Knight-Swift Transportation has officially announced an agreement to acquire U.S. Xpress Enterprises. This is not the first time the company has merged with another, however. In 2017, Knight Transportation and Swift Transportation merged to create Knight-Swift Transportation Holdings Inc. The difference between this merger is that U.S Xpress will keep its brand and continue to operate separately.
U.S. Xpress was purchased by Knight-Swift for $6.15 a share, for a total of about $808 million. The acquisition is officially expected to close in the second or third quarter of the year and will pay around $291 million in cash at closing. This will be the biggest deal for Knight-Swift since it acquired AAA Cooper Transportation in 2021.
In this acquisition, Knight-Swift will assume the acquired company’s debt of $484 million. The debt was caused by a multi-year decline in financial revenue. Ultimately U.S Xpress stockholders were pleased with the high closing stock price after the acquisition was complete.
While the company will be acquiring U.S. Xpress’ accumulated debt, this acquisition is expected to add roughly $2.2 billion in operating revenue to Knight-Swift. This will also cause their truckload fleet to have a total of 25,00 tractors and 93,000 trailers.
This merger is expected to help U.S. Xpress significantly and reduce the turnover rate of employees, which had been happening during the company’s financial decline. This merger is also expected to increase the revenue of both companies to avoid any further financial decline from either company.