USA Truck Inc. of Van Buren on Tuesday reported fourth-quarter profit of $3.9 million, an 8 percent increase from $3.6 million in the same quarter of last year.
Quarterly revenue was $118 million, down 21 percent from $150 million in the same quarter last year.
For the fiscal year, USA Truck reported income of $11.1 million, up 76 percent from $6.3 million in 2014. Revenue was $507.9 million, down about 16 percent from $602 million the previous year.
Quarterly earnings per share was 39 cents, up from rose from 34 cents in the fourth quarter of 2014. For the year, USA Truck reported $1.06 earnings per share, up from 60 cents in 2014.
"Our fourth-quarter results reflect the progress we have made improving profitability in our trucking operations," former CEO Tom Glaser said in a statement. "The many initiatives we implemented to reenergize our trucking turnaround, combined with trucking’s strengthened leadership and the refreshing of our fleet, have enabled us to accelerate the progress underway."
Glaser now serves as the company’s vice chairman of the board of directors after stepping down as CEO on Jan. 14; he was replaced as CEO by Randy Rogers. Glaser took over the position in July 2015 when John Simone resigned for health reasons.
"It has been exciting to see first-hand in the past few weeks the dedication and enthusiasm of USA Truck’s team members, who have been pivotal in transforming the culture and making this a great place to work," Rogers said. "The progress made in such a short period in our trucking business under our new leadership team is impressive and I look forward to working closely with them to generate further improvements."
Rogers came to USA Truck from DHL Supply Chain, a subsidiary of the international logistics group Deutsche Post DHL Group of Germany. Rogers is considered a logistics expert, which complements USA Truck’s hiring of Martin Tewari to the created position of president of trucking in September.
USA Truck, which rebranded itself as a capacity solutions company under Simone’s leadership, wants to boosts its profile in logistics through its Strategic Capacity Solutions division. SCS reported fourth-quarter revenue of $37.7 million, down 14 percent from $43.8 million in 2014 and annual revenue of $153.5 million, down 14 percent from $178.9 million the year before.
"We continue to focus on improving service to our customers, creating network and other efficiencies, lowering costs, and finally, continuing to strengthen the management and board leadership and culture of USA Truck to realize our significant potential," Glaser said. "With the recent addition of Randy Rogers . . . we have taken another key step that we believe will further strengthen our strategy as a capacity solutions provider. This includes the expansion of SCS, our asset-light business, which we believe offers compelling growth potential."
USA Truck reported it had bought back more than 700,000 shares of stock in the fourth quarter and more than 950,000 in 2015. It has authorization from the board to buy back an additional 2 million shares.