K+N claims air cargo share gains as peak season builds

Kuehne + Nagel’s third-quarter airfreight volumes rose 10% year on year and 7% sequentially, while chief executive Stefan Paul estimated the underlying market grew 3% to 4% and attributed 60% to 70% of K+N’s growth to market-share gains.

That gap is commercially material: if Paul’s estimate holds, K+N’s growth ran well above the market rate, although the company disclosed no absolute market-share percentage.

What cargo drove the 10% increase?

Paul tied the gain to semiconductor and cloud-infrastructure shipments and described the driver as hard cargo. “[It’s] pretty much coming from hard cargo. Hard cargo had a double-digit increase in terms of volume this quarter, and ecommerce went down significantly,” he told analysts.

Management did not disclose an overall yield gain. An analyst asked why the changing cargo mix was not producing stronger pricing, and executives reiterated an expectation of stable yields without quantifying the mix’s contribution.

Chief financial officer Markus Blanka-Graff said: “The stronger profitability, the stronger margins are on the hard cargo side and special products, healthcare side, hi-tech side.” K+N provided no category-level revenue, pricing or volume figures to test that claim.

Is e-commerce weakening the market?

Separate Aevean analysis put Chinese low-value e-commerce air-export tonnage down 19% year on year in September and down 4% across the first nine months. Volumes to Europe halved in September, while shipments to North America fell 4%.

The contraction shows why K+N’s 10% increase cannot be read as broad-based demand across every cargo segment. Its hard-cargo gains offset a significant ecommerce decline, but no dollar value was provided for either side of that shift.

How much market share has K+N taken?

Asked whether further market-share gains would follow into 2027, Paul said they should continue at a pace similar to this year. Management also expects better cargo mix, with hard cargo as the priority, to remain a focus into next year.

Blanka-Graff said the hyperscaler business was a good part of growth in 2026 and expected that growth, with customers K+N continues to win, to extend into 2027. Management declined to quantify technology exposure or hyperscaler customers’ contribution.

The 60% to 70% share-gain attribution remains management’s estimate. The report also said DSV was rebuilding volumes, but no DSV volume, rate or capacity figures accompanied the assertion, leaving it without a measurable comparison.

What replaced automotive cargo?

Five to seven years ago, K+N had a strong automotive business out of Europe serving major manufacturers and their first- and second-tier suppliers. Paul said technology cargo replaced that shrinking business on a one-for-one basis, while adding that he did not consider K+N overly dependent on technology.

The switch changes the forwarder’s exposure rather than merely its sector label: K+N’s European automotive business has given way to semiconductor and cloud-infrastructure demand. Without technology-exposure figures, the scale and customer concentration of the replacement remain unquantified.

How profitable was the growth?

Third-quarter airfreight volumes rose 7% sequentially. EBIT increased 84% year on year to CHF169m ($205m), and the air-logistics conversion rate reached 32%, against 23% a year earlier.

The conversion rate improved by 9 percentage points, and profit rose far faster than volume, although management did not quantify the cargo mix’s contribution.

Paul said K+N expected the Q3 volume pattern to continue into Q4 with stable yields. He called the peak season strong but said it remained unproven whether Q4 would exceed Q3.

Where does K+N’s capacity come from?

Paul said half of K+N’s airfreight capacity came from its own charter operations, and K+N covered the remainder through block-space agreements. The 50-50 structure places half of its capacity exposure inside charter operations rather than third-party block space.

Management did not provide the lane-by-lane split or say how much additional capacity Q4 would require. That leaves the cost, utilization and yield consequences dependent on the cargo filling it.

How much winter capacity is arriving?

Qatar Airways Cargo announced these winter additions:

• weekly 777 freighter services through Copenhagen from 25 October;
• weekly Warsaw-Chicago services from 26 October;
• a weekly New York and Atlanta rotation from 1 November; and
• twice-weekly Dallas freighters.

IAG Cargo’s winter schedule starts three weekly Gatwick-Colombo flights on the report date and doubles Gatwick-Bangkok frequencies to six a week. The added belly-hold options broaden forwarders’ capacity on Asian lanes.

Qatar and IAG’s additions could help absorb peak volumes, but no airline load-factor or broader market yield forecast was provided.

The forward test is whether Q4 demand absorbs the added winter capacity while preserving the stable yields K+N expects as the forwarder pursues further share gains into 2027.