U.S. Xpress Enterprises (USX) Misses Q3 EPS by 1c

U.S. Xpress Enterprises (NYSE: USX) reported Q3 EPS of $0.20, $0.01 worse than the analyst estimate of $0.21. Revenue for the quarter came in at $431.5 million versus the consensus estimate of $444.88 million.

Eric Fuller, President and CEO, commented, “This is an exciting time at U.S. Xpress as we transform our business with the goal of delivering not only peer levels of profitability but also deploy an operating model that is being purposefully built to organically scale over time. Through the third quarter, we continued to scale our digital fleet, adding approximately 100 average tractors representing more than 25% sequential growth as compared with the second quarter. The digital fleet business model, now branded as Variant, continues to prove out, maintaining a more than 20% advantage in utilization, an approximately 70% reduction in driver turnover, and substantially fewer accidents per million miles than the legacy Over-the-Road, or OTR, fleet. This provides real confidence in the scalability of our digital model as we work toward our goal of transitioning an additional 400 underperforming tractors in our legacy OTR solo fleet by the end of the first quarter of 2021 as part of our Phase 1 conversion of 900 tractors.”

Mr. Fuller continued, “Our third quarter truckload operating ratio improved to 94.6% or a 450 basis points improvement over the prior year. The improvement was tempered somewhat by a higher percentage of unseated trucks in our legacy OTR fleet due to increased competition for drivers and suspension of our student program during the second quarter, which contributed to an approximate 6% reduction in miles driven during the quarter. Looking forward, adjustments we have made over the past two months to our digital fleet recruiting program are beginning to deliver increased hiring momentum through October, contract rates are renewing at higher levels, brokerage margins expanded as we exited the quarter, and our consolidated safety record is the best in the Company’s modern history. We believe the efficiency and technology changes we are implementing are gaining momentum and position us to positively impact our profitability through next year.”

For earnings history and earnings-related data on U.S. Xpress Enterprises (USX) click here.

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