Good morning, and welcome to the Q4 2016 Conference Call for Old Dominion Freight Line. Today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay beginning today and through February 11 by dialing 719-457-0820. The replay passcode is 690-4652. The replay may also be accessed through March 2 at the company's website. This conference call may contain forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements, among others, regarding Old Dominion's expected financial and operating performance.
For this purpose, any statements made during this call that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward looking statements. Without one being the foregoing, the words believes, anticipates, plans, expects and similar expressions are intended to identify forward looking statements. You're hereby cautioned that these statements may be affected by the important factors among others set forth in Old Dominion's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and in this morning's news release. And consequently, actual operations and results may differ materially from the results discussed in the forward looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation to update publicly any forward looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
As a final note before we begin, we welcome your questions today, but I ask in fairness to all that you limit yourself to just a couple of questions at a time before returning to the queue. Thank you for your cooperation.
At this time, for opening remarks, I'd like to
turn the conference over to the company's Executive Chairman, Mr. Earl Congdon. Please go ahead, sir.
Good morning. Thank you for joining us today for our Q4 conference call. With me this morning are David Congdon, Old Dominion's Vice Chairman and CEO and Adam Satterfield, our CFO. After some brief remarks, we'll glad to take your questions. For the Q4, Old Dominion continued to produce solid financial results although our earnings per diluted share decreased by $0.02 as compared with the Q4 of 2015.
These results reflect the impact of having one less business day than the same period of 2015. In addition, we had another quarter with higher depreciation and amortization expense along with an increase in fringe benefit costs that were largely tied to the 25% increase in our share price during the Q4 of 2016. On a positive note, our revenue trends improved as the 4th quarter progressed. Net revenue per day increased by 3.2%, which is the strongest growth we have seen in the last 5 quarters. We also returned to year over year growth in LTL tons per day after a 2 quarters of decline.
Our LTL rate per shipment increased 2.5% and LTL revenue per helmet weight increased 2.6%. With momentum continuing into January, we believe Old Dominion is well positioned to benefit from a potentially stronger economic environment in 2017. One reason is that consistent with our long term strategy, we continued substantial investments in infrastructure and technology in 2016, while also investing in our employees by providing ongoing education and training as well as a 3% pay raise in September. Our cash flow provided by operations allow us to make these investments, while we also return $130,000,000 of capital to our shareholders in the form of share repurchases. To further improve shareholder return, the company announced today that our Board of Directors has declared a quarterly dividend of $0.10 per share to be paid in the Q1.
Given the long term strength of our financial position and our cash flow generation, we are confident in our ability to return additional capital to our shareholders even as we continue to fund significant investments in our business to leverage our near and long term growth opportunities. Thank you for joining us this morning. And now here is David Conlon to give you more details on the quarter. Thanks, Earl, and good morning, everyone. Stepping back from the specific quarterly numbers for a moment, I'll begin by saying that the overall 4th quarter operating environment was similar to what we experienced throughout 2016.
We had a slow start to the quarter, but our revenue and tonnage marginally improved on a year over year basis as the quarter progressed. Our LTL tons per day essentially trended in line or slightly above normal sequential trends for November December. This continued into January and as LTL tons per day were also in line with normal seasonality. These trends combined with the increase in LTL weight per shipment and other improving macroeconomic indicators for the Q4 provided us with a sense of cautious optimism for an improved economy in 2017, which also concurs with economic forecasts or improved GDP. As I mentioned more than once in 2016 and regardless of the economic environment, we remain focused on the things that we can control by continuing to deliver superior service at a fair price, while also remaining diligent with regards to cost.
Our on time delivery and cargo claim ratio each improved for the Q4 and the full year compared with respective periods of 2015. Driving the superior service that our customers expect can create cost inefficiencies within operations in periods when our volumes are not as strong. We operated very efficiently throughout 20 16, however, as evidenced by an improvement in our variable operating costs as a percent of revenue for both the quarter and the year. I think this is a real testament to the value of our team who effectively managed productivity and costs in the face of lower volumes throughout the year. As you've heard me say before, to improve our operating margin over the long term, we need improvements in density and yield, both of which require the support of a positive economic environment.
Our yield suffered a bit in 2016 with the decrease in fuel surcharges, but it remains positive in what was a generally stable, albeit competitive pricing environment. The pricing environment continued to be stable in the 4th quarter and our LTL revenue per 100 rate increased 2.6% or 1.6% when excluding fuel surcharges. While this rate of growth was lower than the 1st 3 quarters of the year, the 4th quarter included a 2.5 percent increase in rate per shipment and a 50 basis point decline in average length of haul. These changes generally have a negative impact on the LTL revenue per 100 rate. And as I just mentioned, we are encouraged by the increase in LTL rate per shipment, which is typically an indicator of an improving economy.
We obviously didn't have the benefit of a strong economy in 2016 and the reduction in volumes didn't help with density. As a result, we were unable to leverage our fixed costs to improve our operating margin in the Q4 the year. Our OR increased 30 basis points for the 4th quarter and 60 basis points for the year. Even so, we are only 40 basis points below our record 4th quarter operating ratio and 60 basis points above our best annual operating ratio performance. We remain confident that we can increase our margins in the future with improved density and yield supported by a positive economic environment and therefore are encouraged by the potential for stronger growth in 2017.
Thanks for joining us today. And now Adam will review our financial results for the Q4 in greater detail.
Thank you, David, and good morning. Old Dominion's revenue was 745 $700,000 for the Q4 of 2016, which was a 1.5% increase from last year. Our revenue on a per day basis increased 3.2% as the Q4 of 2016 had no less operating day than last year. The operating ratio was 84.8 percent and earnings per diluted share were $0.83 which was a 2.4% decrease from the $0.85 of earnings per diluted share in the prior year. The increase in revenue for the Q4 reflects a slight increase in LTL tons per day as well as an increase in yield.
LTL revenue per hundredweight increased 2.6% for the quarter and increased 1.6% when it excludes fuel surcharges. I'll repeat what David just said and note that these metrics were impacted by changes in our mix and do not reflect any change in our pricing philosophy. LTL tons per day increased 0.3% as compared to the Q4 of 2015 as our LTL weight per shipment increased 2.5% to offset the 2.2% decrease in LTL shipments per day. On a sequential basis, our LTL tons per day in the 4th quarter decreased 2.6% as compared with the Q3 of 2016. This change was in line with our 10 year average sequential trend.
For January, our revenue per day increased approximately 5% on a year over year basis as we continue to see good yield performance in our LTL tons per day increased 2.2%. Our operating ratio for the Q4 of 2016 increased 30 basis points as compared to the Q4 of 2015. This change reflects a 60 basis point increase in depreciation costs as a percent of revenue as well as a 50 basis point increase in salaries, wages and benefits. The increase in salaries and benefits was primarily the result of a $7,700,000 increase in our fringe benefit cost as compared to the Q4 of 2015 as retirement plan expenses were impacted by the increase in our share price. It is important to note that a portion of the increase in both depreciation and employee related costs resulted from our reduced reliance on purchased transportation during the year.
As a result, purchased transportation cost as a percent of revenue improved 70 basis points. Dominion's cash flow from operations totaled $155,500,000 for the 4th quarter and $565,600,000 for the year. Capital expenditures were $66,800,000 for the quarter $417,900,000 for 20 16. The company currently expects capital expenditures for 2017 to total approximately $385,000,000 including planned expenditures of $185,000,000 for real estate and service center expansion projects, dollars 155,000,000 for tractors and trailers and $45,000,000 for technology and other assets. We repurchased $11,300,000 of common stock during the Q4 and $130,300,000 for 2016.
These purchases left us with $200,000,000 available for purchase under our current $250,000,000 repurchase program. We intend for our share repurchase program to be our primary form of returning capital to shareholders, although repurchases in
the Q4 were lower than
previous quarters this year due to the increase in our share price. We are excited about today's announcement of the quarterly dividend, which provides us with another means to consistently return capital to shareholders while also leaving dry powder for other investment opportunities that can drive long term growth.
Our
effective tax rate was 38.5 percent as compared to 35.5 percent for the Q4 of 2015, which included certain discrete tax adjustments. We are hopeful for corporate tax reform in 2017. However, we currently expect our effective tax rate to be 38.6% in the Q1 of 2017. This concludes our prepared remarks this morning. Operator, we'll be happy to open the floor for questions at this time.
And we'll go first to Amit Mehrotra from Deutsche Bank.
Thanks for taking my question. Appreciate it. Just going back to the question on basically trying to ask about tonnage growth and if you have a tightening environment, do you expect to see where market share essentially will go relative to geographic expansion? I think last quarter, you talked about potentially increasing up to 35 to 40 service centers. Is that the case given maybe a little bit better macro backdrop?
And then just following up on that, in a sort of stronger economic environment, where do you expect market share to trend or where did it go in the quarter given some of the expansion and better service levels some
of the competitors? Thanks. Yes. Good morning. This is Adam.
We still have our list of 35 to 40 service centers that we want to add to the network over time. And certainly, we continue to look and evaluate if there are opportunities to purchase land. If those opportunities present themselves, we certainly would look at taking advantage of that. From a market share standpoint, typically when periods are slower, like the economic environment that we were in 2016 and perhaps price becomes more of an issue for shippers versus looking along the spectrum towards the service side of things, then our market share gains were not as strong as they have been in better periods. So certainly our trends turned positive.
We felt good in the Q3. We started out a little slow. October from a sequential standpoint was a little bit below what our normal sequential trend is. November came back was better than our normal sequentials. December was right in line and January of 'seventeen is pretty much right in line with those normals as well.
So we look to get some sustained improvement in the economy And we feel like when that happens, we certainly can get back to growing market share like we have over the longer term. And then thanks for that.
And then on the weaker shipment trends, there's some nice sequential uptick at least. Can you just talk about the sequential change in January? And is there anything in particular that drove that over effect on a broad base and you'd expect that to continue into 'seventeen? Thanks.
Yes. The weight per shipment sort of trended about the same all year long, around £15.50 kind of plus or minus £10. We saw definitely an increase moving into November. It increased above £1600 there in November December. So it was a nice increase on a year over year and a sequential basis.
It dropped a little bit in January to about £15.70 but that's pretty normal. You normally will see a little bit of in history your weight per shipment decline. So we still feel good. It's been consistent. We're seeing it across the board.
And like we mentioned in our comments, we feel like that that's just one more data point that we look at that's indicating that maybe we're turning the corner with the economy and can see some sustained improvement there.
And just last one on the dividend. Just wanted to get an understanding on sort of the thought process there. I mean, have you been hearing from the investors the dividend would appreciate you're looking to maybe expand out the share capital base. And it's a pretty obviously nominal amount on a yield basis. Would you sort of look to slowly improve that over the next quarters or so and essentially make this more of a dividend growth story?
Just trying to understand, one, the reason for the initiation of the dividend and then how you see that evolving over time?
Thank you. Yes. I mean, we felt like that with the quality of our cash provided by operations, the strength of the balance sheet that we certainly had the room to be able to initiate. As we mentioned, we continue to want the share buyback program to have the priority in terms of returning capital to shareholders. So we have heard over the course of years when we first put our buyback program in place that shareholders would have appreciated a dividend.
It's something that we evaluated back in 'fourteen and we've continued to evaluate it. So we felt like we were in a good position to do so. It is a nominal amount, but as we've said that we still feel like we're a growth company and we've got plenty of dry powder to continue to invest in our business. That's where our best return on invested capital comes from. That's what we're going to continue
to focus on. But this is just
one of another complementary means of improving overall shareholder return. Great. Okay. Thanks for taking my questions. Appreciate it.
Thank you. And we'll go next to Allison Landry from Credit Suisse.
Hi, good morning. This is Danny Shuster on for Allison. Thank you for taking our question.
So, we were just wondering if you
could clarify what the normal, I
guess, historical sequential trends are for October, November December? I know you mentioned that they were fairly in line with normal sequential trends in November December 2016. And we're also wondering if you could share the same details for January, February, March?
Yes. So the normal sequential trend or weight per day, October would be down 3.5% as compared to September. November would then be up 3.2%, December would be down 9.2%. And then in the Q1, January would be an increase of 1.9%, February would be an increase of 1.9%, and March would be an increase of 5%.
Okay, great. That's very helpful. Thank you. And shifting to the capital allocation, it looks like you're stepping up the capital you're putting towards real estate and technology this year and holding back a little bit on tractor and trailer investments in 20 17. Just wondering if you could give us a little bit of color into what projects you're working on the real estate and tech areas this year?
The real estate projects are I think they were somewhere in the neighborhood of those 70 different projects that involve expansion of service centers. We've got repaving yards and re roofing facilities. We've got land in there for future building projects. Just a wide variety of real estate projects. I think I don't think we'll give an account on how many new service centers we anticipate opening, but there's a handful out there.
There's about 4 or 5 new facilities we think will open this year.
Yes. And on the equipment side of the equation, we're as we said, we are approaching this year as cautiously optimistic. I would say that back in the fall when we first in October when we first did our equipment projections and our growth projections for next year, we were less optimistic about the economy. When the election results came out, we have become become more optimistic about the economy for next year. And frankly, our equipment numbers are basically our replacement program and we don't have much equipment in there.
There is a little bit, but not much equipment in there for growth. Should we see the economy actually pick up and as we watch our equipment and just volume going into next year, there could be a possibility of increasing the equipment spend as we get into the year and seeing how things are actually trending.
Okay, great. Thank you for the color.
Thank you. And we'll go next to Todd Fowler from KeyBanc Capital Markets.
Great. Thanks. Good morning. Adam, I know you probably don't want to get into you giving specific guidance on the OR for the Q1. But given some of the moving parts in the Q4 with the variable compensation, can you just help us maybe think about the basis point impact from some of those things in
the 4th quarter and then what we should think about for the progression into 1Q? Well, I was going to give you the detail on the first quarter, but since you gave me the out, I
would One of these
days, I'm allergic to ask the question.
One of the biggest things that really hurt us this whole year was the increase in our fringe benefit cost and it fluctuated. And this past quarter, it was a little over 36% of our salaries and wages where it had been 34% of that number for basically earlier in the year and that started back in the
Q4 of last year.
So I mean that's something that we've got some opportunity on, but we don't necessarily see that there's a short term fix or silver bullet with that. And so we're kind of looking at that probably continuing more in a 34% of salaries and wages range. Again, a lot of the increase that we saw just in this Q4 and overall it was a net $7,700,000 increase, but a lot of that was coming from the impact of the increase in the share price on our retirement plans that are linked to that. So obviously, we've got wage inflation in those numbers. We've still got, if you remember last year, we were still seeing a little bit of year over year growth in January February.
It was really March where we started rolling off. We had our top 10 customer. We spent a lot of time talking about last year, but we had a few large customers that rolled off the books. But still were seeing tonnage and shipment growth in January February. So we've got that to deal with.
But overall, I think for next year, we're probably looking at cost inflation excluding the fuel of around 4% just with some other things that we've got going on. And then obviously from a fuel standpoint, where we are today just shy of $2.60 a gallon, I think the average in the Q1 of last year was $2.08 So we've got definitely a fuel cost headwind that we'll be looking at.
So you gave me the answer, but I've
got to do some work
to get to the specifics, I guess. I appreciate the color there. And then just my follow-up I wanted to ask, I got the comments on the January tonnage trends and the revenue per day. So just the thought on the revenue per hundredweight here in January, where are you seeing that trend at and how is that versus where you were in the 4th quarter?
Yes. I mean, we don't really talk about the revenue per 100 weights on a month to month basis because it can there's more impact of mix when you look at it on the month. But we still feel good about the performance of our pricing. I think that our contract renewals, those renewed in the Q4 were consistent. It was a pretty good size increase in weight per shipment and we had a decrease in the length of fall.
So on an absolute basis, our revenue per hundredweight excluding fuel was $16.78 in the Q4 and that was down a little bit sequentially from the 3rd, but it was still above where we were in the 2nd quarter despite our weight per shipment being up between those two periods compared as well. So, I mean, we still feel good about the environment overall. All the reasons are still that we feel good about the pricing environment in the industry last year are all still in place. And you've got an economy that may be improving. So we still feel good about pricing overall the industry and we certainly will continue to look and execute on our pricing philosophy of trying to get an increase that will offset our own cost inflation.
But from a reported yield standpoint, with an increase in weight per shipment, just like we saw in the 4th quarter, it's likely that, that rate of growth on a year over year basis could be lower than the 3% to 4% true price increases that we target. Okay.
Okay. Thanks for all the thoughts this morning and the time. Nice quarter.
Thank you.
Thank you. We'll go next to David Ross from Stifel.
Yes. Good morning, everyone. Good morning, David. Any more optimism on 2033, the digital administration, David? I think there is a decent chance that that may go through.
Fred Smith is the one that's really leading the charge on the 2,030s. We've been studying our lanes and load averages and so forth and we're honestly finding that our long haul lanes where we can get the most bang for the buck are being loaded very, very full and we don't have as much potential benefit from them as we once thought. So we're leaving it up to Fred to lead the charge on that. And should the law pass, we anticipate trying to figure out the best places and ways that we use them in our fleet.
And then on the CapEx side, because you got about $155,000,000 budgeted for the year for tractors and trailers. Are you doing anything different on the replacement front in terms of either equipment vendors or types of equipment that you're buying?
The vendors are basically the same. Our freightliner is our predominant vendor. We are equipping all of the trucks this year with the crash mitigation systems that have the automatic braking. We believe that that's a really good feature to put on the trucks, a worthwhile safety feature. That's probably the predominant difference in what we're doing this year.
Excellent. Well, thank you very much.
Thank you. We'll go next to Chris Wetherbee from Citi.
Hey, great. Thanks and good morning.
I don't know if I missed
it, but did you guys give the December year over year tonnage?
December's year over year tonnage was plus 2.6%. Okay. Got it. And then
when you think about the growth in January as well, it seems like a little bit of a pickup at least on a 2 year stack basis. I mean, you talked about the sequential trends and kind of how that's playing out. Generally speaking, when you're talking to customers
or at least just sort
of seeing activity in the market, are there certain areas where we're seeing sort of pickup as a little bit more broad based? Just want to get a rough sense of maybe how you guys are looking at the freight environment. It seems like it's a touch better than it was certainly at some point in the middle of last year.
Yes. I mean it generally feels better. There's no one particular area that's growing. We've got some that are in pockets growing faster than others, but it's pretty balanced across the system, which is good and what we would want. And but now we're just getting sort of across the board, I guess.
But we are getting positive feedback from customers. We're starting to see some pickup in some customer wins and that's already reflected in some of the numbers. But even some of the customers that we lost some business with last year, some of that is coming back. It may not be all of it and we may not want all of it back, but we are getting some pockets of that. So we feel like we've got some positive momentum going with us from a revenue standpoint.
Okay. Got it. That's helpful. And when you think about the outlook for sort of you talked a little bit about pricing for 2017 or at least sort of the environment, and it sounds like you feel good about how things are playing out. I guess I just wanted to get a sense of sort of what you think it takes to maybe accelerate pricing.
So I think some of us might argue that 2016 probably outperformed the tonnage environment. Pricing outperformed tonnage environment was a bit sluggish on the tonnage side, but we saw decent pricing. Do you need a big step forward, you think, in tonnage to be able to see a reacceleration of pricing? I'm just trying to get a sense of maybe how you guys are approaching the market, what you need to see?
Chris, this is David. The forecast we hear for GDP next year is like 2.5% compared to 1.6% this year, which is not a huge increase. I guess it's close to 50% more credit than we had this year. So maybe that is a huge increase. But I think you'll see some acceleration in yield that would come to that, but perhaps the biggest potential acceleration in tonnage and yield could be with this electronic logging device mandate scheduled for the end of 2017.
The predictions that we hear is that sometime in the latter half of the year, we're likely to see some capacity come out of the truckload arena. And with the for hire truckload market being roughly 10 times the size of the OTL market, if you had a 1% fall off in tonnage from the truckload arena, it could equate to 10% increase in the LTL arena with larger LTL shipments. And so that could be a significant increase in our business in the latter half of the year or a surge. If we have a surge, I would expect pricing will surge along with that increase in tonnage and reduction in trucking capacity.
That's really helpful. And one just very quick follow-up on that point. I think it's an interesting one. When you think about or when you talk to customers as we're entering sort of the early part of 2017, are they engaging with you at all in terms of conversations about contingencies for that
potential implementation? I just want
to get a sense of maybe if it's in the customer conversation on the LTL side yet or maybe something that could come later in the year?
We're not having the conversation. We're not hearing much about it yet. I guess I hear more about it just at conferences and different things and people speculating and we're certainly not betting on anything in particular happening, but we'll keep our head to the ground and staying ready to increase our truck buying if we need to in the latter half of the year as it comes along.
One thing to add to that as well is that we do know we probably lost a little business that's managed by the 3rd party logistics companies with the weakness in truckload pricing, I think they were able to leverage their relationships and maybe find some trucks that were available to move some heavier weighted shipments that otherwise would have moved through 3PLs. So if you get that general tightening and maybe rate inflection up in truckload, that certainly could be a benefit to the LTL industry.
Let me add one more thing is that we believe and I believe very strongly personally that we are in the best position in the LTL industry with capacity across our network because of the investments we've the continued investments we have made in our real estate over time to stay ahead of the power curve and to build out and expand our centers in the markets where our growth is the strongest and where we see the potential for future growth. So should there be a sudden surge in the latter part of the year or 1st part of 2018, we are ready to handle it.
That's great. Well, thanks very much
for the time guys. Very helpful.
Thank you. We'll go next to Ben Hartford from Baird.
I have a few balance sheet related questions. Did you provide a debt reduction or a debt pay down target at all for 2017? And how do you think about carrying debt level as you kind of reconsider or consider dividends as an option to return cash to shareholders plus the reduction in CapEx for 'seventeen. Any changes to how you think about carrying debt going forward?
We don't have any scheduled maturities with our debt in the coming years or next year. We've got one in January of 'eighteen that's coming due. So we had about $105,000,000 of debt. There was a little bit outstanding on the revolver at the end of the year, but not a lot. And frankly, that's what our debt to cap was 5.4%.
That's one of the things that we were looking at as we were going into next year and making the decision on implementing the dividend. So we feel like we've definitely got some opportunities and we can afford to put a little debt on the balance sheet, but we just want to make sure that we're prudent with our decisions and that we're doing it in the right ways and for the right reasons.
I guess to that point, and I imagine there's more to come on that front, but you can look back to where you carried that levels during the previous cycle. It was obviously materially higher. I mean, can you rethink about one time is a reasonable target without pinning you down on a specific number?
Yes. I'd rather not say because we don't just have a stated target. Again, I think that we want to look at ways that enhance shareholder returns. And I think we've done that through the implementation of the repurchase program. We increased our repurchases in the early part of 2016 and ended up buying $130,000,000 last year on that.
Now we've added this other component, but we're still looking at ways that we can expand and grow the business. And if that's available real estate that we can take advantage of above and beyond what's already planned, we will look at those opportunities or other opportunities to invest in some of our non LTL business and try to generate some growth there. But certainly, we know we've got an opportunity with the balance sheet. We just want to make sure that we're using it in a
smart way. Okay. And just to finalize that point, you talked about expanding kind of into complementary and potentially non LTL businesses. Does the fact that you're introducing a dividend reduce the likelihood or does it suggest that you are less inclined to do acquisitions to expand above and beyond LTL? How do you think about acquisitions in the context of organic growth opportunities outside of LTL specifically?
Yes. Our priority for allocating capital really hasn't changed. I mean, it starts with reinvesting in the LTL business. That's where our best returns have been and that's what we're going to continue to stay focused on. We continue to say that acquisitions are in 2nd place and granted we haven't had one since 2008.
We've looked at plenty of them and the pricing, the valuation, whatever just didn't make sense or just strategically we didn't think it made sense. So we haven't executed And that's why we implemented the shareholder return program. But to answer your question correctly, in no way is the dividend going to take away from that focus, and we're going to continue to look and at investing first in LTL. If we can do that at a higher level this year or in the next coming years, we will. And we'll continue to evaluate acquisition opportunities as well.
Okay. And last one, if I could. The $7,700,000 that you called out this quarter, fringe benefit costs that you kind of tied to incentive comp, if you will, tied to the stock price. Is that all of that $7.7 that you had or was there some other element to that fringe cost above and beyond the share price appreciation related inflation? That was a
lot of it. It wasn't all of it. And that's something that we wanted to give this information and definitely not something that needs to be adjusted out or anything in that nature. It's just trying to disclose more information about something that changed.
And our
I guess our retirement plan expenses have been or was kind of choppy this whole year. There was a lot of volatility with our stock price up and down movements and most of the annual expense came in the 4th quarter, but in the 3rd and the
4th quarters as we saw a
good surge in our share price. And so that's there and you can look and we disclosed in our 10 ks the number of vested shares that we have in the phantom stock programs and make some calculations on the dollar movement in our share price and do sort of a back of the envelope calculation with those. But the other costs that we've seen, as I mentioned earlier, we've just had inflated group health and dental costs this entire year. And that's a trend that really is something we can manage to and something we're looking at. We're continuing to evaluate, work with our partners and trying to put other wellness programs in place, other types of preventative programs that we can try to get a good control on the health and well-being of our employees and their families.
Okay. That's great. Thank you.
Thank you. And we'll go next to Ravi Shanker from Morgan Stanley.
So just to follow-up
to your responses for a few questions earlier in this call. When you you said that you're seeing the shift from and your customers from service to price. What gets them to focus back on service? Is it just going to be ELDs and the potential shortage on that? Or do you think that the market is kind of close enough to being in a balance that even an improvement in demand with seasonality should get them there?
I think some of it, Ravi, will come from just the general uptick in the economy. And the other part is we've seen this time and time again through previous down cycles where customers will leave us because a competitor offers a lower price than ours. And when they get a taste of someone else's service compared to the service levels they have in OD, they come back to us. So and we're seeing that happen now. And we believe as the market and capacity might tighten up going into next year as orders are picking up and customers are trying to make their customers happy that they are sort of pleased with our premium service.
Got it. And just
thinking of pricing, you altered your pricing strategy a little bit last year, at least the timing of it in terms of when you announced your GRI. Can you give us an update on what your experience has been with that? What's your customers' reaction been? And what can we expect for 2017 in terms of timing?
Are you saying we altered our pricing
strategy, the timing of your GRI, Austin?
Yes. I mean, we the only thing we did was I mean, we pretty much announced for the most part in line with the industry. It was on a 10 month cycle. We came out at the end of September in 2015. It was at the end of November, but pretty much came out in line with the rest of the group really.
And I think there was only one large carrier that pretty much didn't go out in that same timeframe. But really nothing's changed in that regard. And I think that the GRI went through, they're loving a lot of pushback because most of the other carriers were out seeking rate increases as well, which we think they need to continue to push for if the industry is going to get healthier from a margin standpoint to be able to support any reinvestment in capacity and frankly haven't seen it on a total basis other than us, we believe that the industry has got to continue to push price up. Got it.
And then lastly, you spoke about focus on technology. Can you talk about what are you hearing in terms of platooning? Are you running any platooning trials out there? And do you have a potential timeline for implementation?
Robbie, we have not joined in on platooning at this point and do not have any plans to do so in the near future. We're watching how things are transpiring on that front and the autonomous front and so forth.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. We'll go next to Scott Group from Wolfe. Hey, thanks.
Good morning, guys. Adam, did you see that weight per shipment is up in January?
I didn't say what it was up, but let's see it. It is about £15.70 versus about 15.40 last year give or take.
Okay. We can do that. Okay. So I want to go back to the question on margin. So if we think about the environment of the low single digit tonnage and low single digit revenue per 100 rate net of fuel and fuel higher and some of the cost inflation.
Just directionally, is this an environment where we should be expecting year over year margin improvement?
Improvement and we're always focused on it. This year, obviously, we talked about or I mentioned earlier some of the cost inflation. And I think in David's prepared comments, certainly we think that the ingredients for margin improvement are certainly there. If these trends continue, if we continue to have a strengthening economy that will be supportive of a positive yield environment. And thirdly, we think that we're already seeing year over year tonnage growth.
And as I mentioned, those numbers can look a little bit better once we get through March. So certainly, we've got a density opportunity and we've got the yield opportunity that's in front of us. We just need the economy to really continue to be sustained. I mean, we as we went through last year, we'd see a couple of good months and we need to take a step back and it just felt really rocky and sort of bumping along the bottom. So I think the ISM loan and sort of bumping along the bottom.
So I think the ISM number that was released yesterday is one of the strongest numbers in a couple of years. There's a lot of things that we feel like returning, but I can tell you we're certainly focused on managing our cost, managing productivity and all these things are certainly looking better than they look when we entered 2016. Another thing is
that our fixed cost structure this year includes a lot of investments we've made in IT and also our human resources functions And those costs should be relatively level going into 2017 and beyond. And as the growth improves a little bit, we should be able to get some leverage against those fixed costs. Okay. That's helpful. Maybe I'll try and ask it a little bit differently.
Is there historically a tonnage level that you think you need to see to see margin improvement? And then when I just think about the mix of weight per shipment going higher and revenue per 100, weight net a few or a little less, does that generally help or hurt incremental margin?
If you look at revenue per shipment, certainly this year that can be higher. I mean that's the if you look at our revenue per shipment and then compare that with what our cost per shipment and how those are trending, that's the more relevant comparison, I guess. But there's so many variables that go into it, Scott. It depends. We get asked that question a lot, what tonnage do you need?
It depends on what other actions are we taking. I think that we've had margin improvement in periods with lower tonnage and with higher tonnage, but what level of CapEx do we have? I mean there's so many other variables that go into it that it's hard to say what the specific number of tonnage growth we need because you'd have to have that Y variable of what's the yield increase offsetting. Obviously, we'd like to have more yield that increasing versus the volume. We always used to say that a 1% change in yield or decrease, you would need 5% to 6% increase in tons to offset.
Okay. And then just lastly, I think you guys in the past have talked about your goal is to grow 10 inches 5 100 or 6 100 or 700 basis points faster than the market. Is that still your goal, is it for a realistic goal once the environment gets a little bit better? It's a little bit harder to get that much tonnage, I mean that much spread on our growth rate today than it used to be back when we were expanding geography and also when we look back at some of the disruption in the marketplace with the fallout of business from YRC. And we've touched on that, I think, last fall in a conference call.
And then also when the market is soft and the freight environment is soft, our spread in tonnage growth has gotten down to if you take aside one of the carriers who was using price to get paid recently or this past year, our spread in growth is down in the 200 to 300 basis point maybe difference between the rest of us and the rest of the LTL industry. So as we as the environment is changing and the overall economy is getting a little bit better, maybe 300 to 500 sales, but it may be more realistic than 500 to 700 bps of difference. Okay. I appreciate the time guys. Thank you.
Thank you. And we'll go next to Eri Roza from Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Good morning, guys. So footprint, how is it impacting your business for today? And what competitors are doing broadly on kind of the pricing front of what you're seeing right there?
I think that on the pricing front, we continue to feel like it's been stable. No signs of increasing competitiveness or anything along that front. And I would say too that we mentioned we're getting some business back from that we lost last year. Generally, when we lose business, it's on price. And I think some of that freight is being rebid.
So some of the carriers that
maybe took it at
a little bit cheaper price last year figured out it didn't operate as well and they're trying to push prices up a little bit more and that may be contributing again to some of our marginal improvement. But it takes service, price and capacity to grow. And as David mentioned before, we feel like we're definitely in the best shape in the industry in terms of service. We continue to have award winning service 99% on time and the low claims ratio each year. We certainly got the capacity and the network and prices is now becoming maybe more normalized.
And so we certainly think that price is not a factor that we're going to win on service and capacity. So we feel good or feel really good from that
standpoint. Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. And then just shifting the yes, we
did Sorry, but I yes, we did Sorry about that.
If I ask it again, I don't know if you heard. I was saying just what decision to pay into it in the instead of increasing the buyback?
I got you. So we have a grid and we don't disclose the details of that for which buying our shares and obviously we want to buy when the price is lower. I think when you look at the average price, as we put this program in place, we bought shares at about an average price of $65 and that doesn't mean that that's our ceiling. We certainly have bought when the price is higher, but we continue to execute on that rate. Grid.
We changed it a little bit at the beginning of 2016. If you go back in the 'fifteen, we had not bought more than $35,000,000 in the quarter and we stepped that up in the first half of 'sixteen when our share price was lower and bought about $90,000,000 in the first half of the year. So as the price increase, we've started buying fewer shares as the way our grid is designed. And we've been out of the market of late. And we'll continue to evaluate the change in landscape and perhaps make changes to our grid this year.
But we'd rather buy it when the price is cheaper. That didn't impact the decision on the dividend is not to replace, but anything with the buybacks. And as I mentioned, we continue to think that the buyback is
a better form of returning capital.
And that's our intention and that would be the primary means of doing so. But the dividend is one complementary means of returning capital that's consistent and that was some of the decision making in adding that cash dividend. Great.
That makes sense. And then the statement of Trish, you're going to talk about deregulation. I was hoping you guys could touch on what you think the impact of that might be across the industry and if there are any regulation in particular you guys are targeting as going away and what impact that might have on your cost structure? You broke up a lot and I think you're asking about regulatory reform. Yes, exactly.
I don't think any of us know exactly what that regulatory reform might look like. I know one thing in particular that there was a proposed rule making last year for speed limiter devices for the trucking industry and that is highly, highly contested by different parties within American Trucking Association. It was and we like to see that thing rolling back right now. Most all the fleets out there today have speed limiting devices already on our fleets, but in terms of wide variance and speed limits across the nation, there is no perfect speed that could be uniformly applied across this United States. And so anyway, that's one that needs some attention.
But whether it's regulatory reform, who knows what's going to come down the pipe. Yes. Okay, great. And then just one real quick housekeeping. Could you just give the number of working days by quarter in 2017 and also just say the number again of what LTL tonnage per day was up in January?
Sure. The tons per day in January was up 2.2% on a year over year basis and mostly work days to get to it. I quoted for 2017 and 64 in the 1st quarter, 64 in the 2nd quarter, 63 in the 3rd quarter and 62 in the 4th quarter.
Okay, great. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Thank you. We'll go next
to Matt Brockler from Longbow Research. Hey, thanks. Good morning.
Is 3% to 4% price growth, is that still a good bogey to think about for this year? Well, as I mentioned before, that's what we target with our contractual renewals. And our pricing philosophy is that we look at our own cost inflation and that's what we ask for in the form of a price increase to offset. Now from a revenue per hundredweight standpoint, that yield metric as it was in the 4th quarter is likely to be lower than 3% to 4% because of mix changes. And when you've got an increase in weight per shipment like we had in the Q4, that's certainly going to put a have a negative effect on that reported metric.
It doesn't mean that underlying core pricing is weaker at all or in any way. So we still feel good about being able to get
those sort of 3% to
4% targeted increases next year or this year. Okay. And then can you just remind us when the weight shipment comps, when those get easier this year? Easier in terms of like when it will comp with where we were in the Q4? Yes.
When do we lap? I mean, I can look back at my model, but when do we lap the increases in weight per shipment that we saw last year, the beginning of that? And so, well, it trended again sort of ballpark about £15.50 in each of the first three quarters. So we've been closer to £1600 in the 4th quarter. So depending on if we stay at around 1600 in the first three quarters of the year, make amount of assumptions, then obviously we'd have an increase there and an impact on yield for those 1st three quarters.
Okay. And then just a question on headcount. I think headcount was down in 4th quarter. You guys did a good job of managing headcount into kind of a less robust growth environment. Now that tonnage is picking up, how should we think about headcount going into Q1?
I think traditionally headcount has grown sequentially. But are you at a point with tonnage starting to pick up again here needing to add heads in Q1? And then maybe just some color on the progression of potential headcount growth through the rest of the year? Yes. I think we're in pretty good shape with the workforce where we are and the volumes we have.
Certainly at the local levels, it's up to each terminal manager to make decisions on what their volumes are and what their headcount needs should be. And we always to protect service, we like to add our employees before the volumes are picking up because we want to make sure that they've had suitable time to train and to be able to protect their own service. So certainly, if we continue to see volumes picking up, there could be an increase in headcount for that reason. Okay. But you're not getting pinched right now just given the fact that we're kind of in the initial stages of tonnage reaccelerating potentially?
No, I think we're in pretty good shape and our headcount overall was down slightly in December compared to September, which a lot of times could be normal. But I think we're in shape across the network with where we are today. But certainly, we're finally starting to see some year over year growth and we'll continue to be mindful of what those labor needs should be in each particular area. Okay. And then last question, where did the service center count end the year?
254. I mean, I'm sorry. 225, you're already a couple of years out there, Adam. Okay. Thank you for the time.
Yes. Thank you.
Thank you. We'll go next to David Campbell from Thompson, Davis and Company.
Yes. Thank you very much. My questions have been answered. I think that the name reported in your press release, you haven't seen a number of employees at the end of the year?
Yes. The number of employees, the actual number at the end of the year was 17,543
full time employees. Okay, great. Well, thank you very much. All my other questions have been answered. Thank you.
All right. Thank you, David.
There are no further questions in the queue at this time.
Okay. As always, thank you all for your participation today. We appreciate your questions and support of Old Dominion. Please feel free to give us a call if you have any further questions. Thanks and good day.
That does conclude today's conference. Thank you for your participation.