hoexter - Bank of America

Tom Wadewitz - UBS

Brian Ossenbeck - J.P. Morgan

Jeff Kauffman - Vertical Research

Bascome Majors - Susquehanna

David Zejula - Barclays

Ravi Shanker - Morgan Stanley

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the C.H. Robinson First Quarter 2022 Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the company’s prepared remarks, we will open the line for a live question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded Wednesday, April 27, 2022.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Chuck Ives, Director of Investor Relations.

Chuck Ives

Thank you, Donna, and good morning everyone. On the call with me today is Bob Biesterfeld, our President and Chief Executive Officer; Arun Rajan, our Chief Product Officer; and Mike Zechmeister, our Chief Financial Officer. Bob and Mike will provide a summary of our 2022 first quarter results and Arun will provide an update on the innovation and development occurring across our platform, and then we will open the call up for questions.

Our earnings presentation slides are supplemental to our earnings release and can be found in the Investors section of our website at investor.chrobinson.com. Our prepared comments are not intended to follow the slides. If we do refer to specific information on the slides, we will let you know which slide we’re referencing. I’d also like to remind you that our remarks today may contain forward-looking statements. Slide two in today’s presentation list factors that could cause our actual results to differ from management’s expectations.

And with that, I’ll turn the call over to Bob.

Bob Biesterfeld

Thank you, Chuck, and good morning everyone and thank you for joining us today. During first quarter we delivered record quarterly profits. Sequential improvement was driven by significant operating margin expansion in our North American Surface Transportation or NAST business, as we improved the health of our contractual truckload business, continued to grow our truckload volume, and improve the profitability of our Less Than Truckload or LTL business. Our Global Forwarding team continued delivering excellent service to our customers and collaborating with our carriers driving more business to our platform. And finally, our Robinson Fresh, Managed Services, and Europe Surface Transportation businesses all improved their top line growth and operating income on a year-over-year basis.