Forward Air - Earnings Call - Q1 2025

Executive Summary

• Q1 2025 revenue was $613.3M (+13.2% YoY, -3.1% QoQ) with operating margin improving to 0.8% from -12.1% YoY; GAAP EPS was -$1.68 and net loss was -$61.2M, with strong liquidity of $393M driven by positive operating cash flow.
• Expedited Freight pricing actions drove yields higher: revenue per hundredweight ex-fuel rose 4.3% sequentially and 2.5% YoY; Expedited reported EBITDA margin reached 10.4% (up ~400 bps QoQ) as the company shed poorly priced freight and cut costs in near real-time.
• Consolidated EBITDA (credit-agreement defined) was $68.96M (LTM $313M) and first-lien net leverage was 5.3x with a ~$66M covenant cushion, improving sequentially.
• Preliminary guidance for Q1 was raised from $54–$59M Consolidated EBITDA (Apr 9) to $66–$70M (Apr 21) before reporting $68.96M actual; management estimates 2024 tariff-exposed revenue at 10–15% and clarified Expedited LTL exposure “below 10%” on the call.
• Key stock narrative catalysts: visible yield recovery at Expedited Freight, covenant cushion and liquidity stability, ongoing strategic alternatives process, and tariff/macro updates that management views as manageable.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Rapid pricing normalization in Expedited Freight: “final action was February 6… back half of the quarter, we began to see the improvement… reported EBITDA margin for the quarter up almost 400 basis points from last quarter”.
• Yield metrics improved: revenue per hundredweight ex-fuel up 4.3% QoQ and 2.5% YoY; revenue per shipment ex-fuel up 4.1% YoY.
• Liquidity and cash generation: liquidity increased to $393M QoQ on positive operating cash flow; Q1 free cash flow was $16.4M.

What Went Wrong

• GAAP EPS and net loss remained pressured by high interest expense ($45.5M) and tax expense ($19.6M) despite improved operating profit; net loss was -$61.2M.
• Expedited Freight tonnage and shipments fell YoY (pounds -10.9%, shipments -12.2%), reflecting market softness and deliberate shedding of low-margin freight.
• Consolidated revenue declined QoQ (-3.1%) with Omni Logistics essentially flat sequentially and Expedited Freight down QoQ as pricing changes and macro volatility weighed on volumes.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Welcome to the Forward Air's first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for your questions following the presentation. If you would like to ask a question at that time, please press the star and one on your telephone keypad. If at any point your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star and two. So others can hear your questions clearly, we do ask that you pick up your handset to provide best sound quality. Lastly, if you should require operator assistance, please press star and zero. I would now like to turn the call over to Tony Carreño, Senior Vice President of Treasury and Investor Relations.

Tony Carreño (SVP of Treasury and Investor Relations)

Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Forward Air's first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. With us this afternoon are Shawn Stewart, Chief Executive Officer, and Jamie Pierson, Chief Financial Officer. By now, you should have received a press release announcing Forward Air's first quarter 2025 results, which was also furnished to the SEC on Form 8-K. We have also furnished a slide presentation outlining first quarter 2025 earnings highlights and a business update. Both the press release and slide presentation for this call are accessible on the Investor Relations section of Forward Air's website at forwardair.com. Please be aware that certain statements in the company's earnings release announcement and on this conference call are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

This includes statements which are based on expectations, intentions, and projections regarding the company's future performance, anticipated events or trends, and other matters that are not historical facts, including statements regarding our fiscal year 2025. These statements are not a guarantee of future performance and are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. For additional information concerning these risks and factors, please refer to our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the press release and slide presentation relating to this earnings call. Listeners are cautioned not to place undue influence on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of the call.

The company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, unless required by law. During the call, there may also be a discussion of financial metrics that do not conform to U.S. generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP. Management uses non-GAAP measures internally to understand, manage, and evaluate our business and make operating decisions. Definitions and reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in today's press release and slide presentation. I will now turn the call over to Shawn.

Shawn Stewart (CEO)

Good afternoon, everyone. Before I get into the substance of today's call, I want to take a moment to thank our customers for their trust and loyalty during this unprecedented time in the global logistics market. We have always prided ourselves in solving our customers' problems, and it is during these times when we can add the most value to their supply chains. Thank you. I appreciate you entrusting us with your business. I also want to thank our employees around the world for their dedication to meeting our customers' needs on such a consistent basis. Our employees set the industry standard for exemplary service and commitment to best-in-class service. To our shareholders and lenders, thank you for investing your time and money in our company.

We communicate with you on a regular basis, and I sincerely appreciate your belief in our team and in the transformation journey that we are on. As you have heard from us in the past, we are committed to increasing transparency into our business. We are excited to share our new investor slide presentation that matches how we view the new combined business, which also provides direction on how we intend to report on the business by the end of the year.

Continuing on the theme of transparency, as we look to the remainder of 2025 and into 2026, we expect to have fully integrated the two legacy companies and be progressing down the path of transforming the company from a tangled web of global legal entities with multiple and sometimes duplicative technology systems to a more streamlined entity with the appropriate level of support and simplicity to grow the business. With this backdrop, our goal is to double the business over the next five years, going from the $2.5 billion revenue entity that it is today to $5 billion. Obviously, that assumes that we return to a normal freight environment and the macro headwinds do not persist for an extended period. While we are in uncertain times, what is certain is the tremendous opportunity we have ahead of us.

It is an exciting time to lead our company as we continue to transform Forward Air into a global logistics leader. With that, I want to cover three topics on today's call. First, review our first quarter consolidated results. Second, share an update on the actions to improve the expedited freight segment. Third, provide an overview of our sales by service and by region before turning the call over to Jamie to cover the financial results in more detail. Starting with the results, we had a solid quarter and reported a consolidated EBITDA of $69 million compared to $63 million a year ago. On a sequential basis, the results are consistent with the $69 million we reported in the fourth quarter of last year. With the year-over-year improvement, the last 12 months' consolidated EBITDA was $313 million.

Importantly, we generated positive free cash flow during the fourth quarter and increased liquidity by $11 million to $393 million. Second, a key area of emphasis has been on correcting the previous pricing strategies at the expedited freight segment that focused more on growth than profitability. As previously communicated, we began taking corrective pricing actions during the fourth quarter of 2024 and finished implementing the improvement strategy in February of this year. We're pleased to share that in the back half of the quarter, we began to see the improvement that we were anticipating. As expected and shared on the last earnings call, we shed some of the poorly priced freight from our network as a result of our pricing actions, which leads to some additional capacity in our network.

What is incredible was the team's ability to cut costs in line with the decrease in volume on an almost real-time basis, which led to a 10.4% reported EBITDA margin for the quarter, up almost 400 basis points from last quarter. I have been very clear that it usually takes months to rectify a single poor pricing decision, and shedding unprofitable freight is part of the process. While we all know that there was additional opportunity in the expedited freight segment's margin, I am very proud of how our team reacted and handled a very difficult situation, especially when you consider the incredible volatile environment in which they did it. This quarter's results affirm my view that the fundamentals are intact. The expedited freight segment includes one of the largest expedited LTL networks in North America and is an industry leader in serving time-critical and high-value freight.

We believe the quality of service we provide will be the driver of customer retention, growth, and ultimately pricing and profitability. The third topic is providing additional detail on our revenue, both in terms of service provided and customer region. With the first year as a combined company behind us, we plan to go to market and eventually transition to reporting our financial results by service as we move away from the legacy legal reporting structure. The four main products consist of ground transportation, air and ocean forwarding, intermodal drayage, warehousing, and value-added services. Based on our 2024 consolidated revenue, approximately 70% of our business was attributable to ground transportation business in North America across our legacy Forward and Omni businesses. This includes less than truckload, pickup and delivery, truckload brokerage services.

Approximately 12% of our 2024 revenue was from air and ocean forwarding, with another approximately 9% from our intermodal drayage business. The final product category is warehousing and value-added services, which also is approximately 9%. Supplementing these products is our customs brokerage that we're able to integrate as needed. You can see the summary of the product breakout on pages seven and eight of the slide presentation issued today. As for our revenue by region, utilizing 2024 calendar year customer billing data, we estimate that approximately 88% of our revenue is attributable to customers billed in the United States. Another estimated 7% of our revenue is from customers billed in Asia-Pacific region, while approximately 4% is from customers billed in North, Central, and South America, excluding the United States. Finally, less than 1% of our revenue is from customers billed in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

You can see a summary of the estimated revenue by region on page nine of the slide presentation. Please note that we do not have information on our customers' shipments' points of origin, especially as it pertains to our intermodal segment. In pursuit of continuing to improve the transparency of our disclosures, I hope you find the additional information helpful to your understanding of what this combined business is capable of. When you combine the services we offer with our global reach, we believe Forward Air is uniquely positioned and that separates us from the competitors and sets the stage for growth. We have more than 250 facilities in 21 countries and can offer our customers one-stop shopping and single point of contact with end-to-end international services for specialized products. As we look ahead, I am very excited about our sales opportunities to drive growth and margin expansion.

With that, I will now turn the call over to Jamie to go through the results for the first quarter.

Jamie Pierson (CFO)

Thanks, Shawn, and good afternoon, everyone. As Shawn already stated, we reported solid results in the first quarter of this year with $613 million in revenue, which was a 13.2% or $71 million increase on a required GAAP basis as compared to the first quarter of the prior year. The increase in revenue was primarily driven by the Omni acquisition that closed on January 25th of last year. Since we did not own Omni for the entire first quarter of 2024, I will also include comparisons for the Omni segment on a sequential basis. The good news is that this is the last time that I'm going to have to say that, as next quarter will be our first fully comparative period.

However, back to the point, and on a more sequential and comparative basis, consolidated revenue decreased 3.1% or $20 million from $633 million in the fourth quarter of last year to $613 million this quarter. As for our three reporting segments, expedited freight, Omni Logistics, and intermodal, revenue at expedited freight decreased $24 million or 8.8% to $249 million from the previous year's comparable quarter of $273 million. The decrease was driven by a 10.9% decrease in year-to-year tonnage per day and one less business day in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the first quarter of 2024. That was partially offset by a 2.5% increase in revenue per hundredweight, excluding fuel. You can see the revenue per hundredweight by quarter on slide 14 of today's presentation.

The 2.5% increase outperformed the LTL industry average on a year-to-year basis, as did the 4.3% sequential increase from the fourth quarter to the first quarter. At Omni Logistics, revenue in the first quarter increased by $99 million to $323 million compared to the $224 million a year ago. Again, the increase was primarily due to the 24 days of less ownership in 1Q24 compared to 1Q23. More relevantly, however, on a sequential basis, the first quarter revenue of $323 million was essentially flat to the fourth quarter 2023 revenue of $326 million. Revenue in the intermodal segment in the first quarter increased $6 million or 11% to $62 million compared to the prior year's comparable $56 million. The increase was attributable to a 7.4% increase in revenue per shipment and a 2.9% increase in the number of drayage shipments.

As you heard from Shawn, consolidated EBITDA, as defined in our credit agreement, was $69 million or 11.2% margin compared to the $63 million or 10.2% margin on a pro forma basis a year ago. With the Omni acquisition closing in the first quarter of last year, there were a ton of transaction-related expenses. As promised, we are now seeing the quality of earnings improve when compared to the last year's comparative period. To that end, and as usual, we have detailed the information used to build up the consolidated EBITDA results on page 28 of the presentation. Turning to cash flow, cash, and liquidity, we reported $28 million in positive cash flow from operations in the first quarter, which was a $79 million improvement compared to the $52 million of cash used by operations a year ago.

On a sequential basis, that same $28 million in positive cash flow from ops in the first quarter is a $51 million improvement compared to the $23 million in cash used by operations in the fourth quarter of last year. As for liquidity, we ended the fourth quarter with almost $400 million in total liquidity. Specifically, $393 million, which was comprised of $116 million in cash and $277 million in availability under the revolver. This represents an $11 million improvement compared to the end of the fourth quarter of last year. As usual, in commensurate with my past practice, I would like to leave you with a few additional thoughts for the quarter. The first of which is an update on our consolidated first lien net leverage ratio.

As one of the only financial covenants in our credit facility, net debt to consolidated LTM EBITDA was 5.3 times compared to a maximum allowable level of 6.75 times. The good news is both cash and LTM consolidated EBITDA were up sequentially, which led to a $66 million cushion at the end of the quarter. This is an improvement of $7 million when compared to the $59 million of implied cushion at the end of the fourth quarter of last year. Point two is our continued focus on cash conversion and liquidity. Cash flow from ops and thus cash increased quarter over quarter, leaving us again with a little less than $400 million in total liquidity at the end of the quarter. Given our cash flow performance and our current $393 million liquidity, we believe we're in very good shape today.

Point three, as provided by Shawn in his opening remarks, you now have an overview of our sales by service and by region around the world. We know that you've been asking for more details on what the combined company looks like, and I think this quarter's earnings presentation is a huge step in that direction. As for the potential impacts of tariffs, I'm going to steal a line from one of my peers and say that you would have to be Nostradamus to actually know what the future holds. However, we do not believe that we're overly exposed to any one region around the world outside of the United States, with approximately 1% of our 2024 revenue coming out of customers billed in mainland China and approximately 5% from customers billed in Hong Kong.

In my opinion, the real impact of tariffs will not be from the inflationary impact of the tariffs themselves, but rather the impact the headlines have on consumer confidence and the downstream impacts purchasing has on volumes. Given the daily news out of Washington, including this weekend, we may not know what those impacts may or may not be for another 60-90 days. Finally, as everyone knows, we filed an 8-K on January the 6th, indicating that we are launching a strategic alternatives review process. Since the announcement, we have completed a significant amount of work with our advisors and have recently commenced discussions with potentially interested parties. There is no guarantee that we will enter into a transaction of any kind and do not plan to update the market on the details of the process as it progresses.

If and when there is anything of substance to update, we will let you know. Until then, just know that we will continue running the business and providing the same best-in-class services and solutions as we did before and plan to provide in the future. I will now pass the mic over to Shawn for closing comments before Q&A.

Shawn Stewart (CEO)

Thank you, Jamie. I will wrap up our comments with a focus on the remainder of 2025 and early 2026. Right now, some market participants are narrowly focused on either last quarter's historical results or even the current quarter's tariff results. As for our company, and more specifically our leadership team, we are focused on our employees and our customers, knowing that if we get those right, they will take care of our shareholders. In closing, I would say that in the face of a very challenging industry and equally volatile macro environment, our team has made tremendous progress since the transaction closed. As you have heard us say before, we do not expect progress to be linear. However, we also do not intend to let the recent market noise slow us down as we look ahead and focus on the rest of the year and into 2026.

Either the investments have been made or the plans have been developed and are in process of being implemented. I remain confident in our ability to execute our strategy, grow the company, and enhance shareholder value. Finally, before we begin the Q&A, I want to acknowledge the public disclosure this morning from one of our investors. As you just heard from us, the board and management team are entirely focused on taking deliberate actions to maximize shareholder value. The board is actively engaged in leading the strategic review process, which, as we noted, is underway. With the continued oversight of our transformation strategy, we firmly believe that all of our directors are vital to these efforts. We look forward to filing our definitive proxy materials in the coming days.

Beyond that, we're not going to comment any further, and we ask that you keep your questions focused on our earning results. I will now turn the call over to the operator to take questions. Operator.

Operator (participant)

The floor is now open for questions. At this time, if you have a question or comment, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. If at any point your question is answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star and two. Again, we ask that you pick up your handset when posing your questions to provide for optimal sound quality. Our first question is coming from Bruce Chan with Stifel. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Andrew Cox (Analyst)

Hey, good afternoon, team. This is Andrew Cox on for Bruce. You know, I appreciate the consolidated revenue breakout here and understand the lack of visibility into some of the problems, some of the shipments and intermodal. We just wanted to kind of get a sense of, you know, we felt that Expedited might have a little bit more exposure to international end markets than maybe some of the LTL peers set. We just kind of wanted to know if you felt that was a fair statement. You know, if you could give an estimate or give some color on, you know, how much of that, the revenue in that division or volumes, however you want to discuss it, may be tied to inbound China or Asian volumes. Thank you.

Shawn Stewart (CEO)

Yeah, so Andrew, this is Shawn. It's a great question. When we gave our guidance on the 10-15%, it's actually below 10%, and we've put in a buffer. You know, we don't always know in the expedited LTL, because it's coming out of a U.S.D.C. mainly, we don't know where its original country of origin was. That's an unknown to anybody in the space. We put in a buffer to kind of who we know, if we know the customer, and if we know they're importing. That's where we get it from. It's a pretty good coverage. I can't say it's 100% scientific, but it's a pretty good coverage of that exposure.

Andrew Cox (Analyst)

Okay. Thank you. That's helpful. As a follow-up here, you know, there's been kind of mixed opinions on whether the numbers this quarter have been a result of pull forward, not just at Forward, but across the space. We just kind of wanted to get a sense of maybe conversations you've had with customers and how much you think there may be some pull forward in the numbers here. Maybe if you have any detail, what categories or divisions have you seen it in? Are you making it an air pocket potentially coming through, you know, starting here soon? Thank you.

Shawn Stewart (CEO)

Yeah, we did not see a whole lot of pull forward. I will not say there was not any, but, you know, towards the end, the last two weeks of March, there was quite a bit of significant uptick. We do not know how much of that was truly a pull forward versus just projects, seasonality projects that we had hit. It was not just us. It was some of our indirect customers as well through our network that had the same project. I cannot really comment that it was so much of a pull forward. I can tell you, I hope there is more coming in Q2.

Andrew Cox (Analyst)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

We'll take our next question from Stephanie Moore from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Stephanie Moore (SVP of Equity Research)

Good afternoon. Thank you. I wanted to touch on the pricing performance within Expedited for the quarter. Maybe just trying to get kind of a better understanding of the run rate as we go through the rest of the year. It looks like, you know, very strong yield performance in one Q and benefiting from the corrective actions that you've taken. But how much, just given the timing of those actions, which I think you called out, did not fully get influenced with the end of the first quarter? As you look at the run rate for the first quarter, should we then expect a bit of a step up in two Q and then for the rest of the year as those actions kind of fully take hold? Thanks.

Shawn Stewart (CEO)

Hi, Stephanie, and welcome back. Yeah, the pricing actions, it's kind of a, it's a double-edged sword. The pricing actions that we took in regards to our class-based tariffs are solid, and we're seeing the necessary results. Just for a context of the timing, the final action was February 6. We basically have half of February and all of March. Let's just say half of the quarter was impacted, if that helps you. In regards to, you also lose some volume, although more of our volume declination was overall market and not just from our pricing actions.

What you heard in my opening was we also have to make sure that we are reducing the cost of the network and optimizing that network based on volume, whether it be by, you know, customer declinations, the greater market, or pricing actions that we choose to take. It is not just about pricing. It is also about how we adjust our network and our modeling from an optimization standpoint to bring the cost down when the revenue is not there. It is a double-edged sword in how we really control that from making sure that we are bringing the most margin into the organization as possible with those actions.

Jamie Pierson (CFO)

Stephanie, it's Jamie. If I can add, you know, since the previous pricing action that led to the situation was taken in late 2023, 2024 should be, all else being equal, a fairly easy comp. You compound the fact that what Shawn said about, you know, only half of the impact was captured in the first quarter, with the fact that that pricing action happened in late 2023, carried throughout most of 2024, I would anticipate fairly easy comps. That does not mean that we should not do better, but just based on a year-to-year basis, we should see, you know, fairly good performance.

Stephanie Moore (SVP of Equity Research)

Got it. And then just maybe touching on the margin expectations for this year. You know, look, I think, you know, Jamie, Shawn, you both have talked about the opportunity to continue to improve the Expedited margin profile and kind of compare it to other LTL peers. But can you talk a little bit about what we should expect in terms of an OR improvement expected in 2025?

Jamie Pierson (CFO)

Yeah. Stephanie, what I would say on that is if you look at page 25 of the.

Stephanie Moore (SVP of Equity Research)

I'm on the slide.

Jamie Pierson (CFO)

You're on the slide. You're beating to it.

Stephanie Moore (SVP of Equity Research)

I'm on it.

Jamie Pierson (CFO)

Yeah. You know, if you think about a $1 billion business, on the LTL side of the house being a $1 billion business, if you just do simple math, you know, the average is 18.5. We're at 9.8. So that's about an, you know, 8.7% gap. And then if you go back even, you know, five to seven years ago, not recently, and I'm leaving COVID out for a very specific reason, we were at that 15-17% range. So this network and this company is capable of hitting, and they have. It's not that they're just capable of it. We actually have hit these numbers before. And I don't mean this offensively to our peers, but I think we have a far superior service and product offering. So there's no reason why we shouldn't be at least average.

Stephanie Moore (SVP of Equity Research)

Maybe just to follow up to that, and I promise I'm done here. You know, we talked about, obviously, the pricing side, you know, coming in and impressed by those results. You've talked about your just now, your superior service, which I would agree. So what is left, I guess, to ultimately close that gap, if anything?

Jamie Pierson (CFO)

Yeah. For me, yeah, for me, and I'll let Shawn as the closer kind of clean up, is, you know, we took these pricing actions. In those pricing actions, we created excess capacity in the network. And you know as well as anybody else how the operating leverage works in this space. So from my perspective, we need to be disciplined on pricing and simply add volume to the network. We've created space in the network. Space already existed in the network. So now going forward, if priced appropriately, there's no reason why every incremental dollar shouldn't have that additional operating leverage included.

Shawn Stewart (CEO)

We just got to grow, Stephanie.

Stephanie Moore (SVP of Equity Research)

Okay.

Shawn Stewart (CEO)

Now the network is good. The pricing is solid. The service and solution is solid. We just got to grow.

Stephanie Moore (SVP of Equity Research)

Understood. Thank you for the time.

Shawn Stewart (CEO)

You're welcome.

Operator (participant)

We'll take our next question from Scott Group with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Scott Group (Senior Analyst)

Hey, thanks. Any chance you can give us the monthly tonnage trends throughout the quarter in April? I just want to make sure I'm getting the message right, just near term, right? We've got a full quarter benefit of the pricing actions in Q2, so that'll help. There is this sort of import cliff or whatever you want to call it that I imagine impacts the airport-to-airport business. Do you think we should expect to see sequential improvement in Expedited revenue and margin and earnings in Q2, or is that too much to ask? I don't know.

Jamie Pierson (CFO)

Of course, it's too much to ask, Scott, but I wouldn't expect anything other than that from you. I mean that lovingly. The way I would answer that is, you know, if you look at one Q25 as a baseline, if we can anchor Scott on one Q25, you know, what we're seeing are similar trends as our peers as they have pre-released and what historical patterns would imply, which is very directly a little softer in April and a little stronger in May relative to April. It's following similar trends to what our peers have pre-released to and also similar trends of what we've historically performed at. Right now, we are prioritizing and myopically focused on the broader transformation plan and the longer-term profitability of the company. I mean this to say the last quarter is in a rearview mirror. The current quarter is turbulent.

It's noisy. It's full of headlines than it is really actual performance. We are focused on making really just the necessary investments and the decisions to fundamentally improve the operating characteristics of this company, especially in the back half of this year moving into 2026. I think I can speak for the entire ELT is that we're looking forward to putting points on the board and reporting our results in the next quarter here in a few short months.

Scott Group (Senior Analyst)

I think you had a comment that $2.5 billion of revenue is going to $5 billion of revenue. Is that an organic comment, or is there some assumption of M&A? Just like the other strategic question, at least to me, this talk about bonded warehousing is somewhat new. Just how big of a market is it? How big of a business is it for you? Do you have any color you can share? I think it's interesting to the market overall. Is the activity in these bonded warehouses like going through the roof right now, or is it sort of just business as normal?

Shawn Stewart (CEO)

Yeah, it's a lot. I would say yes, organic expansion by strengthening and scaling our customer relationships. We're also promoting we haven't done a great job in cross-selling of our products and services across the current and future customer base, meaning giving all of our services, not just selling one service that we were in the previous legacy companies, and obviously driving our sales force effectiveness and improve their pipeline. That's really the main areas that we see taking it from where we are today to that $5 billion in five years. Yes, to answer your next question, bonded warehouses and foreign trade zones in the United States are going to be very important, are important today, and even more important tomorrow.

Where we have our bonded warehouses today and fairly good coverage around the United States, we're in the process right now of expanding our foreign trade zones in those bonded warehouses to further take a strategic advantage to the market and based on what our customers' needs are.

Scott Group (Senior Analyst)

Do you have any perspective? Can you give us any perspective? How big is this business for you? Like how rapidly is it growing right now?

Shawn Stewart (CEO)

I can't. I would be, you know, licking my finger and holding it up to catch the wind. So it's not fair to really comment on that one.

Scott Group (Senior Analyst)

Okay. All right. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

We'll take our next question from Bascome Majors with Susquehanna. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Bascome Majors (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks for taking my questions. To follow up on some of the mix disclosure here, within that 12% air and ocean forwarding, you know, can you give us a rough breakdown between, you know, the air and the ocean contribution? And, you know, if we look at that plus the warehousing value add as really the legacy Omni contribution to that, call it 60-40 air-ocean warehousing value add on the revenue top line, you know, how does the bottom line contribution differ from that 60-40 split? Thank you.

Jamie Pierson (CFO)

Yeah, Bascome, we're just trepidatiously putting our toe in the water on this one. We're going to start with revenue. By the time we get to the end of the year, we intend to actually continue to increase those disclosures. Right now, to say that what the or try to break apart air-ocean and warehouse and VAS outside of what we've already disclosed, we're not prepared to do so. I would say I agree with your direction. Air is a little bit bigger than ocean within that segment. I think everyone's very well aware of what's going on with our warehousing operations relative to the volume on ocean in particular and air.

Bascome Majors (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you for that. I appreciate the guidance approach here, but we really do not have a baseline of what seasonality looks like in the combined business. Could you just give us a high-level view of, you know, what a normal, and of course, this is anything but normal environment, you know, might directionally look like in some of the broad stroke business lines in a typical one Q to two Q? I guess we can do our own work on where we think it might diverge for what is happening. Thank you.

Shawn Stewart (CEO)

Yeah, you just said it for me, Bascome, but yeah, seasonality is, I think, out the window. If we went typical, you know, your Q1 is usually lower than the other three quarters in a normal calendar segment. You know, you end Q1 with a strong March typically. You usually start off Q2 with a light April with an improvement in the following months. You know, typically your Q2 is a little lighter. Q3 to Q4 end up ramping up to end the year. That is typical. I think we are anywhere from typical. What we do not have the crystal ball on is, yes, we have got the 90-day reprieve. What is that going to do? You know, we did see a large destocking. What did it get to, like 14% on the destocking? Yeah.

Prior to all this tariff conversation, our sources are now telling us that's probably back up to the levels of post-COVID, 2023 levels. A lot of forward stocking coming back in. We just do not know. You know, Jamie and I look at consumer confidence as probably the main KPI because how goes consumer confidence? All else is just kind of a feed to that. That is what we are going to continue to watch. If the consumer confidence starts to come back up, I think things, especially for you as an analyst, should start to trigger some positive things to come. I think we are going to have to see some more of that.

Jamie Pierson (CFO)

Yeah, Bascom. And by the way, normal, who knows? If you just looked at pages, I would say 13, 16, and 17 in the materials, you'll see the shape of the curve. I'm going to work backwards on this one. 17 is intermodal. It's like a PEZ dispenser. You hit the button, $10 million comes out. If you look at 16 on Omni, going into the beginning of 2024, there's probably some transaction-related, what I'd say, headwinds there. The shape of the curve there looks about right. Then on 13 for expedited freight, we all know that four Q shouldn't be that low.

If you were to extrapolate a little bit better for a fourth quarter, that probably is not too dissimilar to what I would say outside of a tariff-related industry in a weak freight environment would be, probably not too dissimilar to what I would expect.

Bascome Majors (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you both.

Operator (participant)

We'll take our next question from Christopher Kuhn with Benchmark. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Christopher Kuhn (Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking the questions. It sounds like in expedited, the volume decline, I think you said was largely due to the market. Some is due to that shedding of poorly priced freight. Do you expect that to continue as the year progresses, or have you shed most of that freight?

Shawn Stewart (CEO)

I think most of it, Chris, has shed. We've been in further dialogue with some of those customers on some revisit, not that we're changing pricing, but just to continue the conversations and the need. If their needs change, we'll see what we can do as well. Yeah, I think the majority of that. It is really down to the market situation if that's really your question.

Christopher Kuhn (Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah. No, that's helpful. And yeah, that was my next question. I mean, do you think it's possible some of these customers come back just given your service level compared to where their alternative is?

Shawn Stewart (CEO)

I'm a pretty humble guy, so I don't want to be cocky here, but I think our service, you know, anytime somebody leaves and goes and tries something else, we're kind of hard to beat. I'm being proud and humble at the same time. Yes, I do think so. We're going to continue to we're not just sitting on our hands, and we're making this network better every day. We have an outstanding team that is looking for perfection and not just staying status quo. As we continue to make things better, make things faster, quality is improving, and it's hard to improve from a pretty outstanding quality that it is today. Yeah, we're kind of hard not to use.

Scott Group (Senior Analyst)

Okay. You have taken the cost out. You have done a good job there to offset the volume loss. Do you think, though, that you have enough capacity if we are all hoping volumes come back?

Shawn Stewart (CEO)

Oh, for sure. Yeah. There's no doubt about it. You know, we run a pretty, between our fleet owners and partners to our independent contractors to our own employee drivers. We can scale this thing up and down pretty, pretty damn quick. Yeah, that's not going to be a problem for us. That'll be a good, that'll be a good situation, not a problem.

Scott Group (Senior Analyst)

Yeah, exactly. Just lastly, it's small, but the intermodal business, what is the impact of the lower West Coast imports? Will it actually benefit from some East Coast imports picking up again as the Red Sea situation is alleviated?

Shawn Stewart (CEO)

Man, you're like my top sales guy for intermodal right now. Yes, you'll love this. Our intermodal team, which is a fantastic group, we pretty much are focused up and down the East Coast into the Gulf, and then we have one operation in Seattle, Tacoma. That's where our sweet spot is. We catch most of our West Coast traffic in the intercountry rail yards from an intermodal standpoint, and that's where we grab the can. We're not heavily focused ourselves on the West Coast, L.A. Long Beach ports. We feel that we're in the right sweet spot for grabbing as much as we have today and increased off the East Coast because that's where we are.

Scott Group (Senior Analyst)

Got it. Thanks for the questions. Appreciate it.

Shawn Stewart (CEO)

Mm-hmm.

Operator (participant)

We will take our next question, a follow-up from Scott Group with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Scott Group (Senior Analyst)

Hey, guys. Thanks for the follow-up. I just want to try to understand a little bit better. I totally get we're not giving guidance, and there's a lot of there's not a ton of visibility right now. The disclosure is helpful. 88% U.S. customers, 70% ground transportation. My assumption has been that, you know, a lot of that ground business is the airport to airport and thus ultimately tied to imports in the U.S. If there's a drop in imports into the U.S., you know, that shows up as a headwind to volume in May and June, right, as we start to see this drop in import. Is that the right way to think about your business?

Are you seeing that, or do you think it's more truly domestic and it's going to be more like what the other LTLs are talking about and seeing? I just want to make sure I'm understanding how to think about the business drivers. Hopefully, that makes sense.

Shawn Stewart (CEO)

Yeah, it does. I would say that we're an import-consuming country. And so, you know, I can't even give you the right number, but I would say so much of what we consume in the United States is imported into the United States. So it's an impact. I would also say what a lot of people, and this is my view, what a lot of people don't understand is the tariff conversation. If this was Trump administration's first period, we would all have a lot more questions. Since it's not, and this is Trump 2.0, a lot of these concerns, in my opinion, are already mitigated because we had the first four years and another four years to prepare for this.

I know a lot of people do not understand it is a new conversation, but a lot of what we call China plus one has already moved to those plus one countries where these tariffs are not as impactful as China. Where people are seeing the biggest decline right now is in China, but most of that, which is not really a conversation, is coming off the cancellation of the 3-2-1 de minimis rule. A lot of this is more the volume is coming down out of China for the e-commerce business, the small parcel business, than it is about the density real cargo that rides in our network. I do not know if I helped you or confused you more, but I do not think that this is going to be a real impact to our total volume in the LTL sector.

Scott Group (Senior Analyst)

That's super fine. And just so I understand, it doesn't sound like the stuff that the typical stuff that's part of the de minimis, like the Temu and Sheins of the world, that stuff doesn't really flow through your network on the airports.

Shawn Stewart (CEO)

I won't say it doesn't flow, but it's minimal.

Scott Group (Senior Analyst)

Okay. Very helpful. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Jamie Pierson (CFO)

Your question is about our exposure compared to other LTLs. I think Shawn articulated it perfectly.

Scott Group (Senior Analyst)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press the star and one keys on your telephone keypad. We can pause for a moment to allow any further questions to queue. We do have a follow-up question from Bruce Chan with Stifel. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Andrew Cox (Analyst)

Hey, guys. Thanks for letting me jump back in, Andrew, again. I just wanted to kind of get a temperature check on price competition in the premium LTL services. You know, it seems like others have been pretty deliberate about building market share in this segment, including, you know, standing up smaller A2A networks. So how would you characterize the competition and the competitive environment right now? Thank you.

Shawn Stewart (CEO)

Andrew, I do not, I mean, again, to be humble, we have people playing in the space, but they do not have true networks, not a full bespoke like we have. Yeah, there are people out there playing the space. Pricing competition for our service, I do not really see it on a day-to-day basis. If they want to lower their rates, if they have good density lanes and they are buying it, let them have it for a lower margin. What we are doing is focused on our quality and the rate that is market competitive to have the great service we provide. That is where we are playing and let them do what they want to do. We are staying focused really on us and being better every day than comparing ourselves to them.

Andrew Cox (Analyst)

Okay. Thank you. I guess if I can just have one more here. Apologies if we've missed it, but just wanted to get an update on the PT insourcing. You know, do you still feel like you're in a good place there, especially with respect to line haul? Are you seeing that market get any tighter or really any changes to that market? Thank you.

Shawn Stewart (CEO)

You're talking about parts transportation?

Andrew Cox (Analyst)

Yes, sir.

Shawn Stewart (CEO)

When you say PT? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think we're best in class there. We've got really outstanding drivers and owner-operators and fleet owners. There's not a huge influx of overall demand there. We give them a great rate to run our cargo, as well as we work very closely with them to ensure that they get home as much as possible. It is not just about rate, it is how they're treated. We feel like we do that best in class against any of our competitors. I do not see that really being a huge issue this year in 2025.

Andrew Cox (Analyst)

Okay. Thank you for the time.

Operator (participant)

There are no further questions in queue at this time. Let me turn the call back over to Mr. Stewart for any final remarks.

All right. I want to personally thank everyone for joining the call today. Really appreciate it and look forward to connecting with you soon. If you have any questions, please follow up directly with Tony, and he'll get back to us if needed or take your calls. Really appreciate it. Take care.

This concludes Forward Air's first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Please disconnect your line at this time and have a wonderful evening.