News / 'Solid' half-year performance at K+N was offset by weakening US dollar

Photo: © Tobias Arhelger, dreamstime.com

A steep drop in the value of the US dollar against the Swiss franc since the beginning of the year – accentuated by the 2 April tariff announcements – weighed on Kuehne + Nagel’s first-half results, it was revealed this morning.

The Swiss forwarder today reported that first-half 2025 group revenues grew 8% year on year, to CHF12.5bn ($15.73bn), while group ebit was down 4%, to CHF744m, and net profit also dropped 4%, to CHF555m.

It said that adjusted for currency fluctuations, group revenue was up 12%, but the declining dollar forced it to reduce full-year profit guidance from the previous range of CHF1.5bn-1.75bn to CHF1.45bn-1.65bn, which analysts at Bernstein agreed was “entirely due to FX movements”.

However, its underlying business appeared to be relatively healthy, with increased volumes in both sea and air freight volumes.

“Our solid operational performance in the first half of 2025 once again demonstrated our resilience in a challenging market environment,” said K+N CEO Stefan Paul. “The push of our strategic sales initiatives is proving to be highly effective.

“In sea logistics, we increased volumes by 2%, and in air logistics by 7% – that’s well above overall market growth,” he claimed.

However, its sea freight division was also the most impacted by the dollar’s descent, and although half-year revenues were up 14% year on year, to CHF4.7bn, its sea freight ebit declined 7% year on year, to CHF368m.

It shipped 2.1m teu in the first six months of the year and added that it “recorded substantial market share gains on the trade route from Asia to Europe.

“Liberation Day marked a turning point in Q2 25,” it continued. “Following this, the US dollar entered a pronounced weakening phase and uncertainty around tariffs increased sharply.

“Demand and rates for sea logistics services were correspondingly volatile. In this environment, Kuehne + Nagel successfully offset declining volumes to and from the US with gains in other markets.”

However, analysts calculated its volume growth was more in the 1% range, “as the group continued to lap the reduction of some lower-yielding volumes (a -3% drag). Underlying volumes, therefore, were +4”.

Its air freight forwarding business saw “volumes increase significantly”, up 7% to 1.1m tonnes, while revenues grew 8%, to CHF3.65bn and ebit was 10% up year on year, to CHF230m.

“The air logistics business unit achieved particularly strong growth in the segments of perishables, semiconductors, and cloud infrastructure (hyper scalers), a promising field that Kuehne + Nagel is actively pursuing,” the company said.

The road transport arm, predominantly a European business, was essentially flat, in terms of revenue, as its network “remained underutilised due to subdued demand in European markets”. Sales were down 1% year on year, to CHF1.74bn while ebit dropped 29%, to CHF47m.

And its contract logistics operations were hit by a one-off CHF16m charge “related to an ongoing cross-industry investigation in Italy”, without which it would have shown ebit growth.

Contract logistics revenues were up 1%, to CHF2.37bn, and ebit declined 6%, from CHF105m in the first half of last year to CHF99m in the first six months of 2025.

“Operationally, the second quarter of 2025 was the strongest in the history of the business unit.

“In June, contract logistics expanded its long-standing partnership with Louis Vuitton and opened a new distribution centre in Tokyo to serve the Japanese market,” it added.

Despite the fall in group ebit, financial analysts appeared reassured by an improvement in K+N’s cost structure and the growth in volumes and market share, in particular describing the second quarter as meaningful improvement and “moving past 2024’s execution issues”.