Bullish Robinson getting 'through the fog of war on Montgomery and Lipe'

Citi analyst Ariel Rosa had quite a few good questions for the management team of CH Robinson (CHRW) at the bank's 2026 Global TMT Conference held yesterday. (The management trio - CEO Bozeman, CFO Lee and Rajan, the AI tech guru - were as usual upbeat about what will come next; there'll be more coming from them at the 2026 Jefferies Global Industrials Conference taking place today.) The last five minutes of the call, however, were by far the most interesting as ...

No expectations of an imminent EU ecommerce rebound

Global ecommerce air cargo growth has flattened this year following a surge in capacity and regulatory intervention, delegates at the EU CBEC ecommerce forum in Liege heard today. Speaking at the forum, CEO of Rotate Ryan Keyrouse said ecommerce volumes had grown 23% since 2024 but were now flat. Mr Keyrouse noted that political intervention has emerged as the biggest threat - something industry respondents had already identified as the leading risk two years ago in a Rotate survey. "Politically marketed policies. That definitely happened," he said, pointing to the recent de minimis measures introduced in Europe and the US. Rotate highlighted the impact of the EU's regulatory changes that became apparent in July, shorty after their introduction. That month witnessed 24% decline in ecommerce volumes, alongside a 28% fall in freighter capacity to Europe. Mr Keyrouse illustrated that this is the equivalent of around 5,000 freighter flights a year having disappeared from the market. He revelaed that these capacity reductions have been unevenly distributed, creating winners and losers among European gateways. EU ecommerce gateways such as Liège, Amsterdam and Budapest all suffered significant declines, with Budapest's capacity falling by almost 60% between June and August. "We didn't really see that capacity out of China be redistributed elsewhere," Mr Keyrouse commented. Instead, the reduction has largely come through lower utilisation and the parking of older, converted freighters, particularly less fuel-efficient aircraft. Rotate's latest sentiment survey, based on more than 100 industry responses, found most respondents did not expect European ecommerce volumes to rebound immediately after the summer. "The answer is not for another six months," Mr Keyrouse said. Others believe the market will settle into a permanent but stable decline, while only a minority expect an immediate recovery. Any displaced ecommerce demand is nevertheless expected to find new markets, with respondents identifying Latin America and the Middle East and Africa as the most likely areas for future growth, although Southeast Asia and non-EU European markets also featured. However, ecommerce is not the only major growth engine for air cargo. Technology and AI-related hardware have expanded rapidly, with cloud computing, computers and semiconductors driving demand. Outside China, technology-related goods now account for 68% of Asia-Pacific exports, according to Rotate, reflecting the acceleration of the "China plus one" manufacturing strategy. Overall, Rotate forecasts total air cargo demand will grow 3% over the next 12 months, broadly in line with projected capacity growth of 3.3%.

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.