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Freightos founder Zvi Schreiber turns activist in battle to restore growth

Freightos founder Zvi Schreiber has launched a shareholder campaign calling for the removal of chairman Udo Lange and a reversal of company strategy, arguing that its focus on profitability has come at the expense of growth. Dr Schreiber, who founded Freightos (NASDAQ: CRGO) in 2012 and led the company until earlier this year, is today making public a new shareholder advocacy website, growcrgo.com, setting out his case for changes to the board and a return to what he describes as a "platform-first" growth strategy. In an interview with The Loadstar ahead of the launch, Dr Schreiber said he had initially remained quiet after stepping down from the board in February, despite strongly disagreeing with the strategy being adopted. "I thought, look, the board thinks this is good. I should give them a chance, and I wasn't in a hurry for a fight," he said. But Freightos' Q2 results and Q3 guidance, combined with unsuccessful attempts to persuade the board privately to change direction, had convinced him to go public, he added. "I can't keep quiet any longer. This is just not the right strategy for the business. It's not working out well for the business. It's not working out well for the shareholders. "If the board doesn't want to work with me privately to course correct, then really the only way to fix this is to have a public campaign." At the heart of the dispute are two issues: Freightos' determination to reach adjusted EBITDA breakeven by the end of this year; and its decision to put greater emphasis on its Solutions business. Dr Schreiber argues that Freightos should instead reach profitability primarily through revenue growth and margin expansion. "The foundation has to be growth," he told The Loadstar. "What's happening now is they've got no growth, so the only tool available to them is firing people; sometimes a business has to do that, but you don't want to be in a situation where that's your only tool." Mr Schreiber acknowledged that he did not know the circumstances behind every senior departure, describing them as a "mixture" of people leaving and being let go, but said his concern was that many of those who had departed had not been replaced. He believes that, under the previous trajectory, Freightos could have reached profitability around the end of this year or within the following two quarters, although he acknowledged that, having left the company, he no longer has access to its internal financial modelling. The argument comes as Freightos' headline revenue growth has slowed sharply. The company reported record Q2 revenue of $7.7m, but that represented growth of just 3% year on year. Its Platform business performed considerably better, with revenue up 19%, to $2.9m, while Solutions revenue fell 4% ,to $4.8m. Freightos facilitated 458,000 transactions during the quarter, up 15%, while gross booking value reached a record $422m, up 33%. Freightos itself acknowledged in its August earnings call that Solutions had suffered execution problems, with new bookings insufficient to cover the shortfall and some pricing pressure emerging on renewals. However, former CFO turned CEO Pablo Pinillos insisted that the strategic logic remained intact, arguing that embedding its Solutions products into customers' procurement, pricing, and booking workflows should ultimately generate more Platform activity. Freightos is projecting full-year 2026 revenue of $30.4m-$31m, representing growth of 3%-5%, and an adjusted EBITDA loss of $6.4m-$6.9m. It expects to cross adjusted EBITDA breakeven during Q4, and become cash-generative during the first half of 2027. Dr Schreiber argues this represents the wrong way to reach profitability. His campaign website notes that between 2023 and 2025, Freightos grew revenue by 45%, while reducing its adjusted EBITDA loss by 41%, and argues that the company should have continued along that trajectory rather than prioritising a specific breakeven timetable. He is particularly critical of the greater emphasis on Solutions, arguing that Freightos is increasing its focus on software just as advances in generative AI threaten traditional SaaS businesses. Instead, he believes AI could make Freightos' marketplace considerably more valuable. "Before long, the shippers are going to get their AIs to book freight," he told The Loadstar. An AI system, he argued, would want immediate access to rates, capacity, and booking capability, rather than relying on the traditional relationships between procurement managers and forwarders. "So actually, the platform would play very well into the AI world." Dr Schreiber envisages Freightos remaining the neutral connection between carriers, forwarders, and shippers, but with increasingly automated transactions potentially taking place between their respective AI systems. He does not advocate abandoning Freightos' Solutions products, however. "They complement each other," he said, adding that Freightos should continue investing in Solutions, but that the platform should remain the principal growth engine - "It should be platform first, in my opinion." Freightos, meanwhile, maintains that the two sides of its business reinforce one another. Its current strategy seeks to connect procurement, pricing, booking, payments, data, and decision intelligence within a unified Freightos platform. The company is also incorporating AI into both product development and customer workflows, saying it wants AI to help customers make decisions across procurement, pricing, booking and execution. Dr Schreiber's campaign also takes aim directly at Freightos' board. He wants shareholders to support the appointment of a new chairman with experience of building technology growth companies, alongside other board changes and a reduction in directors' terms from three years to one year. Dr Schreiber acknowledges that he was, himself, involved in the decision to appoint Mr Lange chairman last year. "The board chose the chairman. I was involved in that at the time," he told The Loadstar. "It didn't work out how I expected. That's for sure." Mr Lange became non-executive chairman in July 2025. He is CEO of tanker and terminals group Stolt-Nielsen and previously held senior roles at FedEx. Dr Schreiber now argues that, while such logistics experience is valuable, Freightos needs leadership more accustomed to growing relatively small technology businesses. "We're a $30m-a-year technology company. So technology companies have to grow," he said. "A subscale technology company is not the same as a multibillion-dollar logistics company, and it needs the right mindset." Mr Schreiber stressed that he was not seeking the removal of the entire board. "Replacing the whole board would be very disruptive," he said. "But I think we need to make a couple of key changes, starting with the chairman, and use that as a catalyst to wake the board up, that they need to change the strategy." He also left open the possibility of returning to the board himself if its composition and strategy changed, although he insisted the campaign was "not about me". The campaign has been building for some time. In June, Mr Schreiber changed his US ownership disclosure from a Schedule 13G, generally associated with passive holdings, to a Schedule 13D, formally signalling a more active stance towards the company. The filing said he intended to engage with Freightos regarding its business, management, board composition, and strategic direction. It showed him beneficially owning 3,131,931 shares, equivalent to 6.1% of Freightos. Dr Schreiber said he had since spoken to several other shareholders and that those conversations had been sympathetic to restoring growth, but stressed that he had no agreements or commitments over how any of them would vote. And he acknowledged there was inevitably a personal dimension to the dispute. "Of course, there's a lot of emotion and pride, I spent 14 years on it," he said. But the decline in Freightos' share price had also hit him financially. "When the share drops 60%, that's most of my personal fortune down the tubes as well." A further potential battleground is whether shareholders will actually get the opportunity to vote on his proposals. Dr Schreiber said he submitted three resolutions on 8 July, but claims Freightos has indicated it may take until the end of the 120-day notice period to decide whether to allow the resolutions, potentially leaving him insufficient time to seek a Cayman Islands injunction before AGM proxy materials are distributed. "It's very hard to have any other interpretation," he said when asked whether he thought the board was playing for time. "I can only think that they're trying to run down the clock," he added, while acknowledging he did not know for certain why the board was taking so long. "These are not comfortable resolutions. One is to remove the chairman. One is to shorten the board's terms from three years to one year. But you've got to respect the shareholders' rights, even when it's uncomfortable." Despite the increasingly public confrontation, Mr Schreiber said" "I'd love to be proved wrong". He added that if the company could restore meaningful revenue growth - initially perhaps around 15%, before moving back towards 25%-30% - while reaching breakeven, rebuilding its executive team, and presenting compelling products and growth plans for 2027, that would be evidence the strategy was succeeding. If that happened, he said, he could end the campaign, gradually reduce his holding and remain a "proud shareholder". "Nothing would make me happier." Freightos has been approached for comment, but had not responded before publication.

Typhoon-related port congestion keeps intra-Asia rates high and capacity tight

Intra-Asia freight rates rose for the fifth straight week as typhoon-related congestion in China and bottlenecks in transhipment ports Busan, Hong Kong, and Singapore tied up vessel supply. On 3 September, the Drewry Intra-Asia Container Index (IACI) climbed 9% from 27 August, to $1,312 per 40ft, as typhoon-related port disruption tightened available capacity across key Asian trades. Drewry said: "Spot freight rates from China to South-east Asia and South Asia strengthened further this week as Typhoon Saudel disrupted port operations. Shanghai and Ningbo were closed from 26-28 August, adding to congestion that has built following a series of recent typhoons, including Bavi, Noul, Dolphin, and Narra." The operational impact was reflected in vessel waiting times. In Week 35, average waiting times hit 98 hours in Shanghai and 54 hours in Ningbo. Rates on several major intra-Asia routes rose sharply. Shanghai-Busan increased 30%, to $925 per 40ft, while Shanghai-Laem Chabang climbed 28%, to $1,310 per 40ft. Ongoing geopolitical tension in the Middle East also provided upward support, with Shanghai-Jebel Ali rates increasing 6% to $8,254 per 40ft. These trends were mirrored in the Shanghai Containerised Freight Index on 4 September, with the Shanghai-South-east Asia rate up 12% from 28 August, to $893 per teu, and the Shanghai-Busan rate gaining 7%, to $248 per teu. Disrupted berthing schedules in China cascaded to the major transhipment hubs, including Busan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, causing more delays to shippers. With weather-related interruptions and port congestion persisting, Drewry expects freight rates to rise further in the coming weeks. There were also network changes among regional carriers. Japanese operator Kambara Kisen will revise its NK1 service from 22 September, replacing Otaru with Sapporo, on a revised three-week rotation with three 1,091 teu vessels calling at Dalian, Qingdao, Shanghai, Toyama, Niigata, Sapporo, Kanazawa, and Dalian. Rising bunker prices will also add upward pressure to intra-Asia freight rates. The Baltic Exchange yesterday showed very-low sulphur fuel oil prices went up around $30 from last month, to around $850 per tonne, while prices of high-sulphur fuel oil were up around $50, to roughly $660 per tonne, in Singapore and Zhoushan ports.

No 'crazy' air cargo peak this year - consumer demand fails to take off

Air cargo is not expected to see a traditional peak season this year, softening consumer demand removing the catalyst for a major Q4 surge, despite booming hi-tech traffic providing a strong bedrock for the market. Forwarders expect some tightening in capacity and rates around China's Golden Week [early October] and again as Black Friday and Christmas approach, but say there is little evidence of the sharp increase in volumes and prices normally associated with peak season. One European forwarder told The Loadstar there would likely be "a slight uptick" towards Week 40, ahead of Golden Week, followed by additional volumes associated with Cyber Monday, Black Friday, and Christmas. But he added: "For sure we do not expect a peak season with rates doubling or something like that. No crazy shit. Just normal, normal." The assessment is broadly reflected in Ti Insight's latest Air Freight Rate Tracker. While its survey found 68.7% of respondents expected some degree of rate increase in Q4, its own outlook is for a "measured" increase rather than a dramatic peak, with plentiful belly capacity and a lack of a traditional peak-season catalyst. "Very few people are talking about peak season," said Niall van de Wouw, chief airfreight for Xeneta, last month. "In all the conversations we've had with our shipper community, in only one was there talk of peak season charters." High-value B2B traffic, particularly semiconductors, servers, and AI-related equipment is providing underlying air cargo demand from Asia - but as structural rather than seasonal traffic, and it does not provide the consumer-driven surge traditionally seen as retailers stock up ahead of Black Friday and Christmas. China's latest figures show overall exports surged 25% year on year in August, but the growth was heavily skewed towards hi-tech products. In the first eight months, exports of mechanical and electrical products increased 21.9%, while integrated-circuit exports jumped 95.4%, according to China's General Administration of Customs. By contrast, exports of labour-intensive goods, including clothing, footwear, furniture, and toys, fell 0.6%. Indeed, toy exports were down 6.4% in January-August and footwear fell 4.7%, while clothing increased just 2.5%. Automatic data-processing equipment and parts, meanwhile, jumped 49.4%. There are signs of softness in Europe too. Eurostat reported that euro-area retail trade volumes fell 0.6% month on month in July, including a 1.4% decline in non-food products, while Germany alone recorded a sharp 3.4% fall in overall retail volumes. But hi-tech is booming: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing today reported August revenue of NT$514.81bn ($16.3bn), up 53.3% year on year, and up 10.1% on July, boosting revenue over the first eight months 39.3%. And the chipmaker has raised its 2026 capital expenditure budget to between $60bn and $64bn in response to the strong structural demand, being seen directly in the airfreight market. "AI, chips, it's in the market," the forwarder told The Loadstar, noting particularly strong demand out of Taiwan. But this demand has already been present for around a year, and remains relatively steady. "It's ongoing. It's pretty much at demand," he said, adding there could be some increase towards the end of the year as companies deployed remaining investment budgets. The forwarder added that customer forecasts were, similarly, offering little evidence of an impending surge, with some volumes stable and others perhaps 20% higher, but "nothing where I would say we have to turn things upside down". Ecommerce is also unlikely to provide the significant growth seen in previous peak seasons. The forwarder said the impact of changes to ecommerce regulations was difficult to assess, not least because some traffic could increasingly move as consolidated freight rather than identifiable individual ecommerce shipments. But the decline in some ecommerce volumes has already been accompanied by reductions in capacity, particularly at European gateways heavily exposed to the sector. "The volumes are gone, the capacity is gone," he said, pointing to Budapest and Liège in particular. Ti Insight similarly found that the global market was balancing out, with recent rate declines driven largely by improving capacity rather than a significant fall in overall demand. There are potential capacity constraints ahead. The forwarder noted that the switch from airline summer to winter schedules at the end of October would reduce belly capacity on some routes, particularly Europe-US, while allocations and block-space agreements would be reshuffled for the winter season. Rates could, therefore, still rise during Q4, particularly on tighter lanes, without the market experiencing a conventional peak. "I would wonder where a strong peak season could come from," said the forwarder.