Forward Air Corporation Price & Performance (FWRD)

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Forward Air's fourth quarter and year end twenty twenty four earnings conference call.

With us this afternoon are Sean Stewart, Chief Executive Officer and Jamie Pearson, Chief Financial Officer. Now, you should have received a press release announcing Forward Air's fourth quarter twenty twenty four results was also furnished to the SEC on Form eight ks. Have also filed a slide presentation outlining fourth quarter twenty twenty four earnings highlights and a business update. Both the press release and slide presentation for this call are accessible on the Investor Relations section of Forward Air's website at forwardair.com Forward. Please be aware that certain statements in the company's earnings release announcement and on this conference call are forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, This includes statements which are based on expectations intentions and projections regarding the company's future performance, anticipated events or trends and other matters that are not historical facts. Including statements regarding our fiscal year 2025. These statements are not a guarantee of future performance and are subject to known and unknown risks uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially those expressed or implied by such forward looking statements. Additional information concerning these risks and factors, please refer to our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the press release and slide presentation relating to this earnings call.

Listeners are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward looking statements. Which speak only as of the date of this call.

The company undertakes no obligation to update any forward looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise unless required by law. During the call, there may also be a discussion of financial metrics that do not conform to U. S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles or GAAP. Management uses non GAAP measures internally to understand manage and evaluate our business and make operating decisions. Definitions and reconciliations of these non GAAP measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in today's press release and slide presentation. I will now turn the call over to Sean. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining the call today.

I appreciate your interest in Forward and the transformational journey we are on. As is always the case with turnarounds with this much size, scale and complexity, there are usually bumps along the way and this quarter was no exception. And excited about our future. Today, there are three main topics that I want to cover. First, I will review some of the key achievements in 2024. Second, I will share some thoughts on our 2025 priorities and I will close with an overview of the fourth quarter performance. For the full year 2024, we reported dollars dollars which is near the top of our guidance range of $300,000,000 to 3,000,000 We successfully closed out a very busy and noisy year that began with the closing of the Omni transaction last January.

Just thirteen months ago.

I joined the company three months after the transaction closed and quickly centered our efforts on stabilizing the company integrating the networks and I am pleased with the pace and rigor at which we moved. Over the course of the year, we built out our leadership team that has both the experience and industry know how to not only lead these two legacy companies into the future, but also unites them to get the most out of their individual value props. Above the team, most importantly, in our first year as a combined company, we put the customer first and focused on providing best in class solutions leveraging the known capabilities of both Forward Air and Omni's global footprint. We are building on their individual strengths and leveraging the global freight while continuing our domestic expedited LTL truckload and intermodal offerings. We remain committed to providing our customers including and as especially our legacy Freight Forwarders and 3PL customers with the same award winning service they have relied on for years to grow their businesses. We view ourselves as moving more than just our customer shipments. With an undisputed dedication we take ownership of their supply chain challenges solving them with unique solutions that deliver possibilities for growth innovation and most importantly, a peace of mind.

We delivered on the targeted $75,000,000 of integration synergies and cost savings that were circled out at the onset of the transaction. We are at pace to exceed the initial target and remain on schedule to be at a full run rate of savings and complete the network integration at the end of the first quarter of twenty twenty five. These initiatives reduced our operating expenses, our real estate footprint and employee headcount and serve as a springboard for the transformational phase we are entering. In the second and fourth quarters of twenty twenty four, we took additional steps to reducing operating expenses, by incremental approximately $40,000,000 per annum. Including reductions in our workforce direct operating expenses and the use of third party vendors. To date, we have executed on more than $100,000,000 in annualized savings from synergies and cost out actions contributing to a more financially efficient company while maintaining our high level of customer satisfaction. During the year, we made several key additions to our leadership team including Jamie Pearson as Chief Financial Officer Jessica Heron as Supply Chain Solutions and Customer Experience Officer Doug Smith as Chief People Officer and most recently, Eric Brandt as Chief Commercial Officer.

In addition, Tim Osborne assumed the responsibility for all North America ground operations. With our management team largely complete, I could not be more excited about the talent and industry experience they all bring. As we look ahead, the foundational changes and investments made in 2024 are expected to benefit 2025 and beyond. Our priorities include driving profitable long term growth by expanding synergistic service offerings for our customers, which will in turn lead to a higher and more profitable revenue. In parallel, operationally, we are officially turning our efforts from completing the integration to a much broader transformation strategy focused on rationalizing our IT systems, improving the quality of our data and decision making. We are also standing up a global shared services organization to assist us in integrating and managing our back office operations. With Eric joining the company, in January and leading our worldwide sales team, we are excited to grow revenue across our newly aligned global business. He is a seasoned leader with a deep understanding of global logistics and supply chain management. Giving his tenure and experience in the space, he has a firsthand knowledge and relationship with our existing customer base and has already set the path for our future growth.

Regarding transformation, it is being led by our transformation management office and will impact legacy Ford Air plus the 12 companies that make Omni that were previously not integrated. During 2025, and with some work continuing into 2026, we plan to move away from multiple TMS ERP and HRIS systems to a rationalized IT network that is more appropriate for a unified singular company. We expect these changes to reduce redundancies and enhance efficiencies across the organization. Working with 6,600 professionals that delivered on the targeted integration synergies gives me confidence that we will be just as successful in executing transformation.

I will wrap up with a few comments on the fourth quarter and then turn call over to Jamie. Our results for the quarter were driven by consistent performance in the Intermodal segment and yet another solid quarter at the Omni Logistics segment. Achieving its best quarterly reported EBITDA result since the transaction. Those results were further enhanced with additional round of cost reduction previously announced that equate to approximately $20,000,000 on an annualized basis. The expedite freight segment on the other hand did not meet our expectations and income from operations to primarily due to the decrease in volumes in line with the market at large and a pricing strategy put in place prior to the transaction that focused more on growth than profitability. As noted, the decrease in volume is generally in line with the LTL market which continues to be impacted by the prolonged slowdown in the freight environment. The Expedited Freight segment fundamentals remain intact. We continue to be one of the best providers in the expedited service in all of North America in both on time service and claims ratio performance. We believe the service we provide will be the ultimate driver of customer retention and growth The single largest issue was the pricing strategy that we discussed last quarter.

What may not be as understood is the change in the mix of freight and how long it takes to remedy his The change in mix was a shift from our most profitable dense freight and then subsequent growth in our class based customers. As you know, class rated tariffs are less profitable than our traditional density rated tariffs, And as everyone knows, it takes months to rectify a single poor pricing decision. As covered on our previously earnings calls, the good news is we started implementing corrective pricing actions during the fourth quarter and are seeing improvement that aligns with our expectations. We expect to see the full impact of the corrective actions by the February and expect to shed some poorly priced freight from our system as a result.

All else being equal, we also expect to see a commencement yield improvement in the second quarter and beyond. Our pricing strategy, whether class based or density based, will reflect the quality of our service we provide. I want to reiterate and ensure you the value and integrity of our network remains intact. Going forward, we expect to closely monitor how our volume is impacted and take appropriate cost to profitably run our network. With that, I will now turn the call over to Jamie to go through the results from the quarter.

Thanks, Sean, and good afternoon, everyone.

Getting right to it and beginning with the fourth quarter results, revenue for the quarter was $633,000,000 on a required GAAP reporting basis, it was an 87% or $294,000,000 increase as compared to the fourth quarter of the prior year.

The increase over the prior year was largely driven by the Omni transaction. Since we did not own Omni in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three, it is difficult to make a meaningful year over year comparison So I will focus our comparisons for the Omni segment on a sequential basis. To that point, on a sequential and more comparative basis, consolidated revenue remained relatively flat, decreasing 3.5% or $23,000,000 from $656,000,000 last quarter to $633,000,000 this quarter.

Looking at our three reporting segments, Expedited Freight, intermodal and omni logistics Revenue at Expedited Freight decreased $13,000,000 or 4.7% to $266,000,000 from the previous year's comparable quarter of $79,000,000 The decrease was primarily driven by a 5.8% decline in revenue per hernia weight including fuel surcharge. And a 4.3% decrease in tonnage per day. At the Intermodal segment, revenue of $60,000,000 was flat compared to the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three. An increase in revenue per shipment of 3.2% was offset by a decrease in the number of drayage The revenue increase from Omni Logistics which was not included in the previous year's comparable quarter, was the full $326,000,000 On a sequential basis, fourth quarter revenue at the Omni segment decreased $9,000,000 or 2.7% compared to the $335,000,000 reported in the third quarter of twenty twenty four. [indiscernible] the fourth quarter, we reported consolidated income from continuing operations at 76,000,000 includes a goodwill impairment adjustment of $79,000,000 related to the OmniLogistics segment that favorably impacted the quarter. Accounting rules require goodwill impairment to be retrospectively adjusted as purchase accounting adjustments made in the one year period following an acquisition. We do not expect to record any further adjustments in 2025 as our one year window is now closed.

Consolidated EBITDA as defined in our credit agreement For the full year 2024, we reported $3.00 $8,000,000 near the top end of our guidance range The margin for the full year was approximately 12%. [indiscernible] Regarding consolidated EBITDA for the prior three quarters, we've adjusted the previous reported amounts by the actions we took in December during improve our cost structure. The credit agreement allows for the inclusion of the unrealized and pro form a savings from these actions to be included in our historical consolidated EBITDA and requires that they be spread back in time to the period in which the expense would have occurred. As such, we adjusted prior quarters to reflect the amounts of the cost savings. If you would, please reference Page five of the slide presentation issued today and you will be able to see what we reported in the past and updated for the most recent cost out and pro form a actions. Given the transaction expenses incurred in the first quarter of twenty twenty four and the ensuing noise in the second We anticipate that the quality of earnings to demonstrably improve in 2025. On a year over year basis, the first quarter of twenty twenty five will be much cleaner than the first quarter of twenty twenty four and so on.

Again, in transparency, we have detailed the information used to build up the consolidated EBITDA results on Page six [indiscernible] Turning to cash. And liquidity, cash used from operations in the fourth quarter was $31,000,000 As covered in the second quarter earnings call, we discussed inflecting to cash flow positive in the back half of twenty twenty four. And to that point, in the third quarter, we reported cash provided by operations of $51,000,000 Combined with the fourth quarter net cash provided by operating activities was $20,000,000 compared to the $97,000,000 of cash used in operations the first half of the year. Definitionally, that is absolutely inflecting positive. [indiscernible] we ended the fourth quarter with $382,000,000 $105,000,000 in cash and $277,000,000 in availability under the revolver for a total of $3.82. The $78,000,000 sequential decrease in the third quarter was a result of a $40,000,000 reduction to the credit facility size conjunction with the amendment. And a $38,000,000 use of cash, which are predominantly impacted by $60,000,000 in interest expense payments made during the fourth quarter. As usual, in commensurate with my past practice, I would like to leave you with a few points of light for the quarter. The first of which is the amendment.

While it may feel like a long time ago, it was literally less than two months ago that we amended our credit facility. The great news is the two months of preparation and negotiations should benefit us for years to come. As a refresher, we traded a one time $40,000,000 reduction in the facility size for four years of additional financial flexibility with significant covenant headroom. Most of you who know me know I do not take a reduction in liquidity lightly. But all things considered, this was a very good trade for us as it should alleviate cabinet concerns over the immediate future as we ended the year with $59,000,000 in cushion which in turn will allow us to focus on executing our transformation. We are incredibly fortunate have the support of our lenders which I owe a debt of gratitude and appreciation to all of those involved. Point two is our continued focus on cash conversion liquidity and more importantly the results we are seeing. In the first half of twenty twenty four, much of our cash was consumed by transaction costs integration expenses, debt principal pay down and other legacy calls on cash. None of which benefited the company.

In the second half of the year, we saw a significant reduction in these items which contributed to an increase in our cash and cash equivalents balance by $20,000,000 and again ended the year with a little less than $400,000,000 in liquidity. But ultimately, as Sean noted, turnarounds of this size magnitude and complexity are not linear. And that was certainly the case for us in the fourth quarter. While we could have performed better financially in the fourth quarter, we we absolutely killed it in the transformational changes we made to the business that should service the foundation of stability, in 2025 and growth in 2025 and beyond. Everyone knows, there is always a lag from the time that cultural changes are injected into a company's DNA and the time that they bear fruit. And '24 was that pivotal period of time And I'm very much looking forward to what we can deliver as a combined company. Finally, regarding the strategic alternatives review that we announced last month, As we indicated in that press release, we do not intend to disclose development related to this process until the Board determines that further disclosure is both appropriate and or necessary Other than to say that it is progressing as expected, As such, we respectfully ask that you keep your questions focused on our earnings as we will not be sharing any information about the I will now pass the mic back over to Sean for closing comments before Q and A. Thank you, Jamie.

I am proud of what our team accomplished in 2024. We know we have more work to do to achieve the results we know we are capable We started 2024 playing a lot of defense and transitioned to playing more offense by the end of the year serving as a springboard for 2025 and beyond. Our associates around the world came together as one and I am confident in our ability to execute our strategy grow the company and enhance shareholder value. We will remain focused on meeting our customers' needs are making the necessary investments that will allow us to benefit from any rebound in the freight environment when it I will now turn the call over to the operator to take questions. Operator? The floor is now open for questions at this first question is coming from Bruce Chan Stifel. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Hi, good afternoon, Sean and Jamie. This is Andrew Cox. On for Bruce. Just wanted to touch on the tariff and trade disruptions potentially at Omni. I mean, being cognizant that it's kind of hard to keep up with the tariff trade news these days. But I would like to just get your perspective on the changes and how you are preparing for the changes that you may be anticipating?

Any color on customer discussions or planning here would be helpful.

Hey, Andrew, it's Sean. Thanks for the question. It's As you said, it's really difficult to project how freight volumes and the revenue might be impacted from these tariffs I think I've said it in the previous quarters We are pretty vast in many of the Asian countries, not just China [indiscernible] we're a lower single digit today ex China into The U. S. So that trade may continue and the tariffs will have to be absorbed or those customers reposition out of other countries So we don't see a major impact there. Probably closer to home though regarding Mexico and Canada, we've got that thirty day kind of time out period, if you will, But at the same time, the commodities that were mentioned such as fuel energy, alcohol, food is not the commodities in our business network. So we don't see a major impact there as well. So we feel pretty good, always subject to change. We're staying as close as everybody else is to the the potential of other commodities, but as we see it right now, it's not a major risk to our business.

Okay, Sean. Thank you. That's helpful. And as a follow-up, we've heard some whether it be rumors or rumblings of of peers standing up potential A2A networks and competition with you all. So we kind of just want to get your perspective on whether you see this happening, whether it's impacting the market To date, and how could you be planning or changing processes to compete in a market that's potentially becoming more competitive over time? Thank you.

Yes, sure. I love this question. So So we like competitors. It's what keeps you sharp in life. And I would also say at the same time, people that are trying to stand up a real network I wish them the best. There's a difference in people playing in consolidation heavy haul lanes and truly setting up a true network. But our strategy here is while there are competitors many of who we've worked with for years and respect a lot, We got to stay focused on ourselves and differentiate ourselves through the technology the service that we offer, is unmatched especially with our visibility tools. So our value isn't just offering low rate and doing what tactics they're putting in place because that only lasts so long. But truly more meaningful is what we do, what we offer, what we service, and best in class people in the industry and we're going to stay steadfast continuing to improve day on day and offer best in class for what we truly are.

Okay. I appreciate the time. I'll pass it back to the competitors to keep us sharp. Thanks.

We'll take our next question from Askin Majors with Susquehanna.

Please go ahead. Your line is open. Yes. Thanks for taking my questions. Jamie, I want to talk on the balance sheet a little bit in cash flow. You think the business can be cash flow positive this quarter without the bond payment? And any other thoughts on kind of cash flow seasonality tops down? We look forward in the next three, six months?

Yes. Bastogne, love you the way you guys always like to get me in trying to give guidance which I will politely and respectfully pass other than to say we have about $170,000,000 a year in interest payments between the term loan and the senior secured notes and whatever the undrawn portion of the RCF. So it really doesn't take a lot. Once we get through all the transaction expenses from the omni deal plus all the legacy earn outs plus working capital true ups plus all the consultants we had to pay If we can just get back to running the base basics of our business, it doesn't take a lot to be free cash flow positive. We actually demonstrated that in the third quarter of this year And if you think about I think it was in the second or third quarter, most of the last last call that I said, we'll be inflicting cash flow positive the second half of this year combining the third and fourth quarters, it's exactly what we did. So we just need to keep executing is what it amounts to be. Sense it's an asset light business model CapEx isn't that much.

The biggest fixed cost we have is interest Again, it's only about $170,000,000 a year. And as we think about the business and what it could be worth on a some of the parts basis. Is there anything particularly different in the unlevered cash generating potential of your different segments relative to their EBITDA? I just want to think through the free cash flow and if EBITDA is representative across the segments. Thank you.

I'm so sorry, Bascome. I heard every word you said. Can you say that again?

Yes. Understood. So from a similar parts basis, if we're looking at your segments and their cash flow generating potential, is the EBITDA of those businesses representative of their free cash flow generating potential on an unlevered basis. Just want to understand if there's anything unique as we think about where the business generates the cash to support the debt payment? Thank you. Yes, yes, yes, got you. Yes, so a little bit different between the Forward aspect and the warehouse and VAS piece of our business relative to the LTL expedited and pickup and delivery and even intermodal for that matter. I'd say the good news is it's not that different. On the former what I said EBITDA is almost tandem out to unlevered free cash flow. On the latter, given the fact that we are asset light, and given the fact that we are very independent contractor centric, don't even have that much on CapEx. In any given year, on the $1,000,000,000 plus in revenue that we have from the expedited segment, we spend around $30,000,000 a year in CapEx. The only CapEx we really have on the Forward side would be more along the lines of technology. [indiscernible] good news is not that different between the two, a little bit lower on the expedited [indiscernible] forklifts and then what we do for the terminals.

But pretty solid cash conversion, which we're going to start focusing in on that. That's [indiscernible] next quarter and beyond, pretty strong cash flow conversion when stood up and operated appropriately. Thank you, Jamie.

And we can take our next question from Steph Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Great. Good afternoon, everybody. This is Joe Halfleg at Jefferies on for Stephanie Moore. I maybe wanted to drill in on the expedited freight shipments per day. You mentioned fairly consistent with what we've seen in the broader space on LTL both I guess sequentially and year over year on a volume perspective. Sean, when you started, you had talked a lot of your customers and quite a lot of fears about customers leaving forward with the transaction. I wanted to maybe come back to that thought. I don't know if you've had any conversations with customers lately. What have they been telling you? And if we can maybe just unpack that down 9% for percent shipments per day, how much of that is all just macro Is there any movement with the changes in yield? Was there any movement in customers? Just really wanted to unpack that.

Sure, Joe. So, yes, obviously, I talk to them daily. Not much has changed. Our legacy freight forwarder customers obviously where they're entrepreneurs and where they need and have the ability build density lanes, they're going to continue to do that.

On onset, of me coming to Ford, I said you got to run your business. I want to be That continual trusted player for you and your expedited freight segment on what you can't build out on your own. And so we still see that. In our conversations with them, They pretty much tell us our business is down. Just like everyone else in the market. So it's not like we're losing confidence with [indiscernible] Maybe some of them, but they haven't told me that to my face. But ultimately across the board, I think we're in a very good place with those legacy customers and we continue to service them extremely well. And just overall where the volume is down, it's because everyone's volume is down. Got it. And then from a 3Q to 4Q, I guess expedited freight, operating margin perspective, it deteriorated a lot. Could we guess maybe talk about with the focus on cost controls and the focus on pricing, what drove what was essentially 400 basis points of kind of sequential margin degradation Yes. So Joe, in that aspect, we talked a little bit, I think, in Q3 started in Q2, but the mix. And when I say the mix, the difference between class based tariff and density based tariff really started to shift in mid-twenty twenty four.

And that's when we called out the actions in the pricing. So what was happening is the class based tariff customers mainly are 3PLs and let me be clear, 3PLs are extremely important to us. It was something that we did wrong nothing that they did wrong. We had reduced our class based tariffs astronomically And it's not what we should have done in this type of network. So what was happening is that's a true door to door service. So when you look at door to door, with our 97% open ZIP codes in The United States, it was not a good situation.

So that's what we had to enact and put the first I'll say roughly 50% of the tariffs got adjusted at the November with not a lot of trade to impact December, And then the remaining, majority of them went into effect early February of twenty twenty five. So as we stated, we will start to see some impact in Q1 and a full impact in Q2. We feel extremely strong in the actions that we've taken to keep as much of that volume in our network with those traditional 3PLs on a class based tariff But at the same time, we can't continue to, as I like to say, do business with practice Forward practice.

We have to make our margins. And so that's really it. We have not seen a degradation from our traditional density based freight forwarder customers at all. All right.

Understood. That's really helpful. And so I want to squeeze in one more question. Maybe with this change, is there any change in thinking on what that margin can kind of look like for that segment in the past and under prior leadership? It was kind of a double kind of 10% type bogey Was this change in how you guys are looking at the business, does that kind of fundamentally change maybe what margin you guys are looking to achieve in this segment?

Or is there any way of how you guys are thinking about that?

Yes, Joe. Again, love the bread crumbs to particularly trying to give guidance What I would say is if you just go back and look, at the last three quarters of twenty twenty four, it was basically almost double what it is now. You go back in 2023, mid teens me give you a very salient data point. Relative to where we ended on Page 17 of the presentation. You'll see we ended the fourth quarter at 6.6% then if you just kind of go down where our peers ended the quarter, you're in the mid teens to almost 20% EBITDA margin. And I mean this with as much as I can muster having spent a long time at a lower service [indiscernible] Our network is better. Than those peers that I just spoke to. Our level of service is better. Than those peers and our claims ratio is better than those peers. So in terms of where I think said what should it look like I'm not going to tell you what I think it should look like. I'll tell you what it was and where our peers are and I think we're better.

Fantastic answer. Thank you so much for the time. And we'll take our last question today from Christopher Coon with The Benchmark Company.

Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Yes.

Hi, good afternoon, guys. Thanks for the question.

You maybe talk about some of the drivers of the omni business In the quarter, Did it benefit at all from the surge in import volumes that we saw And how should we think about it for next year?

Yes.

Hey, I'll jump in there, Chris, and then let Sean back clean up. So I'd say three things. One, I did see an increase in air volume did see an increase in ocean volume offset by candidly pretty soft pricing environment in both those verticals. But you add to that, what's also an omni is a very strong warehouse and VAS operation. That has a pretty good exposure to some tech clients and customers. That are just literally knocking the cover off of the ball. It's a great portfolio investment, Chris, in terms of you want to invest in the transportation space this is a pretty damn good one if you want exposure across the spectrum of different services. But I'd say it's a little bit of air, a little bit of ocean, offset by and that's volume that is offset by a slightly softer rating environment. But also supported by strong warehouse and VAS operation. Yes. And Chris, I would add, we continue to As we've integrated the network I would say our legacy Omni teammates know the forward capabilities much more than they did prior to And what I mean by that is there's a lot of different ways of thinking of how best to use Ford both in truckload and in LTL.

So from a solutions and penetrating customers in regards to a solution selling, there's some there's some uptick there as well. But Jamie is right.

Very big contract logistics operations in the high-tech space that did extremely well on their Omni segment and we did see an uptick in both our Air and Ocean segments for sure.

Yes. And Chris, I'd actually point you to Slide 18 as a material And it's kind of followed the progression of Omni's performance since the acquisition. It's improved by a couple of hundred basis points every single quarter. I think there's a in my opinion, at least the market checks that I've heard and they're unsolicited by the way, there's a misperception in the market on Omni. If you look at this page, it is performing very well. Within a couple of hundred basis points of some of the best competitors in the space.

So operationally, it's performing very well. The only thing that we're really spending a fair amount of time on is just the integration of back office operations. Operationally, it's finding its stride.

Okay. Great. And then I know you don't want to talk too much about guidance, but I mean as we think about the expedited freight and the pricing strategy, I mean, should we should we think about limited volume growth and more pricing and is that the case? Can you get margins that business? If the volumes are pretty weak, Well, if you isolate it to expedited, our expectation pricing or yield improvement as we go throughout the year, especially on a comparative basis. What I think Sean, I don't think, I know Sean said in his prepared remarks, is that we are shedding some unprofitable volume and man, I did have very protective of our network and Sean said it very well we don't need the practice. We don't need to be carrying negative margin freight on our expedited network. So in terms of what historically has happened when you pushed on price and yield and pushed in those areas, yes, you can think that it'd be reasonable to see some volume decline but the opposite is also true We're already seeing the benefit of the yield and granted by the way it's only two, almost three weeks away from it being implemented in total.

So it's too early to tell. We got to focus on rightsizing the network in terms of the bottom line. But I would agree with you in terms of higher yield in But that doesn't mean Chris that we I don't have a high expectation of growth by our team. So whether it's keeping the volume or replacing the volume, that's what we're going to do in 2025. [indiscernible] We have the ability. I don't want to do it, but have the ability, if we don't have the volumes, we can take the we can take cost out of the network Forward sure. But that's not what I want to have to be forced to do. We got to grow. And that's our focus.

Okay, got it. Thank you, guys. Talk to you later.

Thank you.

And we'll take a follow-up question on the line from Bascome Majors with Susquehanna.

Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thanks for letting me back in. Just to your earlier comments on some of the different businesses within Omni, now that we're almost a year into ownership, can you talk really high level about some of the exposures and how it generates profits between transactional air, transactional ocean and some of the warehousing value added services and customs brokerage?

Yes, I'll jump in there and then again let Sean correct me where I'm wrong. As we've said and we're going to stop saying this pretty soon, Vascon, It is a collection of 12 companies that have very strong positions in their individual verticals. In terms of generating profits, You've got the air Forward, you've got the ocean forwarding, you've got warehouse, you've got customs, brokerage and value added services. So it is a like I said earlier, it's a great portfolio of exposure to this space. I think the real value that's going to come out of this is once we integrated the networks in the first quarter of twenty twenty four, you saw how the performance stepped up I mean exponentially, went from negative 5% to positive 5% literally in January. Sean is very astute in terms of correcting me when I say, hey, you would expect some softer volume. I mean that in the very immediate future. On a longer term basis, by the end of twenty twenty five, as you go through 2025, I would expect the volumes to start to actually recover. And more to come. '24 was an investment year '25 we had the foundation in place We'll do that for the first six to nine months.

And then at the end of twenty second half of twenty twenty five going into 2026, that's when I really expect the growth to start kicking in. So, Bascome, I'll say it this way and Jamie did a good job. Those 12 companies have a multitude of those offerings in them. So we spent most of 2024 moving segments closing entities and rolling them into certain entities So then in 2025, we can start coming to you guys at a later date I won't speak for Jamie and his team, guys in that ground, air, ocean, contract logistics and custom grocery brokerage segments. So you guys really have an understanding on this side of what's doing well and what's maybe not doing so well and is that in line with the market etcetera? So more to come, Bascom, on that.

That's helpful and we look forward to in that. And to your last point about integration driving volume. I don't know if Eric is on the call, commercial officer, I think he's been there two point five months, but would love to hear any early thoughts from him on what he sees as opportunities to really move to offense like you've said a few times today? Well, Bascom, he is not in the room.

But surely happy to have him come on at a later date if that's warrant but he's actually in the room here in our headquarters with His top leadership and the top sales reps from around North America doing a strategy session on the new go to market strategy. So that's exactly where all of us want them to be and that's where they are. So yes, happy to share more as he gets really going here in his early stages.

That's going to be we would never expose someone that new to you guys in this process.

Thank you for the time guys. Appreciate it.

And there are no further questions on the line at this time. I'll turn the program back to Mr. Stuart for any final remarks.

All right. Listen, I want to thank you guys so much everyone, for joining today. Really look forward to 2025. And I look forward to connecting with each of you soon. If you have any follow-up questions, please reach out to Tony. Take care.

This does conclude today's Forward Air Forward Quarter and Full Year twenty twenty four Earnings Conference Call. Please disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful day.