C. H. ROBINSON WORLDWIDE, INC. Q3 FY25 Results

"The third quarter of 2025 was marked by a continued soft freight environment, with the Cass Freight Shipment Index declining year-over-year for the 12th consecutive quarter. The Cass index reading was the lowest third quarter reading since the financial crisis of 2009. And despite a fairly steady exit of trucking capacity over the past three years, truckload spot rates continue to bounce along the bottom due to low demand." "International freight has been impacted by global trade policies, which caused previous front-loading, a dislocation of shipments and a softer than normal peak season. Combined with excess vessel capacity, this caused ocean rates to decline substantially versus a year ago, consistent with the expectations that we laid out at our Investor Day in December. Ocean rates also declined substantially within the third quarter, causing our adjusted gross profit per ocean shipment to decline 27% from June to September. These factors led to unfavorable conditions for global transportation companies in the third quarter. We are not immune to the market, and the volume and rate dynamics in Global Forwarding are certainly headwinds we are facing." "But this is a new C.H. Robinson, and we don’t use the macro environment as an excuse. We are a fundamentally different company than we were two years ago, illustrated by the company’s consistent outperformance versus the market." "Our third quarter results provide another proof point of the disciplined execution of our strategy. In NAST, we grew our combined truckload and LTL volume by approximately 3.0% year-over-year and demonstrably grew market share versus a 7.2% decline in the Cass Freight Shipment Index. This was accomplished while expanding gross margins for the 8th consecutive quarter and further increasing productivity and operating leverage while growing volume. This resulted in a 39% adjusted operating margin in NAST and further progress toward our 40% mid-cycle adjusted operating margin target for NAST." "With seven consecutive quarters of consistent outperformance through the disciplined execution of the strategy that we shared at our 2024 Investor Day, there is no doubt in our minds that we are on the right path to deliver sustainable outperformance. Our model, with an industry-leading cost to serve, is highly scalable and we expect it will improve further as we harness the evolving power of AI to drive automation across the quote-to-cash lifecycle of a load. We’re still in the early innings of our Lean AI journey - call it third inning in NAST and first inning in Global Forwarding. Lean AI is our unique, disciplined approach to AI innovation that transforms supply chains. By combining the principles of Lean methodology in our Robinson operating model with the power of AI, Lean AI is designed to maximize value and minimize waste for better outcomes. It is uniquely enabled by our leading AI technology, our expert logisticians and our Lean operating model that drives continuous improvement."