News / Departing CFO claims Freightos will see profit in 2026 after reporting Q3 loss

UPDATED 28.11.24 TO INCLUDE FREIGHTOS INPUT AND REMOVE REFERENCE TO GUILLAUME HALLEUX

Freightos’ share price fell yesterday as it announced a Q3 operating loss of $4.9m, albeit an improvement on 2023’s Q3 loss of $9.3m. 

But while it continues to be unprofitable, revenues rose to $6.2m in the quarter, up 21% from a year earlier. Adjusted ebitda came in at -$2.8m, up from a loss of $4.1m a year earlier. It has $41.3m in cash in the bank. 

Freightos is now one of very few listed companies in the airfreight space, following its SPAC listing in January last year. Founded in 2012, it has yet to make a profit, despite significantly growing its customer base.  

But the company expects to reach profitability by the end of 2026, said outgoing CFO Ran Shalev. 

“Revenue grew at the fastest pace since going public, highlighting the adoption of our platform and the strength of our execution. Operational improvements and lower cost of goods sold also resulted in significant better than expected adjusted EBITDA, continuing the previous trend and keeping us on track to achieve positive adjusted EBITDA by the end of 2026.” 

He said that platform revenue was up by 29% year on year, to $2.3m, and solutions revenue increased by 17% year on year, to $3.9m. 

Freightos focuses its growth measures for investors in gross booking value (GBV) – $217.5m in Q3, up 35% year on year – but, for the most part, charges a flat fee on transactions, meaning it is unaffected by freight rates or GBV, despite using it as a metric. Freightos added however, that it also measures growth in transactions, user numbers, revenue and ebitda.

One former investor told The Loadstar: “The reason why they’re using booking value is two things, first because that’s the biggest growth that they’re going to anticipate or experience over the next three to five years, so they can show the investors growth of some sort.  

“The second thing, even if it doesn’t grow, people can still see there was something happening, like tracking, or a chart.” 

Freightos was bold to do a SPAC just as the format was under pressure from the SEC and other SPACs were being cancelled. The former investor said: “I think they prematurely went public in my opinion. The share price quickly dropped, because that was what was expected of SPAC listings. But they did it to raise money.”  

Freightos raised more than $80m going public, but the costs of doing so were some $50m. 

The former investor added that founder and CEO Zvi Schreiber only owns 8% of Freightos, as the equity got diluted in start-up phase. And Manuel Galindo Medrano, chief revenue officer until this month, as well as founder of WebCargo which was acquired by Freightos, had less than 1%. 

“Already I saw no benefit in investing in that company in the long term, because the CEO is only at 8% and the founder of WebCargo had only at 1.5% [at the time], so they already over-diluted themselves in order to survive 12 years.  

“It doesn’t mean Freightos is not a valuable company. It means that it has to pass through this cycle, let’s say over the next two to three years.” 

Along with the CFO, who leaves early next year, Mr Galindo quit the company in November, and sold securities in it, according to the SEC. In June Freightos filed a prospectus with the SEC, registering for resale up to 42.2m ordinary shares, including 3.8m from Dr Schreiber, from which he would gain some $7.5m.

Singapore Exchange owns the largest stake at 9.8%.

New investors include BlackRock, while FedEx and Qatar appear to be still on board. About half the shares are owned by corporate investors and insiders.  

In August, Freightos acquired Shipsta, a tender procurement platform which, said management, would boost results via cross-selling, although Shipsta itself is not expecting to break even until next year. And last week Freightos announced an integration with software company e2open, which will see Freightos’ air cargo pricing go on e2open’s TMS. 

Dr Schreiber told analysts in an earnings call yesterday; “E2Open is a fairly big player in software for supply chain and, specifically, some of the big freight forwarders we work with are using them. And so it’s part of our strategy of integrations into other leading software systems.  

“Our customers want our Freightos products to work well with their suite of other products.” 

Freightos has been expanding its SaaS offering, thus boosting solutions revenues. Introducing an SaaS product, said the former investor had been critical for booking platforms desperate for revenues. 

“That’s why Freightos switched gears; that’s why every booking platform switched gears – they went into SaaS model, software as a service. Because the investors were saying it’s not good enough, you have to charge.” 

Freightos however said it has not ‘switched gears’. “SaaS has always been a core part of our business model. 7LFreight, Freightos and WebCargo all started with SaaS, SaaS has always represented the majority of our revenue, and we continue to see it as important,” said a spokesperson.

Full-year guidance now predicts revenue of up to $6.5m, and a loss of between $3.2m and $3.1m. For more financial detail, please go to this Loadstar Premium article.