Morningstar | Truck Brokerage Spot Activity Softens, but Hub Finishes 2018 on the Right Track in Intermodal
In the fourth quarter, narrow-moat Hub Group posted 12% total gross-revenue growth, excluding Mode (divested third-quarter 2018), mostly in line with our forecast. Relative to the year-ago period, the top-line increase stems in part from 18% intermodal segment growth. Intermodal saw continued healthy intermodal volume (up 5%) and strong contract-pricing gains, which have benefited from tight truckload market capacity over much of the past year. The trucking capacity crunch eased in the fourth quarter, but pricing appears to be holding up well despite a likely lower discount on many lanes relative to the competing trucking market, which has seen spot rates retrench from historic highs. The fourth-quarter 2018 Case Stack acquisition, along with new customer additions in the dedicated trucking segment also contributed to growth. Highway brokerage gross revenue declined on a pullback in spot activity and a mix shift to contractual business. Hub’s adjusted operating margin expanded 80 basis points, to 4.7%, on leverage from revenue growth and gross profit margin improvement, partly offset by higher deal amortization and incentive compensation.Since our midcycle revenue and margin assumptions remain largely intact we don’t expect to materially alter our $41 DCF-derived fair value estimate. Note that we will be incorporating full-year 2018 financials into our model, and we expect any related fair value adjustments to be minor. The shares are trading at roughly an 8% premium to our fair value estimate, making the stock appropriately valued, in our view. This is a much more palatable market valuation relative to most of 2018, when Hub and its logistics peers were hovering in overvalued territory. Investor expectations started resetting in the second half of last year as it became more obvious that the truckload capacity crunch--which created an unusually robust pricing backdrop for intermodal marketing companies and truck brokers--would normalize in 2019.
Hub Group is a supply chain management company that provides transportation and logistics solutions. Through its network, the company arranges for the movement of freight in and out of every main city in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The company's lines of business include: intermodal, which arranges for the movement of its customers' freight in containers and trailers; dedicated trucking, which provides a dedicated fleet of equipment and drivers to each customer; trust brokerage, which operates truck brokerage operations in the U.S.; and logistics, which provides a range of transportation management services and technology solutions, and delivers supply chain services to consumer-packaged goods clients.
Morningstar, Inc. is a leading provider of independent investment research in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. The company offer an extensive line of products and services for individual investors, financial advisors, asset managers, and retirement plan providers and sponsors.
Morningstar provides data on approximately 530,000 investment offerings, including stocks, mutual funds, and similar vehicles, along with real-time global market data on more than 18 million equities, indexes, futures, options, commodities, and precious metals, in addition to foreign exchange and Treasury markets. Morningstar also offers investment management services through its investment advisory subsidiaries and had approximately $185 billion in assets under advisement and management as of June 30, 2016.
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