Friday, October 23, 2026
The news that moves freight
Companies & Markets Oct 23, 2026 · 7 min read

Kuehne+Nagel’s Q3 beat and raise

Kuehne+Nagel lifts its 2026 profit range again as air nearly overtakes sea. Kuehne+Nagel raised its full-year EBIT (operating profit) guidance to CHF 1.5–1.6bn on 22 October, from CHF 1.35–1.55bn. Q3 EBIT rose 53% to CHF 435m. Our view: this is an air story. Air EBIT jumped 84% to CHF 169m, almost level with sea’s CHF 172m, on cloud and chip cargo. Q3 EBIT came in 8% above consensus, Investing.com reports. Jefferies called it “another beat and raise” (The Loadstar). Forwarders bidding against K+N should expect a richer rival that can afford to price hard. Our call: K+N’s full-year recurring EBIT lands at or above CHF 1.55bn in early 2027.

Kuehne+Nagel’s air desk now earns as much as its sea desk, and that changes how it will bid

Kuehne+Nagel raised its profit guidance again on 22 October. The Swiss forwarder now expects recurring EBIT of CHF 1.5–1.6bn for 2026. EBIT is earnings before interest and tax, a standard measure of operating profit. “Recurring” strips out one-off items. The old range was CHF 1.35–1.55bn, so the midpoint moves up by about 7%, from CHF 1.45bn to CHF 1.55bn.

The third quarter drove it. Group EBIT rose 53% year on year to CHF 435m. Net turnover rose 22% to CHF 7.4bn. Earnings rose 53% to CHF 316m. Those are the company’s own figures, published at 06:45 Central European Summer Time.

Our view is simple. This is no longer a sea forwarder with an air business on the side. On Q3 profit, K+N is now an air and sea forwarder in equal measure. And the air half rests on a fairly narrow group of customers building data centres and moving chips. That is a strength today. It is also the thing to watch.

Air has caught up with sea

The cleanest way to see the shift is to put the two big divisions side by side.

Air Logistics turnover rose 38% to CHF 2.4bn. Air EBIT rose 84% to CHF 169m. Sea Logistics turnover rose 20% to CHF 2.7bn. Sea EBIT rose 55% to CHF 172m. Air now earns within CHF 3m of sea.

The volume picture explains part of it. K+N said air volumes rose about 10% in Q3, against 3% in Q2. The Loadstar puts Q3 air tonnage at 619,000 tonnes, up 9.8%, and Q2 growth at 2.8%. The rest is margin. The Loadstar reports an air conversion ratio of 32.4%, against 22.8% a year earlier. The conversion ratio is the share of gross profit that survives as EBIT once staff, offices and systems are paid for. A jump of nearly ten points in a year means each extra tonne is earning far more than it used to.

K+N is clear about where that demand comes from. “Demand for logistics solutions supporting cloud infrastructure and semicon customers was a key growth driver,” the company said. K+N also expanded its pharma cold-chain offering, but the release presents it as a separate push rather than the main driver.

Sea is healthy too. K+N said sea volumes rose about 5%. The Loadstar puts them at 1.16m TEU (twenty-foot equivalent units, the standard container measure), up 4.5%, with “yields improving 5% quarter on quarter”. Yield here means gross profit per container. K+N said sea performance “was driven primarily by market share gains on Asia outbound and transatlantic trade lanes.”

The smaller divisions added a little. Road EBIT rose 40% to CHF 28m on turnover of CHF 1bn. Contract Logistics EBIT rose 7% to CHF 66m on turnover of CHF 1.3bn.

CEO Stefan Paul said the results were “validating our strategy of profitable growth”. He added: “All business units contributed to this achievement.”

The market expected less

This was a real beat, not just a good quarter. Investing.com reports that group EBIT came in 8% above analyst consensus. Sea EBIT was 10% above. Air EBIT was 7% above. Contract Logistics was 16% above. The new guidance midpoint of CHF 1,550m sits about 4% above the consensus estimate of CHF 1,496m, the same report says.

Jefferies analysts called it “another beat and raise”, according to The Loadstar.

Yet the share price barely moved. K+N stock was up just 0.7% at CHF 231.50 at 10:55 UK time, The Loadstar reports. Compare that with DSV. Its shares rose 15.1% to DKr1,381.50, from DKr1,200, after its own Q3 report, The Loadstar says. That was despite DSV’s air and sea volumes both falling 3%. DSV CEO Jens Lund told analysts about two percentage points of that drop came from the “sanitising” of accounts, which we read as dropping accounts that did not earn enough. DSV shares are still well below the DKr1,900-plus they reached in February.

In our view, the gap in share moves says investors had already priced in K+N’s strength and were waiting for proof that DSV’s integration was not broken. It also suggests the market sees K+N’s air boom as something closer to a cycle than a permanent step up. We think that is too cautious on the next six months and about right on the next three years.

Why the air boom may last into 2027

Three things support the air numbers holding up for a while.

First, capacity is tight. In July, rate analysts Xeneta said about 12% of global air cargo capacity was removed after the 28 February escalation in the Middle East. It cut its 2026 capacity growth forecast to 2–3%, toward the lower end, and raised its demand forecast to the upper end of 2–3%. It also flipped its call on shippers’ long-term air rates from a 5–10% fall to a 5–15% rise this year. When space is scarce, forwarders that hold space earn more on it.

Second, K+N is growing much faster than that market. Air volumes up about 10% in Q3 against a market Xeneta expected to grow 2–3% for the year means K+N is taking share. The company itself said air volume growth significantly exceeded overall market growth.

Third, the main customer group has signed up for the long haul. In September, K+N signed a long-term contract with Amazon, focused on Amazon Web Services. FreightWaves reported that the deal extends K+N’s role from air freight into ocean, road and contract logistics for data-centre equipment worldwide. It also gives Amazon a seven-year option to buy existing K+N shares once certain commercial milestones are hit. “I think this is the beginning,” Paul said, FreightWaves reported at the time. In the Q3 release, he said the partnership “enables us to capitalize even faster” on growth.

K+N also reaffirmed what The Loadstar describes as “an AI-related uplift of CHF100m–150m emerging from 2027”, linked to customers’ technology spending. And it expects “more than CHF150m in gross savings this year” from cost cuts, The Loadstar reports.

The risk is the flip side of the same coin. A profit engine built on hyperscalers (the giant cloud providers) and chipmakers is exposed if their capital spending slows, or if trade rules on semiconductors tighten. K+N does not break out how much of air profit comes from these customers. Forwarders and investors should ask.

What it means for forwarders

For a mid-sized forwarder, the headline is not the profit. It is what the profit lets K+N do.

A rival with 32% conversion in both air and sea has room to cut price where it wants volume and still make good money. K+N has told the market its sea growth came from share gains on Asia outbound and transatlantic lanes. Those are the lanes where smaller forwarders will feel it first.

On air, the pressure is different. K+N is less likely to undercut on general cargo when space is tight and its capacity is busy with server racks. FreightWaves notes K+N already uses two owned Boeing 747-8 freighters operated by Atlas Air. Smaller forwarders may find openings in general air cargo that the big players are not chasing hard. But they should expect K+N to compete fiercely for any tech, chip or data-centre account that comes to tender.

Shippers gain leverage too. A forwarder beating forecasts by 8% has less excuse to push through margin increases at renewal. Procurement teams will read these results.

There are three practical steps for the next few weeks. Check which of your accounts move tech, chip or data-centre freight, because those are the ones most at risk of a K+N approach. On Asia outbound and transatlantic sea quotes, assume the big rival has room to go lower and decide in advance where you will match and where you will walk away. And on general air cargo, lock in space with airlines early for 2027 while the largest forwarders are focused on higher-value tech flows. Rates on long-term air deals were already forecast to rise this year, on Xeneta’s July numbers, so waiting is unlikely to make space cheaper.

DSV, meanwhile, is coming the other way. It shed volume on purpose and was rewarded for it. It now needs to refill its network. A DSV looking for volume and a K+N with fat margins is not a comfortable mix for anyone pricing against them.

Our call

We expect K+N’s full-year 2026 recurring EBIT to land at or above the CHF 1.55bn midpoint of its new range when it reports full-year results in early 2027. The reason is the size of the Q3 beat, an air business still taking share, and a capacity squeeze that, on Xeneta’s numbers, is not easing quickly.

We also expect both K+N and DSV to push harder on price in tenders by the end of December, as both try to fill their networks for 2027. Forwarders bidding against them on 2027 contracts should plan for tighter margins, not wider ones.

Sources