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

So welcome back from lunch, everyone. Hopefully, we're ready for -- to save some room for extra dessert. That is in the form of what I suspect we'll be an enriching conversation with C.H. Robinson, a name that we pass as one of the most attractive idiosyncratic investment opportunities in transportation. We think C.H. is using technology in one of the most effective ways in the industry as evidenced by their industry-leading and expanding margins. In fact, margins are now within spinning distance, right, of your mid-cycle targets despite freight conditions being well below what we characterize as mid-cycle. They've also been impressively improving profitability. At the same time, they've been outgrowing the market. So kudos to you all. A big factor behind this. I know is all this tech-enabled efficiencies, which we'll get into later. We're thankful to have both President and CEO, Dave Bozeman; and CFO, Damon Lee, up on the stage with us today. We're also joined by Senior Director, Chuck Ives in the audience. So thank you all for your support and partnership with DB. We really appreciate.

Yes. Happy to be here.

So maybe we can start with where we left off about 2 weeks ago, right? So very strong Q2 results recognized by the market. A lot of that was due against your working levers within C.H.'s control, driving higher highs, higher lows and again, we'll get into that. But maybe we can start with the hand you've been dealt on the macro outlook. You move more freight in North America than anyone, right? What are you making of the demand environment for freight, especially in light of recent tariff updates?

Yes. So first of all, glad to be here and I appreciate it. We -- in looking at demand, we'll start off with the obvious that market in those results, and I'm proud of the team because it certainly wasn't any help from the marketplace for doing that. It's over 3 years now on a freight recession. And in that, the team had to look at this, and we do every day, is we wake up and we will not really start off with the macros. The macros are where they are. We just have to build a model and a system that says, we're going to win despite the macro, is the higher highs and higher lows and then outperforming, which I'm proud that we're doing that. We've still see that there's an uncertainty that's out there. We have 83,000 customers. They all have different solutions that they have to work for. I think what separates us is we have Global Forwarding, of course, so we kind of see it across the spectrum of what's happening. But uncertainty is certainly out there for customers. Now we kind of put them in three buckets. One, you have customers that really have the balance sheet and they're able to forward bring in product right, to kind of stave off or prevent tariff impacts. And we've seen them do that and we kind of help them in moving their products. Second bucket, we see some customers that are saying, "Hey, listen, we don't have that total P&L to just fund all of that. So we're going to focus on critical items". And that's really important to know, so back-to-school things or things of just of crucial product that they're bringing in. And they kind of split that. They said, "Hey, we're going to have to pass on some of that cost while bringing in just some of the critical things". And then the third bucket is there are some individuals who -- they're going to pass on the cost of the impacts to tariffs. They may have to do things different on origin and destination of where they start from. But we're right in the middle of that. As you know, customs have spiked for us that a lot of customs request. And overall, there's just a call on quality right now. And so we're getting that call, and we feel good about that in helping to -- these customers kind of drive through all of this uncertainty. And then I'd finish up with -- let's not forget that there's two parts to this. There's the capacity side, which we've all been looking at. And that capacity side is continuing to burn down. We're hoping that in that kind of carrier capacity starts to get back to some normality. That's something we're certainly watching. But on the right side, there's the demand side. And what really drives demand is retail, housing and industrial or manufacturing. And I always say to everyone, housing, that's kind of down into the right. I mean you need interest rates to kind of shift for that to kind of go up. On the manufacturer side, I would call that muted or flat for the most part. And then on retail, the data is really not clean because you see all of the pull aheads and things like that. While it's better than the other two, we still don't see that being something that is like up into the right. And so we really need those three, to kind of normalize, start to go up and to the right, and now you've got then a movement going overall within the industry. So that's kind of an opening salvo of how I would kind of frame this. I don't know if you'd add anything to that thing but...

We just had a couple of statements I think certainly -- our NAST business, although there's still uncertainty on that side of the business has been, I think, more stable. So lower for longer, but I think more stable. The forwarding side of the business, there's been a tremendous amount of uncertainty, volatility, just lack of clarity. Certainly, that business has been a lot hit a lot harder with the uncertainty around tariffs and trade policy. If you take our Q2, we're essentially in April, we had an embargo between Chinese imports of the U.S. And we saw some rebound in May and June, certainly not enough to offset the impact we saw in April where we had certain weeks where volume from China, the U.S. was down over 60%, right? . But despite that, very challenging Q2 outlook uncertain, our Global Forwarding team really performed well. And as Dave mentioned, we always pride ourselves on. We're one of the more unique companies that we offer four modes of transportation, a very global suite of services and our Global Forwarding business benefited from those services, Customs and Duty services were up nice in the quarter. And so that's another area where when volatility and uncertainty hits the marketplace, although we never like our customers distressed, it's actually a very strong value proposition for Robinson. When things are in turmoil in the marketplace, our customers turn to us because we're the one company that can solve their problems. And certainly, customs and duties being a critical focus for very established customers and less sophisticated customers we were able to solve problems for the entire spectrum of customers. So as Dave mentioned, macros continue to be challenging, but our strategy continues to work.

Just one follow-up on that on the customs piece sustainability of that is tariff noise side down, do you still feel like you've introduced enough of a greater value proposition with that product that you can sustain some of these challenges?

Yes, I think certainly -- I'll answer it a couple of different ways. One is, I think, certainly, some of those relationships that capability that customers have seen now, I think that will be something they utilize into the future. I think the degree of volume that goes through customs and duties, I think is very heavily dependent on kind of the tone of trade going forward. And I think we all believe tariffs are probably here to stay, at least for the duration of the current administration. So I think tariffs will be in place, which means some level of customs and duties activity will be elevated above our historical trends. Whether or not it matches the level we had in Q2, I think, is yet to be determined.

Okay. And then just a follow-up on what you see, Dave, the fact that you were able to segment your customer base into three designed buckets. Is that part of the benefits of Robinson as well? I mean if I look at your results and compare them to some of your peers, just the way they've been able to really show more stability, especially on the margin side and the higher margins. Is that just because you think you're better diversified than maybe what you see out there on the competitive landscape?

So certainly, we feel good about what we're doing. I do think that scale plays here and we have scale, having the 83,000 customers certainly helped. But it comes down to this, Richa, we just have a strategy we feel like is winning. One, our operating model and that discipline, I can't stress enough of having a lean operating model and how that's working within the company, how it's changed Robinson. This is a completely different company structurally and execution-wise on how that company operates. Plugging in our technology, which we feel really good about, and we feel is industry-leading, that with the operating model, we think, gives us a competitive moat that is generating the results that you've seen.

Okay. Great. So maybe we can stick to talking about the market first before we get into some of the idiosyncratic positives. But when you talked about the demand side, let's talk a little bit more on the positive signals you've identified on the supply side, right? You've talked about it on your last earnings call, load-to-truck ratios improving, such supply attrition continuing, especially on the broker side. So you talk about the dynamic a bit more. Is it any more promising than we've seen in prior green shoots in recent quarters where we realize we're back to square 1 after a quarter or 2 market remains challenged? Or do you think there's something that's more sustainable here?

Yes, I'll take it and then pass it over to Dave. So I think you highlighted some of the -- what I consider kind of leading indicators for the market becoming more equated there. Certainly, load-to-truck ratios have improved. We've continued to see that. That's a positive indicator. When we've had times of disturbance. So weather, holidays, road check week, when we've had times of volatility in the North American freight market, we've seen spot rates go up, right? And so certainly, that is a great leading indicator that the slack that we've been dealing with for years now has started to abate in the marketplace. So that's another positive indicator. Certainly, more brokers continue to exit the space. More carriers continue to exit the space. Again, all of that is positive indicators on bringing back equilibrium. So I'd say we feel like with the current level of carrier capacity exiting the market that we're getting closer to some level of equilibrium, very difficult to say exactly when that would be. Now we do believe -- and I think we typically don't comment on guidance in the market. But we did hear others in the industry every time we've had an inflection spot, right? Okay, it's here to stay. We never believed that it was here to stay. We saw it was very unique to an event we predicted it would go back down. It did go back down. And we believe that's the market we're still in. We don't see any green shoots, I would say we're in a much improved machine demand and capacity market. I think it's -- the level of attrition, if it continues the way it's going, ultimately, we will get to a equilibrium at some point in time, but hard to predict when that will be.

I'm sure we all want a healthy market here, but it seems like that environment is one where you can drive relative to peers, right?

Yes. I think certainly, Dave mentioned it earlier, we've somewhat been agnostic to the market, right, because you don't hear us talk about things like when the market improves, our results will follow, like we don't buy into that thesis. Our thesis is we will outperform the market regardless of the cycle we're in. So if you look at our results, we continue to outgrow the market in a prolonged freight recession. We continue to expand our gross margins. We continue to expand our operating margins. We're at a prolonged freight recession. Now to your point, we holistically believe that when volume returns to the market, our leverage is going to be great. We completely debunk the thesis that cost will flood back in when volume returns, right? The Robinson of today is completely different than the Robinson of yesterday, right? The processes are completely different. The culture is completely different. The technology is completely different. When Dave and I hear those comments, we kind of look at each and they go like, there's no reason to flood headcount back into the system, right? The processes are human-light now. There are less human touches required the efficiency is already there. All we need is the volume to show that efficiency.

Yes. It's just a structurally Damon's point. It's just a structurally different company, and I would have you think about it this way. the way the structure is set up that when the market returns, actually a force multiplier. I mean, the more you push into the structure, the more output you actually get right? So that's why we feel pretty confident that be it a strong recovery or lower for longer, we're still sitting in a kind of a pole position of where we're going because we're going to continue to innovate we're going to continue to drive. We're going to continue to compete, and we feel like we'll win in this kind of lower for longer. But even when it starts going back, our operating model and our technology continues to consume. And at our scale, it gives us that inherent advantage as we go through. And that's super important to look at.

Yes. So we're excited to demonstrate what we can do when volume returns to the system. As Dave has mentioned before, if you take our Global Forwarding business. Dave calls it the Canary in the cold mine. Last year, they had year-over-year volume growth every quarter, while reducing expenses while generating 15% productivity. So Global Forwarding has already bumped the bare cases -- the bare thesis on C.H. Robinson. And they did it with a very light tech stack. If you compare that to our NAST business, same operating model, same discipline, same rigor much more advanced tech stack. So if it's already yielding benefits for global porting, no reason to believe it won't just yield benefits for NAST, but those benefits will be exponential to Global Forwarding.

In would -- this, and I know you'll have a follow-up to it, but this is like super important. The -- because the bare cases can get held on to, I think, for a while. While I'm a data person. As you know, and if I the data is like right in front of us because we also get the question to say, "Hey, are you guys at almost like 38% operating margins like within your NAST business, you're almost at mid-cycle in the worst freight market ever. I just pause and say, take the pause it for a minute. Yes, how? Because it's structurally different. And if you're putting those numbers up in the worst freight market ever, when it changes, it should subsequently tell you that there's goodness that follows when it comes in.

And I'll just add, generating those margins while growing the Cass index substantially at the same time, right? So our strategy of outgrowing the market, while expanding our market continues to work and will continue to work into the future.

And it's quite unique. Yes. So my follow-up there is, Damon, you've also made this point that you've kind of disconnected headcount growth from volume growth, right? How much with the current headcount situation you have now, how much volume do you think you can take on before you do have to start adding headcount?

Yes. I mean, so we do a lot of scenario planning. So 1 of the things we do is we're testing probably 10 different scenarios of volume, right? And our tech is scaled with all of those scenarios. So we believe if there is an inflection of volume, so volume comes back faster, call it, more of a V-shaped or a prolonged U, our tech can withstand that capability if it's lower for longer, certainly, you can withstand that type of gradual slope. I think the thing to keep in mind, and we clarify this all the time is headcount is not a KPI for us, right? It's not something we actively measure and track. It's an output to our evolution of our process and our transformation. And so volume will dictate. Volume plus technology plus productivity will dictate how much headcount we need. And so there will become a point where volume gets to a level even with our level of advanced productivity and technology where we need to add headcount back. So what you will see is the cost avoidance that, that initiates will generate substantial leverage, right? So we talk about productivity in two different spectrums. One is lower for longer or a prolonged kind of modest freight increase that will show up as productivity. If we happen to get an inflection, volume comes back quicker than anybody is anticipating, we'll still see that operating leverage. It may show up as cost avoidance. So in the past, we had to add -- pick a number, 1,000 people we may add 50, right? So you'll still see that demonstrable leverage because of the technology, the operating model and the process and the company being substantially different, but you'll still see operating leverage with that. So for us we don't really get caught up in and we get the question a lot of your headcount target. We don't really have one. Our target is really productivity based and that productivity is facilitated by the evolution of how we convert more and more processes to automation digital processes, light human touch. And the outcome of those transformations means less headcount, more productivity, but that's how the process works. It's not figure out how to take 500 headcount out. That's not how our process works. It's transformation of the processes.

And it's the whole quote-to-cash cycle. And as you know, it's a handoff. It's a lot of mundane manual task through that cycle. And we've attacked that, structurally, we could do that. But I would just say, you don't cut your way to prosperity. And so we're also investing as much as we talk about headcount, we're investing in headcount when it comes to customer facing. Our small medium business segment that we're going after. I mean that was investment that we did with more customer-facing people. We have the best logisticians in the world. Customers know that. And so our people are solving harder problems while we're using technology to take the mundane task off. And for that, we feel really good about.

I want to get into the tech, but let's just post a loop on market dynamics. Global Forwarding. Damon, you talked about the volatility that, that business has seen. Maybe talk about the push and pull around ongoing tariff discussions there. I know it's been, again, incredibly volatile, challenging and that's made it difficult to forecast. So how are you thinking about it heading into Q3? And maybe that embargo that you talked about in April more in the rearview mirror, customers feeling more comfortable?

Yes. I'd say customers maybe feeling incrementally more comfortable, but they don't feel comfortable, right? So I think there's still a -- kind of uneasiness and what is the next leg of trade policy. If you think about for the beginning of the current administration to now, I mean, how many iterations we've had, timeline changes, peak to valley on tariff rates. So I think everybody that we deal with has that in the back of their mind. And so I think they're looking for optionality in their supply chain. They're looking for flexibility in their supply chain, and I think they're really trying to prepare themselves for what's the next shoe to drop. Now what I said, they all have different strategies. As Dave mentioned, based on what industry they're in, what products they sell. Some have had an inventory strategy, some have had a diversification strategy. Others have pulled ahead seasons and pushed out other seasons. It would be hard to say what has been the main theme because I think it's been such a mixed bag of of how everybody is adapting to the current trade environment based specifically to the industry they're in and the products they sell. And so I'd say, anybody that thinks they know what's going to happen in trade in the next 6 months is probably not as educated as they think they are. I mean we have access to some of the best data in the world on it. And we can tell you it's a very mixed picture. Now what I would tell you is we fought through Q2. Q2 was a very challenging quarter for our forwarding business. We exceeded expectations. In fact, we exceeded our own expectations and how that business managed through very difficult times. And so we think the second half has a lot of uncertainty. Certainly, visibility is reduced, but we're going to run the same play right? So the same playbook we ran in Q2, the same set of capabilities we demonstrated in Q2. We'll demonstrate in the second half of the year as well. But what I would tell you is a lot of uncertainty in the second half of the year, and I'd say the one area that may provide some green shoots that I don't think anybody can quantify yet is the tax bill, right? So does the tax bill provides some economic stimulus? Is it enough to offset the impact of higher tariffs? Does that show up in the second half? Or does that show up in 2026. I think all that's yet to be determined.

Any customer feedback there so far? I know it's early, but...

I'd say mixed. Again, I'd say you've got some customers that are seeing some positivity in the industries they're in and the products they sell, but others that still feels like I'll blanket on top of demand. So I'd say it's a mix.

And I would also say you need time to kind of sort some of this out because some of the data is a bit dirty. If you think about it, customers -- and we worked with them. Some would have pulled ahead a lot of products. Well, they're burning down that product within their inventory stack on here. So it's not like a one for one, every action, there's a reaction. There's -- it's incongruent in that when they burn that down, how much time is it going to take to do that, what tariffs are in place when that inventory is turned down and now when do they start that flow again. It's just -- it's all over the place based on how things have played out this year. You just have different customers in different situations and time will need to kind of flush this out so we get back to a norm.

Yes. The dislocation of volume, so the tariff announcements and the pauses created such a dislocation, right, pull aheads, pushouts. To Dave's point, how that dislocation factors into new economic activity.

You just don't.

Nobody knows yet.

Let's get into the fun stuff now. talk more about the tech innovations, how you're winning in the business? You talk about your outgoing your competitors, right? When I look at some of the outside looking in, you see things like your tariff impact analysis tool, your [ Ace ] import intelligence tool. I feel like those things probably are alluring customers, maybe things that are not out there in the marketplace via their competitors. But talk about how you're using tech to maybe pull in more customers or augment the revenue side of the attrition?

Sure. SP29085718 Yes. It's a -- we started off and said it's a call on quality. And it is. I mean, when we have this level of uncertainty, customers are saying, "Hey, we need help. We need someone who knows what they're doing to do this at scale". And we're taking those calls to do that. The development and the launching of these tools is really to continue to innovate. And just like customers kind of get their way through this uncertainty. And we feel like these tools can bring some level of comfort to customers to help them in their business cycle as they're doing this. And that's but one side of, I think, our innovation of what we're doing. The internal part of doing that, we feel really good on that the generative AI portion that's making, again, our customers' lives a lot easier and certainly making our own lives and I think making us very much more competitive. We always say that it's early innings because it is, Richa, it's just early innings because now we're moving from generative AI to agentic AI. We're really excited about agenetic AI technology Why? Because it's a little bit different. As Dave and I always talk about is the generative AI, it deals with kind of highly repetitive data on system. Agentic AI, when you think about it goes into more reasoning and off-system data going around. That makes us so excited as you look at a business like forwarding, it's super complicated, much more complicated than the truck brokerage. A technology like agenetic AI could be a game changer for that business, and we're going full bore into that. Early, early days when it comes to agentic, but we're certainly going down that path. We love what we're seeing with generative AI, and we're going to continue to reap those benefits. We think that competitive moat is widening and being more deep. But I'd also say this, it's the technology and it's the operating discipline. Those two, we think, really drive that competitive advantage that you see and some of the results you're seeing in the last 6 quarters.

Okay. And so along those lines, leaning more into introducing tech on the GF side. Damon, you said you're going to use the same playbook in 2H, they use in 1H, but would you think it's more of an enhanced playbook now that you're introducing the...

Yes. I think same operating rhythm playbook, but certainly more enhanced with technology right now. We're in the very early innings of deploying the technology on Global Forwarding as we've been very vocal as is we wanted to perfect the technology on the NAST side of the business before we moved it over to the Global Forwarding side of the business, right? We just announced in Q2 earnings that we're on that path, right? So certainly, that will certainly make that journey more fruitful as we go forward. But I think it's a really compelling story. Think about what global porting is done with a very light touch on AI period, right? So most of our AI investment has been over-indexed to the mass side of the business, very light on the Global Forwarding side of the business, but yet they've demonstrated really strong results. Now we think we've given just a demonstrable competitive advantage on now giving them very similar tech to our NAST business. And then they will be kind of coming up the agentic AI, scale at the same time as mass. So for the first time, and our technology evolution, we'll have both businesses that are learning technology at the same pace.

Okay. And maybe talk about what differentiates your technology. I know you talk to brokers and a lot of them tell having great technology. Chuck and I talked about how we could start our own brokerage business tomorrow and get some off-the-shelf technology and it's awesome. But like what are you doing? Give us more tangible specific examples of how your technology is differentiated and why it can't be replicated?

Yes, I can start. David you jump down First of all, I'd say our technology has an iron clad return, right? So I would challenge many folks to show their return on their AI, right? We can demonstrate our return. It shows up in our revenue growth. It shows in our gross margin expansion. It shows up in our operating margin expansion. So for us, AI is not a tagline. It's not a marketing campaign. It's not a buzzword of the quarter. It is how we're running the company, right? It's a key element of how we generate results at Robinson. And when we get asked the question, how are you generating outgrowth and margin expansion, that's a secret sauce of how we're doing. We're not so much of a secret, we talked about all the time, but it's a key element of what we're doing, right? And I would challenge others to show those same proof points, right? Show us where AI is allowing you to quote more business, win more business. How is it allowing you to have more price discovery, better cost to higher discovery for gross margins. And show us an example where technology is improving your processes. I think for us, the proof points are everywhere it's very easy for us to talk about how we're using AI and the rear. We've had a principal in Robinson since we've gone on this journey, which is we don't do any AI for hobby, right? If there's not a specific business return we don't spend the money. And so Arun knows that. In fact, Arun drives that within the organization. So I think our bar for when we spend $1 on AI is extremely high because we expect to see it in the results in a pretty quick cycle thing.

Yes, I would agree with that. I mean I do gimbal walks because part of lean, it means go to the work. And freaks people out a bit, the CEO sitting at the desk or 1.5 hours.

Book and loads.

Yes, I did talk about book load. I did okay on one. But why do I do that? I do that to make sure I go out and understand how our people are taking this technology. Two, to see how the work is done. And let's face it, I want the unsanitized version of what's going on, right, within the company. And so I spend time going to do that, and I encourage all of our leaders to do it, and they do, which is one of the cultural changes within our company is going to gimbal. And in doing this, one of the things I want say, automatic quoting, when you start talking about tangible examples. We introduced that -- and I went out -- and quite frankly, I was testing to see if people are kind of rejecting that technology. How do they feel about that? I got the opposite, right? It was a lot of excitement. It was "Mr. Bozeman listen, I might get to 60% of quotes, we get hundreds of thousands of quotes in Robinson. And when our people are -- and our people are really good and they're trying to like deal with all these things. But these things come in and all types of unstructured data forms, say, hey, we might get to those e-mails for that quote, 60% of the time. just leaving opportunity out on the table in this business about time is money. When we did that -- now when they do get to it, you might say, "Hey, I'm going to quote that Fort Worth to Charlotte, and I want to put a number in there, and I'm going to do the quote. Today, our large language models is they're doing that. They're scraping there, they're responding to 100% of the quotes they're giving more details on that quote than we ever did manually type of equipment, all types of things. It's responding in 34 seconds, 32, took off 2 seconds. And it's doing it in a conversational manner and is hitting 100% quotes and still in a 24/7. That is a very specific example of what's happening. And I can do that on appointments. I can do that on tracking and do that along the whole sphere of fold or order to cash, which is why we said it's a game changer on doing that. And our people are excited about it. They're saying, this allows me to now be able to cover force multiply themselves in getting out and responding to all these quotes and they said it continues to learn. And they're able to help it learn. So that's really, really important to do that. And you said something in it and we're not going to back away from it. Anyone can get technology. And Chuck's right. You guys can start our brokers, our third-party software and everything. I always say that in this industry, it is a low friction to enter, low barrier friction to enter into this industry. It is a high barrier to stay in scale. And that's the difference in doing that. And the example I just gave you, while we love that, we think our competitive advantage on that is that is coupled with how we run the company. And that's when a lot of people just don't understand. technology by itself is not going to get you that competitive moat that we're building. It has to be how you operate the company and that is the secret sauce. And we've been very open about it, and we've been very open about it for 2 years. I don't think we've pulled back on it.

Awesome. And yes, from my perspective, I found it really impressive that even as new layers and complications of the business comes up, your technology is able to adapt -- like I love the LTL example on your last call. Maybe you want to talk about that?

Yes. So we have, we call it, 30 AI agents in the company today. And they run the gamut of activities that they perform. So take LTL, for example. So classification of freight within the LTL space, it has been historically a very daunting task. It takes a ton of time, right? So when that was all a heavy human task oriented task process. I take 10 minutes to do that classification. Today, with our classification agent, we can do it in 10 seconds. So it went from 10 minutes to 10 seconds. If you can take that across the universe of of all the orders we get within LTL. 75% of our orders in LTL today are fully automated. So you just think just within our LTL space, right? We took a very complicated process. It took a lot of time and effort in some cases, impacted a customer because it takes too long to complete a process. We've taken that process from 10 minutes to 10 seconds. 75% of our LTL orders are fully automated. As Dave mentioned earlier, on our truckload side of the business, it takes us 32 seconds now to return a request for a price on freight. As Dave mentioned, that used to take tens of minutes in worst cases, probably a couple of hours, and we didn't even get to all of the request. So we were leaving revenue on the table as much as 30%, 35% of the votes that came in or the request that came in to quote, we didn't even touch them. Today, we touch 100% of the requests that come in and we returned those average of 32 seconds, right? So there's an LTL example, a truckload example. I'll leave you with this one. on just our appointments agents now deals with 40,000 discrete locations and booking appointments. So that's pickups, that's deliveries, that's destinations, that's origins but 40,000 discrete locations are agent that does appointments is dealing with today. Now think of that deal. 3 years ago, that was people. Today, that's an agent, right? And so if you just start adding up all those examples across 30 separate agents, you can start to see how we've generated 35% productivity since 2022, how we've outgrown the market because, again, we're getting to every request for quote. And then as Dave mentioned, because this one gets missed a lot. So we always like to remind people of it. On the gross margin side, we're not just returning every request for quote now. The sophistication and the specific nature and how we're returning that quote is going up exponentially. So before, somebody was just trying to get a number back to a customer. They quickly grab 5 data points to submit a hastily return. Now our AI agents can look at hundreds of data points and send back a very specific pricing estimate based on the Robinson data set, which is the best in the industry. So not only are we returning all the quotes, not only are we doing it quicker, but the sophistication and the quality of that quote is going up exponentially.

By the way, if anyone in the room has questions, feel free. Okay. So let's talk profitability then. I love your point what Ironclad return on some of these productivity initiatives and you've seen it in the numbers. So now you're only 200 basis points shy of your 40% mid-cycle target, right, on the NAST side and, I believe, 130 bps shy of what you targeted on the global forwarding business I know you've talked about how those are not capped here today. But with all these efficiencies that are getting people excited, like what should be -- what do you think is like maybe a more appropriate long-term figure on either side?

[indiscernible], can you jump in?

Yes, because it's -- we should -- this is a super important question that we can talk about on here because it's about leverage. And it's about the expectations of Robinson as a company versus the industry because we don't talk about that a lot. And I think people need to understand this dynamic and how we're thinking.

Yes. So we certainly think there's a decent probability we exceed those mid-cycle targets, right? I mean we're performing very well, and there's no reason to believe we wouldn't continue that performance to exceed those targets. What we spoke to on the earnings call is. We don't want to commit to a higher margin target for one reason is we want to maintain our optionality, right? So today, multiple times an hour, hundreds of times a day, we are making trade-offs between margin and revenue, right? And so therefore, we don't want to lock ourselves. I'll just make up a number. I don't let myself into 42% for NAST. If I have an opportunity to deliver 41% a drive a demonstrable market share gain that drives more operating income to the investors, right. So we want to maintain our optionality there. Now as I said before, we're not going to lay up, right? So if our performance takes us to whatever level of profitability, quality of earnings for both sides of the business, we'll deliver that. But we don't want to make that commitment. We want to maintain that optionality so we drive the best enterprise result for our investors and our employees. I think that's super important, and this is a little different answer to go on top of it. But I think it's very, very important and I want this room and whoever's listening to hear this. From a technology perspective, with the numbers you're talking about and the results, and we feel really good about all those results and you can start to look and see why we look at this differently. We feel like we are a technology generated company servicing a logistics industry. And there's a lot of conversation out there, a lot of money being thrown around looking for investments of bottom line AI results. And you have chip makers, you have infrastructure play. You have a number of other buckets, but you also have end user type of bucket. So we start to look at this as being a our historical multiple were 17x year. Historically, it could be 19. These AI-generated multiples, 25 plus into 30s. You start getting a return on a technology AI type of approach at an industrial multi discount. And we just look at the company a little bit different in our technology, what you're seeing, the returns you're getting and that that's an attractive investment play from that perspective, with a multiple that is certainly discounted in an industrial and that you should think about this a little bit different if you buy into what we said today from a thesis perspective.

Okay. Just on that, what's less going back to whether they call -- gimbal at but is it? What do you walk around and say, this could be better. This is like still inefficient like I could do this better?

It's a great question. Thank you. And it's -- I'm going to always have an answer to that, and my team knows that because we have no hubris. We -- first of all, it is -- you have to get better every day at Robinson. And so when you look at me and I go around, we can continue to be faster, we can continue to think bigger, we can continue to innovate and we continue to fail faster. On those four things. I'm never going to probably be totally satisfying of where we are with that because I consider myself a lean practitioner, and I know the importance of continuous improvement. A lot of people think continuous improvement in some of these big kind of swings, agenetic AI. No, actually continuous improvement is doing something better, small every day. to improve where you were yesterday. And that's the type of culture and mentality we're building in Robinson is improving every day. And as David and I talk about it, when we're having our operating review agenda and people come in and they're green on their goals for 3 months in a row. He brings up the example, and I was there. You have a leader that says before Dave, you and Damon say it. We're 3 months in a row green, we're changing our goal so that we can go to red, and then we can reinnovate on that. And that's the culture that's starting to turn and that's somewhat of a secret sauce that we're pretty open about.

Okay. No questions in the room, [indiscernible]? All right. M&A. I know you also spoke about the bar being high for any inorganic growth prospects. But it sounds like what you're doing is very exciting, very differentiated. I guess, why not see more opportunity to bring it into other models in the marketplace, scale what you're doing that's so industry-leading. And what are the key risks do you think from doing more acquisitions?

Yes. So I think we've said this. I don't know about Chuck want to check, like we will not make a mistake on M&A, right? And it's for a handful of different reasons. One is M&A fails the vast majority of the time. So value is destructed. The vast majority of the time, M&A is created, right? That's the statistics we know that. Second is our organic pipeline is really, really good. And it's years worth of opportunities, right? And we fully control it. The probability of success is very, very high. And that has received our priority. Now we compare that pipeline often to inorganic opportunities in the marketplace. And thus far, it has pointed us back to continue to focus on our organic opportunities versus inorganic now. We are open in organic. We view inorganic opportunities probably every week and some scale, right? But we're not in a hurry. We don't have a need to do any type of acquisition. We believe we're able to outgrow the market, we're able to expand margins on every level. We're outperforming our competitor base. We're outperforming the marketplace. We feel like the future is extremely bright. And as Dave mentioned. From a valuation perspective, I'd argue we're not even valued as a best-in-class within the transportation space, and we are a best-in-class in the transportation space. And we don't even have a valuation there. When you consider the AI ecosystem and it's hard to find a company that's getting a return on their AI investment today and not only we get a return, it's a substantial return -- it's a sustainable return. It's driving growth. It's driving margins. It's driving operating income. And as Dave mentioned, RP right now is kind of a snoozy PE. Yes, even after the big run, look, we've been buying back stock this year as you guys have seen for the first half. There's certainly a higher probability of that trend could continue versus where we were last year as far as evaluating buying back stock. But looking at what Dave and I see, 117, 118 whatever we are today, that's a bargain versus where we're going.

Yes. Well, that takes me to my last question, which is stock at an all-time high or within staying the distance of it, we still think it's too cheap. Sounds like you guys do as well.

We do. And again, we're trying to be very practical about it, right. I think we've built a business model and a company that can perform now at all cycles and not just perform and outperform at all cycles. Our operating model doesn't let us plateau, drives us to be better every day. We have the best people in the industry. So when you combine the best people in the industry, the best tech in the industry the scale operating model. It's a hell of a lot of a vote versus our competition. And we believe the current valuation, Robinson, is very attractive. And certainly, we've supported that with our current capital allocation. There's still a good probability that will be something we look at for future capital allocation. But yes, we're excited. We think as much progress as we made in the last 2 years and kind of astonished the transportation space on what Robinson has been able to do the last 2 years, we think it will be even more impressed in the next 2 years. So now's the time to get in.

And our people in Robinson walk around and they feel like they're getting their swagger back. They feel like they are -- they have this winning attitude. And it's really something to see. It's an energetic type of filling that's happening within the company right now. And so Damon and I wouldn't hesitate on our p-value of where we would be, which is a very, very high P value that we're going even further with this thing because it's too early. It's just way early innings.

And I love the comparison thinking outside the box, like bigger picture look at where these lever names trade at, right, versus what you back.

And as I said before, you can find AI infrastructure plays, you can find the chip guys, right? You can find the ones that make kind of off-the-shelf applications to find an industrial company that's using AI, the way we're using it with the returns we're getting. I can't find one. So it's an opportunity, it's a big opportunity.

Very good. Thank you so much. Extra generous of your time. I think we went a couple of minutes over.

We'll here all day. Thank you very much.