Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Mullen Group Limited third quarter earnings conference call and webcast. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press Star, then one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing Star, then zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Murray K. Mullen, Chair, Senior Executive Officer, and President. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and, welcome all to Mullen Group's quarterly conference call. We'll be providing shareholders once again, and our interested investors with an overview of the third quarter financial results. In addition, we will discuss the main drivers impacting our operating performance, expectations for the year, and of course, we'll close with that Q&A session. Now, before I commence today's review, I remind everyone that our presentation contains forward-looking statements that are based upon our current expectations, and they're subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, and as such, actual results may differ materially. Further information identifying the risks, uncertainties, and assumptions can be found in the disclosure documents, which are filed on SEDAR and at www.mullen-group.com.
Now, with me this morning, I have our senior team, but, you might recall that last quarter I called in from our new terminal in Kamloops, British Columbia, that our APPS group, we were just commissioned it, and I called in from our new terminal. This morning, I'm calling in from the great state of Texas, and earlier this week, I was in Austin, Texas. I was attending the annual American Trucking Associations conference. Now, that management conference, I can tell you, was very well attended. It showcased the newest technologies, including a preview of the engines of the future, electric, hydrogen, CNG, and hybrids. And I must say, the mood in terms of the prospects for the industry was quite positive.
There was a general tone that the current freight recession has found a bottom, and this is all good news for an industry that's so essential to the economy. I can also validate that the industry will be significantly more environmentally friendly in the future based upon the technologies that were on display. So this morning, I'm calling in from Dallas, Texas. I'm attending the annual meeting with our station owners and partners that are based throughout North America. That includes Canada, Mexico, and the United States. This annual event is hosted by Haulistic. It's our U.S. 3PL business, and they bring a network of station partners together to strategize about the future, to benchmark, and plan. Haulistic utilizes a proprietary IT platform known as Silver Express. That's where we're able to track these station partners and station owners.
Then we have a professional sales group. What the Silver Express allows us to do is access capacity as well as identify real-time pricing visibility from a network of over 6,000 carriers. We like this business because it's asset light, it's totally scalable, and it provides Mullen Group with insight into new opportunities within the U.S. market and global supply chain. It'll come to no surprise to anyone on the line today that technology is the most important differentiator for any business in today's interconnected digital world. For this reason, we believe Silver Express provides Haulistic with one of those competitive advantages. Back in Okotoks, we're joined on the line today by the senior team.
I've got Richard Maloney, Senior Operating Officer, Joanna Scott, Senior Corporate Officer, and got Carson Urlacher, who's the Senior Accounting Officer, who, by the way, is the primary architect and author of the interim report. Carson Urlacher will be providing analysis and discussion on our Q3 for financial performance. But before I turn the call over to Carson Urlacher, I'll provide some opening comments. So what happened in terms of Q3 financial and operating performance? You know, as I was preparing for today, one has to think that one of these days, investors will warm up to the fact that we have a damn good company. We continue to generate great results. Just look at the Q3 performance, and I'm confident that our results will show favorably when benchmarked against our peers.
Now, furthermore, if I could be so bold as to suggest that if one was to look into other companies that derive business from the supply chain, let's say, like Shopify, I will argue that our business is actually involved in the most important part of the supply chain, and that's the delivery to the end user. Now, just to be clear, I know that trucking certainly isn't as appealing to investors as, say, the Shopify world. But let's not forget, if you got it, a truck driver brought it. In simple terms, everyone relies on the trucking industry. It is an essential service to the economy, and here at the Mullen Group, we have one of the largest, most diversified, and most profitable trucking logistics businesses in Canada.
Our business is also unique in that not only do we have scale and size, we also have one of those rare business attributes that most in our industry do not have, and that is we are one of the premier liquidity providers to industry entrepreneurs. You know, those people that go out and build small, great small to medium-sized businesses, and eventually they all need a liquidity event. So acquisitions will remain an important element of our long-term growth strategy. Now, we know what to look for, and we don't just look for growth just to grow. We need synergies to derive value for our shareholders. And lastly, I will say this: I'm open to debate anyone who thinks we will not continue to grow, execute at a high level, or be leaders in the communities we serve. So in terms of the quarter...
I'll just leave you with these few comments. Really, not much has changed as compared to Q2, at least from a macro perspective. What do I mean by that? The economy continued on a slow growth trajectory. The remnants of the freight recession lingered on, with consumers prioritizing their spend on doing things rather than buying everything, which is precisely what they did last year, accompanied by shippers doing what they needed to do, which is draw down bloated inventories. So yes, the demand for freight and logistics services was not as robust as it was in 2022. However, this in itself did not deal a serious setback to Mullen. And the reason being, our Specialized Industrial Service segment grew nicely year-over-year.
Now, we all also know that inflation and high interest rates, it bites the average consumer the most, and that's the most troubling part of what we have going on in the economy today, because the less these individuals have to spend on discretionary items, the greater the impact on the demand for freight services will ultimately be. And lastly, consolidated revenues last quarter, they were negatively impacted by lower fuel prices. That's good for the economy, but that reduces our consolidated revenues, and that's because crude oil prices moderated year-over-year. So in fact, fuel surcharge revenues, Carson will break this down for you, but they were down CAD 20.3 million on the third quarter vis-a-vis last year, and that represents the majority of the revenue declines year-over-year in our business units that we own for a full- year.
So in spite of all these challenges and changes to the market, our business performed very well. I'll say, once again, the reasons are the same as last quarter. We have a diversified business model. We service a wide range of verticals. We backstop by 40 independently managed business units, and these teams, they all strive for best-in-class performance every day, every quarter, every year. It is therefore our job at the corporate office, the senior executive team, in fact, all of our 60+ dedicated professionals at corporate, to help and support our business units to be the best they can be. So I would say this: Well done, team. I couldn't be happier. Great quarter. Thank you very much. Now, the second reason we had a good quarter, once again, is acquisition, which is another key responsibility of the senior executive team.
While we didn't finalize any new acquisitions this past quarter, our previously announced acquisitions and transactions contributed to our strong performance last quarter. Speaking of last quarter, I'll now want to turn the call over to Carson for a more detailed analysis. Carson, you're up, my man.
All right. Well, thank you, Murray, and welcome everyone. Today, I'll provide you with some of the highlights of our third quarter, the details of which are fully explained in our Q3 interim report. Consolidated revenues in the third quarter were CAD 504 million, our 6th straight quarter of generating approximately CAD 500 million of revenue. Revenue declined by a modest 2.8% compared to the prior year period, which was really due to three factors. First, as Murray mentioned, fuel surcharge revenue declined by CAD 20.3 million, as diesel fuel prices decreased by 10.5% on a year-over-year basis.
Second, revenue declined by CAD 19 million due to lower fuel or freight volumes, particularly in Eastern Canada, and from a more normalized pricing environment compared to the elevated levels that we experienced in the prior year. Third, we disposed of our hydrovac business in 2022, which contributed to a CAD 2.7 million reduction in revenue. So somewhat offsetting these declines was a CAD 27.6 million of incremental revenue that we generated from acquisitions. We generated OIBDA of just under 90 million, at CAD 88.6 million, which was a decrease of CAD 9.5 million compared to the prior year, largely due to a decline in the LTL and L&W segments. So offsetting these declines was the strong performance of our S&I segment. Operating margins declined by 1.3%- 17.6%.
Now, let's take a closer look at how we performed by segment. Starting with our largest segment, revenues in the LTL segment were CAD 194 million, down 3.7% due to lower fuel, fuel surcharge revenue, lower freight volumes in Eastern Canada, and a more normalized pricing environment. OIBDA was down CAD 6.6 million to CAD 34.5 million. Operating margin declined by 2.6%- 17.8%, primarily due to the lower margins experienced by B&R, our most recent acquisition. The financial results of B&R contributed to a 1.1% decline in operating margins within this segment. Our second largest segment is our L&W segment. Revenues in the L&W segment were CAD 137.1 million, down 12.3% due to the freight recession and the continuation of the inventory rebalancing cycle.
Other factors contributing to the decrease in revenue consisted of lower fuel surcharge revenue and a reduction in revenue from the sale of our Hydrovac business. OIBDA was a respectable CAD 26.8 million, or 19.5% of segment revenue, and operating margins declined due to higher S&A costs as a percentage of revenue. Moving to our S&I segment, revenues were up CAD 16.6 million to CAD 125.4 million, on CAD 16.3 million of incremental revenue from acquisitions. We did experience some revenue declines associated with fuel surcharge, along with the sale of our hydrovac business and from lower demand for pipeline hauling and stringing services. However, these declines were more than offset by greater activity levels for our drilling-related and production services business units.
OIBDA in absolute dollar terms increased by CAD 5.1 million to CAD 29.7 million, with acquisitions adding CAD 3.6 million of incremental OIBDA. Operating margins were strong at 23.7% on lower direct operating expenses as rate increases and greater activity levels resulted in more efficient operations. In our non-asset-based U.S. 3PL segment, revenues declined to CAD 48.8 million due to lower freight volumes in the United States for full truckload shipments. OIBDA declined by a modest CAD 400,000, and margins were down by 0.4% due to higher direct operating expenses as a percentage of segment revenue. Operating margins on a net basis on a net revenue basis was 25.5%, compared to 28.8% in 2022.
When we look at net income, net income increased by CAD 1.1 million to CAD 39.1 million, or CAD 0.44 per common share. This increase was mainly attributable to a positive variance in net foreign exchange and lower income tax expense, which was somewhat offset by lower OIBDA and from a reduction in earnings from equity investments. The number of common shares outstanding decreased by 4.5% to 88.7 million common shares in the quarter, as we continue to repurchase and cancel shares under our NCIB program. On the balance sheet side, we continue to maintain a very well-structured balance sheet with a book value of over CAD 2.1 billion of total assets. Our debt to operating cash flow covenant under our private debt agreement is less than 2 at 1.98 to 1.
We have a total of CAD 250 million of bank credit facilities available to us, of which we had CAD 114.2 million drawn at the end of the quarter. In October 2024, we have CAD 217 million of private debt notes coming due. Our ability to consistently generate predictable free cash over many economic cycles and our large unencumbered real estate portfolio has provided us with receiving many different refinancing alternatives. We are currently evaluating a number of these alternatives, and we expect to finalize and announce to the market by the end of this year, how we intend to structure our balance sheet going into 2024. So with that, Murray, I will pass the conference back to you.
Thanks, Carson and, well done, once again. Now, let's now turn to what we think might happen in the future. That's always important to all the listeners. We'll add in a little bit of the vision of what we think will happen in the last quarter of 2023, and then how we're looking at the markets we service. So I'll start with some expectations for Q4. And I would say, based upon everything we see and know today, the consumer-driven part of the economy can and most likely will remain at levels consistent with the last three quarters. And the reason we say that is primarily because the job market looks pretty steady. So let me summarize that. I say it's solid, but it's not spectacular, and we don't see growth, but it should remain pretty solid going into Q4.
In addition, as I mentioned earlier, there are signs that this inventory rebalancing cycle that shippers and manufacturers had to adjust their inventory, inventories now seems to have found a bottom. All the indications suggest that that's the case. And this suggests that the freight market is now in balance, at least from a demand perspective. So from that point of view, we can start now talking about a recovery in freight demand, vis-a-vis a freight recession. Our view is pricing, that's probably gonna remain challenged for a while, and that's because at the moment, there's excess capacity that was built up during 2021, 2022, when times were so good, everybody had a little added capacity. Now, it's not significant, but it's just enough to impact pricing at the margin.
So in other words, you know, we believe that our LTL or L&W and U.S. 3PL segments can deliver another, you know, strong quarter that's consistent with the, with the first three, but I don't see any growth rate at the moment. Now, let's talk about our S&I Services segment. The news is generally more positive, primarily because commodity prices are pretty attractive. In fact, we're bullish on this segment and except for, except for one part, and that's the large diameter pipeline business. The big projects that our Premay Pipeline group has been working on for the last three years, they're nearing completion. So that's the bad news. The good news is, for our group, is that the pipelines now being built, capital is gonna be deployed by oil and natural gas companies into drilling.
Or as I like to say, now we drill to fill. Otherwise, why build? So on balance, we should have another strong quarter in our S&I segment. And if we want to take a longer term view, for this segment, there are some positive developments that all of us are hearing recently. Increased talk of LNG expansion plans, and of course, the Supreme Court of Canada ruling on Bill C-69, the federal government's Impact Assessment Act, was deemed to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Now, this is welcome news, not just for the oil and gas business. It's welcome news for any major capital project plan for Canada, and it'll make sure that there's a more balanced approach to how these big projects are viewed. So that's any good capital projects, I can tell you, is very good for S&I segment.
Lastly, let me comment on acquisitions. Never seen so many opportunities cross our desk, our challenge is to kind of pick through these ones that meet, meet our, our main criteria, and I'll reiterate what those are. That's the right fit, it's the right price point, and there must be synergies to be had. And when we find them, we'll acquire these companies. And furthermore, there's no doubt in my mind that I think this trucking industry is ripe for a major consolidation trend. Many carriers have overextended their balance sheets, added way too much capacity during 2021, 2022, and they're now paying the price, especially with interest rates where they're at today. So that's, that's causing stress among those that got overextended. Let me just make a comment about that. How did we, how did we handle 2021, 2022?
We actually didn't really add any capital to our business. We sold off assets, we stayed disciplined, and we didn't do a bunch of acquisitions and overpaid. So we think that discipline will pay huge dividends for our shareholders in the future. But for some, the day of reckoning is close. There's gonna be other carriers that are gonna be looking for a liquidity event, and we'll acquire brand name companies in Canada, especially in the LTL segment. In the U.S. market, I see exactly the same thing. They've got the same dynamics as going on in Canada, and we will look at U.S.-based opportunities. But as of today, our preference, it's gonna be in this 3PL, non-asset-based business logistics market.
That's where we think we provide the middleware for the shippers and also for the carriers. And there's a lot of carriers out there. So providing that middleware, which is what Silver Express does, is we think that's an opportunity for our group, and we'll be capitalizing on that as best we can. And by the way, that's why I'm down in Dallas right now, meeting with all our partners down here and station owners. And lastly, the energy and mining sectors of the economy, they look interesting to us. You know, we'll continue to add to our service coverage if we can find good fits, especially when we see the valuations in this segment today, which are quite reasonable.
So that concludes our presentation, and I'm gonna turn it back over to the conference coordinator, and we'll go straight to the Q&A session. So thank you very much, folks, and look forward to answering some of your questions.
Thank you. We will now begin the question- and- answer session. To join the question queue, you may press Star, then one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press Star, then two. We will pause for a moment as callers join the queue. The first question comes from Konark Gupta with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.
Thanks, operator, and good morning, everyone. Good morning, Murray.
Good morning.
Morning. I just wanted to follow up on your commentary on inventory rebalancing. We have been hearing similar commentaries from other companies about, you know, destocking cycle has almost, you know, done, and I think the retailers are kind of a little bit afraid of restocking in this cycle, given the consumer demand is not really certain here. Just wanted to understand, like, from your conversation with your customers and shippers, what are they thinking or planning in terms of restocking cycle? And, like, is there a pent up in restocking that could happen big time next year because, you know, they did not restock this year?
You know that, Konark, that, you know, that appears to be some of the general consensus from some of the people that we speak to. My personal opinion is, I think some of that is wishful thinking. To hold inventories today, it's very, very expensive. Cost of money is through the roof, vis-a-vis the last cycle. Everybody's a little bit, you know, the consumer, the consumer is just about in balance right now, but, there's stress points there. So I, I suspect that the freight recession is over, so I don't think it's gonna get any worse, but I think it's, it's basically in balance right now. We still, on our, on our floors and our facilities, we've got capacity now to take more, more business in, and we're seeing, we're hearing about that all over the place.
So within that kind of overlay, I think it's gonna stay pretty price competitive. So you better have a damn good business model or you're gonna be trapped. And I think that's our general thesis, and our job at corporate is to take advantage of situations where we think that we like the markets, but maybe the management made a couple of missteps. And that's where we're gonna look at opportunity. We think the market's in balance. You might get a little bit uptick here or there, but I don't see a lot of growth, Konark. I just, it's not gonna get much worse, I don't think. We're everything's back in balance. So now you've got to be pinpoint accurate in your business models.
Okay, that makes sense, and that kind of is a good segue into what I wanted to kind of hear about, you know, how you plan for the next year. Knowing what you know today, you know, like, given where the environment is and the rate increases are kind of now starting to impact the consumer and the Canadian consumer, obviously living on a lot of variable rate mortgages and all those kind of things... might see a little bit more change next year. How do you approach the business planning from demand perspective next year? You said you have capacity, but are you assuming, you know, stable environment next year or a big change in either direction, especially for your freight businesses?
I don't see a lot of change for next year, to be honest with you. Where I see is disruption, and then it's just a matter of who can take advantage of the disruption. So let me just point out, if you look at our third quarter, if you look at our year- to- date, you take a look at our direct operating expenses. We've just come through a major freight recession off the massive highs of last year in 2021, and our DOE stayed very, very flat. Our folks do a great job of managing those costs and finding productivity gains, and we're asking them to up their game on that. Where we lost some margin is in S&A, and that's because our revenues came down a little bit.
Gross revenues are down, fuel surcharge are down, blah, blah. And so we lost, I think, Carson, maybe 1.5, as S&A is higher, and we're gonna have to focus on that part of our cost structure next year. Unless we can. Our businesses can gain market share at the expense of people that have got overextended. I think that's gonna be our overall game plan for next year, and we're challenging all of our business units. Remember, they're independently managed, but they know the game plan. Take advantage of your competitors that made some missteps, gain some market share, and corporate office doesn't have to be quite so tough on S&A.
Great. I'll turn the call over and appreciate the color. Thanks.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Kevin Chiang with CIBC. Please go ahead.
Thanks for taking my question and, you know, solid results here, so congrats on that to the Mullen team. I noted in your MD&A, you talked about a little bit of, I'll call it transient headwinds as you integrate the B&R acquisition, and you spoke of some of the margin impact that had in some of your segments, specifically LTL. It seems like you're on the way to kind of rectify some of that stuff, and it seems like you're pretty confident you'll get LTL margins back to historical levels, you know, as that integration progresses here. Maybe you can give us a sense of the timeline of that.
Is that a 2024 comment, or do you actually see, you know, some of that benefit in Q4 here as we exit this year? And maybe just a level set, like what are. What do you consider historical LTL margins? Should we look at last year's as kind of the benchmark, just because you kind of resegmented and then the pandemic hit, so there's been a little bit of volatility there?
Yeah. So, when we acquired B&R Eckel's, it was a brand name company in Alberta, and they really were involved in two main verticals. One was the energy business. They were servicing the oil and gas business and the energy business in northern Alberta, and another part was servicing all the communities in the LTL. So when we do our due diligence and we acquire, we knew that they were not performing as the way they should in the LTL side. In the other part of the business, they were superstars. So but, you know, when we acquire companies from families, we have to be somewhat respectful of, you know, and not try and scare the people off too much. We gave it time.
We tried to figure it out, make sure we're doing the right things, and then we just now announced, you know, for October first, we've entered phase three of our integration plan, which is, we're gonna be shutting that LTL business down and integrated it in with our, with two of our other companies, which is Grimshaw Trucking and Hi-Way 9. So we've already got the technology there
We've got the systems and the process and the terminals, so, we were just too much duplicated. So we'll, once we layer that into those other business units, they'll, we'll get their margins, maybe, maybe margin improvement, if we, if we're so fortunate on that. But, you know, we're, we're probably gonna have about, 50, people that we consider as duplicated people now, head count, and, you know, that's about CAD 5 million on a run rate for 50 people, if you average about CAD 100,000 a year per head.
So we're gonna, we're gonna make sure that's all buttoned up in the fourth quarter. So we don't think it'll help our LTL division in the fourth quarter, 'cause we've got to go through all the-
Right.
All, all of the last of the phase of the integration. But we hit 24 with, with no real lingering legacy base costs. We're gonna, we're just gonna layer that in, and it will not be part of the B&R group. B&R is gonna focus 100% on energy services. That'll be a big company on its own, and that is very complementary to many of the other service offerings that we have within our S&I group. So, yeah, we think, we think our, you know, we, our, our, basically our LTL folks did a pretty darn good job of maintaining margin. We lost some revenue, just because, you know, it just wasn't quite as active and, and, you know, those things as last year. But, generally, they did a very good job of protecting margin.
But we did in the fourth quarter, we lost about 1.1%. I think it was 1.1%, wasn't it, Carson, of-
Yeah, it was 1.1%.
1.1% in our LTL division.
About 1.1%, so add that back in, for next year... would be a pretty good rule of thumb.
That is super helpful.
That's what we're looking at doing. Yeah, yeah.
That's helpful.
So LTL is still a core, core part of our business, Kevin, you know that. It's our biggest segment that we have. We'll continue to add because in LTL, it's not a transaction. You can actually change, you know, the denominator. You can manage the spread by getting either content or making sure that you have got good density in your lanes, so. And the reason that we rolled B&R, the LTL side into our other business units, is because our business units have a really good technology, and we're big investors in that. B&R did not invest in technology, so they were left kind of on an island by themselves, the people there. And, but that's what we're good at as a company.
We take smaller carriers, and we layer them into our network, where we've got professional management and good networks and great technology, and we should be able to drive margin over time. LTL should improve over time with density and technology.
That is a great color and very, very helpful. Just in your S&I division, as you pointed out, obviously the standout segment, especially this past quarter, and the outlook is maybe a little bit more differentiated versus your more freight-exposed segments. If I run some quick math here, it looks like backing out the acquisition, some of the fuel surcharge headwinds, it looks like you posted an organic growth of roughly kind of call it 4%-5%. You also called out Premay was a headwind. If you were to back out Premay, what did the rest of the business grow at? Because it seems like you're going to lap some of the Premay headwind in 2024.
So, just trying to get a sense of, you know, what the rest of that S&I revenue might be growing at, ex some of the large diameter pipeline headwinds you're facing in 2023 here.
Carson, this sounds like a question for you. I can give a general comment, but I think Carson might have a little more detail on that. So-
Yeah.
Let me, let me give him that one to that one, Kevin.
Sure.
Thank you.
Sure, Kevin. So I would say, on a go-forward run rate, you're going to start seeing, Premay Pipeline, as you mentioned, start to come back to a position where it's. You're not seeing those big headwinds going next year as you start looking at the comps. I think, you know, going into 2024, there's still going to be, you know, there's still going to be down year-over-year, but I don't think it's going to be as significant as what we're seeing right now. So, you know, I think that's the general trend that you're going to see for, you know, pipeline stringing and hauling in that segment for 2024.
The other parts of our business within that segment are looking fairly strong and fairly robust, and I think we're just at the beginning stages of it. You know, now that those pipelines are in the ground and they're nearing completion, now you got to fill it. So we kind of participate in that market all the way through its life cycle. Now it's going to switch more to demand for our Production Services Group or drilling-related services group. So it's going to backfill some of what those downdrafts are going to be that Premay Pipeline is going to experience next year. So hopefully that answers your question.
No, that gives me a sense, just to kind of level set, trajectory-wise, how to kind of think of S&I, as we look out into next year. So that's helpful. And maybe just, maybe another housekeeping question, maybe this is to you, Carson, as well. You know, little bit less activity on the NCIB in Q3 versus what we saw in the first half. It seems like you're keeping some dry powder available, given some of the M&A comments that have been made on this call. Just as we think of the activity on the buyback, through the remainder of the year, should we think of something similar to Q3, just given the M&A pipeline looks pretty robust for you guys?
Yeah, I would agree with that comment, Kevin.
Okay.
You know, we want to obviously keep some powder available based on the number of opportunities that are being presented to us. You want to make sure that you're able to capitalize on the ones that we want to end up executing on. So I would say, all in all, NCIB, you're probably Q4 is probably going to be somewhere comparable to Q3, obviously, depending on what the stock price does.
Right.
But I'd say, all things equal, I don't foresee it changing that much.
That's, that's great. I'll pass it along here and best of luck as you close out the year. Thank you very much.
Perfect. Thanks. Kevin, just to add on to that, I would say on the M&A side, I think our primary objective is we don't want to put the cart before the horses here. So, Carson spoke earlier about the balance sheet and making sure that we button up and we have the balance sheet all squared away and stuff like that. We have multiple options that we're looking at, as he said. We're going to pick the best one for our shareholders, and we will have that done before the end of the year. Once that's all tidied up and buttoned up, and you got all that, then we're going to turn our attention to growth again.
And there is, on the growth, there's no hurry because there's no going to be... In my view, there is no big, fast rebound here in the economy, so, we'll be able to just cherry-pick what we want.... and that's very good for our share- for our investors and our shareholders. And, and remember, we'll get aggressive at the bottom of the market. I was not aggressive at the top of the market.
That makes a ton of sense. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from David Ocampo with Cormark Securities. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning, everyone.
Hey, David.
Murray, I guess I appreciate all the commentary that you've made on the outlook, particularly on the near- term, and even in the release, you guys called out that you expect to come ahead of your initial guidance for 2023. I was wondering if you could firm up the numbers there, maybe just on EBITDA and free cash flow.
Well, you know, once again, you know, Carson, I'll just-
Sure.
I'll turn that over to Carson and let him answer that one for you, David.
Yeah. So if you take a look at what we had originally came out with, David, we guided towards CAD 2 billion in revenue for 2023, and, you know, call it CAD 300 million of EBITDA for this year. You look at our year-to-date results, you know, we're right in line with our original guidance. And in fact, one might argue that we may be slightly ahead in terms of operating income. Now, the CAD 300 million that we talked about earlier in the year was based on our traditional business units, so ex acquisitions.
So, we're you know, you add in a little bit of acquisition EBITDA into 2023, and you're probably gonna be slightly above what that guidance was. You can also do a comparative and look at what we did in Q4 of last year, and kind of, you know, get a sense of what Q4 of this year might look like, just based on the trend analysis that we're currently tracking for 2023. And again, it would probably suggest that we're gonna close out a little bit better than our original guidance.
Got it. That makes sense. And then just another housekeeping question on the integration plan for B&R. Is there any real estate that potentially comes out of that as you consolidate into other LTL segments?
Yeah, good question. So we, we didn't buy the real estate from them. We entered into the facilities that we thought we needed long- term. We entered into longer term leases, 5-year leases, with options on them, on the leases. And the real estate we considered as, quote, "non-core," we just took a 1-year lease on. So we, we matched that, I think, pretty well. I think, Richard, we're only off by maybe 1 or 2 terminals or facilities-
One or two locations.
Of all of the ones they had off our initial due diligence and negotiating with the family. So we didn't buy that real estate. We had the option to buy. We always get that when we take leases where we can. But we took five-year leases on the facilities that we considered core to the business on long- term.
Got it. That, that makes sense. I guess, is the non-core factored into that 110 basis point improvement that you guys are seeing?
I would say that-
I think it is, Rich, if I heard that, if I gathered that question, it, we'll, the non-core will expire in April.
Got it.
So we won't have anything pass on those legacy-based costs after April.
Got it. Thanks, Murray.
So, you know, if I just add a comment to it. So last year, I took heat because we came out and we said: Look, it's, the economy might not be as good, and we came out early and said: You know, we still think we can do CAD 2 billion, but some of this fluff that we saw that happening in 2021, 2022, that most people didn't want to talk about, but we tried to be rational about it. So we came out and said: We'll do CAD 300 million of OIBDA. And as Carson highlighted, it looks like we're, we might be off by a couple percent, because when you add in the acquisitions we did, it might add about CAD 10 million on top. So we're, we're gonna beat CAD 300 million, but we did some acquisitions to beat it.
But our initial same store sales and our existing businesses and what we saw in the market were not off by much. So, you know, from that perspective, you know, I think that tells you when we take a look at the markets, we take a look at it on a very practical basis, and we don't look at it on a hope basis.
The next question comes from Cameron Doerksen with National Bank Financial. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks. Good morning. My question's on the sort of the competitive capacity situation that you mentioned, not significant excess, but still some excess capacity out there, I guess, particularly in the L&W segment, and sort of your expectation that we'll see a bit of a shakeout in the market here, either with, you know, smaller carriers in financial difficulty or some consolidation. Just wondering if that's something you're seeing already, you know, as far as, you know, companies maybe going out of business or scaling back operations due to financial difficulty. And, you know, if that's something you're seeing already, I mean, how do you kind of expect that to kind of play out?
Is that something that's, you're gonna take a couple of years to play out, or is that something you think will happen more quickly?
Yeah, that's a good question. So for the most part, I would say the freight recession, Cameron, really hits the L&W's segment more than the LTL segment. LTL segment is still end consumer demand. That's basically what that is. L&W, you know, that's full truckload, that's, you know, a part of the inventory balancing, blah, blah, blah, all those kind of things. So that's what we saw. We saw most of the risk in the freight recession. Now, some of our businesses are not really that in the L&W, are not really tied to the consumer, you know, that bloated inventory. Kleysen, as an example, or Bandstra, those are two pretty good sized businesses in our group.
But the industry talk that you hear about all the negative and, the difficulties, most of it is gonna be in the, in the logistics and long haul business or warehousing side, as we'd classify it. And, it, it's been pretty nasty on people. So if you were an asset-based carrier, in other words, you had a lot of company trucks and you're in the long haul business, last year was fantastic, and this year is a disaster, and that's because of pricing. So when will pricing turn? When I'm talking to everybody down here at the conference, kind of the big U.S. carriers, I'm down talking to them. I'm getting their viewpoints. They were caught off guard by it, and of course, now they think it's gonna turn quick. I'm not of that vein.
I think this, there's a lot of independent contractors in the market that are really hungry, and they're tough competitors, and so it could take a little bit longer on the full truckload side than what people are anticipating. Unless you said to me, the economy is growing and demand increases. If demand increases, I have to change my thesis, but I don't see demand increasing. Therefore, we're stuck in this, you know, in a, you know, lower price environment. You better focus on your costs. You better be pinpoint accurate. And, you know, we're back to old school in from my perspective on that side. I think it's gonna take a little bit longer than a couple quarters. We're at the bottom. It's not gonna get worse, but I don't see an uptick for a while.
Cameron, it's Richard. If I could add, you know, when, when we do see the acquisition opportunities presented to us, I think part of your question was, are they coming now, and, and are we seeing these challenges, these financial challenges? And the answer is yes. You know, as we get them, a couple yesterday, they, they just are looking simply to get out. You know, they, they won't even, in some instances, provide financial information. They say, "Buy my assets." Because if you think about it, some of these smaller people who are fully drawn on an operating line have gone from 2%-8% in terms of real financial cost they got to bear, and they have an old fleet. 5 years or older is an old fleet. They can't afford to get a new truck, and they just said, "We're done.
Can you buy me?" As Murray said, in our acquisition, our precision-based acquisition strategy, we're very precise, and we will look at things that add value to us. So in those instances, those people, you know what? We'll just assume let somebody else acquire them. But yeah, it, it's present right now.
Okay. No, that's very helpful. And just maybe quickly, I mean, on the LTL side of the business, you know, obviously you're more exposed Western Canada versus Eastern Canada, but you did call out, you know, Eastern Canada in at least Q3, as being, you know, obviously where most of the weakness was in LTL. Are you seeing any signs of stabilization in the Eastern Canadian LTL at this point?
Yeah, we saw a little bit of it. You know, the LTL side got a little bit of a bump when Yellow announced that they're shutting the doors, and you, you saw how that capacity, and that, you know, all that, all that freight was just gobbled up, like, within two weeks. Like, nobody cared. It was just all taken. So that, that added a little bit of capacity. Everybody, I'm sure you'll hear that from all the other carriers as well. Okay, but that's over now. There's been a little bit of consolidation on that business that's very healthy for margin.
It's not healthy for demand, overall demand, but it's healthy for margin, and it allows you, those that are able to take advantage of it and fill their lanes and get density, that was an unexpected win for most of us in that. So it went down, and then we got a little bit, you know, got a little benefit from that. The economy is in balance right now. I still see it in balance right now. I don't see a lot of growth, but it's in not a bad spot. If this is bad, we'll take it all day long.
Right. No, that's, that's great. Appreciate the, appreciate the time. Thanks very much.
Thank you.
Once again, if you have a question, please press star then one. The next question comes from Tim James with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. My first question, I'm thinking out to 2024, and I know it's early. I just wanna wondering if you can kind of frame how we should think about pricing in your LTL business, just given sort of spot pricing versus contract and, and your mix. And, you know, if there's any sort of remaining adjustments lower that are required to, to pricing in that business, just because of all the pressure over the last couple of years, and maybe there's a, I should say, the last couple of years, last year, year and a half, and maybe there's a lag effect there. Is there any kind of residual, or is, is the pricing in the LTL business...
sort of been reset to kind of align with current market conditions, and there shouldn't be any sort of material change, obviously, other than changes in sort of market conditions or spot pricing in 2024?
Yeah, I think, you know, if you, if you look at the LTL side of the package business, you watch-- you take your cue from UPS, from FedEx and whatever, and then they're generally in the 4%-5% range that, that they, you know, that they're gonna get in terms of pricing. That goes off the book, and then the contract goes down from there. You know, if you've got big shippers, you can negotiate deals. We had FedEx at our meeting here with our station agents, and, you know, we drive scale, and, and we, we tell them we can't, you know, we can't do that because we can't pass it on. So we have good discussions on that. I think there'll be enough pricing leverage to hold margins. Margin improvement comes because we run a better business, better technology. That's how we're looking at margin improvement.
Can we get better lane density? Can we acquire, you know, a nice tuck-in business that gives us that lane density and that layered in? And then we're really, really focused on accessorial charges and technology. Richard, we're working on some really neat things in-
Absolutely.
Our business, in some of our business units that are just absolutely doing a bang-up job, and that we'll be taking to all of our LTL businesses in the very near future, if I'm not mistaken, Rich.
Agreed. Yeah, you know, some of the, the systems we're working on, you know, just the reweighing system, for example, that we do within our organization. Customer says it weighs 100 pounds, and it shows up and it weighs 1,000 pounds. You don't have to charge them any more in terms of rate, but you just charge them more on the weight that they forgot to tell you, they missed by a few pounds, type of thing. So we have technology that is able to identify that, and we send it right back to the customer. It's all interlinked to our ERP, our, our enterprise resource planning system, and that's the efficiency and productivity improvements Murray talked about, and all of our business units are working to that. That's why we moved B&R into the other entities, because that-- they do that very, very well.
Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. My second question, and you talked and provided some good detail on B&R and the integration of that into the business. And I know you haven't been as active lately on M&A, but are there any other sort of underlying past acquisitions that still provide synergy opportunities at this point? Or have all sort of past M&A transactions, the synergies have been more or less realized from those ones?
Yeah, most of. We've derived most of those synergies. But our business units, I think you heard me say that earlier, they have their marching orders for 2024. You know, we'll look at doing additional tuck-in and acquisitions with our 40 business units. If not, the smaller business units, if you're not performing at a high level, you'll be tucked in with one of our higher performers, and we'll find either synergies within our group or by acquiring people outside. So everybody's got their marching orders. Up your game, up your margins, protect your margins, and then we'll look at acquiring some really good value add tuck-ins for our business units. That's how we think we can really add margin. If we can't, we'll find the margin corporately because we're gonna shorten our bench.
But our first objective is, and our priority is let's go after and gain market share from our competitors. We think a lot of people have trapped themselves in 2021, 2022, and we'll be here to take advantage of that for our investors and our shareholders.
Okay. That's great. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Tim. Cheers.
The next question comes from Trevor Reynolds with Acumen Capital. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. Most of the questions that I had have been answered, but Murray, I was just wondering if there was any takeaways from the conference that you attended that changed your view in terms of the viability or timing of investments in CNG and electrification?
Boy, that's a great question and good observation. Generally speaking, I would tell you there was just a real sense of there was a positive attitude. Everybody was relatively upbeat. They thought that the worst was over. I think that some of the big carriers in the truckload side, I think they're living on hope. LTL is different. LTL, there's no new capacity coming in, and you can work on your margin. That's why it's the biggest part of our business. But on the basic truckload side, I think they missed the boat, that there's a lot of competition. The competition is tough, and pricing isn't gonna go up. And big carriers, they increased their cost structure over this last bit, particularly on driver wages.
And if you bought equipment last year, you bought, did an acquisition last year, you overpaid. Because those, those acquisitions are not gonna give you the return that you thought, that you thought. No way, not in this market. So, you know, it was overall, there's a pretty good tone that the consumer is still okay in the US. There's concern about things in the market, of course, there is. But everybody's pretty much in the same viewpoint as I am, which is, growth will be difficult, but everybody thinks they're gonna win at the expense of the other guy. So everybody else is screwed up except me. That's what I heard. So-
Got it.
But there will be a lot of-- There's gonna be a lot of... There's gonna be some, some more pain in 2024. And, the, you, this is really gonna get back to now. You've gotta, you've gotta run a good business. Those who are running good businesses are gonna win and get market share. But you're hearing about difficulties and failures every day in the market. Look at today, you just read about Convoy, which was a startup, and they're a broker, and they're low. They're shutting the doors. Yellow shut the doors, and they were LTL. I mean, there's gonna be a lot of, there's gonna be a lot of reshuffling of the deck, and the well-run companies that have a long-term game plan and good verticals, they will do quite well.
That's very, that's helpful. Just, sir, and I guess the question was around the viability and timing of investments in CNG and electrification. Just curious to what sort of takeaways you had from that conference.
It's all over the place. Every major manufacturer, OEM engine, they've all got their coloring books out. They've all got their prototypes out, but it's not scalable yet.
Okay, so nothing there changed your view in terms of timing and investment in that-
No, not on timing. No. The, the future, the future's in great hands, but it's not here tomorrow. It's gonna take a little bit of time to get there.
Okay.
We know that. You know, we're, you know, we stay on top of this. I personally have been over to Sweden to check the latest technologies that they were talking about. Hey, we can do this. Yeah, but it's not scalable yet. So, you know, our clearest path right now is, we're big in CNGs, compressed natural gas. I think, Richard, I don't know if Lee's on the line, but, Lee's are headed with that-
Yeah, I can give color on that.
Canada of-
Yeah.
You know, CNG trucks.
Yeah.
They're performing quite well. They have not disappointed. Now, they're way more expensive than a traditional diesel engine, but those price points will come down with the more critical mass around. We're hearing some big carriers down here really starting to embrace CNG rather than diesel. It's a good transition to perfection, which is zero emission. But zero emission is. Let's talk about that next decade. Let's have a good transition for this decade, and then we can go to zero. That's gonna be our next objective. But we've got to get better. CNG is a path towards that.
And Trevor, maybe just a little more color on that. Me and some of the team went down to the, the Cummins organization is making strides in the natural gas engine, the X15N, and we were driving it, and it works. And Murray, to Murray's point, you know, you got reduced emissions, and we think that's the gap, you know, fuel, if you will. And more importantly, when you think of alternative energies, you've got to think about infrastructure and how you're fueling that. And as we know and we've announced, we're part of that announcement, Tourmaline is working on this, and there's more infrastructure for the compressed natural gas, and it's a real thing, and it's coming. And we believe. And today we're probably the biggest users of CNG.
We have 20, 20 units in Canada, and we're only restricted by the amount Cummins is making. But having met with them last week or a couple weeks ago, they're ramping up to start doing this. So we're front and center on looking at that.
You know, my last comment on this is, look, every senior exec that I talk to is an OEM and the engineering folks, everybody's focused on getting better. Everybody understands the path forward, which is, let's get better. Let's do our part, and when everybody's focused on that, it'll eventually happen. I saw some really really intriguing stuff, and I'm very very optimistic that we're just in the first inning of a long game here.
That's great. Thanks, everyone.
Thank you.
Thank you.
This concludes the question- and- answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Mullen for any closing remarks.
Yeah, thanks, folks, for joining us. We'll look forward to chatting with you as we wind up 2023. I hate saying that, but we've already turned our attention towards trying to develop our business plan along with our budget and our CapEx for 2024. Once we get it, we'll share that information on our best analysis of what we see will happen in 2024. Thank you very much for joining us. Appreciate it. Take care.
This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.