Analysts are cutting truckload earnings estimates again just ahead of fourth-quarter reports, which is able to begin to trickle in later this week. Recent channel checks revealed a notable falloff in fundamentals within the back half of December, dispelling hopes that the quarter could be a transitionary period.
“We understand that multiple corporations across multiple sub-sectors across our industry saw a pointy drop-off in on-the-ground activity toward the very end of December, which has the potential to wreck the quarter relative to expectations,” Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) analyst Ravi Shanker said in a Tuesday note to clients.
He cut numbers on all the public transportation and logistics corporations he follows, with the TL carriers seeing the most important changes — down midteen percentages or more. He also trimmed estimates for full-year 2024 but by much smaller percentages. The change comes after he published a comparatively bullish 2024 outlook every week ago. That report included low-single to mid-single-digit estimate reductions for the fourth quarter, which proved too little because the dust continued to settle.
On the time he acknowledged his call, which is based on “an earlier and more robust upcycle in 2024 than the market expects as pressure builds on shippers to restock,” was “out-of-consensus.” Even with the weakness in the course of the last two weeks of the 12 months, his outlook for full-year 2024 stays largely intact, with the caveat that inventory levels may never return fully.
“The truth is, we’re beginning to hear of potential scenarios where inventory levels may never return to prior decade levels so long as rates of interest remain elevated with Shippers preferring to limit SKUs and running shorter, faster, tighter supply chains with higher turnover as an alternative,” Shanker added.
Under that scenario, he said modes like trucking and airfreight would profit if shippers ultimately determine to operate at leaner merchandise levels.
December Cass data also released Tuesday was a mixed bag. The year-over-year declines in shipments and expenditures slowed and TL linehaul rates showed further stabilization within the month. Nevertheless, the shipments index fell to its lowest absolute level since July 2020.
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Susquehanna Financial Group analyst Bascome Majors noted “a rather more negative 4Q23 peak season for irregular route truckload” was revealed during his recent update calls.
He previously cut fourth-quarter estimates for TL carriers like Knight-Swift Transportation (NYSE: KNX), Schneider National (NYSE: SNDR) and Werner Enterprises (NASDAQ: WERN) by 5% to 21% and full-year 2024 numbers by midteen to high-20s percentages. The most recent round of cuts included mostly mid-single-digit reductions to the fourth quarter, with even slighter reductions made to 2024.
He did raise his 2024 estimate for Knight-Swift by 7% to reflect higher performance in its third-party insurance business. He believes the unfavorable claims experience and profit degradation the unit has experienced in recent quarters has largely passed. Nevertheless, his recent estimate for the carrier remains to be 20% below where it was at the tip of 2023.
Majors’ updated outlook for 2025 still calls for a notable earnings recovery for the group, with most corporations seeing 50%-plus gains after two years of declines.
Multimodal transportation provider J.B. Hunt Transport Services (NASDAQ: JBHT) kicks off the fourth-quarter earnings season Thursday after the market closes.
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