By Kathy Fieweger, recent Chief Marketing Officer and Current Consultant at ArcBest Corporation
On November 9, 2015, ArcBest President and CEO Judy R. McReynolds and other members of the company’s management team rang the “opening bell” at the Nasdaq headquarters in New York for the first time in our 22-year history as a Nasdaq-listed company. This exciting milestone, broadcast live on all the financial TV news channels, followed and celebrated ArcBest’s comprehensive corporate rebranding in May 2014. That historic event included a new parent company name and ticker symbol, brand positioning, logos, websites, ad campaign called The Skill & The Will and much more.
The opening bell festivities marked the start of a jam-packed day. Later in the afternoon on November 9, executives also presented a detailed overview of ArcBest’s growth plans to investors and analysts, including projections for a growing proportion of revenue generated from asset-light businesses going forward and the common DNA that binds all of the ArcBest companies.
While ArcBest has a broad base of sell-side analysts who follow the company, issue reports and speak regularly with McReynolds and Chief Financial Officer David Cobb, it was the first time that an investor day was held to include a comprehensive series of presentations by presidents of ArcBest’s subsidiaries as well: ABF Freight, ABF Logistics, Panther Premium Logistics and FleetNet America.
As McReynolds said in her remarks at Nasdaq, ArcBest is working hard to ensure that customers understand all of our capabilities as a logistics company with The Skill & The Will to solve complex supply chain problems through our well-known brands and companies.
“Our brands have strong value,” McReynolds said. “We are making the most of this by tying together service offerings across the enterprise. ArcBest is investing in all of our businesses to better provide our customers the services they want across the supply chain.”
All in all, the events of November 9 were part of an ongoing strategic process to continually highlight the company’s value proposition to all stakeholders including employees, customers and investors.
And, there’s more to come. Ground has been broken on a new corporate headquarters in Fort Smith, Arkansas, to make room for the growing company. As the company outlined to investors, with all the growth plans underway, it won’t be another 22 years before ArcBest heads back to Nasdaq to celebrate another milestone.