Hub Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:HUBG) Q3 2022 Earnings Conference Call October 27, 2022 5:00 PM ET
Company Participants
David Yeager – Chief Executive Officer
Phillip Yeager – President and Chief Operating Officer
Geoff DeMartino – Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer
Conference Call Participants
Todd Fowler – KeyBanc
Jon Chappell – Evercore ISI
Elliot Alper – Cowen
Scott Group – Wolfe Research
Brian Ossenbeck – JPMorgan
Thomas Wadewitz – UBS
Bascome Majors – Susquehanna
Bruce Chan – Stifel
Justin Long – Stephens
David Zazula – Barclays
Operator
Hello and welcome to the Hub Group Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. Dave Yeager, Hub’s CEO; Phil Yeager, Hub’s President and Chief Operating Officer; and Geoff DeMartino, Hub’s CFO, are joining me on this call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions]
Any forward-looking statements made during the course of the call or contained in the release represent the company’s best good faith judgment as to what may happen in the future. Statements that are forward-looking can be identified by the use of words such as believe, expect, anticipate and project and variations of these words. Please review the cautionary statements in the release.
In addition, you should refer to the disclosures in the company’s Form 10-K and other SEC filings regarding factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in these forward-looking statements. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.
It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to your host, Dave Yeager. You may now begin.
David Yeager
Good afternoon and thank you for participating in Hub Group’s third quarter earnings call. Joining me today are Phil Yeager, Hub’s President and Chief Operating Officer; and Geoff DeMartino, Hub’s Chief Financial Officer.
We had a strong third quarter, which resulted in doubling our year-over-year operating income. The results for the third quarter reflect our strategy of diversification, which allows Hub to be more resilient during all economic environments and helps us to mitigate the cyclical nature of the transportation market.
The fourth quarter is generally the peak of the holiday shipping season. However, judging by the feedback from our clients, this peak will be muted versus historic norms. Beyond 2022, we do acknowledge the potential for a continued softening economy, but we believe that we are positioned for success as we’ve taken several important steps to improve our resiliency in a down market.
With our recent acquisitions and organic growth, our non-asset based businesses represent a growing part of the overall results and will generate significant free cash flow while deepening our value to our customers. This diversification into non-asset based services, along with enhancements to our intermodal agreements, allow us to be more flexible and market based. We’ve also aggressively begun to in-source a higher percentage of our drainage, which enhances our competitive positioning in intermodal. We expect to continue to benefit from these business model adjustments as well as continuing our relentless focus on operating efficiencies.
And with that, I’ll now turn the call over to Phil to review our performance.
Phillip Yeager
Thank you, Dave. I wanted to start by congratulating the entire Hub Group organization on their strong performance, which continues to be driven by their focus on supporting our customers and team members.
I will now discuss our service line performance. ITS revenue increased 22% in the quarter, driven by a 31% increase in revenue per load in intermodal on 6% lower volume as well as a return to strong growth and dedicated. Volume was impacted due to the averted rail strike, as well as slower turn times and increased competitiveness within shorter haul segments.
Local West volume increased 1% while Transcon declined 1% and Local East declined 18%. We had a sequential deterioration and utilization, but an improvement in rail service while we dramatically enhanced our on-time performance to our customers.
Gross margin is a percentage of sales increased 180 basis points year-over-year, driven by yield management initiatives and dedicated in intermodal and enhanced purchase transportation costs through increasing our in-source storage percentage, which was offset by higher rail costs.
We have opportunities to improve our network and capture incremental volume growth through our enhanced service and our compelling intermodal value proposition. We believe that with our improved street economics and rail partnerships, we’ll be in a strong position in this dynamic environment.
Logistics revenue increased 12% as we onboarded new clients completed the TAGG acquisition and drove organic growth with our existing customers through our focus on supply chain savings and continuous improvement. Gross margin is a percentage of sales increased 370 basis points as our continued focus on profitable growth was offset by increased purchase transportation and warehousing costs.
With the addition of TAGG, we are continuing our development of the premier third-party logistics solution, which we believe will enable long-term growth and bring significant value to our customers.
Brokerage revenue increased 63% year-over-year, driven by a 54% increase in volume and 6% increase in revenue per load. Our growth is due to the addition of Choptank as well as organic growth in our LTL and drive and offering. Our service levels continue to improve year-over-year and will help us differentiate ourselves along with our diversified capacity offerings.
Gross margin as a percentage of sales declined 60 basis points year-over-year, as we saw more aggressive competition for a smaller amount of spot market shipments. But we believe we’ll see improvement year-over-year in the fourth quarter and into next year as our mixed shift from 52% spot to a larger percentage of contractual volumes throughout bid season. We are continuing to focus on growing in this important service line and are investing in talent and technology to assist in propelling our growth.
With that, I will hand it over to Geoff to discuss our financial performance.
Geoff DeMartino
Thank you, Phil. Our business continued to perform well in today’s environment with strong growth across all lines of business, leading to a 26% increase in total revenue. Our yield management, cost recovery efforts and focus on operating efficiency pledge a gross margin of 16.5% of revenue and operating income margin of 8.7%. We continue to leverage our gross margin performance against our operating expenses with cost and expenses equals at 7.8% of revenue, down from 9.1% last year.
Operating expense dollars increase from last year due to incremental expenses from Choptank and TAGG higher legal and use tax expense and cost for the consolidation of one of our office location offset by gains from the sale of transportation equipment. Our deliver earnings per share for the quarter was $2.61, which is more than double the prior year.
We generated $157 million of EBITDA a quarter and spent $103 million on the acquisition of TAGG Logistics and $110 million on share purchases. We continue to have low levels of net indebtedness, which provides us with flexibility to invest in our business through capital expenditures and strategic acquisitions.
As part of our commitment to returning capital of the shareholders, our Board recently authorized the repurchase of $200 million of our Class A common stock. For 2022, we expect diluted EPS of between $10.40 and $10.60 per share. We expect to grow revenue to approximately $5.5 billion. We expect intermodal volumes will decline low single digits for 2022.
We forecast gross margin as a percent of revenue of 16.5% to 16.7% for the year, as our rate increases surcharges and assets oil revenues offset higher costs for rail transportation, third-party drainage and driver wages. For the year, we expect cost and expenses of $420 million to $425 million. Our capital expenditure forecast is unchanged at $240 million to $250 million. Finally, our entire business is supported by our pristine balance sheet and strong free cash flow generation.
In 2021, we introduced our long-term revenue and margin target. Our recent acquisitions and our purchases of intermodal equipment are illustrative of the types of strategic investments we will make in our business, adding scale while also introducing new service offerings, with strong cross-sell potential.
With that, I’ll turn it over to the operator to open the line to any questions.
Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. [Operator Instructions]
Our first question comes from the line of Todd Fowler with KeyBanc. Please proceed with your question.
Todd Fowler
Great. Thanks and good evening. Maybe for my first question, just a shorter term question on the guidance for the fourth quarter, the implied guidance for the fourth quarter. It’s still a pretty wide range and obviously there’s a lot of kind of cross currents in the macro, but I don’t know Dave Geoff or Phil who wants to take it. But if we think about kind of the difference between the high end and the low end, just to finish out the year, what are some of the variables between what gets you to the high end versus what puts you at the low end right now?
Geoff DeMartino
Sure. Todd, this is Geoff. So, our pricing is primarily set at this point. So the real swing factors for us would be volume, volume growth or volume decline, surcharges, which we are expecting to decline sequentially, and then gain on sale would be the third factor.
Todd Fowler
And Geoff, just as far as maybe the volume trends, we can see what the third quarter was and you talked about most single digit decline for the full year, but maybe a little bit of color on 3Q and what you’re seeing right now in the 4Q.
Geoff DeMartino
Sure. In the third quarter, our volume was down 6%, around 200 basis points of that we estimate had to do with activity around the threaded rail strike. Year-to-date or months today rather in October, we are down about 8% year-over-year, but it is a sequential improvement from September on a business day basis.
Todd Fowler
Okay. Got it. And then just for my follow-up, Dave, you had the comments about the improved resiliency in the model that the portfolio has changed. Is there a sensitivity that you can help us think about and I’m not looking for anything particularly granular, but at this point, is it that 40% of your business now is much more kind of asset light and viewed as a little bit less cyclical? Is that the right way to think about it? Or is there a way we can kind of think about what truly has that cyclical exposure maybe that we’ve seen in the past and then what you’ve diversified into — and then any comments around other levers that you can pull? Thanks.
David Yeager
Sure. So, around between 40% and 45% of the revenue now is asset light. We do have a lot of levers that — some of which we didn’t have last time. We do have much more flexibility in our rail contracts. They can go up and down, and they’re more tuned to market based phenomenon than they have been in the past.
We’ve also begun to in-source a lot more of our drainage. In the third quarter in markets where we have our own capacity, we’re up at over 60% as of about 500 basis points year-over-year. We’ll continue that trend that has a service advantage, but also a pretty powerful property advantage as well. So, we’ll look to continue to do that. We ran our playbook in 2019 and 2020 around cost savings opportunities. We’ve already begun to collect that and start to implement that in anticipation of a downturn.
And then one last piece of information, just to leave for you. The last time we did see a decline back in 2019. We had about a 35% reduction in EPS from peak to trough. So that’s one other factor to consider this time around.
Phillip Yeager
And this is Phil. I just add, I think with our model now we’re going to continue to kick off and the diversification piece of it really comes into play. We’re going to kick off a significant amount of free cash flow that’s going to allow us to be opportunistic in investing in the business, but also continuing to look for creative acquisitions. That’s going continue to be a focus of ours. And I think we have a really good playbook that we’ve run there and have a great reputation as an acquirer.
I think if you look at our most recent acquisitions with TAGG and Choptank and NSD, all of those are much more resilient models, both from a margin profile as well as the — we find the stickiness of the business in particular in warehousing consolidation and final mile home delivery. So, feel very good about the adjustments we’ve made to the suite of services because it’s also helping to make our business stickier on the intermodal and brokerage side, which can be much more volatile historically. So, I think a lot of good changes that we’ve put into place and we are seeing them play out, which is great.
Todd Fowler
Yeah, good. And just to be put that 35% decline in 2019, but that was also before you had the changes in the rail contracts and then some of …
Phillip Yeager
Yeah.
Todd Fowler
Okay. Good.
Phillip Yeager
Without the continued diversification through the acquisition. That’s right.
Todd Fowler
Yeah. Understood. It was just wanted to make sure we got that frame of reference correct. So thanks for the time tonight.
Phillip Yeager
Thanks Todd.
Operator
Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Jon Chappell with Evercore ISI. Please proceed with your question.
Jon Chappell
Thank you. Good afternoon. Geoff, you kind referenced this as you related to the fourth quarter. You said that the pricing is effectively fixed. At the time of the last call in July, you said you were through the peak, the bid season as well. So as we think about weakness and other segments of transport, maybe some of the demand concerns that I think they’ve insinuated, is the pricing really baked now through the first half of next year? Or do you start to get some significant renewals in the early part where we could see some step down if other factors start to weigh on intermodal pricing?
Geoff DeMartino
Yeah. About 35% to 40% of our volume will reprice in Q1. The bulk of that is probably in the March timeframe. So we certainly have a tailwind carrying us through the first part of next year. But by the middle of the year 80% is repriced.
David Yeager
I would also highlight a lot of our larger customers come in the third quarter timeframe, and so those are pretty well in place. I think it’s a little early to tell exactly how good season’s going to play out, but I think historically intermodal has not moved quite as significantly vertically as truckload. Our focus is going to be really on maximizing our margin per load day. That’s how we generate the highest return within the Intermodal segment. And that’s going to continue to be the focus for us.
So, I think an opportunity we have is to create more balance in the network. Our empty repositioning costs have increased on a year-over-year basis, and that’s an opportunity we’re looking at as we enter bid season and that’ll also help with volume and turn time. But we’re really out right now with our customers focusing on the improved service products that we have, as well as the savings that we have versus truck to offer as folks look at converting freight from truck intermodal.
Geoff DeMartino
And I would just add too, even in today’s market intermodal long haul, Local West and Transcon, you’re looking at a 20% to 30% lower rate relative to truckload still.
Jon Chappell
Okay. That makes sense. And Phil, something you mentioned there on the balance, kind of led me to my follow up question, which is, if we look at the last couple quarters, the variance between West and East has been tremendous. And East is even decelerate, I think it was down 14%, second quarter down 18%, and this was even before really, I think the truckload market, especially truckload contract has come down.
When you think about your capital, your equipment commitments, your positioning of resources, et cetera, do you have to still — have the same amount of investment in maybe that lagger region? Is that part of the entire network and part of the balance? Or can you deemphasize maybe an underperforming part of the network and really prioritize your equipment to where you’re getting kind of the best turns and the best returns?
Phillip Yeager
Yeah. So, I think it’s a great question. And when we run our network model, once again, we’re focusing on maximizing that margin per load. I think you can see that showing up in our revenue per load, which I think tells a story of how we’ve been trying to maintain pricing discipline, focusing on the bright lanes for our network.
I think when we look at volume, there’s some controllable factors and some non-controllable ones. When I look at the non-controllable factors, we mentioned the 200 basis point impact from the averted rail strike, we’re certainly hoping that’s all resolved in the upcoming discussions. But when I look at controllable ones, I think our end markets have slowed down a little bit. We are very retail and e-commerce centric. Inventories have moved up obviously, and so we’ve seen a slow down in overall demand from those customers. So, we’re focusing on getting deeper with those clients, but also diversifying our client base and adding to that long tail.
We have deliberately focused over time on growing in long haul segments. I think you’ve seen that perhaps play out probably over the last couple of years where our Transcon Local West business has really outgrown our Local East mainly because of the stickiness that’s associated with it and the gap that it has versus truck. We don’t see that flip nearly as much between intermodal providers or really flip back and forth between truck and intermodal around rate and transit sensitivity.
And then I think lastly, we saw price in the East move more quickly, both in intermodal and in truck than we were moving, or have moved. And so, I think for us, we look at it as running a network where we need to maximize that return, maximize margin for low day, and we’re going to allocate our equipment and capacity to do that. I do think we have latent capacity in the network. We can improve our turn times. But part of that is creating balance and getting that velocity back as well.
Jon Chappell
Super helpful. Thanks Phil. Thanks Geoff.
Operator
Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Elliot Alper with Cowen. Please proceed with your questions.
Elliot Alper
Great. Thanks for the question. So maybe on the increased guidance, can you quantify or speak at a high level to any of the rail disruption assumptions holding back volumes in the fourth quarter? Some new headlines have come across on a potential rail strike. I guess is any part of the guidance range based on whether or not there are significant impact of volumes?
David Yeager
Yeah. We’ve factored in the range of potential outcomes on volume within the 1040 to 1060. But we have seen an improvement on a per day basis sequentially from September into October. So it doesn’t seem like there’s any impact to that news as of yet.
Elliot Alper
Okay. Understood. And then maybe for the follow up, you guys have had some clear success with some recent acquisitions. Can you talk about recent trends within the M&A market? Maybe what’s crossing your desk, how multiples come down at all, or any color there would be helpful. Thank you.
David Yeager
Yeah. We actually have seen a slowdown probably the last six or seven weeks on a new opportunities that come across our desk. So I think that either a combination of the financing markets or economic conditions are probably leading to a little bit of a slowdown. But frankly, we’ve had much more success on outbounds on companies that we get to know and spend time with and make sure they’re a good cultural fit and really have been able to have success in doing acquisitions on kind of bilateral negotiations with sellers.
So, I think there is going to be a slowdown. I think private equity probably is going to pull back from their interest in the sector for some period of time. But we don’t think that’s going to impact our ability to continue to grow through acquisition.
Geoff DeMartino
We think it is good timing for us though. And with our balance sheet, we’re going to be out in the market very actively continuing to run the same playbook that we have, diversifying our service offerings, getting deeper with our customers, and adding really great companies that can benefit from additional investment and cross selling opportunities.
Elliot Alper
Okay. Great. I appreciate it. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Scott Group with Wolfe Research. Please proceed with your question.
Scott Group
Hey, thanks. Afternoon guys.
David Yeager
Hey, Scott.
Scott Group
So, when you talk about less earnings variability, is it more about gross revenue, less gross margin variability, more OpEx variability? What’s going to ultimately be the driver of less earnings volatility?
David Yeager
Well I think we have levers that we’re going to pull, we’ve had those in the past and we’ve executed on those in prior downturns, and we have this time, I think the rail contract features around price up, price down is a really key factor that we didn’t have in the past. That’s obviously the biggest cost factor in our biggest line of business. And so, with the ability to flex up and flex down based on market conditions, we think that is going to lead to less volatility in earnings.
Geoff DeMartino
Yeah. And I would just ask Scott, I think it’s both from a gross margin perspective, but also below the line, I think you’ve seen in the past with us, we can — we are very disciplined in our cost structure and we’ll continue to do that. And then with these additional levers as well as adding more contractual and stickier services, we think on a gross margin perspective, we’ll continue to maintain and hold at levels that are higher than in our history.
Scott Group
I mean, is there any way to like talk about like what historically was like that range of intermodal gross margin to recycle and what — maybe what you think that new range will be with these rail contracts that now go up and down?
Geoff DeMartino
Sure. I mean, I think, obviously we’re in a pretty strong price environment right now. You can see and our guide and where we’re going to exit this year, where we’ve come down off the Q2 levels. But certainly much higher than we were back 2, 3, 4 years ago. Where we’re kind of in the low 12% to 13% gross margin. I think it’s at least probably 150 or 200 basis points north of that is where we think we’re going to be longer term.
We’re just starting our 2023 budget process right now, so I don’t have a more concrete number to give you for next year. We’ll obviously come back to with that on our next call. But I think that’s a good frame of reference to start with.
Scott Group
No. I mean, I guess what I was trying to ask is like, meaning historically the margins peak and trough there’s a 400 base point different in gross margin now with the variability of rail contracts, we think it’ll be more like 200 base points.
Geoff DeMartino
Yeah. That’s probably half of the variability we’ve seen in the past. We’d be able to cut half through that feature.
Scott Group
Okay. And then just last thing, if we do have a year of sort of down earnings next year, how do we think about what the incentive comp as a potential offset?
Geoff DeMartino
Sure. That’s probably the biggest single driver of the — on the operating expense line. That’s about a — could be as much as a $40 million swing year-to-year.
David Yeager
Our goal would be to not have that happen.
Scott Group
I’m sure. Okay. Thank you guys. Appreciate it.
David Yeager
Thanks Scott.
Operator
Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Brian Ossenbeck with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question.
Brian Ossenbeck
Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking question. Wanted to see if you could go into a little more detail on TAGG acquisition. It’s only been a couple months now, I guess since you had that in house. You can maybe elaborate on the strategic goals and how those are progressing. How fits in the portfolio? What’s the initial feedback, cross-selling all those things, would be helpful to kind of get a sense as to what you see here and how it’s progressing so far.
Geoff DeMartino
Sure. Yeah. There were really two main factors that, that let us do that acquisition, which we’ve been looking in this space for some time. The acquisition of TAGG really gives us an e-commerce fulfillment capability that we didn’t have in the past. We’ve been in the consolidation and warehousing business since we made our acquisition of CaseStack back in 2018. And CaseStack got a great model serving small and midsize consumer goods companies, but they didn’t really have an e-commerce fulfillment capability. And so we were not able to pursue business. We were able to only obtain part of a customer’s share of wallet and we wanted to add that capability. And so, we’ve got a list of both our existing customers who we can now offer that to. But also we have our list of customers who had — were looking for that type of service that we can now go back to and win new business based on that. That gives us a partial footprint that we didn’t have in the past as well.
And the other factor was, with the acquisition of CaseStack and the footprint we had, we had about 5 million square feet of non-asset based warehousing space that we spoke for. TAGG adds $4 million of asset based space, so around 9 million square feet now with — close to a 50-50 mix between asset and non-asset. That gives us the ability to scale up more quickly for new opportunities. It also gives us some leverage when we’re negotiating rates with our non-asset based partners, where we have a better understanding of the cost, that it costs to serve in a given market.
Phillip Yeager
And I would just add, I think we’re seeing that play out now. Since the acquisition, the receptivity from our customer base has been phenomenal and we’re far exceeding anything that I thought we would do from a cross-selling perspective, it’s been much quicker. But with our balanced asset, non-asset model, we’re actually able to not only take on that demand, but also optimize it from a margin perspective by in-sourcing the right customers and growing with our third party partners in the right business. So, that has really been exceeding my expectations and it’s a great team. They have a great reputation and so, it’s worked very well.
And I think the other piece that we’re bringing to them that the TAGG team didn’t have before was the expertise that we have in transportation. And by tying that together for legacy TAGG customers, we’re seeing them want to get deeper in with TAGG, give us more business and outsource their entire supply chain to us versus just a component. So, I think it has really been just a phenomenal acquisition thus far. And excited to see what we can continue to do.
Brian Ossenbeck
And on the actual fulfillment side, is that done by third-party contractors as well?
Phillip Yeager
No. We’ve got about 18 warehouses across the country. And those are primarily company employees. We do use contractors for seasonal spikes, but primarily it’s done by employees.
Brian Ossenbeck
Okay. Then just a quick follow up on drayage and the in-sourcing. What was that percentage, when you look at sequentially versus the second quarter? Where do you expect to be exiting this year and sort of rough goal for the next year, given some of the constraints that we see on drivers and equipment, and to the extent you have or want to offer any sort of sensitivity on margin in terms of what a percent point increase would mean for the bottom line, also be helpful?
Geoff DeMartino
Sure. So, markets in which we had our own drivers, we were at 52% in-sourced in the quarter that’s of about 200 basis points sequentially. It’s of about 500 basis points year-over-year. We recognize about a million and a half of incremental profitability for every hundred basis points. Our long-term goal is to get to 80%. I think we’re working through our budget. I think we’re going to probably be targeting around 70% for the end of next year. That will require some capital for new trackers. But the bulk of that is actually coming through productivity. So, running more drivers per truck through slip seating and running. Each driver’s going to run more loads per day. We’ve become more efficient in how we plan those driver days. And we’re seeing the benefits of that from an efficiency perspective.
Phillip Yeager
Yeah. We’re significantly improving our recruiting. We’ve been able to get more slip feeding in our fleet. We went from about a 1.05 driver to tractor ratio a couple of years ago. We’re not where we want to be, but we’re near 1.4 now, and we still have opportunities to become more efficient. We’re adding drivers at a really nice clip in some very important markets for us and in-sourcing that higher share and continue to see progress as we’ve enhanced our recruiting capabilities. So, I think we’ve got a great offering to drivers where they can be home every night, get paid at the high end of the market, and be in the newest invest equipment. The average age of our fleet is nearing 2.3 years, and it’s just a great asset to be able to go to drivers and show them that value. So, I think, we’re a destination at this point for drivers, and we’re seeing that show up in our turnover numbers as well.
Brian Ossenbeck
All right. Great. Thanks for the detail.
Operator
Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Tom Wadewitz with UBS. Please proceed with your question.
Thomas Wadewitz
Yeah. Good afternoon. Wanted to ask you a bit about how you think about the competitive dynamic in intermodal in 2023. I mean, it seems like there’s a lot of interest in growing from the different players. I guess I don’t know where you’re at in terms of volume growth focus. But there you’ve got some new — better flexibility on rail pricing, or purchase transportation, which you pay. So, you could be more aggressive if you want. I’m just wondering how you think about the competitive dynamic. You think it’s going to be stable, or do you think there’s some risks that there’s kind of increase in competition in market because people wanted to grow volume?
David Yeager
Yeah. This is Dave. I would suggest to you that at this point in time that the market is very stable as stable as I’ve seen it, particularly as we’re beginning to see a little bit of a softening and more competition from over the road. I do think we are all focused on growth, but at this point in time, just speaking for Hub, we’re also very focused on margin. We’re very focused on pulling some of the levers that Phil and Geoff have been talking about that are within our control, to control our costs and in fact reduce our costs. So, I don’t believe that it’s going to be impossible to not only grow the overall volumes, but also continue to maintain reasonable margins that’ll allow us to continue to invest in intermodal.
Thomas Wadewitz
Do you think your focus is going to persist just in terms of more focus maybe on price and profitability in a bit less on volume, Is that you’re going to stay the course with that, or you think that may change?
David Yeager
I think, again, we’ll do both. I think that we’ll be focusing on growing volume in particular lanes. We feel as though we have a competitive advantage. And at the same time, we’ll be focused on continuing to deliver solid financial results for our shareholders.
Geoff DeMartino
Yeah. And I think Tom, it really goes to the strategy that we’ve executed on over the last several years, continuing to grow those long haul sticky segments that really stay in intermodal as long as you’re providing a really good service. But also creating more balance in the network to drive more volume and velocity. So, it has to be both. And I think we have the opportunity to do both.
Thomas Wadewitz
Right. Okay. That makes sense. Just one more quick one, you’ve talked a bit about the flexibility on the rail cost. What’s the timing on that and how do we think about what drives the adjustment? Is that like a kind of a one quarter lag or is it longer? And is it driven by the pricing you realize? Or is it some type of a market metric for, I don’t know, truckload contract rates or intermodal contract rates?
David Yeager
Yeah. Tom, this is Dave. We really don’t talk about our contracts. And so, that’s something we just can’t delve into.
Thomas Wadewitz
Okay. All right. Fair enough. Thanks for the time.
David Yeager
Thanks Tom.
Operator
Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Bascome Majors with Susquehanna. Please proceed with your question.
Bascome Majors
Thanks for taking my questions. Just high level to kind of follow up on the last question. If we were to feel peak pricing pressure and intermodal sometime call it the third quarter of next year, as the psychical reverses and counts peak. How long would it take, just is it a quarter or a few months to get that reaction in the rail pricing that you’re getting on the PT side?
David Yeager
Yeah. So, I think, it would, it would be moving as in some way as the market shifts, but not at a linear rate. And we would see it over a period of a year probably fully manifest itself, would be my just kind of assertion on that. I don’t want to go delve too far into the detail, but I tell you, it works itself out relatively evenly over a call quality gear period. Factoring in both our east and west contracts, which differ on mechanics.
Bascome Majors
So if intermodal contract pricing were to trough sometime in the second half of next year, your rail PT would probably trough between the second half and next year and the first half of 2024.
David Yeager
I think that’s probably accurate. Yeah.
Bascome Majors
And to your hypothetical comments earlier about, there’s some differences in the business and we don’t expect to call it one-third EPS decline in the next downturn here. I mean, that gets you to call it $7 in earnings power at that 35% that you don’t expect to hit in the downturn. Can you talk any about what the free cash flow profile of the business might look like in a downturn? Just would that fall more or less? Any thoughts on the cash generation power and its resiliency downturn. Thank you.
Geoff DeMartino
Absolutely. Yeah. We would expect to have really strong free cash flow. We do have the ability to scale up or scale down our CapEx. This year at our range of 245 or 240 to 250 is a pretty heavy year. We’re growing the fleet — the container fleet by 13%. Over time we’d expect more around a 10% on average. So, again, we’re going through our 2023 budgeting right now, but my — our assumption at this point is will kind of be in the mid to high single digit percent range for container growth, which would probably put our CapEx to the end of the 150 to 175 range. So we do have the ability to scale down. We do — and this year does include about $25 million on the headquarters building, which is, as you know is complete.
Bascome Majors
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Bruce Chan with Stifel. Please proceeded with your question.
Bruce Chan
Hey everyone. Thanks for the question. Just maybe you want to start here with a big picture question. You talked a lot about how the portfolio is now, non-asset at this point or almost half the portfolio. Even if that’s not getting reflected valuation, but when you think about M&A and when you think about the growth profiles in each of the various businesses, where do you see the mix being in, say the next three to five years?
Geoff DeMartino
Yeah. I think our mix will continue to shift in the direction that we’ve seen it over the past several years, where our non-asset segments become near to, if not the majority of our overall revenues, which we think will allow us to continue to invest in the asset side while continuing to focus on accretive acquisitions and growth in our non-asset segments. So, I would anticipate it’s not because our asset based businesses are shrinking, but because we are continuing to grow the non-asset side at a factor clip because of the components of organic and inorganic growth.
Bruce Chan
Okay. Great. That’s helpful. And then just a follow up here on the brokerage side, I think you mentioned that you were still 52% spot, which seems like it might be a little bit of a challenge in this market. And assuming that’s not just an artifact of mode mix, what does the right ratio look like for you in this part of the cycle, and how fast do you think you can move there?
Geoff DeMartino
Yeah. So, I would highlight that when we purchase Choptank, that shifted our mix to about a 50-50 split to close to 60-40 spot to contract. So we’re actually seeing that come back to a more normalized level. I think this is where the benefits of Hub and Choptank coming together are really going to show, because traditionally with the Choptank model, we would’ve seen a more difficult time because of the focus on spot. We’re bringing a lot more contractual and bid business opportunities that that team is winning and the pricing expertise to support that while they’re inside. Salesforce is really helping us continue to drive momentum on transactional wins and develop a better tactical relationship with a lot of our customers. So I think there’s this mutual benefit here that’s going to help us have a much more balanced model over the long-term. And I think you’ll see us continue to toggle back and forth between, call it a 45 to 55 sort of spot to contract ratio. And that’ll be the appropriate mix over time. But now that we’re in bid season and that’s starting to kick off, I think you’ll see that mix shift even more broadly.
Bruce Chan
Okay. Great. Appreciate the color.
Operator
Thank you. [Operator Instructions]
Our next question comes from the line of Justin Long with Stephens. Please proceed with your question.
Justin Long
Thanks. I wanted to start with the question on rail service. It sounds like utilization was under pressure in the third quarter, but I was wondering if you could put some numbers around that and then how you’ve seen utilization recover here recently and where you think we might normalize?
Geoff DeMartino
Yeah. So utilization did deteriorate for us on a sequential and year-over-year basis. But I think the good news is that we actually saw rail transits sequentially improve, both on a year-over-year basis as well. Where we are continuing to see the long [technical difficulty] transit is really on our customer dwell. We need to continue to work with our customers to draw that down. I think as inventories are high, in many ways our containers are being used as a storage unit in some ways, and we’re working very closely with our customers on changing that. I think as inventories are drawn down, we’ll see that normalized, that’s going to help us get more velocity back in the network as well, which is part of the longer streets well that we’re seeing. And I think as we balance out the network a little bit more, we’ll see improvement in that as well.
I would also just highlight rail service has improved both in the East and West, but not only has it gotten better on just a percentage basis, but we’ve seen it more of a stabilization in that overall service product. And that’s where really what we’re going to our customers and presenting is improvement. But also a stabilization which allows us to appoint better, allows us to get better visibility to our customers, use our drivers more effectively, and really just give an overall better customer experience. So, we have been very pleased with that.
David Yeager
And I think a good example of that is that we have reduced in a number of lanes the transit estimates by — up to three days. So, we are definitely seeing some sequential improvement.
Justin Long
Okay. That’s helpful. And secondly, I wanted to ask about intermodal volumes. I’ve heard the update on October, but do you have the monthly intermodal volumes for the third quarter? And then any thoughts on intermodal volumes in 2023?
David Yeager
Sure. In Q3, July was down nine, which we talked about our last call. August was up about 1.5 and September down about 10 and obviously was impacted by the rail stroke news.
Geoff DeMartino
But as we look at 2023, I think our goal is going to be growth, and maximizing that margin below day, but growth through enhanced balance, which will improve overall yields and margins.
Justin Long
Okay. So you’re planning on growth even in a mild recession scenario?
Geoff DeMartino
Correct.
Geoff DeMartino
Got it. Thanks for the time.
Operator
Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of David Zazula with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.
David Zazula
Real quick. You’d mentioned that you’d seen some acceleration in dedicated. Is that something you’re planning to lean into in the event that there is some softening of demand next year? Is that somewhere you think you can grow in 2023?
Phillip Yeager
Yeah. David, this is Phil. We’ve put a lot of work into improving our dedicated business improving our contracts and customer mix. And we feel as though it is an area that we can grow. We want to grow with the right customers in the right regions where we have density. And I think that’s really been our focus. So, I think for us, we’re going to stay disciplined, but we do like these long-term contracts with set price escalators that give our drivers a good view to their wage as well. And so, it’s good business for us. We plan to continue to do it, and grow in that service line. So — but it’s great to see a return to growth, but also margin improvement.
David Zazula
And then as a clean up, do you have the employee count, Geoff?
Geoff DeMartino
I do. Bear with me one moment. So the end of the quarter, we are at about 2150. And that includes — so we now have obviously drivers who’s always had, and we now have warehouse employees. So that number is an office headcount number.
David Zazula
Thanks. Appreciate the time.
Geoff DeMartino
Yeah.
Operator
Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Scott Group with Wolfe Research. Please proceed with your questions.
Scott Group
Hey guys. Thanks for the follow-up. Just a couple last quick things. You talked about a little — maybe a little less M&A activity. You just reauthorized a buyback. How are you thinking about buybacks going forward?
Geoff DeMartino
Yeah. We’re going to be opportunistic. We bought back stock in the quarter at a double-digit free cash flow yield. So, that’s a pretty attractive investment for us. If we continue to trade at these kind of ridiculously low valuation levels, we’re going to take advantage of that. So we don’t have any set timeframe on the $200 million, but we’ll make a financial decision around that investment. And again, where we were last quarter as well with our performance lately this year, our balance sheet is very under levered. We’re at 0.2 times debt to EBITDA. So as you know, our priorities for capital investment are CapEx and acquisitions. And in the current environment, we think, we certainly have a financial flexibility to also do a return of capital to shareholders.
Scott Group
Okay. You’ve had some healthy gains on sales this year. How do we — is that tractors, is it containers? How do we think about that in a downturn? Is that an earnings risk this cycle that maybe we haven’t had in the past?
Phillip Yeager
Yeah. We’ve been obviously benefiting from pretty strong market conditions for used equipment. It’s all been on tractors. We’re nearing the end of that. I think number one, just the number of pieces of equipment we have left to sell, but also — I think the market’s going to — certainly we’re not planning on this level of — these types of market conditions continuing. This is something we’ve never had these types of gains in the past, so there’s no real frame of reference for what that looks like going forward, other than we think it’s going to come to an end.
Geoff DeMartino
I think for the — at least for the near term though, we are continuing to see strong gains. And it’s attributable to improving the age of the fleet, which helps us on our M&A expenses, but also better utilization. I pointed to the driver to tractor ratio before. And by getting those — that slip seating, it allows us to take advantage of that and we’ll reach a threshold where we’re really optimized probably over the next six months. And so our — the amount of equipment we would sell would then come down even if the market conditions deteriorate or are staying the same. So, I would anticipate it’s a headwind, but at the same time should help us in our expenses.
Scott Group
Okay. And then last thing. So the rails have new labor contracts, I’m sure they would like to pass some of those costs through to their customers. Does that impact you in your rail costs?
Geoff DeMartino
No. We have contractual agreements and we do not anticipate or expect anything like that.
Scott Group
All right. Thank you guys.
Operator
Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference back to Dave Yeager for closing remarks.
End of Q&A
David Yeager
Great. Well, again, thank you for joining us this afternoon. As always, if there’s any questions, Phil, Geoff and I certainly would be available. Thank you for joining us and have a good evening.
Operator
This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating and you may now disconnect.
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