Radiant Logistics, Inc (RLGT) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Greetings. Welcome to the financial discussion for third fiscal quarter ended March 31, 2026. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note, this conference is being recorded. This afternoon, Bon Crane, Radiant Logistics founder and CEO, and Radiant's Chief Financial Officer, Todd McCumber, will provide a general business update and discuss financial results for the company's third fiscal quarter ended March 31, 2026. Following their comments, we will open the call to questions. This conference is scheduled for 30 minutes. This conference call may include forward-looking statements within the meeting of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The company has based these forward-looking statements on its current expectations and projections about future events. These forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and assumptions about the company that may cause the company's actual results or achievements to be materially different from the results or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. While it is impossible to identify all the factors that may cause the company's actual results or achievements to differ materially from these set forth in our forward-looking statements, such factors include those that have in the past and may in the future be identified in the company's SEC filings and other public announcements, which are available on the Radiant website at www.radiantdelivers.com. In addition, past results are not necessarily an indication of future performance. Now, I'd like to pass the call over to Radiant's founder and CEO, Bob Crane.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining in on today's call. We are pleased to report another quarter of solid financial results, delivering $7.8 million in adjusted EBITDA for our third fiscal quarter ended March 31, 2026. in what is our seasonally slowest quarter of the year. The global logistics landscape during the March quarter was marked by sharply divergent dynamics across domestic and international markets, each presenting its own distinct set of challenges and opportunities, and we believe the resilience of our results reflects both the diversity of our service offering and the quality of our network. On the domestic side, we are seeing encouraging signs of a supply-driven recovery in North American truckload in intermodal markets, where capacity has been steadily exiting the industry through a combination of carrier attrition, tightening driver availability, and the structural normalization of a fleet that expanded aggressively in prior years. With spot rates, tender rejections, and other key cycle indicators moving meaningfully higher and driver headcount at multi-year lows, the domestic freight market appears to be approaching a genuine inflection point. While these market trends are not fully reflected in our results for the March quarter, we view these developments as constructive for our business going forward, as these improving market conditions should translate into better opportunities for our domestic operations. The international picture has been considerably more challenging and, in some respects, unprecedented in its complexity. Global trade flows have been under sustained pressure from two distinct but compounding forces. The first is the ongoing transformation of the global tariff landscape. U.S. trade policy has fundamentally redrawn the economics of cross-border commerce with the universal 10% import surcharge currently in effect covering more than $1 trillion in goods. Country-specific tariff investigations underway targeting dozens of trading partners for industrial overcapacity and labor practices, and critical policy decisions on permanent tariff structures expected before July. The resulting uncertainty has materially altered sourcing strategies, disrupted established trade lanes, most visibly the China-to-U.S. corridor, which has been one of the most consequential freight arteries in the global economy and prompted widespread supply chain restructuring as importers and manufacturers are accelerating near-shoring and diversification initiatives. For international freight forwarders, this environment creates both headwinds and opportunity. Near-term volumes on effective lanes have softened, but the complexity of navigating new trade routes, custom regimes, and compliance requirements increases the premium on experienced technology-enabled partners who can guide customers through the transition. The second force is the physical disruption to global shipping routes stemming from the conflict in the Middle East. The effective closure of the Straits of Hormuz following strikes on Iran in late February, the world's single most critical maritime checkpoint through which significant share of global energy and container trade flows. Combined with the ongoing hooty activity, which has kept the Suez Canal closed to major carriers, has fundamentally rerouted global ocean freight, extended transit times materially, driven fuel costs sharply higher, and triggered a significant surge in air freight demand as time-sensitive shippers seek alternatives. These twin disruptions to global trade, one policy-driven, one conflict-driven, have created a uniquely challenging environment for international freight markets. At the same time, they reinforce precisely why customers need a logistics partner like Radiant, one with the global network, the technology platform, and the operational expertise to help them navigate volatility, find capacity, and keep supply chains moving when the world's trade infrastructure is. is under stress. Looking beyond the near-term environment, we remain highly encouraged by our strategic progress we are making. Our Navigate Global Trade Management and Collaboration platform continues to gain traction in the marketplace, offering customers enhanced supply chain visibility, routing intelligence, and cost optimization, capabilities that are especially valued during periods of market dislocation like the ones we are currently experiencing. With deployment measured in weeks rather than months or years, Navigate delivers speed to value that we believe is a clear competitive differentiator as we introduce it to current and prospective customers in the quarters ahead. We also continue to make good progress with our recently announced launch of Ray, our first AI-powered agent. In addition to our initial efforts focused on streamlining international quote administration across our global agent network, we are exploring how best to further automate key workflows across our domestic and international shipment life cycles, while enabling faster response times and higher service quality for our customers. We look forward to expanding RAIS capabilities and introducing additional AI-powered solution as we continue our digital transformation journey. finally our financial position remains a source of significant strength we are essentially debt-free on a net basis relative to our 200 million dollar credit facility giving us substantial flexibility to pursue the combination of strategic operating partner conversions synergistic tuck-in acquisitions and share repurchases that have long defined our approach to capital allocation with our diversified platform strong balance sheet and growing suite of technology capabilities, we believe Rating is well-positioned to emerge from this period of market turbulence as a stronger and more competitive enterprise. With that, I'll now turn it over to Todd Maycumber, our CFO, to walk us through our detailed financial results, then we'll open it up for some Q&A.

Thanks, Bon, and good afternoon, everyone. Today, we will be discussing our financial results, including adjusted net income and adjusted EBITDA for the three and nine months ended March 31, 2026. For the three months ended March 31, 2026, we reported net income attributable to radiant logistics of $4,671,000 on $214.1 million of revenues or 10 cents per basic and fully diluted share. The three months ended March 31, On 2021-2025, we reported net income attributable to radio logistics of $2,541,000 on $214 million of revenues, or $0.05 for basic and fully diluted share. This represents an increase of approximately $2,130,000 of net income over the comparable prior year period, or 83.8%. For adjusted net income, we reported $5,337,000 for the three months ended March 31, 2026, compared to adjusted net income of $6,881,000 for the three months ended March 31, 2025. This represents a decrease of approximately $1,544,000, or approximately 22.4%. For adjusted EBITDA, we reported $7,751,000, but three months ended March 31, 2026 compared to adjusted EBITDA of $9,398,000 for the three months ended March 31, 2025. This represents a decrease of approximately $1,647,000 or approximately 17.5%. Moving along to the nine-month results, for the nine months ended March 31, 2026, we reported net income attributable to radiant logistics of $11,269,000 on $672.9 million of revenues or $0.24 per basic and $0.23 per fully diluted share. For the nine months ended March 31, 2025, we reported net income attributable to radiant logistics of $12,384,000 on $682.1 million of revenues or $0.26 per basic and $0.25 per fully diluted share. This represents a decrease of approximately $1,115,000 over the comparable prior year period or 9%. For adjusted net income, we reported $17,881,000 for the nine months ended March 31, 2026 compared to adjusted net income of $25,459,000 for the nine months ended March 31, 2025. This represents a decrease of approximately $7,578,000 or approximately 29.8%. For adjusted EBITDA, we reported $26,322,000 for the nine months ended March 31, 2026 compared to adjusted EBITDA of $30,866,000 for the nine months ended March 31, 2025. This represents a decrease of approximately $4,544,000, or approximately 14.7%. With that, I will turn the call back over to our moderator to facilitate any Q&A from our callers.

Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Once again, please press star 1 if you have a question or comment. Our first question comes from Jason Seidel with TD Cowan. Please proceed.

Thank you, operator. Bon, Todd, good afternoon, guys. I guess three different things here. I guess, Bon, I want to hone in on your commentary sort of about the domestic markets, that, you know, things are sort of taking shape, showing early signs of improvement, and that sort of bodes well for Radiant. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, as the markets improve, you know, particularly with capacity coming out and pricing going up, maybe talking about some of the repricing opportunities you have and how should we look about, how should we look at the current quarter on a sequential basis to the one that was just reported given some of the trends that you're seeing?

Yeah, sure. Thanks, Jason. And so I would, I guess to give us some context, you know, January and February started off pretty slow, but then, you know, as kind of the market dynamics, you know, began to unfold, we saw a much stronger march and kind of sequentially we continue to see that building. And, you know, as I'm sure you're aware, you know, the asset-based carriers have been taking, you know, significant rate increases, you know, effectively across the board and rejecting previous tenders. And kind of the domino effect of that is positive, positive both for the truck brokerage business as well as the intermodal business, you know, which has, you know, kind of really suffered in its own, you know, as an industry suffered in kind of mode competition versus truck in this depressed market environment. But as these rates, you know, are moving higher, we're seeing, you know, substantially more opportunity also in our intermodal business. So, you know, we're, you know, quite encouraged and, you know, we'll see how durable all this proves to be. But we're pretty, you know, optimistic that it will be, you know, reasonably durable, you know, with meaningful kind of rate increase opportunities. You know, again, I'm going to point to the other asset, you know, public asset based companies who I think have been, you know, fairly consistently reporting, you know, double digit margin increases. and that kind of creates, you know, an opportunity kind of for all of us to kind of ride on those coattails a little bit because they ultimately are going to be setting the price and then, you know, we can kind of play within that framework.

So I'm going to put you on this.

So much incremental spot, you know, opportunities and, you know, with what limited kind of contracted exposure we had, you know, we've been able to kind of navigate that to better situations.

And so we're bullish. Well, and, Bon, on the contracted situations, when you're seeing your renewals, what sort of rates are you getting? Are you guys getting those double-digit rate increases when they come up?

I wouldn't go so far as to say double-digit, but I would say high single digits are kind of where we would expect to be.

Okay, fair enough. Let me jump to Navigate and Ray. You've been talking about Navigate for a while. Have you thought about breaking it out and sort of sizing it up for us to give us an idea of the actual opportunity that lies before you guys? And then for Ray, are there any data points or KPIs that you guys are tracking that you can report to sort of give us an idea of maybe some of the benefits that you are seeing and some of the benefits that you could see in the future?

So I'll take those one at a time on Navigate. We certainly have been thinking about it, i.e., how do we kind of share insights relative to, you know, the kind of this emerging catalyst and what it you know has the opportunity to represent over time we're not we're not ready for that coming out party just yet but we have been spending a fair amount of time just trying to think about within the context of our disclosures how we might go about that and so we that's going to require a little more work you know we will do that at some point in time. We are not ready for that yet, but it is a little amorphous, and I appreciate that, but it is happening, and we're very excited about it, what it does represent as, I think, A true market differentiator for us in the marketplace and an ability to engage with customers in a way that historically we weren't in a position to. And so we think over time it's going to be a meaningful catalyst for organic growth within the overall Radiant story. So you're absolutely spot on to ask. but we're not quite ready to share that type of data just yet. And on, you know, with respect to Ray, kind of a similar story. We're not yet ready to share kind of KPIs around those metrics, but we'll be, you know, working in that direction as well over time. You know, we are still early on and, you know, very early on, you know, with Ray, but the kind of the organizational energy and excitement and what we're seeing kind of across business units and their engagement is really encouraging. And, you know, as a reminder, we began this process ourselves a year or so ago in our partnership with the University of Washington and their graduate student program. And we're in our second year with our second group of cohort, kind of our second cohort coming through the process. And, you know, we're, you know, we are, you know, as you might expect, we get approached by a lot of kind of VC-backed AI startups, you know, pitching us their ideas. And when we kind of look at where they are and what they're doing relative to what we're incubating for our, you know, kind of on a homegrown basis, you know, we feel kind of really good about where we are with AI. on our own technology roadmap. And, and, you know, over time, that will show up in the numbers.

Bon, I appreciate the color and appreciate the time as always. I'll let somebody else know that. Thank you. Thanks.

Once again, if you have a question or a comment, please press star one. The next question comes from Jeff Kaufman with Citizens Bank. Please proceed. Thanks.

Hey, guys. Hey, Jeff.

So, Bon, I want to follow up kind of where Jason was going there a little bit. And I'm more keen about what you're seeing domestically because we've heard some stories and we've seen a lot of indicators go up, and everybody that we talk to in freight seems to be a lot more optimistic because of what's going on with rates. But when we ask about the volumes, it's still kind of stagnant, particularly in some consumer areas maybe some businesses are starting to get a little more confident and engaging in some more transactions but you know the volume portion of the markets getting better still seems to be something we're waiting on so could you elaborate a little bit kind of where in terms of your your domestic industry verticals are you starting to see movement in physical volume and and not just price and rate and i'd say the same thing with the international i know it's kind of a little tougher to track because that seems to be changing by the minute but where are you starting to see some of your flows uh break whatever pattern they've been in as of late um sure so first i would kind of reinforce or echo your foundational comment which is this has been more of a capacity driven dynamic than demand right in terms of freight volumes. But as you're aware, you've been following us for a long time. You know we do a fair amount in the government services space and military world. So as you can imagine, in this market environment and what's going on on the global stage, that's an area where we would expect to see and are, you know, enjoying some growth. Similarly, there's been some hurricane, typhoon activities, so there's been opportunities for us to do some work. So those are kind of, you know, historically been some of our go-to areas, and that, you know, kind of continues to hold true in the market today. You know, we, you know, also are fortunate to have, you know, exposure to the data center environment and do, you know, a good amount of work, you know, in support of that area. So those would be some of the kind of higher performing categories. We're also seeing some improvement in the CPG, food and beverage space, you know, particularly and most recently in Canada and some of the opportunities that we're seeing up there. So that's been, you know, positive, the kind of traditional, you know, retail luxury goods space, you know, that hasn't been as strong. You know, we've never had particularly large exposures to the e-comm space, so the de minimis tariffs, we weren't particularly impacted by that. But again, as you know, kind of hopping back over to the international side, the ocean rates have just been miserable, particularly in the Trans-Pacific, and, you know, I think even for some of the larger public ops, you know, where they've got news, where they have good news to share on the international, it's on the customs brokerage compliance side of that conversation. Fortunately, we also, you know, have some of that kind of in our portfolio as well, But the ocean product continues to be a fairly tough intersection, but hopefully that will also improve over time. But a lot of this, the more traditional narrative is the capacity tightens off of the West Coast first, but that really isn't necessarily the case right now. This capacity tightening isn't driven by TransPAC imports and its pressure on domestic capacity. Kind of the domestic demand is really coming from the central part of the country, which is a little unusual to traditional traffic patterns. Okay, Bon, thank you. That was a lot of detail. Much appreciated, and congratulations.

All right, thank you. Our next question comes from Mike Vermitt. with Newland Capital. Please proceed, Mike.

Hi, guys. Well, considering how poor earnings across the board were for everyone else in the first quarter, I think you guys did an excellent job putting up these numbers. Thanks, Paul. So, I got a couple of questions for you. So, first of all, I know it's been soft and difficult on the international side, but I got to believe the opportunity here is dramatic, right? The The expertise, the knowledge of navigating this has to be great. Are there opportunities you're seeing come to us? I assume that February timeframe internationally was pretty much the bottom, right? That was the most confusion January, February, and it's starting to get better. We're hearing some other forwarders echo those feelings. Are you seeing opportunity come to you because of the complexities now involved?

Yeah, well, so first, whether intended or not, I appreciate the double entendre of navigating.

Yes, I did hear that as I said it.

Yes, so, and indeed, we are, you know, we do see it as an opportunity, and in particular with the Navigate platform and kind of the incremental solution and kind of level of sophistication that we're able to bring to our current and prospective customers using Navigate and, you know, kind of connecting the dots here a little bit. We, you know, have been, at least in my mind, opportunistic in our own M&A initiatives. We've actually been fairly aggressive in acquiring some NVOCC, you know, ocean service businesses in this softer market environment, you know, effectively giving us an opportunity to buy these businesses on what I believe is a dip. And I think that's going to really work out well for us, you know, over time. This current environment won't last forever, and as things ultimately improve, I think we're going to be in really great shape to participate in that uplift as it occurs. But the Navigate Technology itself is really, really valuable down to skew level landed cost type analysis as customers are diversifying their sourcing strategies and trying to understand the implications of tariffs ultimately on their landed costs. You know, at a unit, you know, SKU unit level, it's going to be really, really helpful. And then just not in this queue, but most recently we expanded our presence in Hong Kong and then opened a new office in Shenzhen that, you know, further complements our operations in Shanghai. high. And, you know, I think all of that is just kind of setting the stage for the opportunities ahead.

Excellent. Just a quick line of navigation. I know Jason hit on it a little bit. And I know you're not going to put numbers around it, but is the expectation that this is going to be significant to our organic growth over the next few years?

Yes, I think it will. And what's interesting one of the things that we've been trying to just kind of think through candidly is how exactly to represent it in our financials because there's the you know in some cases customers want a separate tech fee in some cases they want the tech bundled with their cost of transportation so there's you know in some cases there's there'll be kind of a conceptually a pure tech fee, but what's honestly more relevant is all the incremental freight we expect to enjoy because of the technology. So whether we ultimately call it an enterprise type account or some kind of alternative term to kind of identify this growing ecosystem within our larger transactional account base. That's what we'll need to spend some time thinking through.

Okay, this concludes the Q&A portion of our call. I'd like to turn the floor back to management for any closing remarks.

Thank you. Let me close by saying that we remain optimistic about our prospects and opportunities to continue to leverage our best-in-class technology, robust North America footprint, and extensive global network of service partners to continue to build on the great platform we've created here at Radiant. At the same time, we intend to thoughtfully relever our balance sheet through a combination of agent station conversions, synergistic tuck-in acquisitions, and stock buybacks. Through our multi-pronged approach, we believe this will continue to create meaningful value for our shareholders, operating partners, and the end customers that we serve. Thanks for listening and your support of Radiant Logistics.

This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.