Business
Forward Air Corporation Reports Fourth Quarter 2022 Results
Record fourth quarter and full year revenue, operating income and net income per diluted share Full year revenue growth of 18.7%, operating margin expansion
About this update from Forward Air Corporation
[{"type":"text","content":"\nRecord fourth quarter and full year revenue, operating income and net income per diluted share\n\nFull year revenue growth of 18.7%, operating margin expansion of 390 basis points and net income per diluted share growth of 69.2%\n\n GREENEVILLE, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--\nForward Air Corporation (NASDAQ:FWRD) (the “Company,” “we,” “our,” or “us”) today reported financial results for the three and twelve months ended December 31, 2022 as presented in the tables below on a continuing operations basis.\n\nTom Schmitt, Chairman, President and CEO, commenting on fourth quarter and full year 2022 results from continuing operations said, “We had a record fourth quarter and a record year by a mile. For that, I extend my thanks to our amazing employees, independent contractors and business partners. However, we missed our own guidance for the fourth quarter of 2022 with revenue growth of 5% coming in below our guidance range of 7% to 11%, and reported net income per diluted share of $1.60 and adjusted net income per diluted share of $1.65 coming in below our guidance range of $1.98 to $2.02. We anticipated our continuing drive towards high value freight to yield a sequentially better fourth quarter than third quarter. We believe, however, the temporarily inflated inventory levels caused shipment sizes to fall faster and steeper than both we and our customers expected. As we mentioned in our mid-quarter update, we saw an unexpected decrease in the size of shipments from our customers with weight per shipment down more than 12%. As shipments become more full we believe so will our volumes. These headwinds led to a challenging fourth quarter and likely will impact the first half of 2023 until inventory levels normalize.\n\n“Despite contending with these challenges that we believe are short-term in nature, we are growing new customers in our targeted areas. We grew our LTL direct shipper customer count by more than 200% from fourth quarter of 2021 to fourth quarter of 2022 to over 200 direct shipper customers. Additionally, our core customers are continuing to choose us, with the number of LTL shipments in the fourth quarter of 2022 remaining stable given a slight 0.4% decline in shipments as compared to the same period in the prior year. We believe our service, that was recently validated by a third party industry expert as being best in t...