CH Robinson Worldwide Management Discusses Q2 2012 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

Moving on then to Page 4 and the overall transportation results. There you see the total net revenues being roughly flat for the quarter. The volume growth in almost all service lines that I'll get into more specifically offset by that net revenue margin compression that I referenced. On the bottom half of that slide, our 10-year or historical net revenue margin percentage shows that for the quarter, we had 14.9% net revenue margin for the quarter in transportation. We've talked a lot in the past about how these margins fluctuate and all the various things that could impact them. And while we expected margin compression off of the highs of 2009 and all of the economic circumstances that created that, I think it's fair to say that this margin compression cycle has been longer and more significant than we might have anticipated. So while it's not uncommon for our business model to see supply cost rising faster during periods of time than we're able to pass through to our customers. Again, this has been a fairly significant and fairly long part of the cycle, down to a 10-year low of 14.9% for the quarter.

Moving on to Page 5 then for our truck results. As a reminder, our truck category includes both truckload and less-than-truckload. Net revenue combined for the 2 declined to 0.5% in the second quarter. We were happy with volume increases of 10% in truckload and 17% in LTL. Again, following the theme of cost pressures on the truckload side, the capacity that we rely heavily on, the medium and small carriers, continue to experience a fair amount of cost pressure. And as we disclosed, our net cost for the quarter were up 3% on the truck load compared to second quarter of last year, with customer prices being up about 1%.

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