The Knight-Swift acquisition of truckload carrier U.S. Xpress has closed, with U.S. Xpress stock no longer trading and the company filing a delisting document with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Knight-Swift (NYSE: KNX) has made no comment or filing about the closing of the deal, but U.S. Xpress’ notice Monday to the SEC delisting its stock from the New York Stock Exchange says the closing was effective Saturday.
Prior to that filing, services such as Barchart and Yahoo Finance were showing no trading of U.S. Xpress stock Monday. The section on each company’s website devoted to filings with the SEC also showed no activity beyond Thursday’s filing by U.S. Xpress that its investors had overwhelmingly approved the acquisition. That only changed later Monday with U.S. Xpress’ delisting.
When the more than $800 million acquisition was announced in March, a second-quarter closing was targeted.
U.S. Xpress ended its five-year tenure as a public company — almost exactly — with a closing price of $6.14 for its Class A shares. That is 1 cent less than the price per share that Knight-Swift paid for U.S. Xpress. The total price for the acquisition was $808 million.
About a month before the sale to Knight-Swift was announced, U.S. Xpress stock hit its 52-week low of $1.34. It dropped below $10 per share in May 2021 and never recovered double digits.
At the time of the transaction, Knight-Swift said the addition of assets from U.S. Xpress would add about $2.2 billion in revenue, $1.8 billion in truckload proceeds, to the Knight-Swift top line. The U.S. Xpress equipment count at the time was 7,200 tractors and 14,400 trailers.
Following the deal, the Knight-Swift annual run rate is expected to be close to $10 billion, with a truckload fleet of 25,000 tractors and 93,000 trailers. Knight Swift had full-year revenue in 2022 of $7.42 billion.
In its announcement of the acquisition, Knight-Swift reiterated breakdowns of U.S. Xpress revenue that had been reported in the U.S. Xpress earnings: 36% dedicated truckload, 34% “irregular route” truckload, 14% Total Transportation of Mississippi irregular route truckload and 16% brokerage.
“Portions of the U.S. Xpress business are performing reasonably well, such as the Total Transportation subsidiary, while the most underperforming irregular route business unit matches up well with Knight-Swift’s strengths,” Knight-Swift said in its announcement in March.
U.S. Xpress last September had largely pulled the plug on its Variant initiative. That “truckload carrier within a truckload carrier” sought to use technology to chart a new course for the company but ultimately was unsuccessful. Six months later, U.S. Xpress was sold to Knight-Swift.
Knight-Swift’s stock price has been largely flat to down since the acquisition. It was about $56.70 per share at the time of the deal and closed Friday at $55.75.
Disclosure: FreightWaves founder and CEO Craig Fuller had retained ownership of U.S. Xpress shares through his family trust.
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