What: Shares of trucking giant YRC Worldwide (YRCW 99.67%) soared more than 27% today after its quarterly results impressed Wall Street.
So what: YRC shares have slumped sharply over the past year on continued bankruptcy concerns, but today's strong Q3 results -- EPS of $0.61 versus the consensus of $0.43 on revenue of $1.25 billion -- suggest that management's restructuring initiatives are beginning to gain traction. In fact, the company's consolidated operating ratio increased 180 basis points over the year-ago period to 96.2, reinforcing confidence among analysts that YRC is indeed prioritizing yield improvements and profitability over market share growth.
Now what: Management remains confident in its turnaround plans. "We have continued to reinvest in our business at the highest level in terms of capital and capital equivalent dollars in seven years," said CEO James Welch in a conference call with analysts. "These investments show that our Company is on solid financial ground and making the important decisions that should set us up for additional operating improvement as we move forward." When you couple that operational improvement with the steady decline in YRC's debt-to-EBITDA ratio, enterprising Fools shouldn't let today's big surge prevent them from looking into the stock.
