Q4 2023 RXO Inc Earnings Call

Participants

Drew Wilkerson; Chief Executive Officer, Director; RXO Inc

Jamie Harris; CFO; RXO Inc

Jared Weisfeld; Chief Strategy Officer; RXO Inc

Ken Hoexter; Analyst; BofA Global Research

Jordan Alliger; Analyst; Goldman Sachs

Stephanie Moore; Analyst; Jefferies

Brandon Oglenski; Analyst; Barclays Investment Bank

Allison Poliniak-Cusic; Analyst; Wells Fargo Securities, LLC

Scott Schneeberger; Analyst; Oppenheimer & Co., Inc.

Ravi Shanker; Analyst; Morgan Stanley

Scott Group; Analyst; Wolfe Research

Bruce Chan; Analyst; Stifel Nicolaus and Company, Incorporated

Jack Atkins; Analyst; Stephens Inc.

Presentation

Operator

Welcome to our XLQ. for 2023 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. My name is Laura, and I will be your operator for today's call. Please note that this conference is being recorded. And during this call, the Company will make certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws, which, by their nature involve a number of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. A discussion of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially is contained in the Company's SEC filings as well as in its earnings release. You should refer to a copy of the Company's earnings release in the Investor Relations section on the company's website.
For additional important information regarding forward-looking statements and disclosures and reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures that the company uses when discussing its results.
I will now turn the call over to Drew Wilkerson. Mr. Wilson, you may begin.

Drew Wilkerson

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining today. With me here in Charlotte, our Chief Financial Officer, Jamie Harris, and Chief Strategy Officer, Jared wise, felt before I get into our fourth quarter results, I want to recap 2023 a historic year for RX. Oh, when we spun from XPO in November of 2022, we created a new public company that is more fit for purpose with the ability to allocate capital even more effectively. While market conditions were difficult when we spun, we viewed this as an opportunity to demonstrate the power of our model.
In 2023, we doubled down on our strengths, exceptional customer service solutions that help our customers solve their toughest transportation challenges, innovation and deep customer relationships. We also successfully integrated new leaders into our existing long tenured team. Our model delivered outperformance for 2023 despite the extended soft freight market conditions. Brokerage volume grew by 12% year over year with gross margin of more than 15%. Brokerage cross-border loads grew by 37% year over year. Brokerage productivity as measured by loads per head per day increased by over 15%.
In Managed Transportation, we significantly grew the synergy loads provided to our other lines of business, largely truck brokerage We also onboarded several large new customers. We grew last mile adjusted EBITDA year over year. We also generated strong adjusted free cash flow of $49 million, which Jamie will expand on later. We achieved all of this while making investments for our future, including our people, offices, technology and services. I couldn't be prouder of what the Rx team delivered in 2023, and I'm looking forward to continuing to outperform this year.
Now let's discuss our fourth quarter results. Our XO continued to perform well in the quarter, despite soft freight market conditions that have persisted for the third consecutive quarter, we achieved double digit brokerage volume growth. Total brokerage volume grew by 15%. Full truckload brokerage volume grew by 11% and less than truckload volume grew by 45% year over year. We again broke records in our brokerage business this quarter, quarterly loads per day and total volume hit new highs. Full truckload has always been the core of our brokerage business and it represented 84% of volume in the quarter later. Gerald will talk in more detail about our volume growth by vertical, but all of our major truckload verticals grew year over year. Our cross-border loads also grew by an impressive 28% year over year. Contract volume was again, the most important driver of our growth and represented 80% of our mix in the quarter.
Securing contractual volume puts us in prime position to win spot volume and project loads when the market inflects RxL continues to take profitable market share brokerage gross margin was 14.8% in the quarter, and complementary services managed transportation again grew the synergy loads it provided to our other lines of business, mainly truck brokerage, managed transportation also secured several key wins, including new managed expedite customers, solidifying our position as a leading provider of this service in Last Mile, the focus we placed on improving profitability was successful, and we grew adjusted EBITDA both sequentially and year over year for the fourth quarter and for full year 2023. We're pleased with the progress we've made in our last mile business, and we have many opportunities ahead.
Complementary Services gross margin was 20.9% in the quarter, up 90 basis points sequentially and up 40 basis points year over year. Our proprietary technology continues to drive many of these results in the fourth quarter, 97% of the loads were created or covered digitally up from 87% a year ago. Our seven-day carrier retention was 76%, up 200 basis points year over year.
I'd now like to spend some time giving you an overview of what we're seeing in the market and how that impacted our business in the fourth quarter, the freight market continued to soften during the fourth quarter, primarily due to supply-side challenges. The load to truck ratio declined to about two to one in the fourth quarter, down from nearly three to one in the third quarter, INDUSTRY tender rejections remained steady at just about 4%.
The logistics managers' index dropped sharply in November after three consecutive monthly increases. It rebounded only modestly in December, carrier exits accelerated, but there's still too much capacity relative to demand. We also experienced a muted peak season. We saw typical seasonal capacity reduction at the end of Q4 and when combined with inclement weather hitting certain parts of the country, there were limited opportunities to improve our buy rate.
This negatively impacted both our brokerage gross margin percentage and gross profit per load throughout the quarter. However, our focus on profitable growth while controlling costs enabled us to increase adjusted EBITDA by approximately 20% sequentially, in line with the expectations that we communicated to you last quarter. I'd like now to discuss our expectations for the first quarter.
We expect that our strong brokerage sales pipeline will enable us to deliver year-over-year brokerage volume growth in the first quarter, albeit at a slower pace than in the fourth quarter. Brokerage gross margin compressing continued into January, and we anticipate that will impact the first quarter Jamie and Jerry will discuss this in more detail later in the call.
As we look forward to the rest of the year, we're preparing for multiple scenarios at this time. Our base case is the recovery will begin in the second half of the year. That assumes that the macro economy remains stable and carrier exits continue to accelerate in market conditions like these large companies like RX o who have financial strength, strong relationships with customers and carriers and cutting edge technology will excel and widen the gap with the competition. We have our sights set on the future and are investing for long-term growth and profitability. We also continue to react quickly to changing market dynamics, including by reducing our costs, the actions we're taking now will help drive outsized growth when the market turns.
Now Jamie will discuss our financial results in more detail. Jamie?

Jamie Harris

Thank you, Jay, and good morning, everyone. I'll review our fourth quarter performance.
In addition to some highlights for the full year, in the fourth quarter, we generated $1 billion in revenue compared to $1.1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022. Gross margin in the quarter was 18%, while gross margin declined 150 basis points year over year. We are pleased with this performance given the current freight environment.
Our adjusted EBITDA was $31 million in the quarter, in line with our expectations of 20% sequential growth. This compares to $64 million in the fourth quarter of 2022, our adjusted EBITDA margin was 3.2%, down 250 basis points year over year. The declines in these metrics were primarily due to lower freight rates and the moderation in brokerage gross margin below the line.
Our interest expense for the quarter was $8 million. Our adjusted effective tax rate of 29% in the quarter was lower than our previous expectations due to discrete tax items. Adjusted diluted earnings per share for the quarter was $0.06, which includes approximately $0.02 of discrete tax benefits, you can find a bridge to adjusted EPS on slide 7 of the earnings presentation.
Moving to our lines of business. In the fourth quarter, our brokerage business generated $610 million of revenue, down 8% year over year, primarily due to lower freight rates. Brokerage volume for the quarter increased by 15% year over year. Brokerage gross margin remained strong in the quarter at 14.8%, while gross margin declined 300 basis points year over year against a very tough comp, it only declined by 30 basis points sequentially.
Complementary Services revenue in the quarter of $411 million was down 16% year over year. Revenue was impacted by lower automotive volumes in our managed transportation business and continued weakness in the big and bulky category impacting last mile. While last-mile starts were down 9% year over year in the quarter, last mile adjusted EBITDA was up year over year, primarily as a result of strategic pricing actions we took early in the year combined with continued operational improvement. Our customers recognize the value that our Last Mile business provides, and we're excited about the opportunities in this part of our business.
Complementary Services gross margin of 20.9% improved 40 basis points year over year, and by 90 basis points sequentially. Fourth quarter seasonality and our Last Mile pricing initiatives were the biggest drivers of our improved gross margin on a sequential and year-over-year basis, respectively.
Turning to the full year in 2023, we generated $3.9 billion in revenue compared to $4.8 billion in 2020 to 2023. Gross margin of 18.3% was down 130 basis points year over year. Our full year adjusted EBITDA was $132 million compared to $306 million in 2022. Adjusted EBITDA margin for the year was 3.4%, down 300 basis points. The declines in these metrics were primarily due to lower freight rates and the moderation in brokerage gross margin.
Now I'd like to discuss the full year results for our lines of business. Brokerage revenue for the year was $2.4 billion, down 19% year over year, primarily due to lower freight rates. Brokerage volume for the year increased by 12% year over year. Brokerage gross margin remained strong at 15.4%, but declined by 300 basis points year over year. Complementary Services revenue was $1.7 billion for the full year, down 15% gross margin of 20.8% improved by 80 basis points year over year. For the full year, last-mile starts were down 9%, but adjusted EBITDA was up year over year. As we mentioned earlier.
Please turn to Slide 8. As we discuss cash flow, our adjusted free cash flow of negative $2 million over the trailing six months was impacted by lower profitability levels at the bottom of the freight cycle. As we mentioned during last quarter's call, Q3 adjusted free cash flow was also negatively impacted about the earlier than expected collections in the second quarter.
For the full year, our XO generated strong adjusted free cash flow of $49 million or approximately 37% of adjusted EBITDA. As we discussed last quarter, our 2023, adjusted free cash flow was impacted by out-of-period cash tax payments in the amount of $15 million when adjusting for those payments, our 2023 adjusted free cash flow conversion was approximately 48%. This speaks to the power of the RxL model and our ability to generate meaningful cash flow during a down cycle. We remain comfortable with an annual adjusted cash conversion rate between 40% and 60% of adjusted EBITDA over the long term across market cycles.
At the bottom of the cycle, adjusted cash conversion will be negatively impacted by fixed charges such as interest expense, in addition to the capital expenditures that we intend to make for long-term growth. As Drew mentioned at this time, our base case is that the freight market recovery will begin in the second half of the year. As a reminder, accelerated growth as the cycle turns will result in the use of working capital. We continue to anticipate using approximately 7% to 9% of each incremental revenue dollar. This could impact short term cash conversion dependent on the pace of the recovery.
Now let's move to slide 8, where we've included a six month cash bridge. We ended the quarter with $5 million of cash on the balance sheet, slightly above our expectations due to strong receipts in the quarter. The reduction of our cash balance from the third quarter was principally a function of our $100 million term loan prepayment.
Turning to cost in 2023 we achieved annualized run-rate savings of approximately $32 million with associated restructuring charges of $16 million, a very strong return. While the savings have been masked by the current freight cycle dynamics and the reduction in brokerage gross profit per load will create significant operating leverage when the cycle turns.
Our full year 2023 restructuring and spin-related costs were $28 million better than last quarter's estimate of $30 million to 32 million and our initial expectation of approximately $35 million at the beginning of 2023. Additionally, the cash outflows associated with these restructuring and spin-related actions were $23 million, also better than the $25 million expectation that we shared with you last quarter. And our initial expectations $30 million at the beginning of 2023.
I want to spend some time discussing our cost optimization efforts for 2024. While we continue to strategically invest in the business, we will always leverage our technology and operate with a continuous improvement mindset. That said, given the current market conditions, we are acting expeditiously to take additional costs of the business we currently plan to take out at least $25 million of additional annualized operating expenses.
From a capital expenditure perspective, our current projection for 2024 is for capital expenditures in the amount of $40 million to $50 million. This compares to $64 million in 2023 is more in line with our long-term cross cycle target of 1% of revenues. Also remember, at 2023, capital expenditures included approximately $12 million of strategic real estate expense. As I mentioned earlier, we are continuing to invest for growth, but are mindful of the current operating environment.
As you can see on slide 9, our liquidity position remains healthy, with $600 million of committed liquidity at the end of the quarter. Gross and net leverage at quarter end were both approximately 2.5 times trailing 12 months adjusted EBITDA moving higher from the prior quarter as we cycle through last year's EBITDA, we remain comfortable with our current leverage ratio. And given the strong free cash flow characteristics of our business, we will delever as the cycle and flex our customers want to work with strong partners like RXR, they can perform and invest across all market cycles.
Regarding the first quarter, as Drew mentioned earlier, our brokerage business is currently being impacted by market conditions and limited spot opportunities pressuring our gross margin. We, therefore, are anticipating an above seasonal sequential decline in adjusted EBITDA. Specifically, we expect Q1 adjusted EBITDA in the range of $12 million to $18 million you can find our 2020 for modeling assumptions on Slide 13 of the deck, we expect the following capital expenditures between $40 million and $50 million. Depreciation expense between $56 million and $58 million, amortization of intangibles of approximately $12 million, stock-based compensation expense between $24 million and $26 million.
Restructuring, transaction and integration expenses between $20 million and $25 million net interest expense between $31 million and $33 million. And we expect our full year 2024 adjusted effective tax rate to be approximately 30%. This assumes no change in the current tax law. You should also model an average diluted share count of approximately 120 million shares. This does not include any impact associated with potential share repurchases overall, given the current state of the freight cycle, we're pleased with our execution for operating we'll invest in strategically while remaining disciplined on cost and position in RX oh for this cycle inflection.
Now I'd like to turn it over to Chief Strategy Officer, Jared Weisfeld, who will talk more in detail about our results and our outlook.

Jared Weisfeld

Thanks, Jamie. And good morning, everyone. We continued to outperform the market in the fourth quarter, growing brokerage volume by 15% year over year with continued substantial profitable market share gains enabled by our people and our technology. More specifically, we grew our core truckload volumes by 11% year over year and grew LTL volume by 45% year over year.
Our full truckload customers continue to award US LTL loads because of our strong service and relationships. Ltl represented approximately 16% of brokerage volumes in the fourth quarter. In our full truckload business, all of our major verticals grew year over year in the fourth quarter. We believe this speaks to our idiosyncratic profitable market share gains as our results continue to outpace the macroeconomic indicators most closely aligned with these verticals. Retail and e-commerce volumes grew by 12% year-over-year. Volume from our industrial and manufacturing customers increased by high single digits year on year. This is particularly noteworthy as the ISM Manufacturing PMI was in contractionary territory for all of 2023.
From a profitability perspective, we again delivered strong brokerage gross margin of 14.8% in the quarter, down just 30 basis points sequentially, enabled by our technology quarter started off strong from a gross margin standpoint. But as Drew discussed earlier, the freight market weaken throughout the entire quarter. We had a muted holiday peak season and we experienced a capacity squeeze at the end of the quarter. I'll discuss this in more detail shortly.
In the fourth quarter, 97% of our loads were created recovered digitally versus 87% in the fourth quarter of 2022 seven day carrier retention was a strong 76% in the quarter compared to 74% in the fourth quarter of 2022. We launched several new technology features in the quarter, including enhanced generative AI capabilities that are helping our sales enablement teams get closer to our customers. We also increased automation within our LTL business and implemented new auto tracking capabilities for cross-border freight. Our technology continues to enable our people to become even more productive in 2023.
Productivity in our brokerage business, as measured by loads per head per day, improved by over 15% year over year. In the fourth quarter, contractual volume represented 80% of our business, flat sequentially and up 500 basis points when compared to the fourth quarter of 2022 contract volume grew 23% year over year because our LTL business is largely contractual. We thought it would also be helpful to share our contract mix for our truckload business, which was approximately 75% in the quarter. While we have not yet seen meaningful spot opportunities, it's worth noting that line haul spot rates moved higher as the fourth quarter progressed. I'll discuss this in more detail shortly, but if spot rates and industry wide tend to rejections continue to move higher because of our contractual business and our deep customer relationships, RxL will be a prime beneficiary of spot volume.
I'd like to expand on our current view of the freight cycle, and I'll refer you to Slides 10 through 12 of the presentation.
Let's start with revenue per load. Revenue per load declines eased again in the fourth quarter and declined by 20% year over year. The year-over-year decline improved by 600 basis points when compared to the third quarter, as we discussed last quarter, to get a better view of our consolidated year-over-year price declines on a per load basis, it's important to consider the impacts of length of haul mix and changes in fuel prices. When normalizing for those items, revenue per load was down at approximately low 10s percentage on a year-over-year basis in line with the broader market. This decline also improved versus last quarter's mid 10s year over year decline. We generate a strong gross margin percentage across all different parts of the freight cycle by leveraging our proprietary technology and pricing algorithms to procure capacity at better than market rates.
Let's move to Slide 11 and discuss brokerage monthly gross margin trends for a point in the cycle, including the current environment where market conditions limit our ability to bring down transportation costs. While we leverage our proprietary best-in-class technology and our people to generate a strong gross margin. Our actions cannot fully offset changing market conditions. In fact, transportation costs have recently moved higher, given that in many cases, carrier operating costs are at or above current spot rates.
This is best demonstrated through the continuation of carrier exits in the industry, which have occurred every month since October of 2020 to the carrier exit rate accelerated at the end of December, and we anticipate the acceleration to continue throughout 2024. In fact, in the month of January, the average weekly carrier exit rate was approximately 30% above full year 2023 levels. To give you some additional color, RxL active network carriers declined approximately 5% sequentially, while these carriers hold less than 1% of our volume over the last 90 days, it serves as a good proxy for broader market conditions.
Moving to brokerage gross margin trends in the quarter. As we discussed last quarter, we saw some softening during the month of October, but our gross profit per load remained resilient. However, margin decreased as the quarter progressed as weakness in the freight market persisted for national load to truck ratio averaged two to one during the quarter and for many weeks, it was below two to one levels not seen since earlier in 2023. For context, the loads to truck ratio has averaged approximately four to one for the last five years. And spot volumes typically emerge around six to seven to one.
Tens of rejection rates were relatively unchanged at about 4% in the quarter. Special Projects wound down into November and December, and it was a muted peak season. Market conditions also limited our ability to bring down the buy side, and we saw the typical seasonal capacity squeeze at the end of Q4. This margin pressure worsened in January when compared to December and was further amplified by inclement weather in certain regions.
The loads to truck ratio sharply increased above three to one at the end of December and sustain the move higher into January to help put that in perspective, when comparing January to December, our gross profit per load percentage decline in weather impacted states was two to three times the amount when compared to volumes in states not impacted by weather, entirely driven by an increase in cost of purchased transportation with declines in the Midwest and Southeast regions of the country for the most acute. While our book of business is by design largely contractual.
We can pivot quickly to changing market conditions. This model has worked well for us for more than a decade, delivering above industry growth and profitability during the previous freight market recovery, RxL was able to quickly respond to service our customers' needs, and our spot mix increased significantly in just one quarter.
Let's go to Slide 12. And briefly look at RSO's brokerage gross profit per load on a quarterly basis, given the strong month of October, RSO's Q4 2023 gross profit per load increased sequentially despite the gross margin squeeze in the quarter. I'd now like to look forward and give you some more color on the first quarter outlook that Jamie provided given recent volatile market conditions I'll be giving a more granular view of our Q1 expectations, which is typically our seasonally weakest quarter. Let's start with volume. Our brokerage sales pipeline remains robust. More specifically, our late-stage pipeline is up 24% year over year and up 90% on a two year stack.
This gives us confidence that we will again grow brokerage volume on a year-over-year basis in the first quarter, while January brokerage volumes still increased on a year-over-year basis, we did see year-over-year volume growth moderate when compared to the fourth quarter. More specifically, we grew January brokerage volumes by approximately 8% year over year. We're assuming first quarter year-over-year brokerage volumes will grow, but at a slower pace than the fourth quarter, brokerage revenue per load trends are encouraging, and we expect a moderation in year-over-year. Revenue per load declines in the first quarter. First quarter will be the third consecutive quarter where revenue per load declined and improved on a year-over-year basis.
Moving to brokerage gross margin, which I mentioned was lower throughout the fourth quarter. We expect Q1 brokerage gross margin to be approximately 12% to 14% a solid performance given the difficult market dynamics at this part of the freight cycle. While gross profit per load declines have eased over the last few weeks, while continuing to monitor market conditions. From a complementary services perspective, we expect typical negative Q1 seasonality, including an absorption of fixed cost on a lower revenue base in last mile. Putting it altogether, we expect Arco's first quarter adjusted EBITDA to be between $12 million, $18 million in the first quarter.
If I raise cool as weather patterns normalize and the business seasonally improves into February and March, we are likely to come in at the midpoint or high end of our adjusted EBITDA range. If the recent margin squeeze within brokerage persists, we are likely to come in at the lower end of the range based on our current view of the broader macroeconomic data industry-wide carrier exit rates and what we are hearing from our customers, our current base case is a market recovery in the second half of the year.
It's important to differentiate between the macro economy, which remains reasonably healthy and the freight cycle consumer confidence is increasing inflation is moderating and goods demand relative to services has stabilized. However, there is still too much trucking capacity relative to demand negatively impacting the freight market. We believe the rate of carrier exits is the largest variable affecting the timing of the freight recovery.
In summary, we're continuing to gain market share profitably with another quarter of strong brokerage volume growth and gross margin. We're optimizing our cost structure while strategically investing in the business and have a playbook to deliver rapid earnings growth when the market inflects, we're operating in a prolonged soft freight market, but we're making the right strategic moves to position us well for the long term.
With that, I'll turn it over to the operator for Q&A.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Ken Hoexter, Bank of America.

Ken Hoexter

Jamie, I think you said you ended the year with $5 million cash on hand and that was slightly above target. Just wondering why you're running on such then cash. And then just thinking about what Jerry just talked about, Andrew mentioned for the first quarter 12 to $18 million of adjusted EBITDA of implies maybe another $8 million of operating cash flow. And you don't your CapEx seems to be, I don't know, $10 million to $15 million. So looks like you might be negative on cash again. Can you maybe walk us through the rollout there? And then the thoughts on on cash?

Jamie Harris

Gentleman this, Jamie.
So cash remember in the quarter, in November, we paid down our term loan. So we used $100 million of our cash on the balance sheet in Q4 to pay down term loan. So that was the big use of cash from an operational standpoint, we finished the six month trailing at about a negative to adjusted free cash flow. If you remember, in second quarter, we had a large approximately $15 million early receipt that really bumped up our conversion rate in the first half of the year that really caused the third quarter and therefore, the six-month period to be a little bit lower. And if you take that into account, we're at about a 22% conversion. We actually of the cash balance of $5 million.
We had a Family Dollar cash balance, $5 million usage of the revolver. That was actually slightly better than we had anticipated being based on our outlook 90 days ago. So we're actually pleased with where we landed for the quarter. If you look at lifetime to date, can go back to the span were over 50% conversion rate of EBITDA to adjusted free cash flow for year to date were about 48%. So both of those metrics fall right in line with our 40% to 60% target that we believe is our long-term cross cycle conversion.
If you kind of go to the first quarter to your question about where we think we'll land a $12 million to $18 million range, should put us somewhere in the neighborhood of a usage of cash of about two to three on an adjusted free cash flow basis, taking into account all other cash items, primarily which will be some restructuring costs there. We should be in the 10 to maybe 15 usage in the first quarter. To your point about CapEx, we are spending out to about $40 million to $50 million of CapEx. That's more in line with our long-term target of just over just at or over 1% of our revenues. So overall, we actually felt really good about our cash flow for the quarter as we outlook the first quarter based on that range, we've now we see cash being in that ballpark.

Ken Hoexter

If I could do a follow up I guess just talking about your gross margin, Drew, looking at it, this steep drop-off of margins, I guess, is there something that is accelerating downward in the business in the first quarter.
And from where you ended, I know you talked about a lot of things, weather and everything in the fourth quarter like a peak, but it seems like the step down is beyond Seasonale and beyond economic and seasonal pressures, there increased competition that you're seeing that's accelerating that. Maybe just talk about that outlook a little bit. Thanks.

Drew Wilkerson

Yes, no, absolutely. Thank you, Ken, this is Drew. So if you look at what we saw in the first quarter, typically the first two weeks of January, you see pressure on your gross profit per load and your gross profit percentage. We saw that, but it was actually it actually was worse than what we anticipated due to weather Jared hit on in his prepared commentary. The Midwest and the Southeast. Specifically, those gross profit percentages were down two to three times more than what the rest of the country was. \
So this was largely driven by weather. There's also the cost of purchase trends. We had hit the bottom of where the carriers were operating at. So there is not room to pull down carrier costs and we're operating in what is largely a contractual volume. There's not a lot of spot loads out there in the market today.
So where spot gross profit per load can help offset that. But again, if you look at where we finished for the quarter, I think our gross margin percentage stacks up well for where we finished in the industry. And I think that we will continue to see best-in-class gross margins because of the investments that we've made in our technology.

Operator

Jordan Alliger, Goldman Sachs.

Jordan Alliger

Yes, hi. I was wondering, you sort of talked about the expectation for a second half recovery. Maybe give some thoughts on the cycle recovery, you know, how is it going to look from? What still has to happen will does that include net revenue or gross margins?
I'm starting to expand again just some color on that and sort of the comfort level in the second half?

Drew Wilkerson

Yes. So Jordan, two big things have to happen for the back half recovery. The first is the overall macro, if you look at what's happened in the macro GDP sitting around 3.3%, inflation continues to ease. The job market reports have been good. So we need the market to continue to be in a stable environment.
The second thing and the biggest thing that we're watching right now is capacity exits. And as Gerald said, we've seen capacity exit the market every month since October of 2022. And in the month of January, we saw them run at 30% higher than what all of 2023 came out at. So we need to continue to see capacity exits across.
There's still a good bit more capacity in the market than what there was even at pre-COVID. So those two big things have to happen for the back half of the recovery, what that is our base case, that's what we're anticipating happening. And when you look at that, what the base case implies is that you start to see revenue gross profit per load EBITDA turning positive during that timeframe.

Operator

Stephanie Moore, Jefferies.

Stephanie Moore

Yes, I can hear you, Gary. We're going to do you know, Navistar had a very rough guidance on what happened at maybe following up on Ken's question to start. Can you talk a little bit about even seasonality in, but in the first quarter, maybe what you see from January to March end of March can be a pretty big inflection. So maybe just talk about kind of thoughts on normal seasonality than what the quarter and how that relates to your guidance Yes.

Drew Wilkerson

So typically, you do see Q1 get better throughout the month, I mean, throughout the quarter. And that's what we're anticipating in the guide that we gave you from $12 million to $18 million in EBITDA for Q1 January, there was there was pressure on gross profit per load as we've gotten into February. We've seen in this first a little bit of February, we've started to seeing gross profit per load trend better than what it was in the month of January is not back to where it was in October and November, but it has started the path to recovery, which is why we were able to give you the range that we did of 12 to 18.

Stephanie Moore

That's helpful. Appreciate it. And then I think you noted and have shown that in the past, you are able to adapt very quickly as the cycle turns and move your mix between contract and spot given the cycle has really been probably not like any cycle we've seen before. Can you talk about now your ability either to not be able to move from contract to spot as quickly as you have in the past or what might limit your ability to move as quickly or potentially if this is a slower recovery or are faster recovery, just how should we think about how the how the environment could possibly inflect?

Drew Wilkerson

Yes. So the recovery will largely depend on the spot market will largely depend on what's happening in the overall market. That's not something you can as a business is harder to shift from spot to contract this more of looking at what's going on in the market and making sure that you're in the pole position as spot loads as project as many bids start to happen, you're in the pole position for customers to reach out to you.
And we're confident that we're in the pole position. If you look at the market, I mean, in Q4, load to truck ratio went down to around two to one tender rejections were around 4%. That's not a market that's conducive to being heavy spot market.
Now, did we see spot loads go up sequentially? Yes, but it was minimal. Our spot gross profit per load was trending ahead of our contractual gross profit per load, but it's not a robust spot market. And the measures that we watch our load to truck ratio, tender rejections, carrier exits and what we're hearing from our customers. And our customers are still telling us that we they will lean on us for projects to lean on us for spot loads as the market does start to tighten.

Operator

Brandon Oglenski, Barclays.

Brandon Oglenski

Hey, good morning, guys, and thanks for taking my question, and I hope this doesn't come off the wrong way, but you referenced numerous times in the presentation this quarter and I think in past quarters too, about continued profitable growth in the brokerage business, but obviously, like the bottom line and adjusted EBITDA coming in lower. I mean, I think we're we're back to maybe the lows even approach where we were in early 2020. So help put in context that comment about growing profitable loads relative to consolidated results. I appreciate that.

Drew Wilkerson

Yes, absolutely, Brian. The biggest thing that we're looking at is how we're operating versus the industry versus in the environment that we're in. And so when you look at what we're seeing right now, we're putting up best in class volume growth, and we're doing that with best in class margins.
Now in the bottom part of the cycle, you do feel pressure on your gross profit per load, gross profit per load is one of the biggest levers that we watch for where we're going to go long term. So the pressure that you see on the downward, you see the good side of that on the upselling that gross profit per load can can bring to you. So for us, we're confident that we're making the right investments that allow us to operate at the best gross margin percentage with strong volume growth.
Okay.

Brandon Oglenski

Appreciate that, Drew. And then, Jamie, on the cost side, I think you talked about continuing to optimize the cost structure. Maybe Jerry made that comment, but what's your objective for costs in 2024? If you could provide any directional guidance would be helpful.

Jamie Harris

Yes. So we expect to take out at least $25 million in 2024. As you know, we last year we were able to take out about $32 million of annualized savings on OpEx, not all of that has found its way into the P&L because some of that was latter part of the year. So you'll see some pickup from the annualization of that this year. But $25 million, at least $25 million for this year since spin, we've been working very aggressively to optimize our cost structure throughout. We've looked at all processes. We've looked at all of the roles of vendor relationships to make sure that we run it as effectively and efficiently as possible.
From a cost standpoint, we really want to set ourselves up so that we are optimally structured call Sloss. So when we see a market inflection, it just gives us significant operating leverage and flow through to the bottom line when gross profit pull-through per load recovers.

Operator

Allison Poliniak, Wells Fargo.

Allison Poliniak-Cusic

Hi, good morning. Just on that cost side of it, what I'm implying is or what I'm hearing is it sounds like it's a more structural cost reduction there versus variable on or is a bit of a mix. Just trying to understand those costs out for '24?

Jamie Harris

Yes, it is primarily structural. There will be some variable, but it's predominantly structural, Allison. I mean, obviously, as the market grows and we continue to grow. We'll have to invest in the right places around the structure, but that $25 million is predominantly structural.

Allison Poliniak-Cusic

And then, Andrew, you talked about the contracts and the profitability of those contracts won and accelerate. Could you talk about the profitability of those ads versus maybe a year ago? Is it better this theme? I'm just any thoughts there yes.

Drew Wilkerson

So if you look at it, the gross profit per load is down from where it was a year ago, which is what gives us again what you see in the 12 to 18 number is the impact that gross profit per load has on the business. And you'll see you'll fill the upside of that as the market starts to recover for every dollar that gross profit per load recovers is a meaningful impact to the P&L kind of thinking.

Operator

Scott Schneeberger, Oppenheimer.

Scott Schneeberger

Thanks very much. Good morning. Um, I guess if we could start out managed transportation, it sounds like a lot of the softness there was in automotive. So I'm curious if you could just talk managed transportation in brokerage about the end markets and what you're seeing across the end markets, if you could elaborate on the automotive weakness and then you mentioned some some wins in Managed Transportation synergistic with brokerage that will impact 2024 or onboard in 2024. If you could touch on that too, please?

Drew Wilkerson

Yes, so obviously, we were impacted by the strikes with the UAW. And I would say that things came back online slower than what we would have anticipated. The major OEMs did a fantastic job of prepayment plead preplanning, how they were routing shipments to make sure that they had enough inventory at sites as they were starting back. So there wasn't as many of the expedite just-in-time shipments as what we would have expected going in.
As far as the wins that we're having in Managed Transportation, we've had a number of wins in the three specifically in the Managed Transportation expedite business. That's been a leading position for us for a long time. Customers know that we understand the importance of time-critical freight and what it does to their supply chains. We've been a trusted partner in that for more than two decades. So we think that we'll continue to take share there.
The overall managed transportation business that pipeline is strong. We've got a number of large deals that are in the works right now that could potentially move the ball forward in a big way.

Scott Schneeberger

Thanks for that is just kind of along the lines of the cost question theme that's been going, but you mentioned some investments to cross-border capabilities, Gen-i and sales increased product protection. Maybe just touch on those. But I think the bigger question is on power in this environment, how are you weighing your investments on the not an optimal time, but you guys are perpetually push the business forward with your IT and other. So just curious how your how you're looking at the investments in this time period.

Drew Wilkerson

Yes, I'll start. I'll start with that. The second part of your question, Scott, about how we look at it. The first thing is we look at our velocity and what's the return on invested capital that we're putting in the second thing that I would say is for everything that we do, we look at how it will impact volume, how it will impact our overall margins and how it will impact us as employees will it make us more productive and allow us to do more loads per day per head. And that's a metric that we've continued to move forward.
So we look at the business for the long term. We're not while we're optimizing our costs right now, we look at the business of where we're headed for the long term. You mentioned some of the specific investments that we've had down at the border down at Laredo.
That was that was a huge deal for us. If you look at where we're positioned at the rate of we're right at the World Trade brands, there's a lot of freight that goes through. There is the largest crossing for cross-border shipments north and southbound. And if you look at most recently, and we announced a Gen AR. tool that allows our customers to move loads more efficiently on cross-border freight and allows our carriers to have complete tracking of where their trailers are at our different facilities.

Operator

Ravi Shanker, Morgan Stanley.

Ravi Shanker

Morning, everyone. I think you said in the press release that you're seeing a strong pipeline of new business. Can you give us a little more detail there as to which end markets, what kind of customers and also kind of where the pipeline coming from? Are these customers who are and are ramping up and kind of getting ramped up to start restocking soon or kind of what's the message you're hearing from them?

Jamie Harris

Hey, Rob. Good morning. It's Jeremy. So to your point, the pipeline does remain quite strong. Late-stage pipeline, specifically within brokerage is up about over 20% year over year and on a two year stack up almost 90%. So I think that speaks to the broad-based idiosyncratic share gains that we are having with strong margins accompanied by that it's pretty broad-based in nature in terms of what we're seeing within brokerage in the quarter, all of our major verticals grew on a year-over-year basis including retail and e-commerce and industrial, despite being a broader industrial economy recession.
So I think that it speaks to you look at RxL, post-spin us being even more focused on our customers us allocating capital more effectively, really using this time to ensure that we're delivering the services that our customers want. It's pretty broad-based in nature, and I think it's coming through in the pipeline.

Ravi Shanker

And maybe as a follow-up, going back to your previous response on investments and I'm using and that is that your CapEx plans are reasonably locked or is there much flexibility, though? I'm just wondering if the downturn lasts longer or deeper than that, you guys think especially in the first half of this year, can you push back some of that CapEx through the back half of the year to preserve liquidity?
Yes, Robbie, this is Jamie. That of that CapEx, you know, for the majority of the standard always flexible. We've got a plan and we're working the plan, but for the most part, it's very flexible, so we could defer if needed.

Operator

Scott Group, Wolfe Research.

Scott Group

Hey, thanks. Good morning. So it sounds like 1Q is more about weather than the real inflection in the market and you're assuming that's more of a second half recovery sort of in that backdrop, as your base case assumption, what's a typical ballpark of how to think about 1Q as a percentage of the year. I'm just trying to sort of understand, are we do we think EBITDA grows this year or not? Any color?

Drew Wilkerson

Hey, Scott, it's Derek.
Good morning.
So when you look at the ongoing market dynamics to your point, weather has had an acute impact in the month of January, and that's impacting that impact in Q1. As we said, in the prepared remarks, you look at some of the regions in the country is severely impacted by weather. Gross margin per load was impacted by two to three times that of other other regions. So I think that was acute.
When you talk about how the quarter progress we're expecting to progress, as Drew just mentioned, one of the other responses we have seen some relief in the last the last week or so in terms of gross profit per load, it's still early. We want to see whether or not buy rates cool. When you look at when you look at the full year, our base case right now is for second half recovery. And assuming that the second half recovery does play out, that would lead to second half growth year on year in terms of Q1 as a percentage of full year, just given the dynamics that we're seeing right now, I think that's probably not a great way to look at things just given how acute the suite has been impacted by weather so that we had the followed the hope would be an inflection in EBITDA in the second half of the year?
I wouldn't say hope I would say that our base our base case recovery a is for a second half and the largest variable impacting that would be the rate of capacity exits. We've seen capacity exit the industry every month since October of 2022, that accelerated in December. It accelerated in January to the point of 30% above 2023 levels. And it just comes back to the economics of the with respect to where spot line haul rates are relative to the cost of the carrier. So we expect that to continue to accelerate throughout 2024.

Scott Group

Okay.
And then just one follow-up. So if I think about the contract mix today, the cash balance today, the working capital drag whenever the upcycle will come due to all those factors combined, does that in any way limit in your mind how quickly or how much of a recovery.

Drew Wilkerson

You'll see, Scott, I want to make sure that I'm understanding the question. Right.
Are you saying like the recovery in cash or gross profit per load will I'm just not I'm not sure I followed you completely ultimately.
Your recovery in earnings. Ebitda, everything?

Scott Group

Yes.
Yes. No.

Drew Wilkerson

So we're very confident in the long term, as you look at different parts of the cycle, whether it was in 2017 when the market was down 2015 when the market was down in 2020 at the beginning parts of COVID, you've seen that customers as tender rejection start to go, customers come to us and we're their go-to Joy choice for spot loads for projects for many, but we've got a proven history of showing that the gross profit per load does recover in the up part of the cycle. So we're extremely confident in that.

Operator

Bruce Chan, Stifel.

Bruce Chan

Yes, thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone.
And maybe just to follow up on a couple of things specifically Scott's questions there on the customer adds and the contract mix. To what extent is that going to be a headwind to gross margins?
If we do see a recovery in buy rates increase and in the back half, is the expectation that gross margins are going to continue to be under pressure in '25? Or does your base case kind of anticipate that you can pivot into the spot market fast enough to offset that?

Drew Wilkerson

And Bruce, I think that we've shown in the past that we can absolutely pivot to be able to do that. You've seen our mix shift is close to 1,000 basis points on a quarter-over-quarter basis. Again, it goes back to what I told Scott, when the market turns when people are rejecting loads, when there's projects customers are going to come to the people that they know best, they're going to go to who they've had long-term relationships with who's got technology that's integrated within their business, somebody who has delivered results for their supply chain and their transportation needs. And you look at our largest customers, they've been with us for 16 years on average. So we're highly confident that as the market and Flex, you will see a big movement in gross profit per load and overall profitability that makes a lot of sense.

Bruce Chan

I guess what I'm getting at to a little bit more is the timing. Is that going to be more of a 2025 event? And I guess what I'm really trying to get at is if I think about annual EBITDA, you've got a 60% guide down for Q1 here. I know you've got that second half expectation for an inflection here. But what is the thought that you can grow EBITDA in 2024? Are we likely to see another flat year?

Jamie Harris

Yes, hey, this is Jamie, as we look at '24, I mean, clearly Q1 is below where we expected it to be. As we look to the back half. It really depends on the timing and the shape of the recovery. Our base case is for that recovery to hit in the second half. If that hits, we're very confident we'll grow that EBITDA in the back half of the year. But I think it really depends on the timing and the shape of the recovery. We're positioning ourselves well from a cost standpoint and from a customer relationship point to be able to take those spot loads into service well and it will get significant flow through in the market and doesn't inflect.

Operator

Jack Atkins, Stephens.

Jack Atkins

Okay, great. Thanks for taking my questions, guys. Really appreciate it.
So I guess, Drew, going back to your comment earlier about when the cycle turns customers are going to want, our shippers are going to go up to capacity providers that they know really well. I guess as I think about the brokerage market. Oftentimes it's perceived as being highly commoditized. So I guess in that type of market inflection, why wouldn't shippers it out trying to find the best possible price in addition to looking for good service as well. I just I think there's just some worry that, yes, these market share gains may not be, you know, stick with you once the cycle doesn't work.

Drew Wilkerson

Jack, I think that one thing that you could go back and look at the history and they have stuck with us. The growing volume isn't something that has been unusual to us are one-time and on a yearly yearly basis. I think that what you would look for is the best price customers look for best price, best solution best service services, really important to our customers and the fact that we can flex our capacity up and down with them. The fact that we're delivering when we say we're going to deliver. We've got great communication. We've got technology that helps deliver results into their business. We can help customers decide when they're going to ship something. What mode of transportation they're going to use with help them optimize their freight. So in that sense, you do see them lean on us more to create solutions in a tighter market than what you see in a looser market.
Okay.

Jack Atkins

Got it.
And then I just I guess my last question, going back to sort of, Jamie, your comments around working capital needs once the cycle does inflects, you know, I guess you kind of run rating now somewhere at or above three times debt to EBITDA leverage. And you sort of think about the working capital needs once once the cycle does turn, you know, I guess how much leverage are you comfortable adding to the balance sheet perhaps temporarily to fund to fund business growth there before you're able to start collecting cash and pay that down?

Jamie Harris

Yes, I and two, at year end we were about [2.5]. Jack, you project forward into Q one. It both ends of the range. We're in the [2.9 to 3] range ballpark. We use about 7% to 9% factor on the growth on the top line. That being said, we have actually a very quick turnaround on our on our DSOs. We collect we begin to collect money fairly quickly. And as we do that, we repeat that business through that second and third and fourth cycle, we become cash flow positive very quickly. And so we feel very comfortable that we've got the balance sheet strength to support the growth plan that we have in place. And when the cycle in place, I think we'll be in really good shape to accommodate that.

Operator

This concludes the question and answer session. I'd now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Wilkinson for final closing comments.

Drew Wilkerson

Thank you. Layer Rx will continue to deliver significant brokerage volume growth and strong margins in the fourth quarter despite the freight market that has been solved for a significant amount of time, we're taking the right actions today to deliver long-term results including deepening our customer relationships, having a disciplined approach to costs and making the right investments for future growth. I'm proud of all that AuRico delivered in 2023, and I'm looking forward to continuing deliver for shareholders, customers, employees and the carriers that we partner with again in 2020.
For Thank you all for your time today. And I look forward to seeing a lot of you over the next few weeks.

Operator

Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines and have a lovely day.