C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc. (CHRW) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Our last Investor Day was in 2017, so you might say we're overdue. But the truth is, with new leadership, a refreshed strategy, a change in how the company is executing, this is a perfect time for us to hold our Investor Day, and we're excited to share all of it with you today. I'm sure you're all familiar with safe harbor statements, but please bear with me. We will be making some forward-looking statements today, I promise. And you should review the risks associated with those statements as disclosed in our annual and quarterly reports with the SEC. Before we dive in, let me cover a couple of housekeeping items. Here's our agenda for the morning. After Dave, Angie and Arun take you through our strategy and our core foundational capabilities, we'll take a 15-minute break. After the break, Michael and Mike will share how our strategies apply to our 2 largest divisions. And then Damon will share what all of this means for our financial outlook. At the end of the presentation, we'll have a Q&A session with our leaders, and then we'll wrap up the events at noon Eastern Time. With that, we have a short video to share with you. After which, I'd ask you to welcome our President and CEO, Dave Bozeman, to the stage. Thank you. [Presentation]

All right, all right. How about that for scale? Good morning, and thank you for joining us today here in New York and online. I am excited to show you how C.H. Robinson has raised the bar for ourselves and our industry. How we have activated a clear plan to keep pushing that bar higher, and how we continue to prove that we deliver logistics like no one else. When you leave here today, Here's what I want you to understand about C.H. Robinson. We are the clear leader in the U.S. freight brokers industry and not just in volume, but also in how we're leading our industry into an era of digital enablement. We are executing really better than we have in a long time, enabled by a new operating model that demands operational discipline and a number of you have heard me talk about that all year. We have runway to capture further market share growth and margin expansion and our operational discipline will continue when the market inflects, and you'll continue to see a different C.H. Robinson that delivers further operating leverage. And our asset-light model generates strong returns and significant cash flow through cycles, which provides us with optionality in how we execute our strategy and what we invest in. But before we dive into all of that, let me tell you why I decided to join this storied company after leading successful efforts and teams at Harley-Davidson, Caterpillar, Amazon and Ford Motor Company. C.H. Robinson couldn't have more of a first-mover advantage. As this company actually developed the 3PL or transportation brokerage industry, resulting in more scale than any other North American broker. The company has a strong balance sheet and cash flow that enables us to continue investing through cycles, even during a prolonged freight recession like we're experiencing now. We have the largest customer base and data set in the industry, which provides us with an information advantage that we can leverage to create better outcomes for our customers and our carriers. And I found out quickly that the company has engaged passionate employees that bleed blue and have a very strong desire to win. As I've traveled around this company, the stories that come out of our employees are simply amazing. And I couldn't be more proud to work with them every day. What a great starting point as a new CEO and what a great foundation to build from as we move forward into the next era of growth and profit expansion for Robinson. For those of you who may not be all that familiar with Robinson, this slide will give you a quick snapshot of who we are and what we do. But even if you followed us for a while, and some of you have, might be a few things that surprises you. And I've talked to many of you in my first 18 months. And there were a few things that always surprise you when you hear them. For example, did you know, we moved the most full truckload freight of any company in North America. We have a $3 billion LTL business and nearly a $1 billion drop trailer business. Combined, we moved 50,000 truckload and LTL shipments per day. We are a leading forwarder of ocean freight globally and hold 1 of the top 2 spots in several trade lanes, including the transpacific lane. You're going to hear a lot today about our leadership position in the industry. But what I want to emphasize is that our size and scale creates tremendous competitive advantage when it comes to our ability to compete and win in a highly dynamic industry. When I joined the company, I conducted a diagnosis and a number of you know that. As part of this, we look back at the company's history, as you can always learn valuable lessons from the past. Prior to 2017, we built our leadership position in this space, leaning heavily on a high-touch approach that allowed us to build customer relationships. It was the right model for that error, but it was less efficient than it could have been, which created an opportunity for disruption. In the era of digital disruption, there was a period during which a low cost of capital foster significant investment. New entrants attempted to take a tech-first or, in some cases, a tech-only approach. As a reaction to this, Robinson shifted to a tech-first approach to lower cost, focused on its largest customers to protect market share and ushered small- and medium-sized customers to a tech-first delivery model that didn't best meet their desire for a high level of customer service, and that's what we're known for. This resulted in a loss of market share in the SMB segment, lower overall market share at an erosion of NAST margins due to lacking cost controls. We're learning from that history and doing things differently to meet the evolving changes of the marketplace. A tech-first or tech-only approach ended up being the wrong model for an industry that has many exceptions and unique needs. Robinson and others learned this, although some brokers with less scale came under financial stress after the market cooled post-pandemic and fell by the wayside. As a result, the number of active freight brokers has declined by nearly 17% over the last 2 years. We're now leaning into the strength of our people in customer and carrier-facing roles while using generative AI and other innovations to automate operational task. This is enabling our people to spend more time on value-added services, such as exception management, relationship management and solutioning. We're reengaging with SMB customer segments and recapture lost market share. And we're targeting higher wallet share in certain verticals where we have a unique solution set that enables us to win. And we're strengthening our operational rigor, discipline and agility with a new lean operating model. In short, we are learning from the past and adapting to meet the evolving market needs of the future. During the diagnosis that I mentioned, we found opportunities for improvement by getting hear me, fit, fast and focused. Fit, fast and focused. Our costs had grown too much during the pandemic, we needed to get fit with our cost structure. While the company's tech was impressive, and better than outsiders had described, innovation needed to be faster. And I discovered that operating problems were often admired rather than solved. So we needed to get better focus. We took action to start doing things differently, deploying a new strategy and stronger execution to enable the next era of profitable growth. We stood up our new operating model in January. And it is focused on creating higher and more consistent level of execution. Scorecard reviews that measure critical inputs on a more frequent basis. versus conducting what I call an industrial autopsy when it's too late. Identify and solving problems with a greater sense of urgency and speed. I've deployed these before. These operating models work and they're working at Robinson now. Our diagnosis drove us to the conclusion that our strategies and scorecard reviews needed to be aimed at 2 key priorities. And these are the key priorities, drive incremental operating income through market share growth and expanding our gross profit and operating margins. That's what we wake up every day and do in Robinson right now. You'll hear these reference throughout our presentation today. We're still in the early stages of implementing this operating model. In fact, I was just talking to one of you this morning, if I had to use a term of baseball, we're in a baseball city. We're about in the third inning. Make no mistake, we are executing better right now, though. And our model has been effective at identifying some key issues that we quickly attack with countermeasures to improve our performance. The results are clear. We achieved a 180 basis point year-over-year improvement in our Q3 NAST gross margin, enabled by our improved dynamic costing and pricing capabilities. There are some veterans in this room that have followed this company. And hopefully, you feel good about seeing that. Productivity improvements, both in NAST and Global Forwarding that are on track to increase by more than 30% over a 2-year period. And it all adds up to a 500 basis point year-over-year improvement in our year-to-date adjusted operating margin. I'm pleased with how this team is embracing and adapting to the new operating model. But what I'm really excited about is that we have so much additional runway for improvement. You're going to hear more about that today as we lay out an exciting path for this business. In regard to the industry that we operate in., we believe that North American freight brokerage is a great place to be. We are in an industry with longevity and a consistent history of growth. Although the bare case is that asset-based providers are taking share from brokers, I'm a data person. The actual data doesn't support that thesis. Brokerage has consistently been serving more and more of the for-hire market for over 20 years. As an asset-light provider, we don't have to worry about making sure our fixed assets are being utilized, but rather we can optimize the use of our carrier network to provide the best combination of price and service for our customers. That focus on being an asset-light provider not only provides us with the ability to respond to changing market conditions, but it allows us to deliver healthy returns to our shareholders as well. So brokerage isn't going away. It's continuing to move up and to the right. We will continue to deliver significant value to our 2-sided marketplace by aggregating a very fragmented market for our customers and carriers, which is impossible for them to do at our scale. We have the largest network for our customers and carriers to benefit from. But unlike many other brokers, we don't limit ourselves to the portion of the market that is typically viewed as available just to brokers. We have the ability to show up like an asset with our robust services such as drop trailer and warehousing. And you'll hear more about our ability to leverage those capabilities to grow faster than a brokerage industry itself. We continue to win with our scale and to further solidify our market-leading position. You should feel good about C.H. Robinson's place in this growing industry. While we have the advantage of a best-in-class global suite of services, we are driving focus on our 4 core modes where our value proposition is the strongest. We made some decisions in 2024 that will improve our focus on these core modes, such as discontinuing our small parcel service and we had to sell our European Surface Transportation business. And recently, we announced our C.H. Robinson Managed Solutions offering, which I personally feel really good about, which brings our full tech stack to bear to drive value for our customers like no one else can and shape the future of logistics through our enhanced TMS, freight optimization capabilities and the deployment of automation and GenAI solutions are going to be deployed at scale for our customers. We're doing it. Across the core modes, we have a full portfolio of services to meet our customers, complex supply chain challenges from capabilities to handle cross-border, drop trailer, flatbed or temperature-controlled shipments to providing retail consolidation, port services such as customs, drayage and transloading and end-to-end visibility for shipments. This is the company that does it all, one-stop shop or as they told me when I first started, you call, we haul, and we have a delivery model that leverages the expertise of our people and empowers them to win with cutting edge tools. So what does this all mean? It means we have the breadth of solutions and the strategic focus to show up in a way that not only delivers extraordinary value to our customers, but that also drives growth and profitability expansion for our shareholders over time. Our success is fueled by the tenets of our customer promise, which enables us to deliver an exceptional customer experience like no one else can through our combination of unmatched expertise, unrivaled scale and tailored solutions. You'll hear more throughout today's presentation about how we deliver that customer promise directly from the mouth of our customers. But if there's a common theme to listen for in those testimonials, it's this. Supply chain management is becoming more complex. And this complexity requires a partner like Robinson, that's why I'm so confident in the future of this company and excited about the new capabilities we are delivering to serve our customers. And speaking of our customers, let me briefly remind you who we're talking about. We deliver on our customer promise every day for the world's largest multinationals that you see here as well as for a long tail of small businesses that value the services and attention that we can provide. We're so proud to serve the marquee names that you see on this slide. The global corporations whose brands have become so ubiquitous in our everyday lives. What we're just as proud to serve, the smaller companies whose names you might not know, but who play an essential role empowering global commerce. Simply put, our customers are the global economy, and we're committed to serving them with excellence every day. So let's talk about why. Customers choose Robinson, and why we think we'll continue to win and take share in the marketplace. It's important to note that our many competitive advantages not only help us serve our customers and win every day, but these competitive advantages are sustainable and will continue to help fuel our growth and success. These include having in-depth knowledge about our customers' business. The deep expertise of our people within our 4 core modes. We have the greatest logisticians in the world, period. Our unrivaled scale enables us to provide the best value proposition to our customers and carriers. We're driving a relationship focus and partner-based model that works backwards. We're providing cutting-edge tools to our customers, carriers and employees to enable a seamless experience, and we have a proven track record of supporting our customers' sustainability objectives. When you put all these together, we believe we have an unrivaled value proposition. Now let's shift our attention to our strategy and talk about where we're going from here. At the end of 2023, we developed a clear strategy for delivering premium shareholder value by growing market share and expanding operating margins. And along with that, we set an operating income target for 2026. Now a lot of you would like for me to just say what that is right now, I'm sure. But Damon will share this with you later today, but it's based on the pillars that you see here. We've begun to deliver on our strategy by building on the great foundation that I mentioned continuing to implement an operating model that's enabling us to execute with greater discipline and to innovate with faster clock speed. Supporting our talent with clear objectives that we can act on in a fit, fast and focused way and arming our talent, our customers and our carriers with innovative tools that make their lives easier and deliver greater value. All of this comes together in this strategic framework, which we are going to unpack throughout our time today. This framework guides our priorities and decision making providing clear direction to our entire organization and hopefully provides clear direction to you as you make decisions on investments. You'll see this slide several times today. So let me take a minute to briefly touch on each of the elements you see here before others take you deeper on each of these. We'll discuss our strategies to ignite growth in our core engines by recapturing SMB volume, targeting specific growth verticals, expanding our total addressable market. and moving up the value stack by providing targeted capabilities and by expanding in targeted lanes for global forwarding. Michael and Mike will dive deeper into these during the second hour, but what I want you to hear from me is this. We have a clear strategy to outgrow the market by focusing on areas where we have a compelling value proposition and a unique right to win, all tied to our core growth engine. Secondly, we are improving our cost base and our margin profile. While we execute on our growth initiatives, this part of our strategy focuses on controlling costs and driving operating leverage to strengthen profitability, which will refute another bear case on Robinson. Arun will share how we'll drive higher productivity and scalability across the business by automating operational task and leveraging our growing digital capabilities, super excited about that. He'll also address our plans to expand our gross profit margins by increasing our cost to higher advantage through our unrivaled scale and growing adoption of our digital brokerage and will enhance our yield and gross profit margins by strengthening our revenue management practices and continuously improving our dynamic costing and pricing capabilities. We know that it's not enough to just grow. We have to do so profitably. Through these initiatives and our operating model discipline, we will continue to optimize our costs and improve our operating leverage. And third, we're going to capture greater portfolio synergies. Today, more than 50% of our revenues come from customers to utilize services from both NAST and Global Forwarding. We see an opportunity to increase that. As I met with customers during my first initial diagnosis phase, I was surprised about a number of times, customers said, "I didn't realize that you guys offered that service." Our One Robinson go-to-market approach will be more intentional about selling our full suite of services. While we're doing a good job of serving customers in each of our businesses today. We're excited about the potential to bring the full breadth of our solutions to bear with greater intentionality for more of our customers. Underpinning all of our initiatives are our key foundational capabilities. At Robinson, these core capabilities are a Robinson operating model and our talent, innovation and multi-horizon business strategies. You'll hear more about those from Angie and Arun shortly. We are doing things differently than the Robinson of the past. We're implementing and executing a new operating model to drive a higher and more consistent level of execution. As I mentioned before, our balance scorecards measure critical inputs on a more frequent basis versus conduction and industrial autopsy. We're just getting after it every day. With this operating model, we're getting better at being vocally self-critical and we're driving transparency and accountability on the key metrics that will lead to profitable growth. And as I said earlier, we are just getting started. While many of these changes are having a positive impact already, and you've heard us talk about those impacts on our earnings calls. Others are still being implemented or scaled in a way that will drive evergreen benefits. As I like to say, we still have a lot of grass to cut, but we are building the operational muscle to help us execute more effectively. We are also leading differently. Our senior leadership team has over 300 years of experience at some of the world's 4 most brands, including companies that have implemented lean operating models with great success. We have made some changes to the leadership team to enable our strategy. I'm proud of them, and I'm proud of where we are and where we're going. You will hear more in a minute about why we are so focused on talent and leadership development at Robinson. But let me be clear on this, I believe we have one of the most talented and experienced leadership teams in the industry. And I'm incredibly confident in this team's ability to execute on our strategy. And we have an engaged Board that is fully supportive of our new way of operating in our long-term strategy. As you can see, this is a highly experienced group of individuals. And they bring a lot of energy, enthusiasm and support for our leadership team, for which we are all grateful. I want to take this opportunity to thank them for their service and commitment to our leadership team and to our shareholders. They work hard every day. So let me close with this. I am confident in the future of this company, and then the value we are creating for shareholders today and in the years to come. I am confident in our leadership, our people, the strong foundation we are building upon and the changes we are implementing to enable us to deliver on our strategy with discipline and speed. And I'm confident that we're going to produce profitable growth and top-tier shareholder returns. I believe in this recipe for success that investing in C.H. Robinson can deliver outsized returns for your investment portfolio. Thank you for this time this morning, and thank you for your interest in C.H. Robinson. And with that, I'd like to welcome to the stage the Chief Architect of our Talent and Culture strategy, Angie Freeman.

Thank you. Hey, good morning, everybody. I'm Angie Freeman, I lead HR and ESG at Robinson, and I'm really pleased to be here with you today to talk about Robinson's exceptional people and culture. I see some familiar faces here, which is great. For more than a decade of my time at Robinson, I led Investor Relations. So it's fun to be back with our owners and the Wall Street community. So I've won a lot of hats at Robinson, and it's given me a dynamic view of the company across all of our stakeholders. And I'd like to say that I am a real-life example of the commitment that we make to our people that this is a company where you can have an exciting career with a lot of growth opportunities and the chance to learn new things. I joined Robinson shortly after our IPO. And from my vantage point, the rate that we are attacking challenges and the pace that we are capitalizing on opportunities is faster and more disciplined than I've ever seen. While a lot has changed in recent years at Robinson in our industry and in how supply chains are managed, what hasn't changed is that our people and our performance culture are at the heart of our success. Our people have earned the reputation of being the best in the industry, and our customers consistently tell us that our people and their expertise are the #1 reason they choose to work with Robinson. A wise business leader once told me that no business can outperform its people. So I'm excited to be here today to tell you how Robinson is capitalizing on our industry-leading talent advantage. Okay. You heard from Dave, and you're going to hear from the rest of our leaders today about the ways that we are doing things differently. We're arming our people with innovative tools. We're driving disciplined execution through our new operating model, and we're attacking problems with speed and at scale. And to that end, I want to share with you how we are, first, building on our industry-leading ability to find and develop great people. Second, how we're ensuring we have strong leaders with the knowledge and the expertise to lead the company into the future, and who are aligned with our shareholders. Third, how we're augmenting the strength of our people through innovative technology, a performance culture of excellence, continuous improvement and innovation and through our disciplined Robinson operating model. And finally, how we're aligning our incentives with business strategy to drive long-term profitable growth. Why does this matter on Investor Day? As you all know, we are in a very competitive industry, and it's our people and the value they create for our customers and our carriers that sets us apart. We all experienced this. We all have lots of examples from our day-to-day lives. It's the reason you love the service that you get in your favorite neighborhood restaurant that brings you back time after time, or it's the reason you avoid dealing with the cable company or that particular car dealership, an airline or even your bank, there is a stark difference in your customer experience based on the caliber of the people, their attitude, and how truly committed and empowered they are to do a great job for you. One of my favorite lines about this came from a very large Robinson customer. And he said, and this is a G-rated Investor Day, so I'll keep it clean. Your people simply have a higher give-a-blank factor than everybody else. As you can see from what our customers tell us, our people are the difference maker. They are experts, they collaborate and they energetically show up for our customers with a commitment to serve, and that brings our customers back year after year because they trust our people to make their supply chains perform. So to ground our conversation about talent, here's a snapshot of some key data points about our people. We have 14,000 employees in 37 countries around the world. Across that diverse global footprint, we speak 80 languages and encompass 4 generations in the workplace. The composition of our workforce reflects and supports the diversity of the customers and carriers that we serve. Our headcount today compares to 18,000 just 2 years ago. We've reduced our headcount, but we've empowered them by eliminating waste and manual work. And through our investments in tools, streamlining our processes and GenAI, we have freed up our people focus on being experts problem solvers and innovators. And this, in turn, moves Robinson up the value stack for our customers and our carriers. In fact, while our headcount is down over 20%. The percentage of our people who are in customer or carrier-facing roles has increased 4%. We have shifted the focus of our people away from operational task work to relationships and revenue generation. A final point on this. An important part of our talent strategy continues to be that we hire many people early in their career and that we grow and we develop them. Our turnover rate continues to be lower than many of our competitors. And this tenure gives our customers real world experience and expertise. The longer a high performer stay, the more valuable they become. Many of our customers tell us that our people know more about their supply chains than their own internal teams do. And as you heard Dave say that unmatched expertise sits at the heart of our customer promise. So if there's 1 big idea to take away from my presentation today, it's this, that our people and our culture are a competitive advantage. So let's talk about how we create and sustain that advantage over time. First, as many of you who have followed us for a while now, we have a long, proven track record of hiring and developing great people. We know how to identify and grow people who are committed to winning for our customers. We attract top talent because of our reputation for supply chain expertise, our advanced technology, the career opportunities at Robinson, how we support our people and our communities and our winning culture. Second, we identify people who embody our values and who are committed and driven. People who are adaptable, like being part of a team and are innovative problem solvers. We all know people like this, right? They're the people who stand out and the energy they bring to the work, their ability to build great relationships and the people who want to win and get better every single day. Third, we grow and develop those strong performers. We are known as one of the best learning grounds for logistics. We are a great place for people early in their career and we can also offer unmatched opportunities for seasoned experts to work on complex strategic work for some of the world's largest companies. And then finally, you're going to hear a lot more about this from Arun, but we empower our employees with cutting-edge technology. And I think it's important to touch on GenAI and its impact on our talent strategy. As we continue to get fit as a company and leverage GenAI to fuel our productivity, this is a talent differentiator for Robinson, and it starts when we hire. We have candidates leverage GenAI during the interview process, which helps us identify the kind of people we want on our team, digitally native, continuous learners and innovative. Our recruiters are also using GenAI, and this has contributed to a 33% improvement in hires per recruiter per year. GenAI is changing the way we work, and it's rapidly enhancing what our people can produce. They are showing up curious and eager, and we are putting the tools in their hands as advocates. They know they can do higher level and more interesting work that is robust and meaningful and actionable at scale. When we combine all these capabilities, I am confident we are attracting the best and brightest people in our industry, and we are setting them up for success. And that will continue to differentiate Robinson in our industry. Okay, so we know that any culture is only as strong as its leaders. And that's why we have a very strategic approach to developing great leaders across Robinson. Because of our size, we can leverage our scale, our global footprint and our diverse relationships to grow highly capable and knowledgeable leaders with deep supply chain expertise. Frankly, our ability to develop great leaders is why we are known as somewhat of a leadership academy for our industry. Robinson alumni show up across the industry and on the logistics teams of many of our customers, and to us, that's a badge of honor and a proof point of our success. And while we have seated the industry with a lot of talent, we retain the best of the best. 77% of our people leaders have been with us for more than 5 years, over half have been with us for more than 10. We identify strong talent early that we believe has the potential to be a great leader. And then we have a defined success profile that illustrates what great looks like at Robinson. Things like a growth mindset, being able to translate strategy into a ruthlessly prioritized execution plan and being highly perceptive. And finally, just like we do in our business, we take a data-driven approach to leadership excellence. We have a lot of valuable data on our people and their teams, things like engagement, speed to productivity, retention of top talent and internal mobility. And we use that data to measure leadership effectiveness across our 2,100 people leaders. We leverage our unmatched scale and our performance culture to develop leaders like nobody else can. So we take our great people that we develop, we support them with strong and knowledgeable leaders and then we optimize all of that talent through our operating model, our technology tools and our culture. You've heard us talk about our operating model. Here's what this means for our people. Empowering our people with the Robinson operating model is creating a flywheel of performance and development and accountability. And this is evolving our culture to be driven by progress and disciplined execution. Our new operating model gives our people the tools and the pathway for tackling challenges with speed. They can identify ways to make our processes better and to deliver superior outcomes for our customers, and they can do that faster. As we all know, a critical part of the success of any change is ensuring that you have the culture that embraces it, attacking problems with speed is really important, but it's just one element. Exceptional service, going the extra mile, persistence, curiosity, doing the right thing and continuous improvement are also core to who we are into Robinson's culture. We are executing our talent strategy to drive our core business objectives with an engaged employee base who is eager to win. So I think we all have a favorite Charlie Munger quote, one of my favorites is, "Show me the incentive, and I'll show you the outcome." To succeed, we know we have to make sure that we have incentives that line up with our company goals and are performance based. Our incentives must reward our people for providing excellent service to our customers, for growing our market share, expanding our operating margins and reinforce an ownership mentality. Robinson's top leaders, not just NEOs, but our top leaders across the whole organization are on the same compensation plan to drive and reward enterprise performance. It is heavily weighted to rewarding outcomes. 54% of total compensation is variable and performance-based and 1/3 of total comp is in equity to align with our shareholders. For our people at the desk, the employees who work with customers and carriers and their leaders, we have changed the focus of our incentives to today being better balanced between volume and margin. Our compensation plans now are more disciplined and designed to act as a catalyst for sustainable profitable growth. We heavily promote an ownership mentality. We think that's really important across our people because we want them to be deeply invested in the company's success. In our equity program, we grant equity to about 10% of our employees according to Fidelity, which is the leading equity administrator for large companies, that is nearly twice the average. Additionally, we have a participation rate of about 20% in our employee stock purchase plan. So our internal ownership is broad and deep. From the desk to our senior most leaders, our people have clear goals and aligned incentives to drive Robinson's success. Again, why does this all matter on Investor Day. As I mentioned earlier, we are unique in our industry. We combine the best of the science of logistics through our scale, our data, our technology and our capabilities with the art of a superior differentiated customer service experience provided by our people. We are bringing together motivated people, strong leaders, a performance culture and operating model and the right incentives, and it's working. We see this in our results and in how we're recognized externally. We have our exceptional people and their hard work getting us here to thank for that. So I'll wrap up by reminding you that we truly are differentiating through talent and culture. We're doing things differently, and we're making a lot of progress. We have a clear strategy, a disciplined operating model and a culture of performance. Most importantly, we have exceptionally talented people who want to win because when it's all said and done, it really is all about our people. As a team, we are grounded in our company purpose to together, move the world forward every day. Thank you. And with that, I'll turn it over to our Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer, Arun Rajan.

Thank you, Angie, and good morning, everyone. I'm incredibly excited about my new role as Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer. Let me start by sharing a little bit about what drew me to Robinson and the logistics industry a few years ago. When I was considering a role at Robinson, I saw an industry on the brink of significant transformation full of potential for innovation. It reminded me of my journey with a multiple digital consumer platform since the advent of the internet and the explosion of technology capabilities since. These companies fundamentally disrupted their respective domains. Take Zappos, for instance, during my tenure as CTO and COO, we've revolutionized the footwear retail model and accelerated that journey following our acquisition by Amazon. Think about the complete transformation of the customer experience over the past few decades. From purchasing footwear in store in the '90s to the seamless online shopping experience today, where you can order online, try those shoes on at home and return it if it doesn't meet expectations. Similarly, during my time at Travelocity in the early 2000s, we transformed the shopping experience for travel. How many of you still pick up the phone to call a travel agent and book flights or hotels? In the '90s, this was a norm, tens of thousands of travel agents. We completely transformed the customer experience with a seamless self-serve online experience, which eventually resulted in the industry consolidating into a handful of scale technology platforms. Today, we find ourselves in the midst of a similar profound transformation in the logistics industry. By leveraging technology to its full potential, we can materially elevate the customer and carrier experience and change the underlying economics of the industry. In virtually every business to consumer segment, the past 3 decades have seen tech disruptors unseat or dramatically take share from incumbents as they change the economics of the industry. However, I see playing out quite differently in the logistics space. The complexity of this industry favors incumbents who possesses scale the information advantage and the expertise to boldly disrupt from within. With all the right pieces in place, Robinson is that incumbent that is poised to lead logistics into this new era of digital enablement. So back to when Dave asked me to step into this Chief Strategy and Innovation role, I was thrilled to take on this opportunity to share or to accelerate our collective journey into this exciting new future. So as Dave laid out, our strategy is clear: grow market share, strengthen profitability and create a future-ready Robinson. To achieve what Dave laid out, we are innovating and we're disrupting from within in 3 ways. One, we're transforming the customer and carrier experience to grow market share. Two, we're delivering business model scalability. And three, we're driving gross margin and operating margin expansion. In addition to our operating model and our industry-leading talent, innovation is a key foundational capability to deliver on all our strategic pillars. I will focus my presentation today on how innovation is powering margin expansion and getting fit with our cost base. So let's start by focusing on the mega trend that links back to how I started the conversation and how we are disrupting from within. This era of digital enablement is marked by rapidly evolving customer and carrier expectations. As they engage with the vast array of digital consumer platforms like ride share, e-commerce and travel bookings. It is also marked by an expectation that this era will improve the economics of the industry by leveraging AI, machine learning and the explosion of technology capabilities over the past few decades. To deliver on these expectations, we are setting a new bar for the industry with our digital platform that leverages proven patterns and techniques from digital consumer platforms, intersected with our scale and expert talent to transform the experience for all participants on our platform and to change the underlying economics of the industry. So what are these proven digital platform patterns that we are leveraging to lead the way. It's 3 things. First, it's about leveraging our unmatched scale and information advantage to fuel the most powerful AI and machine learning innovations in the industry. Second, it's about sophisticated algorithmic dynamic pricing and costing capabilities that enable us to expand gross margins. Third, it's about frictionless transaction execution to drive business model scalability and operating margin expansion. The final point here is related to the domain expertise of our people. As you heard from Angie and from Dave, a digital-only approach doesn't work in this industry due to the level of complexity and variation in freight characteristics that necessitate human expertise. The unmatched domain expertise of our people is key. And it's the combination of this expertise with the attributes of our digital platform that defines how we lead the industry into the future. Most importantly, all of this comes together to deliver a superior customer experience, business model scalability and margin expansion all at the same time. With that, let's jump into some tangible examples of what I just described. Let's start with how we use dynamic pricing and costing to optimize gross margins. Here are some key aspects. Our AI and machine learning algorithms are fueled by the tremendous scale of our digitized transactions. And these algorithms dynamically adjust to supply and demand signals in our digital channels. As an example, we make over 100,000 dynamic costing changes per day. Our massively scalable dynamic pricing and costing capabilities generate over 700,000 customer quotes per day and initiate over 1 million digital negotiations per month. Our people or expert humans in the loop continuously improve our algorithms and cover blind spots of the technology. This all comes together to optimize profitability via real-time yield management. So why does this all matter? First, it's about a superior customer experience by delivering market competitive pricing and fast response times. And it's about gross margin expansion, like the 180 basis point improvement that Dave described earlier. Now let me share a video that shows the sophistication and scale of our costing and pricing models. [Presentation]

So in addition to improving gross margins, the advanced capabilities you just saw on the video enables us to respond to market changes faster and with greater intelligence to capture more demand. Now let's shift to what we're doing to generate evergreen productivity improvement and scalability, which enables us to expand operating leverage and operating margins. Across the quote-to-cash life cycle of an order, we are continuing to automate tasks that were previously performed manually. This provides a better and more uniform experience for our customers and for our carriers. It also creates business model scalability, thereby enabling us to decouple headcount growth from volume growth and to create greater operating leverage. One of the key technologies that has unlocked further productivity gains is GenAI. We're not just talking about GenAI internally, and we're not using consultants to implement an GenAI. We're using our own engineers to adapt GenAI for our use cases. The technology is in our products, and being actively scaled across several processes and as we recently announced. Here are some data points around automation and GenAI across the quote-to-cash life cycle, that serve as inputs to the greater than 30% improvement in NAST productivity that we have delivered over the course of 2023 and 2024. GenAI now processes more than 10,000 quotes per day. More than 85% of our order tenders are now automated after utilizing GenAI to automate orders that are tendered via e-mail. Our automation -- 50% of our automation appointments are automated. Approximately 53% of our carrier bookings are automated. We get over 1 billion automated tracking updates from carriers per year. All of this innovation powers a superior customer experience while creating operating leverage, like the 500 basis point improvement that Dave mentioned earlier. Now let's watch a video that shows how we're using GenAI in our order tender process. Remember that this is just 1 input or proof point in the automation of the quote-to-cash life cycle. [Presentation]

So as you just saw, through the use of GenAI, we're reducing the need for a person to toggle between screens and spend a significant amount of time manually entering data. This technology has enabled us to automate that process and reduce the order processing time by over 80%. Now this is only one example of how we're using GenAI in the order life cycle. We're also applying getting other processes such as customer quoting, appointment scheduling and in-transit tracking. This technology will enable us to further improve productivity and expand operating leverage and operating margins. While other companies are using GenAI for simple data queries or chatbots, we are harnessing the power of GenAI to create tangible value for our customers and for workflows in our business. In fact, you may have seen this work featured at the recent Microsoft Ignite Conference and on Microsoft's website as an example of real GenAI innovation impact. Now this is exciting because it continues to validate the impact of our work while also driving engagement with customers eager to take advantage of the benefits of GenAI in their supply chains. So I opened by talking about how excited I am about my new role as we lead the industry into the future. So in addition to all the innovation I just talked about, I'm excited about my expanded focus in a few key areas. First, implementing a long-term multi-horizon strategy for the company. The strategy we are talking to you about today is Horizon 1, which takes us to 2026. We are already looking beyond Horizon 1 to Horizon 2, which is 3 to 7 years out and Horizon 3, which is 7-plus years out to form a clear point of view around the long-term trends that we're working backwards from to actively evolve and adapt our strategy. Second, growth has become a major focus in my new role. By identifying and prioritizing investments in high-growth horizontal capabilities that will enable us to open up new addressable markets and increased conversion of addressable markets to revenue. Third, a greater focus on the One Robinson approach, like the recent announcement related to our managed solutions go-forward strategy. Working backwards from Horizons 2 and 3, we are intentionally making managed solutions, a key enterprise capability that enables us to solve complex customer supply chain problems and move us up the value stack. And finally, as I've described at length today, we are boldly disrupting from within and innovating. You will see me elevate my focus in this context. So to sum up, our strategy is clear: grow market share, strengthen profitability and create a future-ready Robinson. To deliver on our strategy, we're innovating and disrupting from within by doing the following 3 things: transforming the customer and carrier experience to drive growth, delivering business model scalability and driving gross margin and operating margin expansion all 3 at once. I'm incredibly excited about the path that we're on as we lead the logistics industry into the future. Thank you for your time today. We hope you are as excited as I am about the future, and I look forward to speaking with all of you throughout the day. As I leave the stage and welcome Chuck back, I'd like to share the perspective of one of our carriers who are a vital part of the 2-sided marketplace that we serve. Thank you. [Presentation]

We'll take a short 15-minute break now, and I would ask everybody to be back by 10:20. Thanks. [Break]

All right, everyone. We're going to get restarted here. Welcome back from the break. We have 3 more speakers for you this morning, and then we'll have some time for Q&A. Next up on the stage is Michael Castagnetto, the President of our North American Surface Transportation business. But before he comes up, we'd like to share a short video from one of our valued customers. [Presentation]

Good morning. What a great way to be brought on stage by credible customer target. Our teams combined to execute some of the most complex and unique solutions in the retail marketplace. And I want to thank both the Target team, but especially our team from C.H. Robinson for the incredible work they do every day. My name is Michael Castagnetto. I'm the President of our North American Surface Transportation business. And like Angie, I'm finishing up my 27th year at C.H. Robinson. I've been lucky to see us grow to be the industry leader in the 3PL marketplace. But I've also seen where we've struggled and felt the way to being that industry leader with a target on our back. Through these years of perspective, I'm convinced that the energy, focus and expectations that Dave and the senior leadership team are setting is clearly raising the bar. And I'm proud to say that the accountability discipline and execution, measured and track through our operating model is resulting in better clock speed, improved adoption and increased results more effectively than any other time in my long tenure at C.H. Robinson. So let's take a few seconds to go over the key messages I want you to hear about our NAST business today. First, our industry leadership position is driven by relationships and deep expertise, supplemented by the industry-leading technology. Second, our unrivaled scale is not just in shipments. You've heard it throughout our presentations. It's also data and information that leads to tailored solutions for both our customers and carriers. Third, we're going to talk about driving growth, both about our market share in traditional brokerage but also about us how we participate in parts of the market that is traditionally viewed as being reserved for asset-based providers. And finally, reiterating some of Arun's key areas, we will cover how we will expand our already industry-leading operating margins by optimizing our cost to serve through digitization and productivity. So let's repeat some of the stage setting that Dave did before because I want to make sure you understand. We are clearly the market leader in North American brokerage with over 50,000 shipments per day and the largest truckload network in North America. More importantly, we have the most freight to offer that network of carriers. Our LTL business is well over $3 billion, and our drop trailer business is nearing $1 billion, making us the fourth largest provider in the marketplace. All of this is supported and executed by industry-leading talent and tech. From a market share perspective, we are 1.5x larger than the nearest competitor. While we're proud of that industry position, we also recognize that we lost share between 2018 and 2022, and some of it was due to some poor decisions or execution on our part. The small and medium business segment or SMB is a primary example of a core constituency where we pushed a solution that our customers were neither ready for nor do they want. But we've learned from this. And we're leaning back as Dave and Angie have mentioned into our best asset, our people, and we are closing this gap. Our ability to get the balance of people and tech right the human in the loop while still leveraging our scale and size to compete effectively in any market condition. We'll get our market share going up, both in this key segment, but overall. Not only do we have an opportunity to retake share in our current space, but we see significant opportunities to expand into addressable markets over time. The for-hire trucking market continues to be a sizable $400 billion marketplace. Within that market, brokerage continues to garner a higher percentage. Through the strong value propositions that Dave mentioned, we are confident that brokerage will continue to grow in its share of the for-hire market. But we're also reinforcing our leadership position where we deliver flexibility of solutions at unrivaled scale with unmatched expertise and cutting-edge technology. However, brokerage only accounts for 1/3 of the for-hire market. And over the next few slides, I'll walk you through several examples of how we're attacking different segments of the brokerage market, but also how we're moving into parts of the market that's previously been considered reserved for asset-based providers. Put simply, we're going to cover how are we going to grow market share in our current space, but also how do we expand the market in which we get access and deliver our industry-leading capabilities. As Dave and Arun have both covered, our disciplined operating model is focused on increasing our operating margins by growing market share and expanding our margins at both the top and bottom line. I'm going to spend some time on the first strategic pillar, which is pointed at continuing to grow market share in our 4 core modes. However, as we dive deeper, you'll see a direct connection between how our operating model, combined with our industry-leading talent, creates a clear opportunity for us to not only ignite growth now and into the future, but to expand margins at both the top and bottom line. One of our highest priorities as we focus on igniting growth in our core business is to recapture market share in our small and medium business segment. I'm going to walk you through some of the more complex solutions that we offer later, but this is about getting after traditional daily hustle brokerage. This is core to our DNA, and we are really good at it. But admittedly, as I mentioned earlier, this is a segment where we lost focus during the area of digital disruptors as we protected our share with our large enterprise customers. Positively, we know the playbook on how to win these customers back, add new customers to our portfolio, deliver the highest level of service in the marketplace and grow with these customers. Put simply, we're going to roll up our sleeves and we're going to get after it. And as you can see in the numbers, it's working. We're also supporting that team by eliminating operational tasks with automation and AI. We're enabling our people to focus on the things and spend their time that their customers value. Things like matching customer-specific pricing to the characteristics of their load and their business with our industry-leading costing and pricing engine. All of this results in industry-leading cost to serve in a very competitive marketplace. This customer group also historically delivers a higher average margin in what is predominantly a transactional space. This gives us the ability to generate higher returns. Let's now hear directly from a small and medium business customer on why Robinson is the right provider for them. [Presentation]

So thank you to the team at Atlantic track and our brokerage sales teams overall. Momentum is a really great thing, and we have it in this space, and we're not giving it back. So let's shift to moving up the value stack and delivering customer-specific tailored solutions. Our NAST business has broad capabilities and there are specific verticals that are highly aligned to our value propositions. Retail, automotive, health care, energy. These verticals have complex high reliance on inventory supply chains. They're multimodal. They're multi-temperature. Consolidation services all come into play. And within each of these verticals, there are specific needs that C.H. Robinson is uniquely qualified to solve and deliver. More importantly, these verticals represent a large portion of the total addressable market that we discussed earlier in the for-hire market. These examples demonstrate how our capabilities, combined with our expertise, create a unique value proposition for our customers. We're meeting our customers in their language, in their supply chain. And together, we're building robust and continuously improving supply chain solutions. The takeaway from this slide is that we're picking our spots. We're pursuing growth in areas where we have a unique right to win. And as we do so, we are confident that we'll be able to continue to take share but also deliver profitable growth for our shareholders. In addition to growing our market share within brokerage, our strategy includes leveraging our expertise and capabilities to expand beyond the total addressable market of traditional brokerage. For example, drop trailer is an area that's traditionally been reserved for asset-based providers. However, our unique ability to combine C.H. Robinson trailers, we have over 2,000 of our own with unique POWER + programs and our key carrier partners gives us a pool of over 10,000 trailers and has allowed us to grow to be almost $1 billion in annual sales and the fourth largest provider in the marketplace. We're leaning aggressively into this space, which represents over half of the $400 billion for-hire market. Another services that maximizes our scale and expertise is our LTL consolidation in warehousing, where we offer industry-leading capabilities and infrastructure. This mode combines common core carrier offerings with tailored solutions across everything from temp control to final mile to reverse logistics, all delivered through our hub-and-spoke tailored solution. Our cross-border solutions are meeting our customers in Mexico and Canada and their ongoing near-shoring efforts. We provide our customers with the scale, speed and service that they need to keep their cross-border freight moving and in many cases, operating in a just-in-time environment. To give you a sense of our scale, 1 out of every truck heading north from Mexico into the U.S. is touched by C.H. Robinson. We have over 1.5 million square feet of cross-dock and warehousing space along the border. And we are super proud of the teams in both Mexico and Canada for all the work they do for us. We also recently announced our next generation of logistics management through C.H. Robinson managed solutions. Through this offering, we're meeting customers where and how they want to buy, tailored customer-centric solutions that provide the highest value for them. This offering solves a growing gap in the marketplace that none of our competition can match. It unlocks access for companies of all sizes to the full breadth of solution that C.H. Robinson offers, combining that with end-to-end visibility through one seamless AI-enhanced global technology platform. This new go-to-market strategy ensures optimal ROI for our customers that no other company can match. All of these capabilities and services allow us to show up like an asset, and it allows us to compete in high-growth adjacencies while maintaining our asset-light model. While we're focused on capturing scale and expanding our addressable market. We also recognize that we have to deliver profitable growth. A big part of that process is delivering on our strategy to reset our cost base and our margin profile. I do want to point out with the growth strategies we discussed, we do not intend to cost cut our way to prosperity. Rather, we want to grow and better leverage the industry-leading cost structure that we have. We're going to maximize our growth opportunities, and we're going to drive both top and bottom line growth. As we cascade the new operating model further into the organization, we'll continue to execute with greater discipline. Our costing, pricing and expense management will drive productivity and scalability and ultimately operating leverage. As Angie described, we deliver our services to the industry's very best people, and we're amplifying their supply chain expertise with industry-leading technology that harnesses their scale and information advantage. This is coming to life in the pace and the quality of the data that we provide our people every day, allowing them to make decisions faster, more frequently and with more information. By utilizing our tech and automation, we've been able to reduce manual tasks. We're driving further efficiency into our model. And with productivity improvements of greater than 30% over the period of 2023 and 2024. Combined with everything that you've heard today from Arun, Dave and Angie, we are excited about our ability to improve our yields and gross margins, and we are poised to deliver better profitability and get back to our mid-cycle NAST operating margin target of 40%. Now let's shift to our third strategic pillar. Our portfolio synergies allow us to provide differentiated value versus the competition. We can solve problems only we can address, and we can meet customers from a global and a local perspective. By taking a portfolio view, by looking at Robinson Fresh, a global forwarding, by bringing our new managed solutions offering to market. We're identifying opportunities where we will provide increased value for our customers and drive additional volume to our core modes. Before my presentation, you heard from Target about our ability to provide premium service and customer value across their retail supply chain. This is one of the many examples where we are the only provider who could have met them with the tailored solution they needed at the speed in which they needed it to solve a complex problem that was out of their control. Working with our colleagues in Robinson Fresh, the combination of our unique portfolio of services, our deep customer understanding and the expertise and service level delivered by our employees enabled us to meet their needs, like no one else could. Similarly, you're going to hear shortly from an automotive customer that chooses us because of the tailored solutions we offer in NAST, but it's also because of our integration with our Global Forwarding division. The value we are unlocking for our customers and for Robinson, it's unique, and it's differentiated. And only Robinson is able to bring this to bear across the industry. As Dave covered at the very start, we are laser-focused on growing market share and expanding margins while we are going to deliver higher highs and higher lows regardless of the cycle. We are delivering on this expectation right now, and we will continue to do so into the future. We're capitalizing on our strong relationships and deep expertise, leaning back into the strength of our people and we're amplifying those folks with improved technology. We're leveraging our unrivaled scale, data and information to deliver tailored solutions and a better customer experience. We're driving market share growth, both in our small medium business segment, key verticals while also expanding the addressable market in which we get to show up like an asset and deliver other key solutions. And finally, we're enhancing our operating margins by optimizing our industry-leading cost to serve through increased digitization and productivity. If our NAST business sounds different than the past, it's because it is. And I'm extremely proud of the NAST team for the work we've done in 2024, but more importantly, for the foundation that we have set for the future. Thank you very much. I look forward to engaging with all of you during the Q&A. And before Mike Short comes up to discuss our Global Forwarding business, let's listen to why Benteler, a global automotive leader relies on Robinson for global solutions and expertise. [Presentation]

Good morning. Thank you all for being here today. Today, I'd like to show you how we are winning and taking profitable market share in the global forwarding space by bringing value to customers like Benteler. I'm Mike Short, President of the Global Forwarding division of C.H. Robinson. I've been in the industry for 27 years with all but 2 of those years with Phoenix International and subsequently bought by C.H. Robinson in late 2012. Since joining Robinson, I have witnessed many changes across this organization and in the industry, but none as rapid and as effective as those implemented by our new leadership team. We have a lot to be excited about, and I hope that you share that enthusiasm by the end of today. One of the things I wanted to highlight that Chuck had said earlier, we have not done an Investor Day since 2017. I was at that Investor Day. And I will -- I'm telling you today, things are different. It's -- we're -- what's being presented today is different. And what we do every single day is different. I can attest to that. Today, I'll be covering the following topics that are most important to our success. Number one, market share growth. C.H. Robinson's Global Forwarding has consistently driven growth across air, ocean and customs. We're determined to maintain this trajectory by capitalizing on the current tailwinds of a growing market. And #2, we're building on our strengths by tapping into our vast scale, our deep understanding of our customers' supply chain needs, our technology expertise and commitment to continuous improvement. We're not just competing, we are winning. And #3, driving productivity and scalability. We're not -- we're using automation, the new lean operating model and continuous improvement to improve our productivity, scalability and operating leverage. And #4, One Robinson strategy. We are harnessing the power of One Robinson to capture growth across verticals and trade lanes. For those less familiar with our Global Forwarding business, here are some key facts. We executed approximately 6,000 ocean and air shipments every single day. We're serving 25,000 active customers who trust us to solve their most complex supply chain challenges. In the global ocean market, we proudly rank among the top 5 non-vessel operating common carriers in the world. As a leader, we have scale in the most largest and most important trade lanes in the world. Having scale across multiple products and trade lanes allows our customers to navigate their increasingly complex global supply chains and ongoing disruptions from natural disasters to port strikes and wars. Our objective is to move freight around the world with flexibility and ease. This slide shows the proof of what is possible with the right growth strategies in place. Since C.H. Robinson acquired Phoenix International in 2012, we have grown the business more than fourfold. Here are some key statistics. Our volume has grown almost 3x since 2012. Organically, we've achieved a steady 5.3% growth rate. When you factor in acquisitions, that number jumps to 10%. We've increased our annual gross profit from $150 million in 2012 to nearly $700 million in 2023. Our operating profit has increased from $10 million in 2012 to $108 million in 2023, and we will be over $200 million in 2024. We're also on track to reach our highest [indiscernible] count levels to date, which is a very exciting milestone. And we've done that with -- we've also reduced our headcount over the last year. So we're proud of this growth but we know we can do better by being fit, fast and focused. During the pandemic, our costs surged as our teams across the globe worked hard to uphold our exceptional service and unprecedented challenges. However, we didn't reduce these costs as quickly as we should have when the market normalized. Now we're refocusing on disciplined execution, and we're also focusing on strict cost controls. With our new operating model, we feel confident that we can deliver higher value and exceptional service to our customers while expanding margins and taking market share. So looking at the future of our division, we see a lot of opportunities for sustained market share growth. We're looking into vertical-centric solutions tailored to industry-specific needs. We have robust capabilities that support near-shoring and reshoring trends. And we're doing ongoing enhancements to our customers' experience that set us apart. We also have strategic expansion into key trade lanes that drive our success. So circling back to the strategy slide. These same strategic pillars apply to Global Forwarding as it does the rest of the business. I'm going to provide more specifics around each of these 3 pillars in just a minute. But I want to repeat what you've heard from Dave and others today. This is a new Robinson. We are operating differently, and we are delivering different results, and that is just as true in Global Forwarding as it is in any other part of the business. Our robust operating model and disciplined execution are driving significant improvements regardless of market conditions. We're instilling a culture of accountability, discipline and execution. And that goes throughout all of our teams, and we look forward to continuing to implement that new technology in alignment with our enterprise innovation strategy to further accelerate this over time. We are tackling challenges with unmatched speed and delivering sustainable enhancements to the customer experience to exceed their expectations. And all of that leaves us incredibly excited about the future of this organization. So with that, let's spend a minute on the first pillar of our strategy, igniting growth in our core engines. Our competitive advantages have positioned us to not only grow market share but to continue to lead in the future. First, we have unmatched scale in some key markets, reinforced by strong relationships with our core carriers, empowered by a robust global procurement team. Second, we delivered differentiated services and solutions tailored to meet our customers' complex needs as proven by our recent success with Robert Bosch, in Germany. Bosch faced the challenge of managing more than 800 suppliers across Europe for automotive parts supplied to 14 factories in the U.S. Our teams developed a unique ocean consolidation program for the Transatlantic westbound route, enabling them to save time and money throughout a collaborative planning approach. And our commitment to consistent execution and continuous improvement has only strengthened this partnership. This success in the U.S. led Bosch to award us a similar program for 1,000 shipments per month into their 9 plants in Mexico. Third, our blend of proprietary and third-party technology validated by industry experts allows us to adapt to evolving market demands and deliver impactful solutions. And finally, our industry-leading talent navigates complex supply chain challenges with expertise, fostering strong, lasting customer relationships across borders and regulations. We believe this unique combination of advantages will allow us to continue to capture share as we seek to profitably grow this business going forward. As part of our pillar to ignite growth in our core modes, we are deploying a proven playbook to expand into key trade lanes to aggressively pursue growth opportunities. by leveraging our expertise to deliver customized solutions that meet the unique needs of our customers while guiding them into new regions with confidence. We see particularly robust opportunities in lanes involving Southeast Asia and India. We're recognizing that these lanes serve as a backbone for supply chains that are heavily reliant on Asian manufactured goods. To win in this space, we are maximizing our existing sales network to broaden our global reach while maintaining strict cost control, really intensifying our efforts where they count the most. We have a proven playbook to drive repeatable process through shifting market dynamics, and we're excited about the growth potential from our lane expansion initiatives. And as you heard from Dave and others today, we recognize that we must not only grow, but we need to grow profitably. And we're going to do that by prudently managing our expenses. As we think about improving our cost base and margin profile, the Global Forwarding division is achieving impressive productivity that allows for scalability positioning us for sustained growth and efficiency. There is a big difference in how we manage this business now that is fueling our performance. In 2023, we achieved a 20% productivity improvement. And throughout the first 3 quarters of 2024, we've delivered an additional 16% improvement. How? First by harnessing the power of automation and committing ourselves to improvement with a long runway of enhancements on the horizon. Second, we are lowering our cost to serve. Our cost to execute a shipment has decreased 12% since 2023, while we reached record internal quality in Net Promoter Scores. This equates to millions of dollars of savings. Our disciplined operating model allows us to closely monitor costs and uncover arbitrage opportunities and boost our operating leverage. Third, by centralizing procurement and pricing strategies, we've significantly boosted yield and revenue management. And fourth, we focus on products that need expertise and scale, especially by expanding our valuable hard-to-replicate ocean and air gateways. We're also strengthening our vertical expertise and our solutions that all of these have high barriers to entry. So while I could spend a lot of time diving deeper into these opportunities, here's the one thing that I'd like you to remember. The Global Forwarding business has significant opportunities to not only grow but to expand operating leverage and to grow profitably. And that's exactly what we intend to do. And that brings us to the third party -- third pillar of our strategy, capturing portfolio synergies. We're leaning into the One Robinson go-to-market strategy to drive volume for our 4 core modes. Our integrated approach to selling our full suite of services and seamless execution between global forwarding and NAST is resulting in greater cross-selling. Over the past decade, on average, of 20% of Global Forwarding new AGP has originated from NAST customers annually. Those same opportunities exist for NAST as well. We are harnessing the power of One Robinson to build upon NAST relationships and highlight our unique forwarding capabilities. And we're delivering tailored integrated services that address our customers' specific needs in key trade lanes and verticals across the globe. In a few minutes, you'll hear from one of our customers about the value that we can bring when we show up as One Robinson in the marketplace. But for now, remember this, the combined power of NAST and Global Forwarding is allowing us to build something truly distinctive in the market that we believe will continue to propel our growth. Our 3 strategic pillars are enabled by our foundational capabilities, which we are strengthening to become a leader in global supply chain business intelligence. Our operating model is enhancing our focus on driving quality, growth, productivity and effective cost management. We're improving the customer experience by increasing operational quality and consistency. And as you heard from Arun, we are capitalizing on technology to streamline tasks and to develop our team skills. These enhancements open opportunities to expand our presence in Europe grow our airfreight services and simplify customer interactions through technology that increases business intelligence and predictive capabilities. While these capabilities may seem basic, they are absolutely essential to profitably growing our business. As I said at the beginning of my remarks, while I've seen a lot of change in my 27 years in this business, none have been as rapid and impactful as what we're seeing at Robinson today. In summary, our focus is on continuing to deliver market share growth, continuous improvement in all aspects of the customer experience and our productivity and using the scale of One Robinson to drive profitable growth. We have an established playbook, and that established playbook is for growth. And we're replicating this playbook across growing verticals and high potential trade lanes, giving us the confidence in our ability to sustain our market share gains. By continuing to implement the new operating model and drive continuous improvement through technology enablement, we can see the path toward our 30% operating margin target. So thank you for your time and attention today. As I leave the stage, I would like to share a great example of our One Robinson strategy in action. Henry Schein is a worldwide distributor of medical and dental supplies with a presence in 33 countries. And they require a provider with scale across air, ocean, LTL, and truckload. So before Damon comes on to provide an update on our financial outlook, let's listen to why Robinson is a provider they can rely on. [Presentation]

Thank you. I love that video and what it says about the unique capabilities that exist across both our NAST and Global Forwarding segments. So before I get started and at the risk of complete distraction, the finance materials will be posted to our website at 11 a.m. I hope through these customer testimonials and through our comments that you are starting to recognize the power of the Robinson franchise. And I want to thank all of our customers who took time out of their busy schedules to help us highlight the important role that Robinson plays in their businesses. Thank you for joining us here today. For those of you I have not met yet, my name is Damon Lee, and I am the CFO of C.H. Robinson. I am excited to be part of such a great company and to partner with Dave and the SLT on the next chapter of our journey. I thought I would share with you why I am here, why I decided to come to C.H. Robinson for the next chapter of my career. First, I found the strategy to be compelling. Second, the core capabilities of the company are solid. And lastly, I saw a team with conviction about what game we are playing and how we will win. So when you take those items, plus my experience and skill set related to operational excellence and transformation I thought what a great match. I have been part of transformations and the implementation of lean operating models at previous companies such as GE and Eaton. Those companies had a strong core like Robinson, and I see a lot of similarities between those journeys and what we are doing here. Similar to those examples, we needed to run the company better with a disciplined operating model and lean conviction. And I'm excited about the tremendous potential to generate outsized growth and to enhance shareholder value. You have heard a lot today about pursuing a fully aligned strategy that drives market share growth and operating margin expansion. Let me repeat that because it's important. Driving market share growth and operating margin expansion. We are taking a proactive approach, not reactive to our strategy to take control of our destiny and drive improved results throughout market cycles. The execution of our strategy will be enabled in part by the accountability, rigor and discipline that our operating model demands. The combination of our people, our innovation and our cutting-edge technology will drive incremental value for our customers and carriers, better pricing and sourcing yields and productivity improvements that will continue to decouple headcount growth from volume growth, which will continue to improve our operating leverage. The strength of our balance sheet and our cash flow generation is a differentiator that enables us to invest throughout market cycles, and our disciplined approach to capital allocation enhances value creation for our shareholders with high ROI initiatives within the 4 walls of Robinson we are currently prioritizing organic opportunities over M&A. Before we get to our financial outlook, let's take a quick look back at the last 5 years. You can see from the 5-year averages of our financial performance that our asset-light business model has the ability to generate solid results through the freight cycles and during a period of unprecedented change. But there are certainly opportunities for improvement. As Dave and Mike Short mentioned, our cost grew too much during the pandemic, and we needed to get fit with our cost structure. And at times, the company's productivity gains were given back. We are now taking an evergreen approach to productivity with a focus on being fit throughout market cycles. With greater discipline and more consistent execution, we will achieve our operating margin targets and deliver higher highs and higher lows over the course of market cycles. You have seen this slide several times today. So I'm sure you're starting to recognize how committed we are to the strategy. As I and others have mentioned, our strategies are aimed at driving incremental operating income through market share growth and expanding operating margins. Let's recap how we plan to capture these. As you have heard from both Michael and Mike, we are committed to igniting growth in both NAST and Global Forwarding. We have growth opportunities where we expect to redeploy known playbooks to recapture market share with small and medium businesses in NAST, and to expand into targeted trade lanes in Global 40. In both businesses, we will leverage and enhance our unique capabilities to offer solutions that are aligned to the needs of verticals that we are targeting for profitable growth. We will expand our total addressable market outside of traditional brokerage by leveraging our capability to deliver key solutions. And we will enhance our go-to-market approach to sell our full suite of services with seamless execution. Simply put, we are investing in areas where we believe our unique right to win will enable us to outgrow the market and capture additional market share. Likewise, we have a number of initiatives in flight that are aimed at improving our gross profit margin and our operating leverage. We are doing things differently than in the past as our operating model has created more visibility to air states that we are attacking with countermeasures and faster pace. And our technology is enabling our strategy on several fronts, such as our digital brokerage, improving our cost of purchase transportation and our dynamic costing and pricing tools enabling optimization of our yield. We expect this combination of a stronger operating model and ongoing technology enhancement to deliver evergreen productivity improvements that will enhance both our gross margin and our operating margin. In fact, let me give you some proof points around that. We are already seeing the benefits of the disciplined and faster problem solving that the operating model is driving and technology that is empowering our people to act with greater speed and precision. Through the first 3 quarters of 2024, we are on track to deliver compounded improvements in our NAST and Global Forwarding productivity of greater than 30% over 2 years, measured by shipments per person per day. Our NAST gross margins have expanded 180 basis points year-over-year in a market environment that was largely unchanged. These initiatives have led to higher gross profit, while at the same time lowering our cost and thereby improving our year-to-date enterprise operating margin by 500 basis points year-over-year. Those are outstanding results. But we are in the early innings of our transformation, and there is much more opportunity for profitable growth. All of this growth and profit improvement supports a strong, healthy balance sheet. The strength of our balance sheet and our cash flow generation is a key differentiator that enables us to manage through market volatility and supply chain disruptions and to invest throughout market cycles and initiatives that fuel our growth and margin objectives. And although we were above our target leverage ratio for a short time during this elongated freight recession, we have prudently managed our cash flow and spending at the same time that earnings have improved, and we are now back within our normal long-term target range. In an industry where so many competitors are struggling financially with impacts of a prolonged freight recession, we are operating from a position of significant financial strength. What's more? You can expect us to continue to operate with discipline and to balance continued investment in our business with a healthy balance sheet and a consistent return of capital to our shareholders. And speaking of returning capital to our shareholders. Let me remind you of our very strong track record of doing just that. With our asset-light business model, the capital requirements of our business are limited. And thus, we have chosen to return significant capital to our shareholders. As such, our per share dividend has increased annually for more than 25 years, earning us the distinction of being a dividend aristocrat. Through a combination of dividends and share repurchases, we have returned 120% of our free cash flow to shareholders since 2019, while still servicing the capital requirements of the business. Again, that's a powerful reminder that size and scale really do matter when it comes to delivering strong through-cycle returns for shareholders. As we think about our capital priorities going forward, we will take a disciplined approach to capital deployment to drive value creation for our shareholders. We prioritize our investment-grade credit rating, which enables us to optimize our weighted average cost of capital. And we will continue to maintain healthy liquidity and that allows us to respond to the evolving needs of the business in an agile manner. We will focus on organic investments that will generate the highest risk-adjusted returns, and we currently have a solid pipeline of these opportunities. And while M&A isn't a big focus for us in the near-term, we will always look at opportunities to use M&A opportunistically to accelerate what we believe is a very strong organic growth strategy. We are committed to growing our dividend in line with long-term EBITDA growth. And lastly, we will take an opportunistic approach to share buybacks. Taken together, we believe this combination of capital deployment priorities will continue to deliver strong total shareholder returns. So now let's shift gears and talk more specifically about our financial expectations over the next few years. Through the execution of our strategy, including the key actions shown here and a disciplined approach enabled by our lean-based operating model, we will deliver higher highs and higher lows in our financial performance over the course of market cycles. And while some degree of cyclicality will always be inherent in our industry. We believe the investments we are making to strengthen our business will not only allow us to consistently meet the needs of our customers during periods of market volatility, but will also allow us to strengthen our market position, ultimately allowing us to deliver strong through-cycle returns for our shareholders. Let me give you an idea of what that will look like over the next few years. In terms of financial performance, we set a target to generate incremental operating income of $350 million to $450 million in 2026 compared to our 2023 results with a midpoint of $400 million. This equates to a 72% improvement over that timeframe or a 20% CAGR. Also, reiterating that our operating margin targets for NAST and Global Forwarding of 40% and 30%, respectively, while clarifying that these are mid-cycle targets, meaning that we will do better during the peak of the cycle and maybe below these targets in the trial of the cycle. This will translate into a mid-30s enterprise operating margin, again, at the midpoint of the cycle. These strong financial targets reflect the strength of the Robinson franchise and our commitment to drive profitable growth. Let's review what will enable us to achieve our 2026 operating income target. First, approximately $200 million of operating income improvement is expected for 2024, based strictly on consensus estimates. There has been a lot of really good progress on our strategic initiatives that have contributed to this. However, it's also important to understand that 2024 includes an estimated $90 million benefit from higher rates in Global Forwarding due primarily to the disruption in the Red Sea. We are not planning that these elevated rates will be in place for 2026. So as we look forward to the remaining 2 years of our financial target, let's review our market assumptions. First, the upper and the lower ends assume a range of market assumptions for 2025 and 2026 after a decline in market volumes in '24. The base case includes market growth in transportation volumes of 2.5%. The low-end scenario assumes volume growth of 0% and the upper end scenario assumes volume growth of 5%. At the low end, this results in no financial benefit. At the high end, we are estimating $100 million of net operating income benefit. And of course, the midpoint would assume $50 million of net benefit. We are also assuming that the trucking and forwarding markets will return to a certain profit per load by 2026 based purely on market dynamics. For NAST, we assume that the market will return to some semblance of balance between supply and demand and that the average profit per shipment will increase to levels similar to the pre-pandemic average in 2019. But for Global Forwarding, we assume that the addition of more vessel capacity and a resolution of certain disruptions will result in a decline or normalization in profit per shipment back to the level seen in the second half of '23. These 2 net out to an estimated headwind of $10 million in 2026 compared to $24 million. We are also -- we also call out the financial benefit that we expect to achieve from each of our major initiatives that we have discussed today, including $40 million from market share gains, $90 million from gross profit margin improvements and $90 million from sustained improvements in our cost structure. In regards to the cost structure improvements, these could show up as cost avoidance in a growth scenario or they could show up as cost reductions in the low-end scenario. These tailwinds are partially offset by $60 million of investments in our team. as we reward the talented people that fuel our progress. All of this adds up to the $350 million to $450 million of incremental growth in operating income that we expect to deliver in 2026 compared to 2023. We have made a lot of progress on these initiatives already in '24. But there's a lot of work to be done to achieve these targets. I believe we have the right strategy, the right team, the right technology and the right discipline to win and achieve these targets. As you have heard me describe, we are confident in our clear and fully aligned strategy to drive a new era of profitable growth. We will deliver margin expansion by continuing to drive our operating model and the resulting disciplined execution further into the organization. Our strong balance sheet and cash flow generation will enable us to continue investing in the initiatives we have described to fuel our profitable growth. And we will continue to leverage our disciplined approach to capital allocation to enhance value creation for our shareholders. So there is a lot of work to be done to execute this strategy. But with a disciplined approach to driving operational excellence throughout Robinson, and a specific focus on profitable growth and margin expansion, we will win. With that, I'll turn it back to Dave for closing remarks before we get into Q&A.

All right. As I promised, we've covered a lot of ground in roughly 2 hours. But let me sum up why I believe that C.H. Robinson is a good investment. We have a strong foundation to build from with the scale, expertise and technological capabilities that create a strong competitive moat. With the strategy map that we have in place, we are positioned to continue regaining market share in NAST and continue gaining share in Forwarding. And we're poised to deliver further expansion in both our gross and operating margins. Our new operating model is yielding results. I think you all see that. And we expect our execution to improve further as we continue to cascade the model and problem-solving tools deeper into the organization, something I was talking to some of you on the break. We expect to generate strong free cash flow, which will provide us with the optionality to invest in organic growth to return cash to shareholders. And if it could accelerate our strategy to consider M&A opportunities. As we execute our strategy through our operating model and deliver on our financial targets. We expect to generate top-tier investment returns for our shareholders. That concludes our formal presentation. I'd like to welcome the rest of our presenters back to the stage and we'll get set up to answer any questions that you may have. Chuck, I'll turn it over to you to moderate the Q&A session, and thank you for the engagement and being here in New York for our Investor Day, our first one in 7 years. Thank you so much.

So as we get seated here, we have a couple of people that will be running mics around. So raise your hand if you'd like to ask a question, we'll have them bring a mic to you. We're also taking questions online for those that are viewing online. So Tom Wadewitz, we'll start with you. Keep your hand up, and then keep our hands up because we've got 2 mics that are running around. And then Brian Ossenbeck, keep your hand up, so they know who to bring the mic to. Greg, if you want to bring the mic over here to Brian. Go ahead, Tom.

Yes. Great. Thank you. And thanks for the presentation and all the information. It's really helpful. I wanted to see if you could give some more perspective on how we think about that NAST, 40% operating margin, right? It sounds like you say it's kind of mid-cycle. But I don't know, is that -- are you assuming that's what you get to in '26? Just how do you think about that? And if there's any kind of mix within '25 and '26? Is that just our view on the truckload cycle that you get kind of more help if truckloads moves in '25 versus '26? And then another maybe more strategic question, how do you view being a low-cost provider? Is that an objective? And do you leverage that more to grow volume? Is that where you hit the gas? Or you say, hey, we just want balance? And we sustain an industry-leading operating margin as opposed to when we get all the productivity in, hitting the gas on volume growth. So 2 questions within that.

Yes, I'm glad you acknowledge 2 questions there, Tom. But we like the 2 very good questions. And I think we'll have Damon give you a little bit more light on your first part of your question. And then I think you're talking about our operational leverage. I'll have Mike and Arun maybe step in on that.

Sure. Thanks for the question. So look, I would just reiterate that the 40% NAST and 30% Global Forwarding margin targets, those are mid-cycle. And there's a reason why we don't want to get too granular as it relates to '26. As you saw through our strategy, we have a ton of optionality, whether that's through revenue management, through pricing yield and cost of higher yield, whether that's through further refinements of our productivity and our cost structure. And so we're really anchored on that operating income target. And the reason we don't want to give a lot more granularity beyond that is just the optionality we have. We've talked to many of you in our sessions about every day, we're trading price for margin and margin for price, right? It is a real-time environment in Robinson. And so we don't want to put any information out there that could change, right? Now the operating margin commitment, the cumulative $400 million at the midpoint. That is our commitment we will get there. But the composition of how we get there certainly is subject to change, which is why we don't guide specifically and just reference that, that 40% and 30% is mid-cycle versus any specific reference to the 2026 target.

And then on the second part, it's really getting into the low-cost provider, and that's really operational leverage that we get. And maybe you guys can go into that a little bit.

Yes, I think it's a really important thing for us to be low cost but high value and then giving our teams the ability to choose how to use that to grow the most effectively and deliver profitable growth at the bottom line. I think one of the things we've achieved over the last couple quarters is giving our team better information quicker so that they can make those decisions in a way that's going to maximize the return, both for the customer and for us. I think in the past, when we've taken that advantage, we haven't been able to turn it into volume impact or margin impact with kind of not as much control in the past that I feel we have now. And so really, we need to be able to compete in the low-margin business, and we need to be able to deliver value in the high-value business. And I think being able to meet the customer where they want to buy and how they want to buy. Our operating model and working with Arun's team is giving us the leverage, and I like that word optionality to choose how we behave in whatever scenario it is. As you saw, we have 90,000-plus customers. Their view of that question varies pretty dramatically. And I think being able to meet them where they want to be met is the most important thing for us.

Brian Ossenbeck from JPMorgan. Maybe to ask the margin question a little bit differently, just -- can you give a little more examples on the SMB share like that was obviously a big part of what changed. You're obviously growing it this year. But how far are you from where you want to be? What are you doing to get there? And is that a big part of the margin uplift that you're looking for in the next up cycle? And then just more broadly on the shift to asset base or more focus on asset base. Can you just give us some parameters in terms of what that means from an investment perspective? Is there anything different or verticals or capabilities, you might have to put some more capital work?

Yes. Thanks, Brian. Two big questions there. First one on SMB, which we smile because we're super excited about it. I go out and do gemba walks, which are go see and are really focused on going to see our teams who are out there getting it as Michael says. So we're smiling because we are definitely in early innings on where we want to be. but we like what we see so far. This is a super important segment for us on growth because, one, it's very profitable. And two, we do it very well. And our people are very excited about it. So I'll have Michael really kind of enhance that. That's his team doing it every day to really talk about that, and then we'll get at the second half of your question.

Yes. I think Dave said, we're in early innings. We're seeing good initial results, but we have a lot of runway. I think we have a lot of open green space, both in terms of recapturing customers we've done business with in the past, growing wallet share with existing customers and really expanding in what is a pretty wide breadth of customers, right, from everywhere from a small customer, maybe a couple of million dollar company to companies up to $50 million to $80 million of revenue. So I'm really excited about what we have in front of us and how we can engage them. I also think it's really important that we engage customers regardless of size if that's how they want to buy. And so sometimes we can predefine for customers how they want to buy. And I think what we're being better at is meeting those customers where and how they want to buy, whether they're a large global customer or whether they're a small and medium business. From the second part on expanding addressable market, we're being very targeted in how we address that, and the way I like to look at it is we want to see exponential benefit for any investment we make. And so when you think of our drop trailer business, we invest in trailers, but we don't move the amount of loads based on investing in one trailer, right? When we invest in one trailer, we want to get the business that you can get from having 10, 12, 15 trailers. And so that's why how do we make sure the investment we do make, we can match up with our network that we described, which is the largest network in North America and then turn that into some type of exponential market growth or load count growth. And so as we look at whether that's investing in warehousing, whether it's cross-border capabilities, drop trailer, any of the things we mentioned, we want to make sure that if we make $1 investment, that we're not getting the $1 back, right? We want to see -- and the same thing, if we're making a one load equivalent investment, we want way more than one load back. And that's how we look at it, and that's how we're going to continue to challenge ourselves. So we won't do asset-like work for the purpose of doing it. We're going to do it where it really drives exponential growth.

And just to put a period on that. Brian, going back to the SMB, when we look at our investments in what we're doing, and we've had a lot of productivity that's happened. This is a segment that we're investing in, like we're hiring. We're doing the things we need to do because this is a super part -- important part of our growth that we're doing. And just as Michael said, on the last one on addressing the asset part, we've always had these trailers. We continue to look at that. We go at it, and we're doing it to get inside the door to be able to show up like an asset and get us some of that TAM. It's a wise thing that the team is doing and very focused every day. So good 2 questions.

Ken and John.

Ken Hoexter from BofA. Again, thank you for hosting the meeting. Exciting times for first one in 7 years. Damon or Dave, I guess, your thoughts on the impact of tariffs, right, if that's a big thing coming up on trade, especially, I think as Mike mentioned, 1 in 10. You touched 1 in 10 cross-border trucks. And so that sounds like it could be a significant impact potentially. And then thoughts on the impact as spot rates go up -- begin to go up here if we're starting a new cycle, your thoughts on how the business handles that and what we should expect through the cycle for the business?

All right. Ken, good seeing you. We are consistent. 2 for 2, another 2 questions there. I think I'll do the first one and then maybe you jump in -- you guys jump in on the second part of the question. The tariffs that are hidden, and obviously, we're getting a number of those questions that we have. I'll start by this, and I think it was evident today is that this company is built for disruptions that happen in the world. And at the end of the day, Robinson moves products around the world for our customers. And we saw really, really high intense problems for our customers. This is not the first time that we've had tariffs that are -- I mean, it's not going to be the last time. I would say that we are in trenches with our customers, and we're solving their issues to do that. Whether it means a change of origin to destination, we're going to be there. Whether it means coming into the U.S. from a different port, we'll be there. We're going to be giving the advice to our customers that best suits them and solve those issues. And it doesn't matter what the tariffs are. We're going to be there to help solve our customers' problems in doing that. It doesn't mean that it's not a disruption. It just means that we're going to be there with our customers to do it, and we're built to do that. And we have a lot of people at home right now to do that every day. So from a tariff perspective, they happen, won't be the last thing to happen. We have potential port strikes to happen. We'll be there for our customers to do it. That's how we're built in order to solve those things. That's how I would really answer that. Second part, you want to take?

Yes. I think, listen, we're not immune to the market inflection, right? And when it happens, we're going to have to deal with it. I'll reference back to what you heard from us today, which is we're putting information in our people's hands faster and more effectively than we ever have. And so our question is not, are we impacted? The question is how fast can we react and get through it. And so we're constantly talking about if it took us a quarter, it's got to take us a month. And if took us a month, it's got to take us a week; a week, a day; a day, an hour. And we are working with our teams, and we're planning that now. We're doing scenario planning of what is a certain type of market inflection look like? What is a different type of market inflection look like? And how are we going to handle it? And how are we going to get that information to our people's hands as fast as possible so that, that impact to us, while real, is as short as possible, and we can turn it into an opportunity for us and our customers as quickly possible. And so we're not immune, but I feel we're in a much better position to handle it than we ever have been and that we're going to deliver really, really good information to our people and our customers so that we can deliver a solution as quick as possible and get us both growing into the rest of that cycle.

I'll just add to what Michael said. It's part of what I presented earlier is we're much more proactive than reactive now. I would say old Robinson would have been reactive to an inflection in rates and what that means to the business. As Michael went through, we're already having those discussions now. We're war gaming it out to determine what is our optionality and what are we going, right? So I think that's a clear distinction today versus yesterday.

John Chappell from Evercore ISI. Dave, I'm going to give you a little Minnesota nice here and do one question, maybe we'll improve productivity in Q&A by 50%. Arun, the question is for you. So I thought it was really interesting the horizons 1, 2 and 3 that you laid out, I assume that Horizon 1 being completed by '26 is fully baked into that '26, $350 million to $450 million of EBIT improvement. Can you give us a little bit more -- you said you've already started working on horizons 2 and 3. What do those mean specifically? Are there any numbers you can put on that? And is that really going to be focused on the continuing of igniting growth? Or is that going to be more on driving more productivity and efficiency out of the business?

Yes. So I'll start with working backwards, we work backwards from Damon's slide, right? Damon's slide has that waterfall. That's sort of a financial goal for Horizon 1. When we think about Horizon 1, and preparing for horizon 2 and 3, we say, well, what are the trends? There are sort of predictable trends and there are trends that are less predictable. Predictable trends are sort of show up in what Michael presented with the horizontals. So things like drop trailer showing up like an asset, moving up the value stack with managed solutions, showing up like an asset with a drop trailer. Those things are -- we believe those are secular trends in terms of how brokerage evolves in the long term, right, meaning customers, if you don't show up like an asset, you got to show up like an asset, you got to move up the value stack to provide solutions for complex supply chain problems that Dave described. So those are the secular trends then we say we translate that into these horizontal capabilities like managed solutions, like drop trailer that power our verticals. So that's how that translates from Horizon 2 to Horizon 1 and where it shows up is in market share growth that Damon showed in his waterfall. There are less predictable trends in horizons 2 and 3 that we're starting to prepare around, but things like AV, things like what happens with -- I would say AV is a critical point, AV/intermodal and how that plays out. We may not have -- we may have research and initial investments, but not to the extent that we have with the more predictable trends like cross-border show up like an asset value stack. Michael, would you...

No, I think that's right. And it's really about sure that we -- that Horizon 1 flows into Horizon 2 and so that we're really setting ourselves up to make sure our customer needs are met, and we're bringing them solutions before they're asking. And so I think this is something we haven't done great in the past of really challenging ourselves to look further out than next quarter, next year, and I'm really excited to work with Arun on it. But the team is laser-focused on Horizon 1 and then we -- for the first time, really, with Arun's new role, have a team that's focused on that horizon 2 and 3 to free up the different work.

Yes. This is a difference that you guys have within the company right now. And I'm glad you asked the question is that this team is expected to show up and do Horizon 1. That's the price of the mission of how you run a company, but you're obligated and you have a responsibility for horizons 2 and 3 because some of that might be for the next level of leaders who will be here. And this team has a responsibility to hand the company off to a leadership team. It might be 15 years down the road that we will look and say, I am so glad that, that team did that. And that's a different way of thinking and it's how we think now. You show up and perform today, but you have an obligation of performing for the team of tomorrow.

Jason, come to Chris next.

Thanks again for hosting this event. This is Jason Seidl from TD Cowen. How should we think about headcount out in '26 because you guys brought it down to 14,000. You talked about some growth or some customer-facing activities. And then Arun talked a lot about utilizing new technology, especially AI getting, I think, 10,000 shipments per day now looking at that. How should we look at that? And how should we look at the evolution of AI taking over sort of in the transportation space that might help you guys do more with less going forward?

Yes. AI -- I think of AI as a new tool in the toolbox. If you sort of think about automation and the history of automation in various industries, right? So you saw me talk through attributes of digital platforms. It doesn't have to be logistics, like these attributes of digital platforms in terms of AI, ML, automation of the order to cash life cycle. Those things are things we've applied. Now you've got GenAI sort of like this new layer. And I think the advantage for us now and into the future is the fact that this industry is sort of like dominated by unstructured data exchange across the life cycle of a load, across companies. And the fact that a scale player like us can now say, well, companies historically who communicated with us through API or EDI had this advantage. But now it's kind of like smaller companies who communicate with us over e-mail have this ability to be treated almost the same way with the same responsiveness that we can treat a customer with EDI or API connectivity. And I think in terms of productivity, again, I go back to Damon's slides, right? We've said we've done 15% productivity in 2023, 2024. And going into 2025 and '26 and forward, you'll start to see the operating leverage of what we've delivered in previous years showing up as we grow volume. But equally, we'll start to see -- we'll probably see single-digit productivity gains as we apply more GenAI into the mix. And again, GenAI for the sake of GenAI or any technology for the sake of any technology is not something that we're going to do, right? We work backwards from the waterfall that Damon showed, as it relates to cost reduction and cost avoidance, there GenAI applicability now and into the future.

Yes. I'll just add to what Arun said. So although we haven't shared a specific headcount target for 2026, as I mentioned, the optionality that we certainly want to keep. What I will tell you is every headcount decision we make is 1 of 2 paths. One path is what headcount is needed and what mix of headcount is needed to serve our customer, right? And so getting that right is critically important. The other path is how do we decouple headcount growth from volume growth, right? A lot of that work has been done already. As Dave has mentioned, there's still a bare case that, that only works at the bottom of the market. It doesn't work at the top of the market. We're highly confident it works. And we're going to demonstrate that. But that's the way we think about headcount, right? It's not just thinking about headcount, but what really is the enablement of the headcount, and how does it ultimately fulfill that operating income goal that we have for 2026.

Chris Wetherbee from Wells Fargo. So you talked about how you went through a period of sort of disruption in the market with folks from the outside looking in tech first. I guess as you think about the gross margin opportunity, I was interested to see it was sort of the same as the productivity opportunity in the window that we're talking about here. Do you think that the market has changed? Or we shouldn't think about gross margin compression over the long run technology? Is there the ability to sort of offset some of those headwinds as you think about maybe beyond just the 2-year horizon, but a little bit further? And then maybe a second question just on free cash flow and how you guys think about deploying the free cash because it does seem like there will be some accumulating here over the next several years.

Maybe take the first part, Arun and...

I'll take the second.

Yes. So on gross margins, I think it's important to look at sort of -- we look at dynamic pricing and costing and digital brokerage, right? So what we say is like there's clearly gross margin opportunity that we see with our dynamic pricing and cost and capabilities. And the way I look at it is, on the customer side, there's customer propensities around this trade-off between service and cost, right? So based on that, there's elasticity and we get to manage -- we get to optimize on that side of the equation. And on the cost side of the equation, brokerage, the way we've observed the industry and I've observed the industry from the outside and is that it's not -- the cost of higher -- cost of purchase transportation isn't operated the way most marketplaces do, right? And so in terms of shopping the market to optimize for purchase transportation. So you've got the cost -- there's cost -- purchase cost transportation optimization and then this price side optimization on the customer side, which drives gross margin optimization and yield management. So I'd say like these things are -- I haven't seen it applied in brokerage the same way I've seen it applied in airlines and yield management. So think about yield management and other industries, applying that to brokerage has legs. We've demonstrated that in 2024 with our gross margin expansion. It's sort of a pricing and costing capabilities, combined with our revenue management and our operating model, discipline that drives this expansion. And we believe we have that going into '24 -- '25 and '26 as well. Again, linking back to Damon's waterfall, there's a bucket for gross margin expansion, and we think there's room there.

I just want to add. I think it's also really important and why you heard us talk about moving up the value stack so much today is we have to understand that as information trades more quickly and more effectively that in order to maintain margins and expand those margins over time, we have to deliver higher value. And so matching Arun's team with our account and carrier-facing teams that we're delivering that value in the transaction is super important that we can maintain that, but also delivering more and more to our customers. And that's really where -- as I view what our opportunities are with AI, as we remove the manual task work and free our people up to do higher value works that we can demand a higher price in the marketplace because when you buy services from Robinson, you're getting more than you're getting from somebody else. That's how we're going to be able to maintain it over time. I think we can grab -- you can grab it through the work we're doing with Arun's team, but to maintain it and to deliver that value in the marketplace is super important. And so that's why I go back to Angie's slide. Our headcount is down, but it's down in the right places. We have more customer and carrier-facing people today than we did 2 years ago. So we're delivering value to our customers and carriers while making sure where we save money, we're doing it in places that we can do through automated tasks.

You want to answer the second part of your question? Yes. I'll add one piece on to what my team has said here, just on margins because I think it's important. There's also a mix element there, right? So there's a scenario and we see it all the time where through our load optimization, we can actually take a lower price and make more margin because we're better now at taking the load characteristics and fitting them to the carrier, right? So in the past, we would have put a square peg in around slot. Now we can get square to square. And even though pricing may be compressed on that order, margins improved. So I'd say there's even a mix optimization element just between pure price and pure cost of hire in our gross margin strategy going forward. Related to cash flow and capital allocation. Certainly, we expect cash flow growth to trend with operating income growth and earnings growth. Our capital allocation strategy and discipline won't change, right? So we'll still focus on maintaining our investment-grade balance sheet. We will continue to prioritize high ROI organic investments. We feel like we have an incredible pipeline of investments that are high probability and really good returns. And so that will continue to be a top priority for our cash flow going forward. Certainly, our dividend, right? Our investors in large part in some areas, invest in Robinson in large part because of that dividend. And so we absolutely are committed to growing our dividend in line with EBITDA growth as well. And then probably there's no surprise. Once those priorities have been met, then certainly, we're always open to share repurchase, inorganic activities. But as we sit here today, we feel like we've got many years of inorganic investment opportunities that will be a good use of our cash flow.

Organic.

Organic, excuse me.

All right. I'll go to the other side of the room, go to Jeff over there. And then I do have a question from the online audience that I'll read first. So if you can hang on a second, Jeff. You mentioned that 50% of capacity bookings are now digital. How much was done digitally a few years ago? And how much do you expect in a few years? Does sourcing loads digitally help improve gross margins?

Yes, that's a good question. And Arun, I'll have you answer that. I think it's important. Let me set the context of the timing. Let's just go back to 2018 or so. And we talked about with the onslaught of digital entrants and things that were happening, it's important to understand where Robinson was at that point, which was about 5% or less of digital bookings, but the quality of digital bookings were not that great as well. Now fast forward, I'll have Arun answer where we are today, the quality of it and why you guys should understand that, that doesn't go away when the market inflects. Think about where we were in 2018, think about where we are now and what's going to happen when the market inflects as well.

Yes. So good question. So back in 2019, like Dave said, single digits of digital bookings. Now we're at the 50% range. In terms of gross -- so it's a productivity driver, but it's also a gross margin driver because when we shop the market on digital brokerage, it contributes to a different cost to purchase transportation profile and therefore, it drives gross margin improvement. In terms of improvement for the future, I go back to -- I'm not going to commit to a number, I would just say that critical input to the gross margin expansion bucket that Damon showed you in his waterfall. But it's absolutely a driver of gross margin.

Thank you for hosting this event. Question for Damon. I'd like to follow up on the free cash question. So you mentioned a lot of inorganic growth opportunities near term that you're going to be using that for. I don't know if trailer pools, things like that fit into that. But I guess my questions is, if operating income is growing at a 20% CAGR at the midpoint of your range, are you saying that free cash probably grows a little less than that in Horizon 1 because of these opportunities? And then what moves this as we get to horizon 2 or 3? Could we see free cash growing at a faster rate than profits as we get beyond this investment phase?

Yes. I'll just clarify one thing because I think you said the same thing I did, which is we have a lot of organic opportunities versus inorganic opportunities. So I just want to clarify that. Look, what I'd say, we specifically didn't give cash flow guidance because, look, our model is going to generate cash, right? So that's not a concern for us, right? Earnings will become cash flow. As most of you are aware, right, I mean, our market as it goes through the different cycles has different requirements of our balance sheet, right? And so in some cases, there's working capital requirements that will use some of that cash flow as we grow and certainly give it back over time. And we certainly have modeled that into our expectations, right? As I spoke to optionality, it's not just P&L, it's also balance sheet. We feel like Robinson has exponentially more optionality from a liquidity and a balance sheet perspective than our competitors do. So we can get more aggressive in the upcycle of the market because we have the balance sheet to support those working capital requirements. But what I would tell you is I'd point you back to my original comment, which is, look, we have great discipline around our capital allocation philosophy. We don't make, I'd say, quick pivots on that methodology, right? They're well thought out. We have our priorities. As Dave always said, certainly, if something comes up that we didn't have planned in a certain horizon, we'll react to that. And I think we certainly have the liquidity facility and operating cash flow to support that. But stopping short of giving you any type of growth goes on cash flow, I would say that discipline that we've articulated around capital allocation will continue in that structure.

Ravi up here and David, sorry.

Ravi Shanker, Morgan Stanley. Arun, question for you. Just going back to your slide on where you compared C.H. Robinson to your prior experience, why will this be like one of the few industries where the incumbent succeeds where like digital disruption has in other industries? And what about the complexity or the income and advantage here makes it different from entertainment or travel or other sectors? And maybe kind of as a follow-up, obviously, you guys are pushing more towards providing more asset base like services, where do you draw the line in terms of how far would you go into asset base? Like will you have your own trucks and drivers [ at some point ]?

I'll take the first one. So thanks, Ravi. So this is how I see it. When I first came to this industry, I was a little bit kind of taken aback by the fact that it hasn't evolved as fast as some of the other industries. And it took me a little while to sort of like try to zero in what I now believe are the reasons why it's difficult to penetrate. So first is we call it domain expertise. I call out 2 things. I'd say domain expertise and scale advantage, which includes information and data advantage. But let me talk with the domain expertise piece. I think the -- clearly, the transaction is more complex. And dislodging an incumbent in the B2B relationship is also not that easy. And I think so -- so when I look at an external come in -- external -- first external competitor come in and try to disrupt our relationship with the customer, there's got to be something meaningfully different in terms of better service, better price, better expertise, right? And I see that our people have this level of domain expertise that makes them and our company extremely sticky. So that's one portion of it. So domain expertise, our people, our talent and that relationship. I think the other side of it is -- so that's one piece. The second piece is the data and information advantage, I'd say, is a material driver of our ability, I think we have asymmetric advantage on the visibility we have in the market on both pricing and costing. And the way we shop the market and the way we look at yield today with the scale of data we have is a materially different driver. On that first bit, I would say that part of that is the fact that the transaction is much more complex, right, a travel transaction or an e-commerce transaction. If something goes wrong, like something -- it's not a big deal. You're talking about a company's supply chain and the fact that there are exceptions in the transaction, you've got to have people -- you have to domain expertise to go solve those problems in real time. And I think part of the future, as I look at it, beyond sort of brokerage is this expertise -- moving this expertise up to value stack such that there are fewer exceptions for them to deal with and more value to customers is sort of the way I see it. And to me, like that's completely different than sort of a B2C disruption like in travel or e-comm.

Second half was talking about what do you draw the line on assets. I want to make it very, very clear, Ravi, that we are an asset-light provider. And what you saw today, I think, was a wide strategy that says an asset-light provider showing up like an asset are 2 different things. So Michael, you can answer that question, but...

That was pretty close. I'd say -- you heard us say, like an asset a lot. For us, our flexibility is really what allows us to meet customers where they need us, when they need us. And the further you go into that asset model, it naturally lowers your flexibility and your ability to meet those customers where they want to be met. And so -- but there are addressable markets that you have to have the deliverable value that falls into that space so that customers include you in that aspect. So we want to be as close as we can to meet the customers' needs in that space. drop as the good example where our network of carriers, along with a small mix of our own lets us behave in a competitive way, but very much meet the customers' expectation of when you bid on a drop bid, are you meeting our expectations of service and control. And so as we can replicate that in other areas, as we can build our capabilities but still maintain the flexibility because we always want to make sure that if Horizon 2 doesn't look like Horizon 1, that we aren't stuck in Horizon 1 because we've built a model that doesn't flex to Horizon 2. That is who Robinson is, right, is we need to meet customers where they are now, but also where they're going. And so we have to balance that appropriately. So for our team, it's what can we do in that $400 billion that allows us to move every day, get access to more and more of that addressable market, but still remain core to who we are as a company.

David Vernon from Bernstein. Thanks for hosting us and thanks for the presentation today. So Mike, I wanted to ask you a question about the SMB share. You mentioned volume was up sort of mid-singles. Based on the slide data, it seems like the aggregate is down, so that implies kind of enterprise down. As you think about -- can you actually help us understand what percentage of the business today is SMB? And how that share has changed in the past and whether -- and what sort of the recovery rate is expected to be? And then talk to about -- and if you can also share any insight into whether it's right to think that an SMB average gross profit per shipment is going to be higher, all else equal, than in enterprise?

Yes. I think I'll speak to it more in terms of, listen, in that for-hire market, a significant part of it is SMB, but we are aware our largest global customers drive the volume, right? And so we have to win in both places. So that's the first thing I'd say. When we look at where we're at and we kind of said we were early innings in the SMB marketplace, I think we have a lot of runway in that space. But the truth is, for every big win you get with a customer like Target, you need 25 or 30 wins in a small and medium business space to equalize that growth, right? But we have to do both. And the reason we do is because it provides that diversification in terms of our portfolio and how we're managing it. And so margins, especially in a market like now, where we're at the lower end of the trough, are better because it's predominantly a transactional space, you have more optionality in how you price and how you win every day. In other parts of the cycle, your contractual business does better. But what you find is throughout the whole length of the cycle, that business, that small and medium business customer is driving good business, good margins. They appreciate our value and we can drive growth with those folks. And so to me, it's a much -- it adds a layer of stability to our business that we can build off of in the channels.

And unfortunately, I think we're out of time. But Dave, if you want to make some closing comments?

Yes. My comments will be this. Well, first of all, to see all of the hands and the engagement, I just want to say thank you, first of all. Secondly, a number of you are investors in Robinson, and I'd say thank you for that. We appreciate it. And for those of you who are not, I hope today gave you a good sense to go and make sure that we are a great investment for you because this is an awesome team and all of the Robinson employees that are back across the world looking at this are really, really proud to wake up every day, solve problems for customers, and we just represent them here today. And thank you for everything you do. So I appreciate it.

Thank you very.