Saia (SAIA) Q1 2026 Earnings Transcript

Motley Fool Transcribing, The Motley Fool

Thu, April 30, 2026 astatine 10:31 AM CDT 27 min read

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DATE

Thursday, April 30, 2026 astatine 10 a.m. ET

CALL PARTICIPANTS

• President and Chief Executive Officer — Frederick J. Holzgrefe

• Chief Financial Officer — Matthew J. Batteh

Full Conference Call Transcript

Frederick J. Holzgrefe: Good morning, and convey you for joining america to sermon Saia, Inc.’s archetypal 4th results. As we moved into 2026, we remained focused connected serving our customers, enhancing operational efficiency, and integrating our newer terminals into our network. Q1 2026 was nary antithetic than past with upwind impacting operational results. This twelvemonth was pronounced arsenic we saw upwind patterns impacting our halfway and profitable Texas and Mid-South regions. However, overmuch similar history, we saw seasonality summation successful March, peculiarly the 2nd fractional of the month, arsenic our customers began to pat our nationalist network. Our teams, fleet, and footprint were good positioned to instrumentality vantage of this accidental to enactment our customers’ seasonal demands.

Service metrics continued to amended done the quarter. During the quarter, our squad remained focused connected what matters most: serving the customer. We achieved a cargo claims ratio of 0.5%, which is our sixth consecutive 4th of claims ratio beneath 0.6%, a grounds of consecutive quarters achieving this milestone. Customers besides worth our quality to reliably prime up and present freight successful the timeframes that conscionable their requirements and expectations. Across our KPIs, we proceed to conscionable and transcend expectations passim the network. Despite the dynamic situation this quarter, we improved operationally. Most notably, we saw a important summation successful miles betwixt preventable accidents and a important betterment successful hours betwixt lost-time injuries.

Miles betwixt preventable accidents were a first-quarter record, portion hours betwixt lost-time injuries were astatine the highest first-quarter level since 2020. Both metrics are a testament to our ongoing committedness to safety, training, and technology. Our operational execution is driven by our continued investments successful our web and optimization technology. Although we are inactive successful the aboriginal stages of realizing the afloat semipermanent benefits of a nationalist network, execution remains beardown crossed the organization, improving upon trends seen successful the backmost fractional of past year. Increasingly, customers worth consistency and reliability, and our show successful these areas is enabled by the longer-term investments that are halfway to our strategy.

As a result, productivity continued to amended successful the quarter, with touches making their strongest show since 2024, improving much than 2.5% compared to 2025 and improving astir 1% sequentially from the 4th quarter. These metrics show the interaction of our ongoing investments successful optimization technology. As the freight backdrop improves and we proceed to physique density connected our nationalist network, we expect further web leverage and plus utilization. With work levels among the champion successful the manufacture and our expanding worth proposition to our customers, we proceed to marque advancement connected pricing and premix management. Revenue per shipment excluding substance ramped passim the quarter, successful portion owed to our efforts astir contractual renewals, which were 6.7% for the quarter.