Freightos is off to an unexpectedly robust start this year, as lagging first-quarter Red Sea disruption continued to shift international cargo to air freight booked through its digital marketplace, the company said this week.

But Freightos also attributes the quarter’s record transaction volume to the company’s ongoing investments in digitalizing international freight management to bring more value to shippers.

The company said the volume of gross bookings processed through its digital platform surged 29% year over year to 295,600 transactions. Revenue increased 11% to $5.4 million as gross booking value grew 14% to $192.4 million. The number of unique buyers digitally booking freight services increased 11% to 18,000.

Targeting an 80% market share

Zvi Schreiber, CEO, Freightos

CEO Zvi Schreiber said on an earnings call this week that Q1 marked the “seventeenth straight quarter of record transactions,” that the total transaction value exceeded the company’s expectations for the quarter, and that Freightos “maintained a share of approximately 80% of all international air cargo digital bookings on platforms.”

“This performance highlights the robustness and growing acceptance of our platform, and the strides we’re making digitalizing international freight in order to bring efficiency and transparency to this crucial sector,” he said.

He added, “We continue to consider transaction growth to be the most important caveat for our business. And it’s consistent with as the prime proof points of the benefits users gain from the marketplace was built for them.”

Schreiber also noted, however, that overall Q1 shipping rates remained higher than expected because many carriers were still avoiding the Suez Canal because of the Red Sea crisis and shifting to air cargo, resulting in higher rates.

Still, Freightos is also pushing ahead on several fronts, Schreiber said.

Focusing on new freight opportunities

“We pursued several initiatives to increase not only the number but also the value of the transactions, including investing in Asia, and an emphasis on high value shipments such as pharma. Looking ahead, we remain focused on the opportunities in the massive air and ocean freight markets, driving continued growth and innovation in the quarters to come.”

“The first quarter results exceeded our expectations in every metric: the number of transactions, gross booking value, revenue, and profitability,” said Ran Shalev, chief financial officer.

Freightos ended the quarter with 49 cargo carriers on its platform. It recently announced the addition of several airlines participating as sellers of air freight services, including Delta

Cargo, Singapore Airlines and Fits Cargo. Last week, Freightos said United Airlines had chosen Freightos as its technology partner to build a “state-of-the-art” air cargo web portal for freight forwarder and other businesses working with United’s cargo services.

To foster more transactions on its platform, Freightos has been displaying service recommendations.

“We started dynamically suggesting alternative options when people book, including highlighting premium air content products like express on relevant searches, driving more value and, in some cases, increasing our transactional revenue,” Schreiber said on the earnings call. “These enhanced service offerings contribute to our monetization efforts, optimizing how we generate revenue from each transaction.”

Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. [email protected].

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