TFII

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to TFI International's first quarter 2026 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Callers will be limited to one question and one follow-up. Again, that's one question and not a follow-up so that we can get to as many callers as possible. Further instructions for entering the queue will be provided at that time. Please be advised that this conference call will contain statements that are forward-looking in nature and is subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. I would also like to remind everyone that this conference call is being recorded on April 27, 2026.

Joining us on the call today are Alain Bédard, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, and David Saperstein, Chief Financial Officer. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Alain Bédard. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you for the introduction, operator, and welcome everyone to today's call. Within the past hour, we reported our quarterly results, including adjusted diluted EPS of $0.69. This performance was driven by the tremendous effort of our talented team members and their relentless focus on efficiency and related operating principles. Taking a step back, a long-standing part of our strategy is to maintain a rock-solid balance sheet that allows us to thoughtfully manage through the cycle. After generating more than $800 million of free cash flow last year, which was over $10 per share, we produced another $124 million during the first quarter, which further benefited our financial position.

Most importantly, this allows us to continue to our track record of strategic capital allocation, investing for the long term regardless of market conditions, while also returning excess capital to shareholders whenever possible. To that point, during the quarter, we paid out $38 million in quarterly dividends. Let's take a closer look at our first quarter financial results. Total revenue before fuel surcharge of $1.7 billion was consistent with the prior-year quarter. Our consolidated operating earnings of $97 million represented a 5.7% margin, and our net cash from operating activities came in at $122 million. Turning to our business segment performance, I'll first mention that we have streamlined our reporting approach in our quarterly report in an effort to reduce complexity for our investors and better align with our peer practices.

Therefore, I'll be primarily speaking to the overall results of each of our three segments, beginning with LTL, which represent 38% of our segmented revenue before fuel surcharge. We saw a notable improvement during the quarter as weather improved, with shipments per day in March considerably stronger than January and February, and this trend continued into April. For the first full quarter, the $656 million of revenue before fuel surcharge was down just 3% year-over-year, an improvement from the fourth quarter 10% decline. Our LTL adjusted operating ratio came in at 95.3, and total operating income of $31 million compares to $47 million one year earlier. Lastly, our return on invested capital for LTL was 11.6, again with notable improvement through the quarter and into April.

Turning to our truckload segment, the $673 million of revenue before fuel surcharge was 39% of segmented revenue and grew from $663 million in the prior year first quarter. We were able to grow by 9% our revenue per truck per week, excluding fuel surcharge, while reducing our truck count 7% as we increase fleet productivity and shed excess equipment. In addition, we continue to see rapid sequential growth from data center construction, although this today is a small part of overall revenue. Truckload is also a segment for which our past acquisition, including Daseke, have increased our exposure to industrial truckload end markets, helping us to overcome industry fundamentals recently characterized by tariff and economic uncertainty, as well as our industry overcapacity.

Our quarterly truckload operating income of $56 million was up from $49 million the prior year, and our OR was 92.7, improved by 100 basis points. Lastly, our truckload return on invested capital came in at 6%. To round out our segments, logistics accounted for 23% of segmented revenue at $388 million, which was up slightly from the prior year figure of $385 million and also up 8% sequentially. Our logistics operating income of $34 million was also up year over year from $31 million and was up from the December quarter as well. This equates to a margin of 8.9%, which was also up both year-over-year and sequentially. Our logistics return on invested capital was 12.4%.

Moving on to our balance sheet, our strong financial foundation continues to benefit from our free cash flow, another $124 million during the quarter, as I mentioned, and we ended the month of March with our funded debt-to-EBITDA ratio at 2.6. Wrapping up my remarks in terms of our updated outlook for the second quarter of 2026. We expect adjusted diluted EPS to be in the range of $1.50-$1.60. Net CapEx excluding real estate for the full year, we're expecting a range of $225 million-$250 million, unchanged from previous expectation. As always, our outlook range assume no significant change, either positive or negative, in the operating environment. With that operator, David and I would be happy to take questions. If you could please open the lines.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star two. Your first question comes from the line of Ravi Shanker with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks, everyone. Alain, obviously a lot has changed, since your previous call with the cycle and the current environment.

Yep.

Would just love to get a sense of what you're seeing out there in terms of the TL market tightening up, direct impacts on you, secondary and LTL, et cetera.

That's a very good question, Ravi. What we're seeing really in the truckload sector is that it's the offer that's been reduced, right? With everything that's going on in the U.S., with this new administration, the tightening of CDL, the closing of all those driving schools, right? That didn't make any sense. I mean, the offer has been reduced month after month, and now slowly, we're getting closer to a balance in the industry where, you know, for a long time, this industry was very unbalanced, where the offer was way more than the demand. Now, if you look at our truckload operation in Canada and in the U.S., I mean, we're focused on the industrial freight, right? We're not a carrier of retail freight in our truckload world.

We are really industrial, and we feel really good about where the U.S. is going and even Canada, where the future is for our flatbed operation, our specialty truckload, okay, et cetera, et cetera. We're starting to see a change, okay? Customers now are asking for, "Hey, can you help me?" Customers are saying, "Can we be partners?" Because, you know, it's always the same story. When the markets start to tighten up, shippers want to be partners with truckers, right? I mean, we're seeing that. We're very happy with what's going on. You know, the investment we made in Daseke two years ago has been, you know, average so far. We were really busy investing in technology and financial system and all that consolidation.

Now we're starting to see a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel in terms of the demand, in terms of you know, the future of North America, U.S. and Canada. I feel really good about where we're at. Now, if you talk about our LTL in North America, I would say that it's been a long time since we have some organic growth in that sector. I would say that what we're seeing now is slowly we probably gonna show up at least no negative, okay, growth in Q2 in our LTL. We believe that organically our LTL could grow maybe a few points, right? Which is gonna be a first.

I'm really happy with the commercial team that we have in the U.S. right now, led by our guy, Chris Traikos and Cal as well. I mean, we have way more stability in our commercial team. Our service is slowly again improving. Customers are starting to see us maybe in a different way that, okay, finally, these guys are you know, getting their act together. We're not perfect. We're far from that yet, but we are improving. I mean, if you remember the Mastio report, for the first time, okay, we've shown an improvement, okay? I mean, I feel in a long time. I mean, the last two or three years have been very difficult for us at TFI.

I think that finally we're gonna turn the corner, turn the page on very difficult 2023, 2024 and 2025, even 2025 being the worst of the three. I think that 2026 is the transition year to a much better future for us in the quarters to come.

That's incredibly helpful, and I hope you're right about that. Maybe as a quick follow-up, you said light at the end of the tunnel. Do you have confidence in what the full year is shaping up to be? When do you think you might restore full year guidance in there?

You know what, Ravi? Until we have a deal signed between Canada, U.S. and Mexico, we can't come up with a full year guidance. I mean, it's too unstable right now. Until we have that, and hopefully we'll have that by the end of the summer, okay. Also with more experience where this market is going, I mean, we have a fuel situation with what's going on in Iran. I mean, this free trade agreement between North America. This is why, you know, David and myself, we feel good about giving a guidance for Q2, but not the rest of the year. There's too many things that we're not sure.

We feel good about where we are, and we feel good about where we should be heading, but it's still too early in the game to come up with a year number, right? This is why I think that, you know, $1.50, $1.60, I think it would be a great accomplishment because it would be better than last year. Because if you look at my Q1, I'm worse than last year on EPS, right? This gotta change. I think that Q2 is, for the first time in a long time, okay, that will show better numbers than the prior year, at least.

Understood. Thanks, Alain.

Pleasure, Ravi.

The next question comes from Scott Group with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks. Afternoon. Alain, you mentioned inflecting to hopefully some growth in LTL. Are you still providing breakout U.S. versus Canadian LTL? Are you seeing growth, both U.S. and Canada, within that comment? I don't know, maybe just along those lines, any thoughts on, like, on the margin-

Yeah.

Margin outlook for the LTL segment.

Yeah.

For Q2.

Here is the deal, Scott. I mean, no, we don't separate U.S. and Canada anymore because, you know, more and more what we're saying, the same as our truckload and our logistics, we are a North American player. What I can tell you, though, in terms of organic growth, we're seeing as we speak, okay, organic growth in the U.S. year-over-year in April and what we've seen so far. On the Canadian side, we're starting to see also some improvement there. That's why we feel pretty good that organically, in our sectors, truckload the same, okay, logistics the same. We feel that we're gonna show some organic growth in Q2, 2026 versus 2025 year-over-year.

Okay.

Yeah.

Maybe just, you know, I asked for LTL, but maybe you could sort of walk, you know, walk through the P&L and how you're thinking about some of the margin assumptions in order to get to the guide for Q2. Maybe that'd be helpful.

Okay, well, that's a very good question, so that's why I'll leave it to David, our CFO. He's the numbers guy.

Hi, Scott. Yeah. For TFI as a whole, we expect OR improvement of 400-500 basis points. Taking it through the segments. I'm talking about sequentially from Q1 to Q2. LTL, we expect 600-700 basis points of sequential improvement, Q1 to Q2. Truckload, 200-300 basis points. Logistics, 75-125 basis points of improvement.

I mean, that's a really big LTL number. Just any additional color there. Is fuel a big help, or is pricing getting a lot better? It's a pretty big

Yeah.

Sequential.

A couple of points. First of all, Q1 was probably unusually bad because of the weather in the beginning of the quarter. We're exiting the quarter way better than we entered the quarter. Just to give you a little bit of sense across that, around that, in January, LTL shipments were down year-over-year 10%, okay? In March, they were up 8% year-over-year. April is looking similar to March. We had a very different situation now than in the beginning of the quarter, and that's what's driving a lot of this improvement and as well as the other things that the team has been working on. Fuel is a part of it, only where we have really strong density.

It's really more around the volumes and some of the pricing actions that we will be putting through.

Also, David, if I may add, don't forget that our GRI, okay, was not in place in late 2025. We delayed that, and it was put in place mid-March, right? We have that a little bit of tailwind on that, Scott.

Yep.

Although this is only.

Thank you, guys. Appreciate it.

For about 25% of our shipment. Hey, Scott, this is only for about 25% of the shipment, but, you know, we're in the penny business, Scott, so every penny counts.

I get it. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it.

Thank you, Scott.

The next question comes from Ari Rosa with Citigroup. Please go ahead.

Hey, good afternoon, Alain and David. Alain, you mentioned that you were feeling good about the sales effort on the LTL side. I was hoping you could talk just more broadly about how the LTL turnaround is progressing and kind of how you think about the structural barriers to improving margins there. It sounds like that a lot of improvement is underway, but just kind of curious how much of that is related to things that you guys are undertaking versus the broader macro environment may be turning more favorable.

Yeah. You see, Ari, if you look at the worst thing that you can have is you try to sell a service and the service is not there, right? Because that's what we do. We sell a service. We are supposed to pick up the freight, and we don't show up. I mean, that's not too good, right? This is what the operating guys have been working at, okay, missed pickup. If you look at our claims, okay, consolidated, we're at 0.6. If you remember when we were showing that separate, I mean, U.S. was not that good. That's another area that we are improving. Stability in your sales team also helps you, okay, with the customer relationship and all that. This is like a goodwill thing.

Hopefully macro will start to help us down the road at one point when the market, you know, is stronger. In the meantime, okay, we still have lots to do for us to improve our service. I said in last conference call that if you look at our U.S., okay, we still have issues with, not the next day service, we're good at that. The second and the third day service, we have some issues. The guys are working on that. The culture is the culture of, you know, the old days of laissez-faire and, I don't really care. I mean, we're changing that culture. You're gonna say, "Alain, you bought the company five years ago." I mean, five years ago, think about that.

We're still, okay, working on changing this culture of we're not a monopoly anymore, okay? We are a LTL company in North America, and we compete with good peers. I mean, we're competing with good companies in North America, so we have to be good. Our service has to be up there, right? In order to get more money. Because if you ask me today, price-wise, we are a discounted carrier compared to some of my peers, right? The reason we are some kind of a discounted carrier is because our service is not where it should be. This is the chicken and the egg, right? Where does this start? Well, it starts with providing the acceptable service comparable to our peers. This is an ongoing thing that our ops guys are doing.

At the same time also, we're saying to our commercial team, "Guys, let's focus on freight that fits us." I mean, don't give me a customer where I have to run 70 mi to pick up the shipment, because this is not what I want. I want something that is closer to my terminal to improve my density, okay? I want more shipment per stop, okay? To improve my cost per shipment, et cetera, et cetera. It's a team effort. Again, I mean, we're still in a position of working hard to get closer to the service level of our peers.

Okay. Understood. I wanted to ask about the strength in flatbed rates. It's been pretty remarkable to see some of the public load board data. I'm just curious to hear your thoughts on what TFI's ability has been to capitalize on that, particularly in Daseke. Broadening it out to the broader business, how you think about what upcycle earnings could look like both for Daseke and for the broader business. Let's assume for a moment kind of a benign resolution to USMCA.

Listen, guys, I mean, our revenue/mi is up in our TFI specialty truckload. Absolutely, our revenue/mi is moving up, okay? We drive more miles per truck per week, okay? This is a productivity effort that Steve, the leader of our truckload division, has been able to do, is do more with less, okay? Now, for sure, also, if you look at our market, our focus is more and more into markets where we are more specialists. I'll give you the example of Lone Star, which is Texas-based. Today, we run 100 trucks, highly specialized, $7-$8 a mi, okay? Which is great. Next to that, in Lone Star, we also run over the road at $2.25-$2.40 a mi.

What we're saying is that, you know, being Jack of all trade, master of none, what we're trying to do with the team there is that, guys, you know, from 100 trucks, we'll move the super specialty truckload to 150. The over the road thing there, we're gonna move that to someone else. Okay. What we did with SPD on the West Coast. Okay, those guys are very strong with Boeing, and Boeing is just on fire, right? The demand is just through the roof over there at Boeing. We said, "Guys, how many trucks do we need to service this high-end customer, that niche customer?" We need 75 trucks. That's it. That's all. Okay, fine. Goodbye. You used to have 200 trucks, now you're down to 275, okay?

We're moving those trucks to Wiley in North Dakota because Wiley is our big over the road truckload guy, and we want Wiley to be 1,000 trucks, right? Not 500-600, but 1,000. We're doing all these changes at the same time that we are working on reducing our costs, reducing our asset base. If you look at our brokerage operation in our truckload sector, last month, revenue-wise, we were up 7%-8%. The goal is to drive more revenue with less steel on the road. All of that, this is when David was talking about our Q2 forecast versus our Q1, okay? We see some improvement in all of our sector, including truckload.

Like on a like for like basis, 'cause I understand there's a mix impact there, but on a like for like basis, can you tell us kind of how contract rates are comping year-over-year?

Yeah.

Yeah. Go on.

Maybe, I can jump in on that.

Go ahead, David.

We're renewing contracts in the U.S. flatbed in the high-single digits to low-double digits. We also have about 20%-25% spot exposure in the U.S. flatbed, and those rates are coming in higher, but that's not where we're focused, right? We're really focused on the contract area, but we do have some spot exposure. Canada is not yet seeing those kinds of numbers. The renewals there are more like in the low-single digits.

Okay, very helpful. Thanks for the time.

Pleasure.

The next question comes from the line of Ken Hoexter with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Hey. Great, Alain. David, good afternoon, and thanks for the details on the outlook. The historical sequential change in LTL, TL logistics. Dave, I know you gave the target now in this. Can you give maybe historical, just given combined numbers so we can kind of understand how that is normal or as it stands out? Then maybe talk about the highs, lows in the target, the $1.50, $1.60.

Yeah. On the historicals, Ken, we've got all of the in the appendix of the presentation on the website, we've got eight quarters of historicals with the new presentation. I'll just, you know, ask folks to look at that. You know in terms of the range, the high and you know what could drive the high, the low, I mean it's a pretty tight range. It's $0.10, right? There's a lot of moving parts. I don't know, Mr. Bédard, if you'd like to comment on what could drive you know where we land within the range.

It's what we feel, Ken, that is reasonable and attainable, okay, right now, based on what we've seen so far. Don't forget, there's lots of instability right now, right? This is based on what we've seen so far in April. This is based on when we talked to our three top guys, our three senior EVPs about how they see the quarter. We asked those guys to reforecast, okay, so that we can give you guys that kind of guidance, okay? These are fresh off the press, revised number from our guys. I mean, we could be wrong, okay? We feel pretty confident, based on what we've seen so far and the trend.

If I could just follow up on that. I mean, just given right now, right up 8%, both March and April in LTL tonnage, I presume you're talking about or shipments. Then-

Shipment. No, that's shipment numbers.

Okay. Shipments. That's not just catching up from the weather, that's actual economic upturn? I just wanna understand the feeling behind that and same on truckload, your ability to kind of capture that share back real time. Thanks.

Well, it's always an interesting question, right? Is it catch up from freight that didn't move in January that's driving that? Possibly, but I'm not sure that would continue all the way into April. I mean, when I look at the LTL shipment count, it was down 10% in January, it was flat year-over-year in February, and then, like I said, we're on 8% in March and looking similar in April. Now the important piece is to press on the revenue per shipment and make sure that, 'cause we were a little bit late on the GRI relative to peers. We were also a little bit low relative to peers on the GRI at only 3.9%.

Maybe some work to be done there. In terms of truckload, listen, like Mr. Bédard was saying, there's been a lot of good work that was done last year, taking excess trucks out of the system. When you look at the KPIs of our truckload today, you can see that revenue per truck per week ex fuel was up 8.6%, and truck count was down 7.1%. We did the same amount of revenue with 7% less trucks. You see that in the D&A, right? The D&A is down, I think $3.5 million year-over-year, but actually on a like for like, if you exclude M&A, it's down $5 million.

Yeah.

On top of that, we've got brokerage up another 7%. That trend is continuing into April. This is the direction that the segment is going. We haven't really seen the impact of this pricing yet, right? Because all these renewals are taking place now.

Wonderful. Appreciate that. Thanks, David. Thanks, Alain.

It's a pleasure.

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Walter Spracklin with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks very much. Good afternoon, Alain. Good afternoon, David. I wanna-

Good afternoon.

Perhaps just ask a couple kind of modeling questions here. Tax rate has been pretty low here in the last couple of quarters. What tax rate should we kind of assume for the rest of this year, and does that hold for next year? I know and just as a second question here, I know you're not giving guidance for full year, but historically, I mean, putting last year aside obviously, but historically, summer trucking is better than second quarter trucking, and you tend to have a better OR and better EPS in the third quarter, all else equal.

Is there anything if there's no change in underlying conditions, no change in tariffs, just looking on a straight line, you know, is it fair to say that summer sort of Q3 EPS seasonally does tend to be better than Q2 and should we at least pencil that in for this year?

Yeah. You know what, Walter? David, I'll let you answer the tax thing there, and then, I'll take the rest. The second question.

Okay, sounds good. Yeah. On the tax, we have a permanent tax benefit which was related to our financing structure. That increased a little bit as we increased the size of that financing structure through additional M&A. That's a permanent benefit. When profit before tax came down in Q1 quite a bit, the rate looks very low, right? Because we have a fixed benefit and less profit before tax. What I would model going forward is something more in the maybe 24% range. That should be directionally where we land over the course of the rest of the year.

Then Walter, on your question, I mean, although we don't give guidance, okay, on three and four for 2026, but what I could say is this. I mean, our logistics sector is gonna do probably a lot better, okay? I mean, one of our major contributor to our logistics is we move trucks, right? For PACCAR and DTNA, and we just signed a deal also with Volvo, okay? We start Volvo late this year. We haul about 70% of all the trucks manufactured in North America right now. If you read what the OEMs are saying, and I could tell you that we're very busy so far in Q2. Logistics and also the acquisition we did late last year, we didn't have that, so those guys are doing great.

We are involved in the data center construction, so we are partnered with the construction company in Michigan with four data centers, so this is something new for us. I feel really good about, you know, 26 in our logistics truckload. Like David was saying, the renewal rates are really helping us. Thanks to the U.S. administration with these guys, you know, they took the bull by the horns with all these illegal and unsafe drivers. This is really helping the industry in general. Hopefully, the industry will stop chasing drivers and chase rates instead of always chasing drivers. We learn from that after three years of being like famine on rates.

In our LTL, I mean, Cal and the team there are working, and finally, on the commercial side, we have stability. To answer your question, Q3 normally, because it's summer, costs are less. We probably should see better, and I feel pretty good, but we can't really give guidance because there's so much instability, Walter, in the world right now. We say cautious, but we know that we have a lot of good stuff on the go with our team, right? Our team is, you know, all pumped up and after three years of, you know, very, very difficult environment for us.

Appreciate the time. Thank you.

Pleasure, Walter.

The next question comes from the line of Jason Seidl with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

Thanks, operator. Hey, Alain. Hey, David.

Hi, Jason.

Wanted to talk a little bit, Alain, about a comment you made that you guys are still discounted in terms of the LTL pricing versus your peers.

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Where do you think the service level needs to go? It sounds like you're finding your next day, but it's the second and third day that you're looking at. Where do you think it needs to go? And are you gonna still give investors sort of updates so we can sort of keep track of that progress?

Yeah, that's a good point, Jason, because we know where we stand, okay? Although it's not published, but this is something, David, that we'll have to look at. But what I could tell you, though, Jason, is that on the next day service, okay, we're on par with our peers and the four-day service. And this is where the guys are working on second and third day. And I said the same story on the previous call. And this is where we lack, okay, you know, the care, okay? We still have issues with shipment that's supposed to go to A and they're going to B because they've not been scanned. I mean, it's a global.

You know, when you look at TFI, our Canadian LTL over time has built one step at a time, right? If you look at one of my best peer, OD, they were built one step at a time over a long period of time. Us, we jump into UPS Freight and, you know, the real estate was abandoned, the fleet was abandoned, the IT was abandoned. A lot of things were abandoned because UPS, for them, it was not really important. Their parcel business was the key. Their LTL was just an afterthought, right? It takes us way more time than I thought, you know, way more time. We're gonna get there, and the service is the key because if you don't provide a service that is equal to your peers, you get penalized, okay? You get switched over.

Now, for sure, in a difficult environment, okay, in a soft market, you suffer way more. The investors say, let's say a strong market, so they will, the shippers will close an eye more if your service is not up to par in a very strong market. We've not been in a strong market for three years. Now we're getting ready to have a better market. No, no, we're still working on improving our service so that we can move closer to our peers in terms of the revenue per shipment, right?

No, Alain, I totally get that, and let's keep our fingers crossed for a better market. I wanted to follow up on something you mentioned. You talked a little bit about, obviously, the steps the administration here in the States is taking to, you know, combat some of the very questionable capacity that has flooded the market over the last couple years.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

You know, what's going on up in Canada, and what do you think needs to be done going forward to help out with capacity up there?

Well, you know what? The Canadian, with the new prime minister that's not asleep at the wheel like the previous one, they took action, okay? In 2011, okay, they've decided not to issue any employment record for an owner-operator. These Driver Inc. guys took advantage of that, and that loophole has been closed as of December 25. Now if you're a Driver Inc., your employer has to issue you an employment... What do they call that? Certificate that tells you your earnings, et cetera, et cetera. Now you cannot cheat the tax, right? We see an effect, okay, not as strong as what we see in the U.S. because U.S. they took really the bull by the horn. It's not the same approach, right?

The Canadian approach is slower, after 10 years of complaining, they start to do something. We're starting to see a little bit of that effect because those Driver Inc. don't pay any taxes, right? They can offer a customer that doesn't care a much better deal than us. Now, as of December 2025, the employer had to issue kind of what we call the T4, it's like a W-2 in the U.S. or W-9, okay? This is the statement of your earnings, okay? Now you're stuck with paying taxes because this information has been sent to CRA, the Canadian Revenue Agency, right? It's much slower than what we've seen in the U.S. I mean, the U.S. is really very active. You know what? There's a safety reason there, okay?

Those drivers are not safe. Their equipment is not safe, you know. It's gotta be resolved. Us as an industry, we have to stop chasing drivers and talking about we have a shortage of drivers. Well, if you ask Exxon or Chevron, there's a shortage of oil. What do they do? Well, they just raise the price. They don't try to chase for oil stupidly.

Alain, great color as always. I appreciate the time.

Pleasure, Jason.

The next question comes from the line of Jordan Alliger with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hi. Afternoon.

Hey, Jordan.

Hi. Sort of question, now that you've sorta streamlined or re-streamlined the segments into the three broader categories, I was wondering, Alain, if you could maybe give some sense on this revamped basis and how you're looking at it, perhaps medium- to long-term margin targets as to where you think these segments in a normalized world, you know, should be at. Thanks.

Well, in a normal environment, okay, I don't see us running an LTL with an OR that is 90 OR, okay? Right now we were at 95 in Q1, okay. Based on what David just talked about, how do we see Q2, probably a sub-90 OR, okay. In a normal environment, you have to run an LTL division between an 80-85 OR, okay? That's our goal in North America LTL. For sure, okay, the edge that we have is our Canadian operation. Everybody knows that. It's always been, you know, a gold standard, right? Our U.S. operation has never been a gold standard. This is why it's a unified operation under Cal now.

We believe that our U.S. operation over time will get closer to our gold standard that we run in Canada, right? To say that a 80-85 OR in a normal environment in our LTL, we, that's where we have to be. The truckload sector, I mean, we don't run van for retail guys, right? We don't run van for Amazon or Walmart. We don't do that. Our customers are industrial. We are a specialty. Our drivers are not just driving a truck, they also operate something, right? If it's a tanker, they operate the unloading of the tanker. If it's a flatbed, they operate with the tarp and things like that, the strapping and all that. It's not just the driver. He's also an operator. This is why you cannot run, okay, with a 90 OR.

That doesn't make any sense. If you look at our Q1, okay, we're running a 92-something OR, which is terrible, okay. Our goal is to be under 90 OR very soon, okay. In a normal environment, where should we be? Well, we have to be between, let's say, 82-86 OR in our specialty truckload. More importantly, Jordan, is the return on invested capital, okay, which is the problem that we have. Right now, we're at 6%, which is terrible. In a normal year, we should be between 10%-15%. Now, this is where we're heading to. In our LTL, we have to be above 20%. The same with our logistics sector, above 20% return on invested capital, right? Our logistics, we've always run at about a 90 OR.

That's where we're at now. We're very close to that. Where should we be in a normal environment with the quality of our logistics? Okay, where we're heading, it's got to be between 86 and 88 normal environment. Maybe 85 is a good year, okay? But this is where we have to be in a normal environment. If you do the sum of all that, TFI is not a 90 OR company. I mean, that's where we'll probably be in Q2, around 90 OR. But in a normal environment, TFI is not a 90 OR. Where we're heading with the quality of our people and our market, end market, in a normal environment, it's more like an 85 OR, right? Globally. 85-87.

Got it.

Right?

Got it. Thank you very much.

The next question comes from the line of Brian Ossenbeck with JPMorgan, please, go ahead.

Hey, thanks for taking the question. Just to come back to the GRI, I know you said it was late and low, at least in the U.S. How did that-

Yeah.

Work out? It sounded like perhaps there's another action coming just based on what you were talking about earlier. Are you starting to see some weight per shipment improve there as well? Maybe you can talk about the price and mix trend in U.S. LTL.

Yeah. Well-

Sorry.

You know, like, well, you know what? Go ahead, David. I'll let you go with that.

Yeah. Listen, the pricing actions that are taking place next are specific. Specific accounts, specific freight that is below where it needs to be. Because the volumes have improved, now we have to be more selective. That's the work that's being done right now and will sort of develop, you know, over time. In terms of weight per shipment, it didn't move too much when you look at this quarter, right? We're kind of year over year, kind of flat. That's true in the U.S. as well.

All right. Thanks, David. Maybe just to follow up on that real quick, anything into April for weight per shipment, as you've given out some information on that already. We'd love to hear a little bit more about the acquisition you guys just did. I think it's a fairly good size at 2% of consolidated revenue. Maybe give us a sense in terms of what you're expecting from that here, into the next quarter as you integrate it and for the rest of the year. Thank you.

Yeah. I don't have the weight per shipment in front of me, but I do have LTL revenue per shipment in April, and that's flat. Which is much improved over March, because in March it was down low single digits. We're flat revenue per shipment in April with 6% more shipments.

The next question of our friend David was about.

The acquisition?

Yeah.

The one in logistics, Brian? Is that...

Yeah, that was the one.

It's the one? Yeah. I mean, listen, it's a great value-added kind of logistics niche-y business. It's similar to. In concept, it's similar to the JHT acquisition, meaning, yeah, niche, good barriers to entry, and these guys are basically providing value-added warehousing, kitting, sub-assembly in the auto sector, entrepreneurial, and we're able to grow this into different adjacent areas. Like, even into some data centers, some battery plants. We're looking at expanding this into the trucking OEMs. It's just another example. It's really the kind of business that we like in our logistics. I mean, we don't do a ton of brokerage in our logistics.

It's—we do have some, but what we really like are these niche really value-added providers that provide great service and great returns. Which, by the way, are completely uncorrelated with the rest of the business and provide a nice portfolio element to the earnings profile as well.

Yeah. Sorry, if I may add, guys. I mean, it these guys are a solution provider to our customer, right? They come in and they say, they have a great engineering department that comes in and provide a solution that could be good for a year, good for two years on a project. This is really a good thing. Now, like David is saying, we're talking to our truck OEM, which we moved their trucks, right? We're talking to, an example, a company that wants to open up a battery plant for storage, right? Not for the cars, but for storage. We are involved with those guys on that, in the U.S. That division is, I would say, David, what, 85% U.S. and 10%-15% Canadian.

Yeah. Yep.

Of revenue-wise.

Yeah. Yep.

The split. It's really U.S.-based.

Okay, very helpful. Thanks very much, guys.

The next question comes from the line of Tom Wadewitz with UBS. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Good afternoon, good evening. Let's see. You've, I think, had a lot of helpful responses to the questions. Alain, and it's, you know, great to see the improvement in demand and traction you have. How do you think about where you're at on, I guess, quality of shipments? If I look back to what happened, this is focused on U.S. LTL. You know, you kinda had a lot of shipments in the system, and that came down maybe more than you thought, right? There was some probably purposeful move out of shipments, and now you got the service improvement. How do you think about the, like, shipments per day you're at in U.S. network and kind of quality of the shipments you have?

Is that, you know, kind of on the right track and what you're getting is good quality? You know, I think it relates to some of the other questions you've had.

Yeah.

Maybe additional to that is, like, how long is the lag between service and really getting, you know, more on price, right? Because you're-

Yeah.

You know, the industry leaders get, call it 4%-5% revenue per hundredweight. You know, that's something you can, you know, do, I think with really high service. I guess a couple components on just kinda where you're at in U.S. LTL.

Yeah. You know what the commercial team has done, as an example, you know, with our 3PL, you know, what we gave those guys, let's say a year ago, was mostly blanket rates, which is the worst that you could do, right? Because then you give the guy a blanket rate that mean they will use you when you're the cheapest and lowest guy in the world, right? We said, "This doesn't make any sense." We have to move closer to CSP, customer-specific pricing, okay? This is stickier because it's customer-specific to a 3PL customer, okay? What we see now, okay, is that our 3PL business is way more acceptable in terms of volume and in terms of pricing and in terms of stickiness than the system we had before.

On the other side, the corporate account, okay, we made a lot of changes there with two big retailers that want to squeeze you 45 times a day on the rates. We just said, "I'm sorry, okay? We can't afford to service you because we can't make money with you guys. You know, we can't run business with a 150 OR." At the same time that we're moving our SMB to where they should have been at the time, and our corporate, okay, shipments is about flat. Why is that? Because we got rid of two retail guys, okay, that were very important to us about a year and a half ago, and now they are kind of still with us, but very, you know, negligible in terms of the size.

If you look at the mix between SMB, corporate, government and 3PL, okay, we feel good about the mix that we have today. Now, that doesn't mean that we're not pushing on SMB, okay? Absolutely, we're still pushing on that because there is some niche areas that freight that fits us better than anyone else, right? This is the goal, is to get that fit, that freight that fits us better than anyone else in our industry, right? This is the focus that we have with our guys. Not a price game. It's just get the right price, but something that fits us, right? Sometimes a shipment that is worth $300 for my peers, okay, fits me way better than them, so this is the kind of shipments I want, right?

This is all these tools that we've been using, and slowly, because we have some stability in our sales force, then we can build with the strategy with those guys. The leader that we have in our commercial now is a strategic player that comes out with all these kinds of, promotion is not the right word, but strategic approach to the market. As an example, one area that we're pushing more and more is transborder freight between U.S. and Canada and vice versa, right? We are a large player in Canada, and we know that the profitability of a transborder shipment is way better than a domestic U.S. or a domestic Canadian shipment. Until a year ago, the focus, we kept talking about it, but it didn't walk the talk.

Now, okay, we see also on the transporter side, okay, way more focus on growing that highly profitable business.

Okay. That makes a lot of sense. What about the lag between service improvement and price? Like, I don't know if you wanna say kinda what your revenue per hundredweight was, you know, in the quarter year-over-year or how you think that progresses. You know, is price really starting to come through, or is that something where you say, "Hey, that's another lever to come in the future that we're seeing nice, you know, nice traction on shipments, price comes next year-

Yeah.

or price comes a couple quarters out, or just how to think about that element of the equation." Thanks.

Hard to say, Tom. I mean, we're not there. We're not there to say that, "Hey guys, we're gonna get more dollars, okay, from our customer because our service is up to par to our peers." We're not there yet. Right now where we are there, though, is that through the stability of our of our commercial team, to the focus that these guys were able to bring volume organically growing, okay, compared to where we were, let's say, a year ago. That we can say. We know, okay, because we have experience, that the more that your service is closer to your peers, then your revenue per shipment, unless you're stupid, okay, will be closer to your peers, okay? We're not there yet, Tom.

I mean, we're slowly at least creating some kind of organic growth, which we've never done, right, on the U.S. LTL, like David was explaining, okay, on the shipment count. On the pricing, we're not there. That's an opportunity in the future that I could say.

Right. Okay. Makes sense. Thank you.

You're welcome, Tom.

The next question comes from the line of Konark Gupta with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, Alain and David. Alain, maybe I want to ask you first on the demand side. You know, I think a lot of people are talking about obviously the trucking rates are going, you know, up a lot. Fuel prices have surged as well. You know, clearly, you know, the truck rates combined with the fuel price is what the shippers see at the end.

Yeah.

You know, in this environment, I mean, what are you seeing from demand perspective? You know what I mean? Like, I'm curious to know because I know you said you're a discounted carrier in some respects in U.S. LTL, so maybe it's not such a big an issue for you. You know, at some point, I mean, there's some price elasticity perhaps. I'm just trying to see, you know, what are you seeing from that perspective. Where do you see shippers becoming more sensitive or less sensitive now?

Well, Konark, for sure. I mean, right now it's a double whammy for the shippers, right? They get the pressure of the fuel surcharge, right, which is huge. At the same time, on the U.S. side, mostly on the U.S. side, they get the offer that's been reduced tremendously by this new administration that is doing their job in terms of getting rid of all these unsafe, okay, and unqualified drivers in the U.S. I mean, for sure it's difficult. Don't forget that all of this that's going on right now, the volumes are not growing, right? It's the offer that is less and less and less, right?

What we've seen so far is that, hey, listen, I mean, the market is adjusting, okay, to higher rates, to the fuel surcharge, and everybody is thinking that this thing there in Iran hopefully will get settled at one point. It's an economic war right now, right? Because they're not really shooting at each other. I mean, it's a financial thing there, and it's gonna get resolved at one point, right? Is it in a month? Is it in two months? This fuel surcharge will start to disappear slowly over time. At the same time, okay, we hopefully believe that because of our business focus on industrial, okay, not retail, on the truckload side I'm talking here, this is gonna start...

The demand is gonna start to grow at the same time that maybe fuel will start to drop, fuel surcharge will start to drop, rates will keep flat or going up, and our costs will come down because of fuel surcharge. Because you know, at the end of the day, when fuel surcharge is 80% of the base rate, I mean, it's not a good discussion that you have with the customer, right? Nobody likes that, but you know, it is what it is, right?

That makes sense, Alain. Thanks. As a follow-up, I think we haven't had a lot of discussion today on your M&A opportunities. Can you talk about, you know, what's your focus here now, you know, given the market seems to be turning? I think you have-

Yeah.

Waited for some time, you know.

Yeah.

I think to pull the trigger, I guess. Your free cash is still good. You know, more earnings power probably means more cash flows. How do you see capital allocation, you know, maybe heading into 2027?

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, for sure the problem we have right now on M&A, Konark, is very simple, that everybody is waiting because everybody believes that things will get better. The seller says, "You know, why would I sell now? Okay, I'm gonna wait. I'm gonna wait because my numbers, my profitability will improve over the next six to 12 months or 18 months." Because we are having serious discussion on some nice tuck-ins. Everything is on hold right now because everybody says, "Whoa, whoa, things will get better." We wait. Now, for us in the meantime, myself and David we're gonna be doing is very simple. If the price is acceptable to us, we'll do the buyback. If not, we'll just reduce the debt, reduce the leverage.

I mean, with like you said, Konark, with the huge free cash flow that we're gonna generate, I mean, Q1 was an exception because we pay fuel short-term, and our customers pays us on average about 40 days. This is why our free cash flow took a beating in Q1. You know, when fuel situation gets normal, I mean, this cash flow is gonna get back to, you know, the usual numbers that we see, $700 million-$800 million of cash. We're gonna work on reducing the debt. The dividend, I mean, we grow that dividend every year. We've grown that, what? $0.02 a quarter last year.

Yes, maybe a little bit of dividend growth, but really it's gonna be focused on reducing our leverage because we believe that interest rates are not coming down anytime soon in the U.S., unless maybe the new president of the Fed changes mind. And in Canada, we're worried that, because of inflation, maybe the interest rates will start to go up. We said, "You know what? Let's reduce our debt level." If I remember, David, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think our leverage goes down under two, if we don't do anything major in 2026 in terms of M&A, besides what we've done so far.

Konark, we make the best of whatever situation the market gives us. The market gave us over the last three years a very difficult cycle. During those last three years, we deployed more capital than we ever have in any three-year period. When we look at 2023, 2024, 2025, and first quarter, we've deployed $2.5 billion in investments. $1.8 billion of that was M&A, and $620 million of that was buybacks. We feel very good about that timing. We're optimistic that now in this environment, we're gonna start to see the returns on those investments.

We'll use the cash flows to delever a little bit and get ready for the future.

That's great. Appreciate the time as always. Thank you.

Thank you, Konark.

The next question comes from the line of Benoit Poirier with Desjardins. Please go ahead.

Hey. Good afternoon, David. Good afternoon, Alain. Thanks for the update on capital allocation and the update on M&A talk. What about. I'm just curious, what about the potential for maybe a more transformative deal and anything required on U.S. LTL to add density, in order to get to a normalized OR of 80%-85% as you mentioned before?

You know, Benoit, that's. It takes two to dance, right? So far, in a discussion that we had with one of our target, it didn't work, right? It didn't work. You know, if you go back in time, it took us five years. I've been working five years to convince UPS to sell UPS Freight. Took me two years to convince DHL to sell DHL Canada. So I mean, we're very how would you say that? I mean, you know, we're used to people saying no to us, okay? We don't let go when we believe that for the shareholder, the target and our shareholder, a deal would be beneficial, right? Right now, it's still a no. It's still no, no, no. You do something else. Call someone else.

Don't bother me. You know, it's still the best deal that we could do in a lot of deals that we're looking at. Right now it's difficult, right? You know, like David was saying, we're gonna be busy this year in 2026. We still have a lot of good stuff to go. I mean, Daseke was bought two years ago. We still have a lot of work to do there on working with those guys to turn good truckers into good businessmen. The difference being good truckers like to service customer and hope that they'll make money. Good businessmen, you know, are focused on making money servicing customer well. It's not the same, right? This is the kind of TFI education on truckers that we try to do.

M&A is the blood of TFI. 2026 is probably gonna be very quiet. Hey, listen, we're getting ready. Like David was saying, I mean, we made a ton, $1.8 billion of investment. The last few years, I mean, we were not able to show how good these were because the market was so bad. Now 2026, 2027, hopefully things are starting to turn. We'll be in a position to not come up with a stupid $4 a share of EPS, right? We'll get closer to where we should be, and hopefully we can come up with reduced leverage and could strike a good deal once we have a seller that says yes instead of no.

That's great color. Maybe just in terms of follow-up, Alain, you've seen a lot of trucking cycles over the years. You mentioned potential OR for each.

Mm-hmm. Yep.

... segment under a normalized environment. How fast do you think we could get into a normalized environment, given this cycle and improved fundamentals? Could we see a normalized environment in 2027 or maybe 2028?

You know what, Benoit? It's hard to predict, but I think that if you look at industrial freight environment in the U.S. or in Canada, I mean, schools, hospital, road, bridge, et cetera, et cetera, housing. Housing is an issue, right? I mean, we feel pretty good that interest rate is an issue, right? Interest rate being high is related to inflation being high. Now we have the problem of the fuel, but the problem with the fuel will probably be settled soon. As soon as, you know, we have lowered interest rates, this economy will start to boom again. Industrial freight, to me, is the key. I'm always worried with retail freight because of the nature of the beast, the e-commerce.

My customers, some of my customers in the brick-and-mortar world, you know, it's, they're being squeezed. When your customer is squeezed, he tries to squeeze you, so this is why I don't wanna be stuck with those guys. Industrial freight is really the future because this is related to a growing economy. I think the intention of this U.S. administration is to bring back some industrial base into the U.S. They understand that there's a problem. I mean, globalization was good, but if you can't build a ship and you're the U.S., well, you have a problem, right? Because the ships are mostly built in Asia right now.

The guys are saying, "Hey, we gotta do something about that." To me, these are all positive to our flatbed division that relates to the industrial. As an example, I was talking about Boeing. I mean, Boeing went through a lot of issues, okay, with their products. But now, I mean, those guys are flying high. And us, we're piggyback on Boeing with our SPD or TFI Global Logistics division over there in Washington State. I mean, these are all things that, you know, when you are piggyback on the U.S. industrial economy and the direction that this administration wants to go, I feel pretty good.

That's great. That's great color, Alain. Thank you very much for the time.

It's a pleasure.

The next question comes from the line of Cameron Doerksen with National Bank. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks. Good afternoon. You know, just a question on the logistics segment. I mean, obviously you guys are feeling pretty optimistic about the truckload portion of that business as the year progresses. Can you just talk a little bit about the other couple major businesses within logistics, what you're seeing there and, you know, what the outlook looks like for the next few quarters?

Yeah. Yeah. You know what, Cameron? Within our logistics sector, okay, we have the truck movers, okay, guys. We have the specialty guys that David was talking about that we just acquired late last year. Very importantly is our logistics sector that is the old Dynamex operation that we run both U.S. and Canada. Highly profitable last mile operation. Also we have a small brokerage, $500 million brokerage operation that's called WT, TForce Worldwide, okay? That is an LTL play. All these business unit, Cameron, are showing good results today. When we talk to them, they say, "Hey, we'll do better." I mean, the truck movers will do better. The other logistics that David was talking about will do better.

Our last mile guys are saying, "You know what? You know, we're working on a solution that will help us reduce our costs. It's an IT solution, and hopefully we'll have that ready for the new year, 2027." We feel pretty good about where we're heading, guys. Logistics, I mean, if you look at what the guys are doing with close to $400 million of revenue, it's not chicken shit, right? Most importantly is what's the bottom line? Well, the bottom line is about 10 points or close to 10, right? This is a big area of focus of ours, and it's a beautiful business.

Okay. That's helpful. Just maybe, I guess, a quick question on the fuel impact. I mean, you mentioned the impact on the free cash flow in the quarter, just the timing of collections. Was there any positive or negative impact from the big spike in fuel prices during March to like the P&L? I mean, obviously there's a lag between when you collect-

Yeah.

the revenue, but there's also maybe in some of your operations, denser operations, maybe the fuel surcharge helped. Just wondering what the net impact was in the first quarter.

Yeah. Yeah. On that, David, I'll let you go with this one.

The net income was pretty neutral across TFI in March. It was slightly positive in the LTL because of the density that we have in certain areas of the LTL. What I mean by that is we're not driving large distances between stops, so we're not burning a lot of fuel. But that was offset by a negative like a loss in the truckload related to those climbing fuel prices.

Okay. That's helpful. That's all for me. Thanks very much.

Good.

The next question comes from the line of Bruce Chan with Stifel. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks. Good afternoon, guys. Just wanted to clarify a couple of things. You know, first, I understand the rationale for the reporting consolidation between the different LTL divisions. Just curious if there are any changes planned for, you know, maybe more operational integration between them now.

Um-

No, there's no.

No.

Please go ahead, Mr. Bédard. Please.

No, no. I was just gonna say the same as you, David. I'll let you go.

Yeah.

No. No.

No. There's no change in terms of the way that the business is managed.

Okay. Great. Yeah. That's very clear and very helpful. Just a kinda final quick one here. You talked about the data center exposure, which is obviously, you know, very exciting. You said that it's a small piece of the business. Can you know, maybe just remind us of what that exposure looks like today versus, you know, maybe where it was last year?

Yeah. This quarter it was $21 million of revenue, which was up from $15 million in Q4 and $8 million in Q1 of last year.

Great.

That's all in trucking.

That's super helpful. Awesome. Appreciate the time.

Sure.

You're welcome.

Our last question comes from the line of Harrison Bauer with Susquehanna. Please go ahead.