C.H. Robinson Reports Lower Revenue, Net Income for Q1
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C.H. Robinson Worldwide experienced a year-over-year decline in revenue and earnings during the first quarter of 2024, the company reported May 1.
The Eden Prairie, Minn.-based logistics and shipping company posted net income of $92.9 million, or 78 cents a diluted share, for the three months ending March 31. That compared with $114.9 million, or 96 cents, during the same time the previous year. Total revenue decreased by 4.3% to $4.41 billion from $4.61 billion.
“We began implementing a new lean-based operating model,” C.H. Robinson CEO Dave Bozeman said. “And although we continue to battle through an elongated freight recession with an oversupply of capacity, I’m optimistic about our ability to continue improving our execution regardless of the market environment.”
C.H. Robinson in its earnings report said the Q1 revenue decline was primarily driven by lower pricing in the truckload services segment. However, this was partially offset by higher pricing and increased volume in the ocean services segment.
C.H. Robinson ranks No. 2 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest logistics companies in North America.
C.H. Robinson Q1 2024 earnings
“Our new operating model is being deployed at the enterprise, divisional and shared service levels and is evolving our execution and accountability by bringing more structure to our continuous improvement cadence and culture,” Bozeman said. “This new way of operating is starting to enable greater discipline, transparency, urgency and consistency in our decision-making, based on data and input metrics that can reliably lead to better outputs.”
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Bozeman added the new approach is setting the tone for how the company holds itself accountable.
“In what continues to be a difficult environment, our resilient team of freight experts is responding to the challenge and embracing the new operating model and the innovative tools that we continue to arm them with,” he said. “Our people have a powerful desire to win, and I thank them for their tireless efforts. They continue to be a differentiator for us and for our customers and carriers, and I’m confident in the team’s willingness and ability to drive a higher level of discipline in our operational execution.”
The company’s Q1 results topped expectations from Wall Street analysts, who had been looking for EPS of 60 cents and quarterly revenue of $4.21 billion, according to Zacks Consensus Estimate.
C.H. Robinson’s North American surface transportation segment revenue for Q1 decreased 9.2% to $3 billion from $3.3 billion, driven primarily by lower truckload pricing because of an oversupply of capacity relative to freight demand. Income from operations declined 18.7% to $108.9 million from $134 million.
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“As a result of disciplined pricing and capacity procurement efforts, we executed better across our contractual and transactional portfolios in our NAST business and, in particular, in our truckload business in the first quarter,” Bozeman said. “This resulted in improved optimization of volume and adjusted gross profit per truckload, which improved sequentially despite an increase in our linehaul cost per mile for the full quarter versus the fourth quarter of 2023. Additionally, our first-quarter truckload volume reflects growing market share.”
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NAST overall volume growth increased 1.5%. Average truckload linehaul rate and cost per mile decreased by about 7.5% from the prior year, which resulted in an 8.5% decrease in truckload adjusted gross profit per mile.
The company’s global forwarding segment saw Q1 revenue increase 8.7% to $858.6 million from $790 million last year, driven mostly by higher pricing and increased volume in ocean services. Income from operations grew 4.8% to $31.6 million from $30.1 million. The segment includes ocean, air and customs operations.
The company’s ocean operations experienced a 2.5% increase in adjusted gross profits, driven by an increase in shipments. This was partially offset by a decrease in adjusted gross profit per shipment. Air adjusted gross profits decreased 2.4%, while customs adjusted gross profits increased 11.8%.
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