Omni Logistics, LLC (FWRD) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

August 10, 2023

NASDAQ US Industrials Air Freight and Logistics m_and_a 40 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Operator

operator
#1

Thank you for joining Forward Air Corporation's Conference Call to discuss the recently announced agreement to combine with Omni Logistics. Before we begin, I'd like to point out that both the press release and webcast presentation for this call are accessible on the Investor Relations section of Forward Air's website at www.forwardaircorp.com. Please be aware that certain statements in the company's announcement and on this conference call are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Legislation Reform Act of 1995, including statements, which are based on expectations, intentions and projections regarding the company's future performance, anticipated events or trends and other matters that are not historical facts. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding our ability to consummate the transaction with Omni Logistics and to meet expectations regarding the timing and completion thereof. Our ability to achieve the expected strategic, financial and other benefits of the transaction, including the realization of expected synergies and the achievement of deleveraging targets within the expected time frames or at all. And the satisfaction or waiver of the conditions to the completion of the transaction, including the receipt of all forward regulatory approvals or clearances in a timely manner and on terms acceptable to Forward. These statements are not a guarantee of future performance and are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. For additional information concerning these risks and factors, please refer to our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the press release and webcast presentation relating to this earnings call. The company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. During the call, there may also be a discussion of financial metrics that do not conform to U.S. generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP. Definitions and reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in the press release issued, which is available in the Investors tab of our website. With that out of the way, joining us are Forward CEO, Thomas Schmitt; and J.J. Schickel, CEO of Omni Logistics. I'll now hand the call over to Tom Schmitt, Chairman and CEO of Forward.

Thomas Schmitt

executive
#2

Greg, thank you so much, and thank you for having us. To all of you dialing in, I guess, I'm excited to have a call with all of you twice within 8 days. That's highly unusual, probably will remain highly unusual, but we have great news to share. The -- I'm going to headline some of what we posted on our Investor Relations site. There's a deck that you can follow along. For those of you, who don't have access to that deck, what we are going to be doing between J.J. Schickel, who's joining me here and me, we're going to just headline some of the key messages of the presentation. And then we're going to have a conversation with some of you asking questions or having comments with us. So for those of you, who have the presentation, the cover page says what the main message is we are creating between -- Omni and Forward Air coming together, we are creating the category leader in Expedited LTL, that is the main thing that we're doing. But before we're talking about this amazing combination, let us briefly look at the 2 companies, for those of you, who may not be fully familiar. Forward Air goes back more than 4 decades, and is based on what we call today, precision execution. The same way UPS talks about the Vulcan package in some commercials that we all know or FedEx talks about absolutely positively overnight. We are proud to be the best in shipments of consequence when it's bigger than a box. We have the lowest damages in the industry. We are the fastest on the biggest lanes. And we also hit the tightest time windows in our Expedited LTL business better than anybody else does. The same precision execution also applies to our supporting business lines, intermodal drayage, truckload and final mile. In final mile, for instance, just a couple of years ago, The Home Depot awarded us with Carrier of the Year. So when you think about Forward Air, think about precision execution, being the best when it matters for something that's bigger than a box, an operational muscle that we shaped over 4 decades. That's who we are today. That's who we are to our business partners and customers when it comes to shipments of consequence. So let's get the other half of the equation on the table, too. And J.J., if you could say a few words about that great company, Omni that you built.

John J. Schickel

executive
#3

Yes. Thank you so much, Tom. It's a real pleasure to be here with you on the call. Many of you on the call, I know and I look forward to meeting the rest of you at some point in the future here. A lot of respect for Forward, a tremendous company, and this is a really exciting day for Omni, our team and our customers. For those of you, who are not familiar with Omni, we are an asset-light, high-touch logistics and supply chain solutions company. We pride ourselves on building deep customer relationships in high-growth end markets, and our reputation for solving highly complex supply challenges. The world is moving faster than ever, and our purpose is to use a hybrid of innovative technology and human creativity to connect all the branches of a global network. How do we do this? Specifically, we focus on time-sensitive and mission-critical freight for predominantly U.S.-based customers, operating both domestically and internationally. This includes freight forwarding, fulfillment services, customs brokerage, distribution and an extensive portfolio of complementary value-added services. Over the past 5 years, Omni has expanded rapidly to become a leader in global logistics and to significantly build our customer base, and I'm proud to say, from 300 to over 7,000 customers in just a little over 5 years. Today's announcement is a culmination of all that we have accomplished in Omni to build our deep industry expertise, advance our proprietary technology and establish a multidisciplinary commercial engine that delivers bottom line value to customers. As both a Forward Air customer and an operator, I'm thrilled to join the company and the team -- with Forward's company and the team to achieve the full potential of our combined force. And I can say this with a lot of pleasure having gotten to know Tom and the team even better leading up to today's announcement. I can say with confidence that we have found a like-minded partner in Forward, who shares our commitment to strong customer relationships and unrivaled service. I look forward to hitting the ground running as President at Forward, following the close of the transaction and believe that our companies will be even better together. I'll now hand the call back over to Tom to walk through the compelling strategic rationale of the transaction and the significant value creation we expect to deliver. Tom?

Thomas Schmitt

executive
#4

Thanks, J.J. For those of you, actually who are able to follow along on the deck that's on our Investor Relations site. If you look at Page 7, that picture kind of tells the two companies coming together. We have Forward Air with a tremendous, as I just said a few minutes ago, tremendous precision execution focus for shipments of consequence. And I'm so proud for our teammates, and I'm happy to repeat the lowest claims ratios in the industry, best on-time performance and just a natural muscle of hitting very tight time windows, our company was founded replicating airline schedules. And then you have Omni, and J.J., you just talked about some of those tremendous attributes, super customer-focused with a network of 7,000 very challenging and demanding customers that you satisfy every single day. And bringing those 2 companies together brings in my mind and our minds the best operations execution engine and the best commercial engine in the business in North America together. That's what we're creating here. And if you look at it from a Forward Air perspective and you go to Page 8, for those of us who have been following us for the last several years, we've been on a multiyear journey. We called it Grow Forward and Grow Forward has 4 very simple and compelling pieces to it. The first one is we established a focus on higher quality freight, sensitive freight and making sure that we actually come to bat for you and for every single day when it's shipments of consequence. And once we put that focus more in place over the last several years, the second thing we also did was we upgraded our pricing capabilities. We wanted to make sure we create a ton of value for our customers, and we capture a fair share of that value. The best pricing tools, processes and great pricing people that we build up in our team. The third block, after focus on high-quality freight and appropriate pricing is what we call a cleansed network. For those of you, again, who know as well, you noticed a few years ago, we actually stopped accepting loose freight, because loose freight in many cases, clocked up the system and made it harder for us to meet our commitments and beat our customers' expectations. So the first 3 blocks of Grow Forward over the last 2 or 3 years, very successfully put in place by thousands of amazing teammates that I'm proud to be part of. focus on higher-quality freight priced appropriately in a cleansed unclogged network. The fourth piece and the final piece to unlock the value of -- for Grow Forward is making what we do so well and making it accessible to a larger customer base. As you remember, over the last couple of years, we started selling directly to small, medium-sized businesses that were complementary to our intermediary business partners and customers. And we build up and now several hundred active accounts in the direct selling space. Combining with Omni takes us to a whole different level. We are now making our industry-leading LTL available to a much, much, much larger customer base, and that is unlocking that value in that fourth block of Grow Forward. Number nine, if you take the two companies together, and we have some numbers in subsequent pages, but just from a concept perspective, as I just said, we're now making available what we have to a much larger customer base together, our scale is twice the size. We have 2, roughly speaking, equally sizable companies coming together. We have several services -- complementary services that feed the beast of Expedited LTL, which is obviously our main show. We have, as we talked about before, industry-leading operations teams and commercial teams coming together with a much larger footprint and we're going to talk about it, J.J. Will actually dive in a bit more into that with synergies, both on the cost side and the revenue side, which we can make happen very, very, very short term. If you see -- like, how high is up here, and Page 10 in our presentation speaks to that. I oftentimes talk about the LTL market in the U.S. alone being -- depends on which estimates you take, $75 billion or as we showed here, most recent estimate that we actually got our hands on $86 billion. We believe about $15 billion of that is that high-value, high-quality sensitive freight that's right in our wheelhouse. So far, we had Forward, we only have a 7%, about $1 billion in revenue, market share of that high value of $15 billion in freight. What this does here, this combination of these 2 amazing companies does is getting us to the fastest possible speed of going after that $15 billion Expedited LTL market, the best way in the fastest way. And the good thing is we're doing this together and at the same time, realizing synergies from the get-go. And J.J., do you want to talk a little bit about what's depicted on Page 11 on the synergy front?

John J. Schickel

executive
#5

Yes, I'd be happy to. Thanks so much, Tom. The significant synergy potential of this combination is a super powerful driver of the transaction, will not only enable us to operate more efficiently and effectively for our customers, but also create significant value for our shareholders. Specifically, we expect the combined company to have a meaningfully enhanced financial profile with higher growth and significantly increased revenue underpinned by cost and revenue-based EBITDA synergies. Synergy opportunities, including, but not limited to, in-sourcing of Omni's third-party LTL network and other domestic transport spend, capitalizing on significant cross-selling opportunities and driving the incremental cost savings. We expect to realize up to approximately $125 million of total run rate EBITDA synergies, with $75 million of those representing cost synergies and $60 million of those realized within the first 6 months following the close of the transaction and full run rate cost savings realized by the end of 2025. The $50 million in revenue base EBITDA synergies are expected to be gradually realized in the first 3 years post closing of the transaction.

Thomas Schmitt

executive
#6

Thanks, J.J. And to make this more of a conversation here in a couple of minutes and not a monologue or just 2 people having a monologue. Let's headline the last 4 pages of this presentation very briefly. We talked about Page 12, how this transaction will double our scale. This is a conceptually and directionally correct depiction both on the revenue side, as well as on the EBITDA side. The EBITDA side does include the run rate of synergy opportunities, as J.J. -- as you just mentioned at a headline level. Then if you go to Page 13, I do want to obviously acknowledge that as part of this transaction, we are levering up as a company. And I want to say we are levering up as a company temporarily. We want to emphasize, we have a very, very, very strong cash flow, and we're going to delever very, very quickly. And we do see meaningful cash earnings per share accretion in year 2 of post-close. And as a company, we're going to maintain a very strong habit of having dividends to our common shareholders. I talked about, but I think -- always a picture tells a lot -- thousand words, how this combination is just going to take our footprint to a whole different level. Our destination footprint is obviously North America. We are a proud combination of 2 North American companies. And our footprint, if you look at Page 14 covers all of North America, including Canada and Mexico, extremely effectively, 300-plus locations, 12.7 million square feet. And finally, and that J.J., you can speak to that a little bit, too. We do have with this combination, a significant amount of great teammates also outside North America. But the main thing, and I want to make sure this comes home very loud and clear. We are getting deeper and deeper into decision-making processes of our business partners and customers and be helping them in many cases, from the origin of where they're building their supply chains. And it's all about what I call feeding the beast, which is North American transportation, primarily the Expedited LTL. That's the main price that we're going after together.

John J. Schickel

executive
#7

Yes. Thanks, Tom. I think it's a critical point and really well said, just to reemphasize some of those concepts and to hit on Page 15 here. Transaction fees, Forward's Expedited LTL network and expands access to high-growth, high-value sectors, including aerospace, medical equipment, technology, events, industrial goods, automotive, telecom and media. The addition of Omni's more than 7,000 customers, over 70% of which are focused on high-value freight and its presence in Europe, Asia and South America will position Forward to provide expanded international capabilities and extended logistics service support for global customers.

Thomas Schmitt

executive
#8

Thank you, J. J. And again, making this more of a conversation. Let's open it up for thoughts, comments, questions. Greg, if you could instruct our listeners how they can participate in this conversation.

Operator

operator
#9

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Bruce Chan from Stifel.

J. Bruce Chan

analyst
#10

Tom, J. J., congrats on the transaction. Obviously, a very big news. You both had a very close relationship for quite a long time with Omni is an important customer of Forward. And I guess, Tom, I'm just curious here, as you bring Omni into the fold, can you qualify or quantify that the risk of business attrition from maybe some of the important customers?

Thomas Schmitt

executive
#11

Yes, Bruce, first and foremost. And thank you for indulging us for 2 of these calls within 8 days. Obviously, a core topic for us. We -- Forward Air, we've been very, very fortunate to be able to build this amazing business. And Bruce, you know our company extremely well with domestic forwarder partners that have like in Omni Logistics, but also many, many others where we have tag-team extremely effectively for decades. And so there clearly is a risk because, obviously, now a very, very strong formerly domestic and now also more international Forward or Omni Logistics is becoming one together with us. But we will be doing everything possible. We'll be moving heaven and earth to remain a partner with some of those business partners who got us here, we're far from done yet. I do believe we're going to find a space where we figure out which verticals, which customers are special to them, where they've got deep relationships. And where we are still doing everything possible to be the best tool in their toolkit to provide competitive rates, obviously, to make them win more good business. And all I would be asking our business partners after the initial digestion of this news, be open-minded, you have a Forward Air team that's been with you for 4 decades in some cases. And my aspiration and my commitment is, if you choose to do so, we are far from done. There's lots of untapped upside. But Bruce, I do realize this is something that we -- it's a different relationship going forward. And it's one that we have to earn and reearn every single day, all I'm asking for is open-mindedness.

J. Bruce Chan

analyst
#12

Okay. Great. That's helpful. And then maybe just as a quick follow-up, you mentioned that you expect the deal to be meaningfully cash earnings accretive in year 2. Is the implication there that in year 1, it's going to be dilutive? And if so, any thoughts around the magnitude of that?

Thomas Schmitt

executive
#13

Yes. So we obviously have different models. And -- but in all fairness, we haven't shared that number yet, whether it's positive or negative. But I do believe that the cash flow generation that we do have and with the models that we actually are looking at, and there's more to come, obviously. And J. J. did briefly talk about the cost synergies and the revenue synergies. We're talking about so much positiveness that we're going to be tackling in the first few days and months. We have -- we'll have a 30-day and 90-day, 180-day dashboard of cost and revenue opportunities. So I was meaning to be positive about being EPS, cash accretive in year 2. I'm not saying the opposite is the case in year 1. I just wanted to make sure that we all understand that this juggernaut of a combination will be positive very, very quickly. If we do our jobs extremely effectively, which I expect us to do, I like our odds for year 1 and for year 2, but especially with the cost synergies that are so readily available and easily available to us as well as revenue opportunities. So Bruce, let me say, the year 2, I'm very, very confident, positive and the absence of me mentioning year 1 does not mean we cannot achieve the same in year 1.

Operator

operator
#14

Your next question comes from the line of Bascome Majors from Susquehanna.

Bascome Majors

analyst
#15

Tom, on the cost synergies and the revenue synergies, they come very quickly and then have a bit of a longer tail for the last piece of that. On the $60 million in the first 6 months, can you give us a little more functional understanding of how that hits so quickly? And then maybe some more visual into what the longer tail looks like on the cost side and why that takes another couple of years?

Thomas Schmitt

executive
#16

Yes. So I'm going to actually headline this, and J. J., you can perhaps double-click a little bit more on that. So many of our domestic forwarder business partners and customers when there are dense lanes or in some cases, specific customer requirements, they have put up their own line haul network not our size, typically not nationally, but for major lanes and in some cases, so did Omni. And I think there's an opportunity, especially after we unclogged our network, the cleansing that we talked about 2 years ago, Bascome, to basically consolidate those 2 networks into one. And J. J., do you want to perhaps give a little bit more of a sketch of what that could look like?

John J. Schickel

executive
#17

Yes, sure. Tom, I think you were hitting on the -- certainly the easiest part of this. We, at Omni have spent a good number of years and a good number of dollars trying to build our own line haul in our own network. And the smartest and the best thing that we can do, right, is to collapse that into Forward's network. It just makes incredible industrial sense and was a real huge compelling part of the story for us, certainly, in terms of just like right out of the gate wins. A couple of other things that I would say is if you just think about the domestic network that Forward has. We have a similar network, a shadow network, if you will, where we're all kind of going to a lot of the same cities. One of the really interesting aspects of this is that Forward has their network and Omni has their network. Oftentimes, we've got to do our own cross-stocking in the same locations in the same cities right next to Forward. It's just how the business frankly works. So when you think about the value prop to the customers you really only need one cross-dock in most of those markets. So the industrial logic of being able to just shut down and combine facilities, it's massive. And fortunately, the integration is quite easy and quite quick. So I think those define a lot of the quick cost-saving wins. And then there's obviously the opportunity to go and expand the LTL opportunity for us to go deeper into the LTL sales channel now, through partnership with Forward. And I think we have 7,000 customers where we're just scratching the surface of that. And we have a gigantic commercial engine that will be super excited to go and pursue those opportunities. And we think there's a very big opportunity to do that just with our existing customers, not to mention new logos as well.

Thomas Schmitt

executive
#18

And Bascome, so just piggybacking on J. J., what you just said. So from a pure timing perspective, you mentioned the tail. So the cost synergies probably are certain close to certain and fast. And the revenue opportunities are massive, but they will obviously ramp up. Some of it will be fairly straightforward, but some of it will be relationship building, cross-selling, making sure that those customers start feeling confident with the new service offering that is available to them now, which is our brand of LTL.

Bascome Majors

analyst
#19

And maybe just to pivot more to the revenue side. I mean, it did feel like some of the customer turnover consolidation from your deal earlier this year was maybe, a bit more surprising than you had expected. Not to kind of follow up on the same question that Bruce asked earlier, but how do you really guard against that? How are you so confident that the revenue generates synergies and not some customer departures at least in the short term?

Thomas Schmitt

executive
#20

Yes, Bascome. I mean, I think there's two parts of -- there's two elements to your thought and to your question. And let me just address both of them. So the first one is, again, our business has been built with very, very strong business partners over 4 decades. And I'm very, very aware of that, that we need to earn and reearn the confidence that they will want to continue getting our service to help them to profitably grow the same way we've done this together for a long time. That is a challenge. And that means our sales team, our operations team, pricing team, and I personally, we need to make sure that we have these conversations. We reestablished that confidence in that trust that has to be earned. That's not taken for granted. So that's, I think, is a challenge. Now, the second piece, and that's a different issue is on the positive side. Some of these -- I mean, Omni has been a good customer of ours -- a growing customer of ours -- a well growing customer of ours. So some of the 7,000 customers, active customers that Omni has had are using ultimately our LTL service today already. All that's changing with this combination is, now we have a very, very strong incentive to go to the thousands of omni customers today that actually have been using other services that may not have been using our Expedited LTL service. So whatever you want to call that, cross-selling or leveraging that relationship for another meaningful offering, that's what we're obviously going to go into overdrive in. So I think both of these revenue opportunities keeping the confidence and reearning the confidence of our existing customers and making sure that those 7,000 customers that know Omni and extremely well and trust Omni, give -- as it's earned, give our Expedited LTL service a chance, both of these will be a top priority for us as a joint entity and both of them have their own risks and opportunities. But I'm very much aware, we won't be taking any one of our current business partners for granted, never will. And I'm also very much aware of the huge untapped upside that the deep customer relationships that Omni has today brings to the table.

Bascome Majors

analyst
#21

Of the 6,000 customers at Omni, do you have a sense of how many already used Forward Air directly? Or is there a revenue overlap? I'm sure that study was done in the due diligence. I'm just curious if you have some numbers behind that.

John J. Schickel

executive
#22

So this is J. J. It's a good question. Just to hit on that. The way that our network works is that probably I don't know the exact number, but we're doing -- we're constantly doing load balancing and trying to optimize our existing network. That will obviously, as I mentioned, move into forwards network after closing. But in the current state, about 50% of our freight is domestic freight. And so it's highly possible that at some point along the way, every one of those customers is moving through the Forward network. The density and the magnitude of that is a little bit tougher to -- we don't track it that way. So we don't think about it that way, and I don't have that exact number, but the domestic footprint for that would likely imply that somewhere in that neighborhood is probably moving or has moved through the network. Certainly, a much greater percentage has the potential to do so. And I think that's what we're so excited about. If you think about -- just like the 7,000 customers that we have, 70% of those customers are using us, because we're -- this is freight of consequence. This is freight that needs to stay on a schedule. This is freight that can't wait. And therefore, the opportunity for us to go now and further maximize Forward's overall footprint domestically, it's a really exciting proposition for us. And so the percentage may be somewhat high. The actual magnitude in dollars and pounds of that is actually probably low. So we think there's a really big opportunity just internally with that existing customer base.

Operator

operator
#23

Your next question comes from the line of Scott Group from Wolfe Research.

Scott Group

analyst
#24

I just want to take one quick step back. Just, when I think about Omni, what percentage of the business today is LTL?

John J. Schickel

executive
#25

The way that we look at the business today is about 60% of our business is U.S. ground. A huge percentage of that is going over the LTL or Expedited LTL space. But there's a, I would say, probably about 20% or so is kind of characterized in that bucket. And therefore, the potential for us to move more into the forward network is the balance of that or roughly the balance of that. And if you also think about our business that's not characterized as ground today, a huge percentage of that is ultimately palletized, right? So it could be Air coming into the U.S. that's ultimately coming in on pallet and going out on pallet, a very small percentage of that is pushing through Forward's network today, so there's quite a big opportunity to shift in that direction as well. Tom, anything else to add on that?

Thomas Schmitt

executive
#26

No. I think -- I mean, again, you build a network that feeds -- that your North American customer base -- that entire North American customer base, all 7,000 of active customers today have some need for LTL. But you're absolutely correct, Scott. I mean, these customers also have need for truckload. They also have need for intermodal service, some final mile services. Having said all of that, we have to look at this there was no overproportionate incentive that Omni and its first-class sales force had to look to feed the beast of Forward. Now that's changing, that incentive is going to be significant. And again, I've been saying for 4 years now, LTL is the main show. And now we have an opportunity in our go-forward journey to take that main show to a whole different level.

Scott Group

analyst
#27

Okay. And then I just want to understand some of the numbers a little bit better. So maybe, just again on the Omni side. So LTM, $1.6 billion of revenue, adjusted EBITDA, $180 million. What's -- what's been the CAGR there? What was maybe just -- obviously, there's been a lot of noise in freight in the last couple of years, like any color on what, like 2019 revenue, 2019 EBITDA were?

John J. Schickel

executive
#28

Yes. I think I don't have those numbers off the top of my head. We can obviously pull that information together for you. I think, just to build a mental glide scope from kind of where we were at 300 customers, was around $13 million of EBITDA in 2015, and 2016 time frame to the $183 million or so of adjusted EBITDA today. So that glide scope has been pretty consistent on the way to get to this level. So a meaningful CAGR. I apologize, I don't have it off the top of my head in '19 and '20.

Thomas Schmitt

executive
#29

J. J., if you look at your growth journey, the last several years, it's been pretty phenomenal.

John J. Schickel

executive
#30

Yes. I mean we've been on a great trajectory, I would say, over the time period from -- in particular, '18 through midway to now in '23, but '18 to '22 were significant growth years recognizing '18 was a great freight year, '19 was a challenging freight year, '20 was COVID, it's been an unusual, I've been in business 25 years, it has been an unusual freight market for sure, but the business has been on a very good healthy growth trajectory.

Scott Group

analyst
#31

Okay. And then maybe just lastly, Rebecca. I just want to understand the buildup to the enterprise -- so it's $3.2 billion of EV, just what's cash, what stock, what's debt? And then it sounds like you're taking on a lot of debt. How much is to -- is new debt? How much is to refinance existing debt? Just because like when I look at Omni GAAP net income, was losing money. It seems like there's just a lot of interest expense there eating up the earnings and is there an opportunity to refinance that and get that down?

Thomas Schmitt

executive
#32

Yes. Scott, so this is the unusual circumstance where I am actually Tom and Rebecca at the same time. I was Interim CFO a couple of years ago, and quickly found somebody more confident for that position. But no, in all seriousness, we actually have an investor conference today at the same time, and we had to divide and conquer. All of those, Scott, we'll make sure we can follow up with you in one-on-one. Obviously, we have done the math. But roughly speaking, obviously, as we, the 2 companies come together, the total consideration, a good part of that, it's almost like 50-50, gets used to repay the original debt that Omni had to its investors, and then the rest is a combination of common and preferred shares that most of the current investors, and I think this is something we should emphasize. Most of the current investors in and behind Omni have chosen to do one thing, which is basically taking the money that's part of this transaction and flipping it right back fully into the combination. I mean, if you think about 2 companies coming together, I cannot think of a bigger sign of confidence than somebody basically getting a check and giving your check right back and saying, "I want shares for that." That's what's been happening. But to be very precise about the model, I want to make sure that we honor your request and get your numbers that are right, specific and to the point. And so that would be best done with a follow-up, some of these numbers are in these documents, but you're right, we should probably double click and do a bit more.

Operator

operator
#33

And I'm showing no further questions in the queue. I would now like to turn the call back to Tom Schmitt for closing remarks.

Thomas Schmitt

executive
#34

Well, thank you so much, Greg. And I'm sure that some of the other covering analysts, we'll find ways, one-on-one to follow up with this -- with them. This call was set up with a very short notice, and I apologize for that. That's not our usual habit, and we'll get this right going forward. I just want to reemphasize and the presentation speaks to that right there on the title. This is 2 amazing companies coming together. It's not exclusively that, but you can argue that Forward Air for 4 decades has built an operations muscle for shipments of consequence, better than anybody else in North America. And Omni has done a tremendous amazing job building a commercial muscle that's second to none. And we have this amazing rare opportunity to bring those 2 teams together and create a category leader in Expedited LTL, something that actually has not existed so far. And I'm just thrilled to continue the Grow Forward journey high-quality freight, priced appropriately in a cleansed operating environment and take the access to a much larger revenue and customer base together with Team Omni to a whole different level. So thank you for your curiosity, your interest, your engagement and we're going to have a great journey together. Thank you, Greg.

Operator

operator
#35

Thank you. That concludes Forward Air's conference call for today. Please remember, this webcast will be available on the Investor Relations section of Forward Air's website at www.forwardaircorp.com, shortly after this call. You may now disconnect.

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