Thank you very much, Mathilde. Good afternoon and welcome to the presentation of Kuehne+Nagel's third quarter 2026 financial results.

I am CEO Stefan Paul, and I am joined once again today by our CFO, Markus Blanka-Graff. Let's move into page number 2, nine-month 2026 results: Kuehne+Nagel significantly improves profitability in the third quarter.

For the first nine months of the year, Kuehne+Nagel maintained its positive earnings momentum, supported by disciplined cost control, air logistics growth, and the recent stronger growth in sea logistics. Solid underlying business development and market share gains also improved the results of road and contract logistics.

In the third quarter, recurring EBIT rose to CHF 435 million, 53% higher year-over-year and 14% higher quarter-on-quarter. Let's review some of the key factors.

Our cost reduction program, introduced a year ago and underway since year-end 2025, has already delivered year-to-date savings of about 100 million. We expect savings to accelerate into the Q4 and reach an annualized savings run rate of at least CHF 200 million by year-end.

These cost savings helped improve the group conversion rate to 18.2% in Q3 versus a 16.9 in Q2 and 13.4 in Q3 last year on a like-for-like basis. In sea and air, we target a conversion rate of 35%.

The combined conversion rate was 32.3 in Q3 versus 30.2 in Q2 and 22.8 in Q3 last year, again on a comparable basis. Important factors behind the higher conversion rate included resilient yields, and favorable mix, consistently strong air logistics, and improving sea logistics volume.

Recurring group EPS grew by 58% year-over-year in Q3, with no material impact from currency translation. Underlying free cash flow generation in the third quarter improved by 53 year-over-year when we exclude disposal proceeds in both periods.

Given the positive earnings momentum and our expectations through year-end, we are once again lifting our 2026 full-year recurring EBIT guidance. Markus will cover this in more detail shortly.

Before we move on to our business unit details, let me briefly recap our AI ambitions. We are calling for CHF 100 to 150 million of annualized benefits to emerge over the course of 2027.

Our next deep dive will come with the full-year results in March in line with our commitment to provide formal updates. As I said at top, each business unit contributed to our strong third-quarter and nine-months results.

Let us now turn to our performance by business unit, starting as always with sea logistics, which you find on page number 3: strong growth trajectory with supportive yields. In sea logistics, we steadily increased volumes and returned to year-over-year growth in the third quarter.

Unit profitability has risen consistently, aided by cost control and resilient yields. This is clear to see on the three charts on the slide.

As usual, on the left, we have the volume in thousands of TEU. In the middle, we show gross profit per TEU, on the right, EBIT per TEU.

Q3 volumes grew by 5% year-over-year and 6% quarter-on-quarter. Sequential growth is above our typical performance for this period.

We gained market share in Asia export trades as well as in the transatlantic, where the recovery of US import demand was a key driver. The SME volumes grew in line with the overall business.

Average yields ticked up sequentially in the third quarter, the fourth consecutive quarter of stable or better results. All these factors combined to lift EBIT in the third quarter to CHF 172 million, a 23% gain sequentially and 55 gain on a year-over-year basis.

The sea logistics conversion rate was 32% in Q3 versus 29 in the second and 23 last year in the third quarter. Let's now focus on page number 4, our air logistics business unit: ongoing market share expansion in higher-yielding segments.

In air logistics, we delivered yet another quarter of strong volume growth in higher-yielding segments. That growth, combined with effective cost control, helped the conversion rate improve even further.

Q3 volumes expanded by 10% year-over-year and 7% sequentially. As with sea logistics, these results are better than what we typically see in this period.

The drivers behind this growth were once again the high demand in the tech sector and stronger general cargo volumes. In parallel with the strong volume growth, we kept yields broadly stable Q-on-Q thanks to incremental improvement in unit costs.

EBIT rose to CHF 169 million in Q3, a gain of 10% sequentially and a very healthy 84% gain year-over-year. The air logistics conversion rate was 32 in Q3 versus 31% in Q2 and 23 in the third quarter last year.

Next is road logistics, page number 5: EBIT growth accelerates on market share gains. In road logistics, EBIT growth in the third quarter extended the positive trend we have seen throughout the year so far.

Q3 EBIT increased by 40% year-over-year to CHF 28 million. The conversion rate was 8% versus 6% in the third quarter last year.

Net turnover grew by 14% in the third quarter, or 13% organically, which compares to a 9% like-for-like growth in the second. We continue to believe the improved trend in recent quarters is most likely the result of market share gains rather than underlying market growth.

At the same time, we are seeing rising demand from the high-tech sector in road as well. Page number 6, contract logistics: positive results from recent investments in growth.

In contract logistics, net turnover and profitability growth accelerated in the third quarter as recent investments in high-tech sector growth began to pay off. Net turnover grew by 8% in the third quarter, excluding currency effects, well above the average 5% rate of growth over the past year.

Q3 EBIT came to CHF 66 million, which is 29% growth sequentially. The corresponding conversion rate rose to 7% in the third quarter from 6 in the second.

We remain confident in the future growth trajectory. Contract logistics has well-filled pipeline, solid retention rate, and several contracts currently in the implementation phase.

This concludes my comments on the performance of the business units, and I will now hand over, as always, to Markus.

Thank you, Stefan, and good afternoon, all. Thank you for your continued interest in Kuehne+Nagel.

Starting with the income statement for the third quarter, I would like to highlight the key drivers of our year-over-year earnings development. First, the third quarter was marked by accelerated gross profit growth from all business units and notably, solid volume and yield expansion from both sea and air logistics.

Second, a high proportion of this gross profit growth converted to recurring EBIT, supported by our cost reduction program. On a like-for-like basis, the incremental conversion rate was 57%, lifting the group conversion rate to 18% in the third quarter from 13% in the same quarter last year.

Lastly, it is noteworthy that the 5% year-to-date foreign exchange headwind you see in this table on the right was confined entirely to the first half year 2026. The Q3 EBIT of 435 million Swiss francs reflected plus 53% year-over-year growth with no material foreign exchange translation impact.

Turning to working capital, here we saw the base increase to more than 1.9 billion Swiss francs at the close of the third quarter. This is an increase of about 17%, reflective of continued strong volume development as well as higher rates.

Net working capital intensity increased to 5.8% by the close of the third quarter versus 5.5% at mid-year and 5.1 at the same time last year. This corresponds to a contraction of the spread between DSOs and DPO, with the spread now being negative.

The 281 million Swiss franc increase of core working capital over the course of the third quarter 2026 contrasts with an 80 million reduction during the same period last year. This primarily reflects significantly higher volumes and freight rates, as mentioned before, for both sea and air logistics, a large share of airfreight capacity linked to dedicated freighters, and material growth from contract logistics.

Let's now turn to free cash flow generation in the third quarter. We produced 336 million Swiss francs of free cash flow, including a 3 million Swiss franc of cash proceeds from asset disposals, which had no material P&L impact.

For a closer look to that cash conversion, let me move on to the next slide, where we see the usual comparison of free cash flow conversion in the most recent quarters versus the historical average. We focus on the history since the first full year of Apex consolidation, since that event changed the pattern of our free cash flow generation due to a larger proportion of freighter-based airfreight activities.

The third quarter is typically the second strongest cash conversion quarter after Q4, with an average conversion of roughly 100% since 2022. In Q3, this underlying conversion rate was 105%.

This 105% also includes the benefit of favorable cash tax payment phasing, with corresponding outflows to come in the fourth quarter. We expect a continuation of normal underlying free cash flow conversion seasonality also over the coming quarters, with a long-term average of 90% heavily weighted to the second half of the year.

Turning now to our financial guidance for 2026, we are raising both the lower and upper end of our recurring EBIT guidance by 150 and 50 million, respectively. This results in a new recurring EBIT guidance range now from 1.5 to 1.6 billion Swiss francs.

As you can see in the graph on this slide, this marks the third sequential earnings guidance increase for the year, with the current midpoint nearly 20% greater than our opening estimates for the financial year EBIT presented back in March. Our core assumptions continue to include: We see global GDP growth, but with persistent uncertainty across geopolitics, macroeconomic policy, and trade patterns.

We now expect gross savings from our cost saving program announced in the fourth quarter 2025 of more than 150 million Swiss francs in 2026, up from the 120 million Swiss francs, as we have reached our target earlier than expected. In terms of currency translation headwinds, our financial guidance assumes no more than 5% negative impact.

At this stage, it appears that this might be entirely weighted to the first half of the year 2026. Lastly, our expectation for a 25% effective tax rate remains unchanged.

That leads me already to our key takeaways. We rest with our unchanged strategic focus on growing faster than the market in targeted attractive sectors.

We see this emerging in sea logistics already, which is on a strong growth trajectory with supportive yield backdrop. Air logistics remains a powerful source of volume growth, especially in the higher-yielding segments.

Our cost reduction program is ahead of schedule, and we remain confident in full delivery of the targeted savings by year-end 2026. We reiterate our expectation of material AI productivity gains emerging in 2027 with an uplift of 100 to 150 million Swiss francs.

In light of this positive earnings momentum, we are once again raising our 2026 recurring EBIT guidance, this time to a range of 1.5 to 1.6 billion Swiss francs. With this, I want to thank you for your attention, and hand back to the operator, Mathilde, to open the Q&A session.

Hi, Stefan and Markus. Thank you for taking my questions.

First one, how much of the 10% volume growth in air would you say came from underlying market growth versus market share gains? In so far as there are share gains, do you think you can sustain those or even improve on them into 2027?

Then in sea, obviously volume growth, sequential yield improvement, EBIT per TEU the highest level in over a year. Should we be viewing Q3 as the beginning of a more sustained seafreight recovery, or is it premature to say?

Thanks very much.

Jaime, Stefan speaking. I take the first one, the question on airfreight.

This is an estimate, right? I would say 3-4% is the market, and 6-7% is our market share gains, and pretty much coming from hard cargo.

Hard cargo had a double-digit increase in terms of volume this quarter, and e-commerce went down significantly. Overall, I would say it's 60-70% market share gain driven.

The other one is the seafreight. Is that the new normal, to say?

Good question. This is difficult to touch, basically.

I would say, at least for the fourth quarter, and most probably as well as we look into the first quarter, that should be a good reference in terms of the yield is concerned, and I would not expect a significant change in the next weeks and months to come.

Thanks, Stefan. I don't know if you can comment on market share next year in air, more gains, do you think?

Similar to this year. It should continue.

Very good. Thank you.

Good afternoon. First question is just on the guidance.

You have a 100 million range with just one quarter remaining, I wanted to understand how you're thinking about the top and bottom end of the guidance range, and especially given that 4Q is peak season for air, thoughts on volumes and yields on air within that. Then secondly, on sea yields, those were up 5% sequentially.

It's much less than the freight rate increase we've seen, is it because of a mix shift that yield performance is lower than the freight rate performance? Then related to that, how should we think about yields next year in the scenario that ocean freight rates come down?

Thank you.

Muneeba, it's Markus. Let me talk about the guidance.

I think, yes, 100 million looks like a larger corridor. I think the usual way of looking also from our perspective would be around the midpoint.

I think the rest that goes from the midpoint up and down is really a variance that could still happen around the peak season, how that plays out, or if there is any other interruptions that we are not aware of. I think it's a relatively fair and narrow way of looking for the next three months.

I would look into midpoint, and then that corridor obviously halves relatively quickly.

The question on the sea yield, Stefan speaking, it has to do with the timing, of course, right? We invoice at the time when customer receives the cargo, right, at the destination, and this has to do with the timing, and that's the reason why we have a little bit of a lagging increase and slower time to show the higher yields, right?

Though this is the explanation for this question. As I said before, I would reiterate what I said before: I think yields should be stable into the Q4 and Q1, but beyond it's hardly difficult to make any judgment currently.

Thank you. If I could just follow up on the air peak season then, what are you thinking that turns out to be this year for 4Q?

Our expectation is that the volume development in the Q3 you will see as well materializing in Q4 with stable yields. We have just started in the peak season, but I would say it's strong.

Is it even stronger than the Q3? Wait to be seen, but it's definitely strong.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Two from me, please.

The first one is around AI and productivity-related savings. You're achieving really strong volume growth across both air and sea, and what I'm wondering is whether that increases the size of potential productivity savings as you can accelerate the productivity gains faster without needing redundancies.

Should we therefore see upside to the 100 to 150 million AI-related EBIT improvement that you've spoken about? My second question is on your airfreight yields.

You point to semis, cloud, and hard cargo as the main growth drivers, less e-com and by implication less perishable freight in the mix. Excluding FX, translation, GP was the lowest it's been since Q4.

Why aren't we seeing more of a positive mix effect on your airfreight yields following that mix effect? Thank you.

I go for the first one, right? Fair question, fair assumption.

I think, as we said before, the next update will follow in March when we present the full-year figure. Maybe a couple of topics up front, right?

For us, it's three ways of looking into AI and the impact of the 150 million in 2027 is everything around additional revenue and GP streams, for instance, that comes from use cases like AI pricing, where we have tested already quite intensively in airfreight, and we talk about that more then in March. The second one is everything around Alex, everything around service quality and a better quality in order to retain customers even better, especially on the SME side.

The third one is then what you have touched base on is everything around efficiency gains, productivity and efficiency gains. I wouldn't basically link that to a much higher volume.

I would focus still on our use cases and how successful are we with the pilots which we are currently conducting. Then, of course, if we have more volume, we can increase the potential savings.

I would not make any statement currently that we go beyond the 150 million, which we have communicated a couple of quarters ago at the beginning of this year. This is our target, and this is our commitment on which you can measure us.

Alex, it's Markus. On the air yields, I think when we look into FX, which obviously had zero negative impact anymore or very small in the third quarter, my expectation obviously is that that's going to continue not having an impact into the fourth quarter either, right?

I think what we need to look into when the mix changes, right, you're absolutely right: the stronger profitability, the stronger margins are on the hard cargo side and special products, healthcare side, high-tech side. I think it becomes academic when we look into the fourth quarter and we say yields are going to stay stable.

If that is now one or two Swiss franc up and down, I think that's something where it's really difficult for us to assess that at the current stage. What we can certainly say is that we will be in the similar range as we have been in the third quarter.

What's exactly supporting or driving it, if it's more the mix or more the way how we do the pricing, or if it's more about the capacity, or if it's a bit more of the peak, I think I cannot tell you right now. What I can tell you is we expect a very similar and stable yield going forward.

Maybe to add on that last statement or comment, I think the focus pretty clear into 2027 is as well an improved mix focusing on the hard cargo and piggybacking on my comment a couple of minutes ago.

Right. Thank you both.

hi there. First question, contract logistics.

Could you help us quantify the impact of the 37 new contracts there? What kind of the uplift could that represent?

Similarly, as it hasn't really featured yet, could I ask the same question about the Amazon collaboration? Thank you very much.

Let me repeat your second question, because the line was a bit bad, that we understood it correctly. First question is on contract logistics, 37 new contracts in implementation, and you were asking what would be the GP uplift.

Good.

Exactly. Thank you.

The second question was on

Yes, could you help us quantify the Amazon collaboration?

Amazon. Right.

On the contract logistics side, I think looking at the performance of contract logistics in the third quarter, when we talk about 37 or a number of new contracts being under implementation, obviously implementation takes time, is putting also some initial investments in place, right? Many times before we start fully operating, we have to implement the business with startup costs usually being invoiced at a later stage to the customer.

From that perspective, when we talk about new contracts, the timing and the phasing can be absolutely fluid, I would call it. Where they are, I think we currently gain business quite around the globe on a global basis with a good mix of different industries, and yes, there is also some of the high-tech cloud provider business that we currently are implementing.

It's a good business mix with a global basis and in different phases of implementation. You will not have seen the full impact of these implementations as of yet in the third quarter.

What's the second? Just to double check, Stefan speaking, the second one, the Amazon thing was how many do we implement in contract logistics at present from them?

Was that the question?

Just could you sort of help us quantify the potential upside from the Amazon collaboration? Just any comments around that would be helpful.

Oh

yeah, okay. It's more broader, right?

Of course. What we have stated, and I can only reiterate what we have stated, from a couple of hundred millions, right, in all four business units.

We have a collaboration partnership in contract logistics, road, sea, and air. The aim is to come to a billion kind of revenue as of 2027.

We will contribute, or this deal will help us to gain share in all business units, not in one. For instance, airfreight will help all four business units to grow their business with this important customer.

Thank you.

Thank you for taking my question, and congratulations on a good results. I just wanted to confirm that say for airfreight, there's not any let's say temporary impact from the Middle East crisis in there.

It's a pretty clean number driven by what you said, data center, hard cargo, and probably good performance Apex, no Middle East in there. The second question would be on the ocean freight volume number.

I guess you quantified market share gains for airfreight. Could you do so for ocean freight as well?

To me, it seems that overall the ocean freight market is pretty solid, especially into the US, I believe, in Q3. What do you feel is really driving the strength then in US or let's say transpacific ocean freight?

What do you see on the mix? Is it more consumer, is it more manufacturing?

Do you feel like in the US inventories are still low, people need to restock? Anything that might help us really assess the underlying strength of ocean freight volume might be helpful.

Thank you.

Marc, Stefan speaking. Thank you very much for your feedback and positive reaction.

I can confirm: no, there is no impact from the Middle East crisis, straightforward. Then the question on seafreight, where is this push or this volume increase coming from, and it's mainly from Asia, in particular China into the US, and twofold, right?

We talked about that already, I think, last time. We have decided roughly a year ago to invest into these new let's call it new MNC, multinational customers, the new logos, the new OEMs coming from China.

All of them want to become global, and they need definitely support with their uplifts into the markets, right, whether it's Europe, whether it's Latin America, but as well to a certain degree, of course, outside of the automotive industry to the US. We have signed roughly 25 master service agreements in this year, and now we get a quite a good traction with these customers, and you have seen some press releases on BYD, you have seen the CATL, but this is only to name two.

It's much more brands who want to become global, really large and very successful from a product innovation perspective, pushing their products now into the global market, and we see ourselves very well positioned, and that is part of the success you have seen in the third quarter. That is one of the main drivers.

Of course, restocking in the US is ongoing, consumer is getting better, industrial is getting better for seafreight as well. The main driver in terms of new additional volumes is as I just have described it.

Thank you.

Hello, good afternoon from my side. A first question is on air.

There, can you share some sort of indication, potentially more on a quantitative basis, how much exposure you currently have to semi and tech, and if possible, how that compares to a couple of years ago? That would be my first question.

The second question is on the sea side with regard to the D&A swing in the third quarter. Can you also add some or shed some additional light on that one, please?

Let me tackle the first one, right, Sebastian, Stefan. I would say if you look into 5, 6, 7 years ago, we had a very strong automotive business out of Europe, right, with the large OEMs and with the first and second tiers on the former combustion kind of century, right?

If you take this, right, that has been replaced by the high-tech sector, by the tech sector in particular, right? I wouldn't say that we have an over-dependency now on this one, but it has replaced the shrinking auto sector in a one-to-one basis.

Sebastian, on the seafreight depreciation and amortization, we have a reclassification of real estate with no EBIT impact in the seafreight. It's a reclass between opex and D&A.

The amount for the third quarter was accumulated 23 million, so that's why that's changing.

Got it. Going forward, the D&A number would be what sort of number then, if I may follow up there for the seafreight?

When

we take around 6-7 million less than what it was as an average.

Got it. Thanks.

Right,

thank you.

Good afternoon. Two questions from my side.

The first one was just a follow-up on the Asian contract or the Chinese contracts. What were the key drivers behind this strong development or signing new contracts with these master agreements as we all already heard, and so far also to defend your volumes in China?

What do you expect here? Can you quantify a little bit how many of these master agreement partners you are currently approaching, the share of how many already signed, what do you expect also for the next two to three quarters of additional master agreements being signed in China?

That's the first question. The second one is just can you please also give us an update if possible on the Apex investigation that you had?

Thank you.

Gian-Marco, Stefan, I tackle the master service agreement question. The master service agreement is a prerequisite of entering into business discussions, right?

So 25 master service agreements doesn't mean that you have business already automatically with all of them, right? If you look at the sheer volume behind this 25, then it's millions of containers and a lot of airfreight, right?

That doesn't tell you a lot, right? It's basically how many customers can we implement and gain in a certain period.

I would say per quarter, we are currently implementing between two and three, but the volume is quite massive, right? You should not link that too much to how many master service agreements.

It's more about this is the basis, and there is maybe another 20-30 multinationals where we can go exactly the same route, but this will take us another two through three years. Looking at the sheer volume of each of them, right, it's a couple of thousand container units on a quarterly basis which we can implement.

Gian-Marco, on the Apex, understandably, obviously we are part of a wider US government investigation. That one is still ongoing, there's not a lot I can say.

Obviously Apex is entirely cooperating with the relevant authorities, and we know it's an isolated matter. Full cooperation and is not connected to any of our staff or anything like that where we're directly investigated.

That's all I can say at that point.

Thank you.

Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions.

Just wanted to ask about kind of how we should think about your sea yields going into next year. I think I appreciate what you've talked to us before about the fact that the Chinese brands that are giving a lot of volume usually come at a lower margin.

How should we think about the evolution of that mix into next year? Should we care at all about the fact that container supply is going to grow double-digit next year, or do you see that your yields will not be affected at all by that because they haven't been massively influenced by this year's spot rate dynamics?

Thanks.

Alexia, hi, Stefan. Looking at our revenue gain in the third quarter, 22%, which we translated into 53% EBIT margin, right?

We will not, by all means, tackle new volumes on a lower-yielding basis. We will carefully investigate where to play, how to play.

As I said a couple of times, it's not only the port-port portion, it's as well everything beyond, right: customs clearance, on-site delivery, value-added services. We are not going into this market with the Chinese MNCs in order to gain sheer volumes.

We are carefully looking into an end-to-end margin, which is similar, if you look at it from an end-to-end perspective, with the European, US market and customers who decide on that side.

Yeah.

I think on your second question for the container, I assume you mean there is capacity coming into the market, and if that has then an impact on the rates. I think that's something we will have to see how relevant that's going to be in the next year.

We have seen also this year, with all the changes and disruptions and challenges, let's say, around how that works, that even additional capacity does not necessarily lead to a direct impact of freight rates. We are seeing that this capacity is sometimes even blocked in congestion situations or the like.

I would answer in theory, when we looked historically in an undisturbed market, I would think, yes, it should lead to a certain pressure on capacity. I think the last at least two and a half years have shown that that logic becomes more skewed.

Thank you both. If I may follow up just on Stefan's point around kind of the end-to-end, could you kindly remind us the split of value-added services in the two kind of product segments at the moment, and whether we should expect some changes in the mix there?

I wouldn't expect any changes, but in seafreight it's the typical 40-60, 40 port-port, the 60 before and after. In airfreight, we are not so much depending on that question, cause we have 50% our own charter capacity, the rest is block space agreement, and this is for this business not so much relevant rather than for seafreight, and here's a 40-60.

Thanks very much. Hi, I just wanted to follow up on this question of the sort of tech or hyperscaler customer and the relevance in the airfreight business.

I don't want to know what percentage it is of revenues, but I'd like to try and understand what percentage that segment has been of your growth this year, because there's some market data out there that suggests that ex the hyperscaler or high-tech customer, that market growth in airfreight has been extremely tepid. I'd like to sort of get a bit of color on how you see your composition of growth this year.

Then I don't know if you can give any visibility, but it would be helpful to know if you have any sort of view on what that looks like into '27 or maybe even Q1 or Q2 of next year. Here I'm talking about specific contracts that you maybe have in place already that can give us a little bit of color and confidence in terms of the durability of growth.

Thank you.

Hi, Sathish, it's Markus. Yes, I can certainly confirm the hyperscalers are a good part of our growth in 2026, and I think our view currently is that growth in that space with the customers that we continuously gained is also going to continue into 2027.

Specifics around which customers, how many, and what's the percentage, we will not be able to disclose. I'm sorry.

Thank you for allowing for follow-up. Just quickly on IMC, could you tell us if there was any yield uplift in Q3 from IMC versus Q2?

Would it be correct to assume that IMC activity is strongest in Q4 when all the containers that are shipped in Q3 Q3 will arrive in the US, or would that be a wrong way to think about it? Thank you.

Your way of thinking it through is absolutely right, right? As more the volume bounced back into the US, as better the GP and the overall situation with IMC became, so much stronger in the second half, and that is as well valid for the fourth.

Thank you. You're

welcome.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for listening. We had a very good third quarter.

We will continue with our efforts and deliver the same moving forward, and wish you a very good time, and talk to you then latest after the first quarter 2027. Thank you very much.