Cliff's Announcement and Company Transition

Find a new company while you can. Freight must be slow in Cliffs world but freight is still steady in the real world.

 

They didn't even say when they would announce. Just all the sudden there was the report. Im pretty sure they don't even care about the investors anymore. Cliff Beckhams main compensation is still his salary. That credit line is a 5 year deal but does anyone really think they will be around that long?

 

If I am reading the information correctly, the majority of USA Truck stock is held by investment companies that have the stock in mutual funds. These mutual funds have account executives that buy and sell securities based on what is better for the mutual funds. With the USA Truck stock in the tank, all it will take is for two things to happen for USA Truck to lose a hostile takeover battle. First these executives lose confidence in the company's management followed by someone offering them what they might consider to be the best deal to unload the shares. So in my humble opinion they better start caring or they might be out on their butts!

 

You know I think me and you agree on much more than we disagree. Not sure if you keep up with Sirius XM but I own shares in my retirement account. Liberty media has been hostily taking them over for a couple of years now. Liberty does this because Sirius is an attractive takeover. They see growth for Sirius and themselves through this takeover. I think its every bit possible for anyone to take USA over. If anyone wanted to do it USA doesn't have a fighting chance. Just about every relevent trucking outfit out there has the cash to take them over. I don't know everything about finance to understand how companies see the debt burden of USA truck. At 2.93 a share if USA were truly undervalued I wonder if a prospective buyer would have already come along and expressed interest. If Celadon thought it was a good buy last year I wonder what they are thinking now? Why not buy a bunch of shares again? I mean they could get 3 times as much as they did last year for the same price and then when its reported the stock goes up and Celadon makes money. Point being there is a reason no one has tried to take them over even at the lowest stock price I think in USAs history. And of course they were in compliance with their new credit facility. How goofy would it look if they werent less than 2 months later?

 

This guy is continuously pissing on everyone's back and trying to convince them it's raining!!!! How stupid does he think everyone is??????

 

Cliff has been doing this for a long time. There will be a day of reckoning. They are too far in the hole to get out. I can look at financial reports for other publically traded trucking companies and you will see solid numbers. The way they did this release was pretty cowardly. No prior announcement just a wam bam here you go and more excuses. Not our fault we are losing so much money its the freight. The freight is slow costs are higher. The industry is the same for every trucking company but yet they are making money.

 

Im curious what the operating and levered cash flow numbers are now. I saved the last numbers for comparison sake

 

"During the quarter, we engaged an experienced truckload executive to assist us in assessing and improving our operations activities. We determined that the percentage of our business comprised of very short haul loads (under 300 miles) was too high, which was negatively impacting equipment utilization and the ability of drivers to earn adequate compensation. We also re-evaluated customer profitability on a lane-by-lane basis. As a result of this re-evaluation, we accelerated the exit and replacement of specific lanes and loads that failed to meet our new criteria. The timing was not optimal given the weak freight environment, but we believed the overall benefits to our drivers, customers, and future financial results justified the timeline.

The above is a copy from the report. I wonder if the current board really knew what they were doing why would they need to hire a consultant to realize the percentage of short hauls was too high?

Here is another copy from the report

Darron Ming, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, addressed the Company's capitalization: "We believe our balance sheet and sources of liquidity remain solid and adequate to support our business for the foreseeable future. At September 30, 2012, our outstanding debt, less cash, represented 54.6% of our balance sheet capitalization, compared to 47.4% at December 31, 2011. At September 30, 2012, we were in compliance with our new, five-year $125.0 million revolving credit facility and had approximately $23.0 million of available borrowing capacity (net of the minimum availability we are required to maintain of approximately $18.75 million).

For the foreseeable future? Well that could be any amount of time. Could be a year, could only be for the next quarter. Someone who doesn't know how dangerous that statement is might think a foreseeable future is 5 years. I put foreseeable future at the next 3 months. If Cliff thinks freight was slow this last quarter just wait till after thanksgiving when the peak of the freight mountain tops out and slowly start going down. It should be noted that even though Cliff tried to inject positivity into previous poor earnings reports. There isn't much effort to inject positivity into this latest report by anyone in the company. Heck they didn't even try to decorate the SCS segement with Xmas lights like they usually do even though its just an intercompany paperwork division.

 

I think maybe we do. I just get peeved off because at it's nucleus USA Truck is a good company with a lot of good people working there. It's a dang shame it's being run by a dysfunctional Board, CEO and management whom seems hell bent to make the company into something it's not or destroy it trying. I just found out that in 2011 USA Truck spent over a Million for a totally new telephone system. What the hell was wrong with the old one?

 

Ge drivers could actually get hold of someone when they called. Can't have that.

Sent from somewhere out there