GXO Logistics Inc Aktie

Welcome to the GXO Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call Webcast. My name is Kevin, and I'll be your operator for today's call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded.

Before the call begins, let me read a brief statement on behalf of the company regarding the forward-looking statements the use of non-GAAP financial measures and the company's guidance. During this call, the company will be making certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws, which, by their nature, involve a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in forward-looking statements. A discussion of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially is contained in the company's SEC filings.

The forward-looking statements in the company's earnings release are made on this call are made only as of today, and the company has no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements, except to extent required by law. The company also may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures as defined our applicable SEC rules during the call. Reconciliations of such non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measures are contained in the company's earnings release and the related financial tables are on its website. Unless otherwise stated or results reported on this call are reported in the United States dollars. The company will also remind you that this guidance incorporates business trends to date and what it believes today to be appropriate assumptions.

The company's results are inherently unpredictable and may be materially affected by many factors, including fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, changes in global economic conditions and consumer demand and spending, labor market and global supply chain constraints, inflationary pressures and the various factors detailed in its filings with the SEC. It is not possible for the company to actually predict demand for its services. And therefore, actual results could differ materially from guidance.

You can find a copy of the company's earnings release, which contains additional important information regarding forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures in the Investors section of the company's website.

I will now turn the call over to GXO's Chief Executive Officer, Patrick Kelleher. Mr. Kelleher, you may begin.

Good morning, and thank you for joining our third quarter 2026 results call. Joining me today are Mark Suchinski, our Chief Financial Officer; and Kristine Kubacki, our Chief Strategy Officer. I'm pleased that we're beginning to see the results of the strategy we set in motion over the past year. stronger commercial performance, improving North America business and a growing technology lead that we're enabling across our network.

The headline for the quarter is simple. Organic growth accelerated to its fastest pace in over 3 years. Adjusted EPS grew 13% year-over-year, and our commercial engine delivered another quarter of strong wins with a record pipeline supporting our continued growth.

Starting on Slide 4. Our performance through the first 9 months keeps 2026 firmly on plan. We are delivering financial results while investing in the capabilities that will accelerate growth. And our leading indicators for 2027 are wins, our pipeline and the revenue we've already secured continue to build.

In the third quarter, revenue was $3.6 billion, up 5.7% with organic growth of 6.4%. Adjusted EBITDA was $251 million, in line with prior year and adjusted diluted EPS was up 13%. Mark will walk through the details shortly. And year-to-date, approximately 40% of our new business wins have come from our strategic growth verticals and which include data centers, A&D, life sciences and industrials.

Moving to Slide 5. Commercial momentum continued in the third quarter. We signed $375 million of new business wins, up 34% versus the prior year, our second consecutive quarter of this level of growth, led by our largest global accounts and our strategic growth verticals. Looking into the fourth quarter, we expect new business wins to again show strong growth year-over-year. Our wins are also turning into revenue faster and we're carrying that momentum into next year.

We expect to enter 2027 with more than $850 million of incremental revenue from new business wins. That's ahead of the $774 million we had entering 2026 and the highest level we've ever carried into a new year. Through the end of the quarter, signed wins have exceeded $1 billion, nearly matching what we won in all of 2025 with a quarter still to go. And even after a quarter of rapid conversions, our sales pipeline grew to a record $3.1 billion at quarter end, up more than 30% year-over-year.

North America led that growth and our pipeline across the U.K. and Europe also grew. Wins are also weighted more heavily towards the strategic growth verticals and multi-region customers we are targeting. Mark and Kristine will discuss our financial results and commercial wins in more detail shortly.

Moving to Slide 6. We are making excellent progress on our 3 priorities: a new commercial playbook strengthening operational excellence through the GXO Way and advancing our technology leadership through automation and GXO IQ, our warehouse AI platform. First, on commercial. We believe the results I just walked through are the clearest evidence that our new commercial playbook is working. We're winning more and we're winning across both core and strategic verticals.

In the third quarter, we won new business and expanded relationships with blue-chip customer brands, including Applied Materials, Boeing, NetApp, Unilever and L'Oreal. Our core business continues to grow alongside our strategic verticals. One of our largest wins in the quarter was with the leading U.K. online fashion retailer, and as in the second quarter, we had sizable e-commerce wins in Europe.

North America remains our biggest opportunity, and it is where the execution of our new playbook is most visible. Our pipeline there is up more than 80% year-over-year, and we are converting more of it. Across our Americas and Asia Pacific region, new business wins so far this year have already exceeded the total for all of 2025 and we're winning larger, more complex mandates than we were a year ago.

In the quarter, we again saw strong momentum with our technology and data center customers, where we see no signs of slowing and there are more RFPs in the market than ever. We're also building out our aerospace and defense capabilities, including the recent appointment of former military and defense industry veteran, Dan Davis to lead the vertical, a West Point graduate and former U.S. Army Field Artillery Officer, Dan brings a rare combination, military experience, industrial experience and commercial leadership. Second, operations.

We launched the GXO Way playbook across more sites and we've begun rolling out a unified labor management system with rollouts now live in the U.S., U.K., Netherlands, Poland and Spain. We expect these to start delivering productivity benefits in 2027. We've also advanced our global procurement strategy to unlock cost savings across our sites. Third, in technology, GXO IQ is now live across all 3 of our regions and we remain on track to meet or exceed our target of roughly 50 sites deployed in 2026.

We've also expanded our technology organization around 2 mandates: Balaji Rangaswamy, our new Chief Information Officer, strengthening the enterprise systems that serve as the foundation that lets us scale while Nizar Trigui, our Chief Technology Officer; is accelerating AI, automation and robotics across our network. So to bring it together, we delivered a strong third quarter. We are accelerating organic growth and see continued commercial momentum through the end of the year and into 2027.

Our 3 strategic initiatives across commercial, operations and technology are moving from plan to execution, and we're pleased with the results we've seen today. And we will have more to share on what's driving that momentum at our Investor Day on November 16 at the New York Stock Exchange. This quarter is early evidence of the plan we'll discuss in full that day. The leadership team and I will take you through our long-term strategy, where we see GXO growing, our technology and automation road map and our financial framework and capital allocation priorities. We look forward to seeing many of you in New York. And for those who can't join in person, the event will be webcast live.

With that, I hand the call to Mark.

Thank you, Patrick, and good morning, everyone. Strong commercial momentum is beginning to drive an acceleration in our organic growth. We delivered a solid third quarter, our fastest organic growth in over 3 years, adjusted EBITDA, in line with our expectations and double-digit growth in adjusted EPS.

Turning to Slide 7. GXO delivered third quarter revenue of $3.6 billion, up 5.7% year-over-year and up 6.4% organically, with contributions from all of our regions, including strong growth in the U.K., our largest market and our fastest growth in North America and Asia Pacific in more than 2 years. By vertical, technology and consumer electronics led the way with revenue up 19%, driven by the rapid growth in data centers.

We delivered adjusted EBITDA of $251 million, in line with the prior year and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 7%. Sequentially, adjusted EBITDA increased by more than $30 million and margin expanded by about 60 basis points versus the second quarter. The third quarter year-over-year margin reflects start-up costs on the new business we're onboarding, with more of this year's wins going live within the year, along with investments in our commercial organization, our labor management system and GXO IQ that we expect to deliver productivity benefits in 2027.

Net income was $65 million and adjusted EPS was $0.89, up 13% year-over-year. Adjusted EPS grew faster than adjusted EBITDA, primarily on lower tax rate and a modestly lower share count.

Moving to Slide 8. In the quarter, we generated operating cash flow of $156 million and free cash flow of $85 million. Year-over-year free cash flow primarily reflects the timing of our ERP implementation as well as higher net CapEx than the third quarter last year. Consistent with the prior year, we expect the fourth quarter to be our strongest cash generation quarter of the year, and we remain on track to deliver our full year free cash flow conversion target.

Turning to the balance sheet. We ended the quarter with $340 million of cash, total debt of $2.8 billion and net leverage of 2.7x. During the quarter, we repurchased $84 million of shares, bringing year-to-date purchases to $100 million or 2.1 million shares at an average price of $47.46 and that leaves $200 million remaining under our existing authorization. With an investment-grade balance sheet, we have the flexibility to keep investing in high-return organic growth, continue to delever and return capital to shareholders, and we will stay disciplined in how we balance the 3.

We completed the divestment of Wincanton's dedicated grocery business in the U.K. and the Wincanton integration is now substantially complete. As we close the year, we are delivering run rate cost synergies of $60 million.

Turning to our full year outlook on Slide 9. We're reiterating our 2026 guidance. Organic revenue growth of 4% to 5%, adjusted EBITDA of $945 million to $965 million, adjusted diluted EPS and of $2.95 to $3.15 and free cash flow conversion of 30% to 40%. We entered the fourth quarter with new business ramping. Our productivity program is gaining traction and a cost base we are managing tightly, which sets us up for a solid finish to the year.

Behind that, the shared systems we have been putting in place from a single operating dashboard and labor management tools, the global procurement data gives us 1 way of running the network, which we believe will turn faster growth into higher margins over time.

With that, over to you, Kristine.

Thanks, Mark. Good morning, everyone. I'd like to spend a few minutes on the drivers behind our commercial momentum and on the future growth we have already secured. Turning to Slide 10. Even with winds up more than 30% for the past 2 quarters, our pipeline has continued to build. North America has been the biggest driver with its pipeline up more than 80% over the past year to around $1.3 billion, while our pipeline across the U.K. and Europe also grew to around $1.7 billion.

As a reminder, the pipeline naturally fluctuates as we convert opportunities into wins, yet the year-over-year trend is clearly moving in the right direction. Growth was broad-based. Third quarter wins in our strategic growth verticals were nearly 3x the prior year level, led by technology and data centers. And year-to-date, they account for approximately 40% of our wins. At the same time, our core continues to grow.

We have sizable wins in e-commerce and retail in both the U.K. and Continental Europe. Our new commercial playbook and aligned strategic priorities position us to grow across our strategic verticals while maintaining focus on our core.

Moving to Slide 11. We I want to highlight our revenue visibility. From the business we've signed, we've secured more than $1 billion of incremental revenue for 2026, a record and we've already built $630 million of expected incremental revenue for 2027. We added $267 million in the third quarter alone versus $206 million in the same quarter last year. With the continued growth in the fourth quarter wins that Patrick described, we are confident we will exceed the prior year figure and enter 2027 with more than $850 million of incremental revenue already secured, a record level.

That growth comes from 3 sources. Year-to-date, about 33% of our wins came from competitors, from new activity with existing and new customers and 26% from customers outsourcing for the first time. This level of visibility gives us confidence in the durability of our growth and in the predictability of our cash flow and future earnings it can generate.

To wrap up, our commercial engine is firing on all fronts. We are expanding our relationships with the world's largest brands in our core, and we are building real scale in faster-growing strategic verticals. With a record pipeline, wins on pace to exceed last year's total and a growing base of secured revenue for 2027, we carry strong momentum into the fourth quarter. Thank you.

And with that, I will hand the call back over to the operator for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions]

Our first question today is coming from Stephanie Moore from Jefferies.

Great, congrats on a nice quarter here. I guess starting with I guess starting with the organic growth performance. So as you noted, organic growth accelerated to over 6% in the quarter and look, the pipeline has grown pretty meaningfully since even the beginning of the year, -- so I think what's interesting as I look at this is, I guess, the momentum appears to be generating before you've really seen the full benefit of a lot of your actions. Obviously, you called out the new Chief Commercial Officer, the commercial playbook in place.

So I guess what extent do you view the momentum we're seeing today is just kind of the beginning of this commercial reset -- and then how much confidence do you have that this growth can continue to accelerate as these initiatives mature? And what should we be really looking for there as these initiatives mature?

Yes. Sure, Stephanie. I'll kick off, and then Mark will provide some additional commentary. I think you're absolutely right. In our business, contract logistics, we're about a 6-month sales cycle. And so the results that we're seeing are really the results of initiatives that we kicked off when I joined about 14 months ago. Our focus, especially on North America, our emphasis on the strategic B2B verticals most notably aerospace and defense and technology where we're seeing great progress on data center new business wins there. Those are bearing fruit now.

I'm really proud that we did that without taking our focus off the core business of retail consumer omnichannel and CPG, where we've also continued to see great growth. And so the focus on North America, the focus on the strategic verticals has been additive to the organic growth agenda with the 6-month sales cycle. We are really in the beginning of the acceleration of that agenda. We had over 30% year-on-year increase in contract wins in Q2. We signaled we would achieve that in Q3, and we did and I can signal today that we will achieve that acceleration in Q4 through the end of the year.

So really confident that as we step into 2027. We're going to continue to drive improvements in organic growth in the business, both on the new business wins as well as customer retention. Mark, maybe you want to comment on a few of the organic growth metrics that we're seeing.

Sure, Patrick. And Stephanie, just to provide maybe a little bit of color on the organic growth and the momentum that Patrick just talked about. And as we just discussed, 6.4% organic growth in the third quarter. I'm trying to give you a little bit of look ahead into the fourth quarter and how we see it. We expect 4Q organic growth to be slightly above 5% with the assumption of flat volumes.

Now in comparison, Q3 organic growth reflects a 1% volume benefit. So we've guided all year with the assumption that volumes are flat. We think that's prudent to do that. But we do know that fourth quarter peak season, holiday season is a good 1 for our industry. And so if volume trends hold during the fourth quarter, we could see organic growth similar to the type of growth that we posted here in the third quarter. So I just wanted to decompose the organic growth assumptions for our listeners on the call.

And the 1 thing I'd add to that is when you look at the revenue that we have booked for 2027, we see ourselves exiting the year at $850 million plus, so more than $850 million of revenue going into 2027. That would be a record for us exiting the year will sign close to $1.3 billion of new business. That's up from just over $1 billion in 2025. And our pipeline is $3 billion today, and growing. And I think what is most exciting about the $3 billion pipeline is that it is diversified across all of the industry sectors that we participate in 40% of that pipeline in our B2B industry verticals where we're putting a lot of emphasis on growth.

So all of the components are in place. We've got the projects to work on to deliver the organic growth that we're talking about, and that is why we have such great confidence going into Q4 and into 2027.

Very clear. And just 1 quick follow-up. As we think about those strategic growth verticals in the B2B space, obviously, I think we can understand the TAM of those verticals and the growth opportunity. But is there anything you would like to call out about those I guess, customers in general from just maybe a margin standpoint, return standpoint of those particular contracts?

Yes. I think that's a great call out. the new contracts that we're winning are margin accretive to us. And so our teams are doing a very good job around pricing discipline. We want to make sure that in terms of achieving our margin aspirations and I've said very clearly in the past, we should be at or better than our peers in terms of our margin performance. Winning new business that is margin accretive is really important to that. Our pricing disciplines have been very strong throughout the year to deliver that.

In terms of margin performance, I would comment as it relates to growth, we're ahead of where I thought we would be in terms of the deacceleration of the commercial agenda. We are spending some external money to support the start-up of new operations because we're ahead of plan. We are working to position internal operational resources to fuel our organic growth agenda, but the positioning of that resources has lagged what has been overperformance in the new contract signings.

And so we've had some short-term expense associated with start-up costs. We don't see that everything in our growth agendas. We rightsized the operational organization to deliver against growth but that did have an impact on EBITDA margins in Q3, but really to reinforce the margins of the new business that we're signing is accretive. Kristine, maybe any other comments on that?

Yes, Stephanie, I just wanted to highlight a little bit on the data centers in aerospace and defense in particular. Those are very complex mandates, very complicated supply chains and the services that we're doing for our customers are a bit different than probably what you see in kind of the core business that we're doing. It tends to be stickier. It tends to be higher value-added services. So we're excited about that. And I would also say that we're very excited on our Investor Day to give you a deep dive look, in particular, into aerospace and defense and what we actually do inside the data center, so stay tuned.

Your next question is coming from Chris Wetherbee from Wells Fargo.

Maybe kind of picking up on the margin point. I guess, maybe if there's any incremental detail you want to give about the start-up costs? And then, I guess, if we think about some of the growth opportunities coming from these complex mandates like data centers and aerospace and defense, I guess, how do we kind of think about the progression of those start-up costs? What drops away, I guess, as we go into the fourth quarter?

Obviously, the guide does call for some margin expansion, I think, on a year-over-year basis. So can you just maybe talk a little bit about sort of the margin progression and then maybe bigger picture, how we see that sort of expanding as we move forward from here.

Yes, Chris, it's Mark. Maybe we just pivot to expectations of margins we're starting to see some green shoots in the fourth quarter. But really, we're looking for another sequential improvement in margins in the fourth quarter, specifically from the GXO Way. Global procurement, establishing that organization in the middle of the year, we'll start to drive some procurement savings. We continue to be focused on continuous improvement initiatives via the GXO Way and we're also seeing a more favorable balance between net wins and exits in the fourth quarter.

So a little less churn in the fourth quarter than what we saw in the third quarter and the second quarter, as we told you historically. In addition to that, we'll where the Wincanton synergies are behind us, and we'll really see the full benefit from those win savings. So really, that's how I would walk the third quarter to the fourth quarter. And as Patrick said, we did have some additional costs associated with some new large-scale customer start-ups.

But overall, I think that's how I would how I would position the margin improvement from Q3 to Q4. And then just generally speaking, as we move into 2027, broadly speaking, we're really focused on productivity and efficiencies, and a lot of that is going to come from not only the commercial side by growing the B2B, higher-margin but as we go into 2027, the rollout of our labor management systems, the further deployment of GXO IQ.

And so all of that will start to quicken as we move into 2027. But we're right where we thought. We -- we hit our guide here in the third quarter, and I think I've provided you some color here on how we see fourth quarter shaping up versus the third quarter.

Okay. That's very helpful. I appreciate that. And then maybe, Patrick, can you comment a little bit on the competitive landscape. So I know there's been some discussion over the course of the last several months about new entrants and other concerns like that. Obviously, sort of the pipeline looks like it's growing the success in the key verticals that you're focusing on looks pretty good.

So maybe provide us with a little bit of perspective and if you can sort of weave in a little bit of maybe what your expectations are for the opportunity on organic growth in '27, that would be helpful.

Sure. I think maybe back to the May time frame, a lot was made of statements that Amazon made about coming into the space. And I think that is maybe what you're referring to as new entrants -- we have continued to not see any impact of Amazon's statement in contract logistics. I think they're absolutely having an impact in last mile in ocean and air freight and in fact, we think they're a great provider in those 2 areas and probably we'd look to leverage their services.

In contract logistics, as I said back in May and on last call, they're simply not a competitor in our space. Our value proposition is very different in terms of what we bring to our customers versus what they're offering to the marketplace. And I continue to reiterate, we haven't lost any business to Amazon in contract logistics. We don't see them in bids, competitive bids that we're in. And so that really has not been a factor.

The marketplace is competitive. There are a number of players in the industry, but we have a $3 billion pipeline. In many cases, we are competing against 6, 7, 8 providers for opportunities, but we're winning better than 30% of those. And so we're winning more than our fair share. We are competing, which I think speaks very strongly to the value proposition that we have and especially underpinned by our agenda of robotics automation technology, AI, and so we really feel good about our competitive position in the market.

When we look to our TAM and opportunities to grow that pipeline, certainly putting emphasis on North America, which has been a big driver of our organic growth this year as well as the B2B verticals really will provide us the opportunity to continue to grow the pipeline that we have today, as Kristine referenced, especially on aerospace and defense, we are just getting started there. We already have a great book of business there, but in terms of the pipeline build. There's significant opportunities to play for that aren't represented in our pipeline yet.

And then I would point to Asia, where we have a relatively small business but we're really starting with strategic emphasis there, which we will accelerate in 2027. We are winning new business in Asia, including data centers, by the way. And so great progress there to grow the pipeline in 2027. And so all those factors give us a lot of confidence that, number one, we're positioned really well competitively in contract logistics as 1 of the market leaders. We have great industry verticals to target for continued growth and geographic expansion opportunities, both with the emphasis in North America and Asia to continue to build out our TAM, which should fuel organic growth going forward.

Our next question is coming from Ari Rosa from Citigroup.

So congratulations on some strong results here and the positive momentum. I'm curious to hear just to get your thoughts on kind of where macro conditions currently stand? And then as we think about both the pipeline and the sustainability of some of these results, how vulnerable are they to macro conditions? And if we see a change in macro conditions, kind of what's your level of confidence on being able to continue with some of the momentum that we're seeing here clearly gaining traction.

Yes. Sure. I think it's a great question. I've talked in the past about contract logistics as an industry and the sensitivity of the industry to macro conditions being geopolitical, economic. We are less connect to GDP performance. We're less connected to geopolitical challenges with the exception of maybe an environment of those challenges creates tailwinds for the industry when customers need to make changes to their supply chain.

So as trade flows change, warehouse locations need to change, inventory holding strategies change those changes result in opportunities for companies to look at outsourcing, supply chain activity as an alternative to operating themselves. And that fuels opportunities for the contract with visits industry and us, especially as technology, robotics, automation, AI, not humonoids, become more prevalent in the execution of supply chain. Supply chain execution is becoming more complex and the expertise that we bring and the solutions that we have to address supply chain complexity are driving customers to make a decision to outsource versus in-source.

And we've talked about from an industry perspective, only about 30% of supply chain spend is outsourced. And so there's a lot of white space. 70% of spend is white space for us to go after to grow the business. We don't need to take market share from competitors to thrive. And we are seeing the trend of outsourcing accelerate, I think, because supply chains are more complex and supply chain execution is becoming more challenging, and there's a huge value proposition associated with hiring experts like GXO to deliver against those solutions.

So from a macro, we are not really sensitive to some of the big macro economic drivers that are happening. And in fact, those are serving as tailwinds for us today.

That's really helpful. Appreciate the color. And then just as a follow-up, I was hoping you could give us a bit more context on GXO IQ. Just -- how should we think about what the upside potential is from that? And is there a good way to think about the costs associated with developing and deploying GXO IQ and what the return profile looks like from that investment.

Yes, sure. So for those who don't know, GXO IQ is our middleware solution. That is our data lake, in the platform for deployment of AI and productivity improvement tools to our operations. And we're working to integrate GXO IQ with all of our operations, over 50 will be integrated this year. We, in terms of AI, have a team who are developing our own proprietary AI, but we also leverage external partners and the things that they have developed, which keeps our development costs very low.

The benefit of AI in our operations is just 1 component of many elements of the GXO Way that we're pursuing. When we look at the deployment of our labor management systems, unified labor management system approach around the world. We think that's 5% to 15% improvement in labor costs and individual operations. And we'll be on that journey over a multiyear period to get that deployed and realize the benefits. When we look at AI, we think it's a mid-single-digit percentage improvement to productivity on top of that. And so we have a lot of emphasis to get those tools out to the business, and there's a great -- a really strong return on investment associated with that for ourselves and for our customers as we share in the cost savings generated by that.

I see AI is going to continue to feature in a very big way in our business. We're seeing great results from the tools that we've deployed already in the mid-single digits benefit that I talked about. And so we'll continue to accelerate that. That will contribute EBITDA margin improvement. It will also continue to strengthen our value proposition to customers as we share costs as we share cost savings with them.

Our next question is coming from Richa Harnain from Deutsche Bank.

I just wanted to follow up a little bit more about the start-up costs. Is this just something that will be reoccurring to some extent as you bring on new customers and any strategic verticals if so, like when do they typically start to taper off? Is it a 1-quarter adjustment or something and then you start to get compensated for those costs? Or is this something unique to this past quarter about the start-up?

And then I think there was something said about Wincanton related cost in the quarter to that led to some outside weakness. That seems to be in the rearview now. But just wanted to understand, I guess, big picture, like what's artificially depressing the Q3 margin in relation to its potential? We're hearing lots of good things on this call with respect to how organic growth accelerated. You have the GXO IQ starting to build up the unified labor management savings starting to trickle in.

So I just want to understand again like what the potential is for margin uplift if we didn't have maybe some of these unique costs weighing on results.

It's a fantastic question to call out. And so I would say, first, the site costs in Q3 are really unique. So the period and the projects that we were working on and the timing of those coming on. I was reflecting back to -- I don't know if it was the last call or the call before I was asked what keeps me up at night or what would be the biggest headwind to our organic growth agenda. And I talked about the importance of matching our operational capability, particularly on implementation with our organic growth agenda and particularly an accelerating growth agenda.

With organic growth accelerating at the pace it has, we really found ourselves in Q3 stretched in terms of implementation resource. So we were quick to go outside for outside consultative health on implementation activities, that's a onetime thing to support those activities while concurrently. We've been putting operational resource in place to support the growth agenda going forward. That's really about rightsizing our implementation teams, our operations teams to meet the expectations that are created on the new business signings side.

And so I feel first of all, we are customer service first. So we have 0 hesitancy in engaging outside resource to make sure we successfully implement 4 customers even if it comes at a short-term cost. We are long-term focused and we're going to deliver a long-term, strong organic growth agenda. We want to make sure we perform strong out of the gate when we win business, and we'll do that even when it comes at the cost.

As we look forward, what's really important is that we have consistency in the delivery of our organic growth agenda. So we have to have the sales materialize when we are positioning resource for implementation and keeping that in balance. And I feel very good about coming out of Q3 into Q4, where we are on that agenda. And I feel especially good about how we're moving into 2027, rightsizing the organization and focused on delivering organic growth.

And remember, this is an inflection point for GXO really coming out of the 5-year agenda of strong M&A. I've talked about the priority being organic growth, Q3 in terms of some of those external start-up costs associated with implementations of those growing pains and making that inflection. But the team is on top of it, and we're going to deliver really well against that.

Right. I appreciate it. And if I could just squeeze in 1 more clarification around conversations or expectations rather for peak. What are your conversations with customers right now? I think it was alluded to that we have a good season here. But curious what kind of puts and takes you're considering for peak and how you're preparing for that?

Yes. So I think, as Mark said, we saw across the board about a 1% lift in volume. I would characterize our posture right now is cautiously optimistic. We are positioning labor for the peak that our customers are wanting and expecting to see. So we're stepping into Q4, sharing our customers' confidence in that but in terms of how we are guiding Q4, we are on the basis of flat volume to last year. So being prudent in that.

And we'll continue to see week-by-week over the next 7 weeks here, how that plays out.

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Brian Ossenbeck from JPMorgan.

Maybe start with a quick follow-up on the peak season. We're seeing some fairly significant congestion in the West Coast ports. I don't think you have any direct operations in those areas, but clearly a leading indicator and tied into the rest of the supply chain. So I don't know if that's coming up in your customer conversations or in some of your in some of your planning because we're starting to see some fairly significant delays coming out of the ports. So is that feeding into your view on peak season? Or is that separate?

Yes. We are not being impacted by that today. At least I'm not hearing that from customers. I think the positioning of peak inventory really happened in the August, September time frame. In order to meet the needs of the next 8 weeks, at least for the customers that we're servicing. So as you say, we don't have any core operations, certainly. We're taking a lot of freight in from support to our warehouses, but the inventory has already been positioned to deliver it with our customers.

Understood, Patrick. Just a quick follow-up. The exposure to to data centers in that whole supply chain. Can you give a little bit more context on that maybe in terms of how much of the incremental new wins are coming from these customers? And if you can give, also a little bit of flavor in terms of how much of the current book of business is related to those sorts of contracts. And it does seem like it's still moving forward at a pretty good clip for you guys, especially in new geographies, it sounds like as well.

Yes, Brian, this is Kristine. I think we saw really good growth both in new business wins and then even in existing business around not only data centers but as Patrick mentioned, the strategic growth verticals, I think you can see in our revenue breakout around technology. It was our fastest-growing vertical. I think we're encouraged that the growth is only picking up. I think you can see our strategic growth vertical wins, whether you're looking year-to-date or in the quarter are up 3 times over where they were last year.

And then certainly, within the pipeline, they are about 1/3 of our pipeline, but the RFPs are coming quick. We're winning business very quick in this space. So the TAM, not only growing in North America, but as Patrick mentioned, we're winning in this space in Continental Europe, and we're now winning in Asia. So the TAM just continues to expand for us and a lot more to come as we move into 2027.

Next question is coming from Ravi Shanker from Morgan Stanley.

A wanted to ask you a big picture question on your current churn levels. Is it where you want it to be? Kind of how much room for improvement do you see -- how much of it is within your control? And anything in particular that you guys can do to maybe kind of reduce that? Not saying it's elevated our saying this any signs of improvement there or any kind of leverage you can do to get that better over time?

Yes. So I'm really happy with the trajectory on churn. Mark referenced that in his comments as it relates to our EBITDA margin trajectory going forward. So we're seeing lots of improvement on customer retention. We continue to signal and plan around 95% retention, but we do see of 1 or 2-point opportunity there in terms of improving retention going into 2027.

I would say that the launch of our global customer success model is already yielding benefits. So we're putting resource and attention to our top customers, and especially those who are doing business with us across multiple geographies. We are being more deliberate around collecting customer feedback through our MPS approach and putting mechanisms in place to action that feedback so that we make sure that customers are getting the very best experience that they can have today, not even waiting for the renewals.

And we've had some really great renewals this year where we're extending customer relationships even beyond 10 years in many cases. So not only retaining but creating increased contract length through that renewal process. And a lot of that is underpinned by investment in robotics, automation and technology in our customers' business and our customers really looking for longevity in the benefit of those investments. So our retention is going to continue to contribute to organic growth as we step into 2027. We'll share more details about that on our Investor Day, November 16.

Great. Looking forward to that. And maybe just a quick follow-up on the macro. What are you hearing from your shipper customers? Do they feel like they're in a good spot here with their demand levels and inventory levels? Or does it feel like there are coil spring kind of waiting to pounds as soon as the macro gets better, which could drive meaningful upside to like the base activity level for '27?

Yes. I think -- it's hard for me to comment on that in the aggregate. I would say feedback I get from customers varies a little bit when you talk about North America, U.K., Europe and so forth. But generally, as I would say, cautiously optimistic I think you characterized the coiled spring. I think people have been waiting for the coiled spring for a while. Hopefully, that cold spring comes soon, and especially as we move into 2027. But generally, from the things that we see in the macro, the economies continue to perform fairly steady.

And we're not seeing the 5% to 10% in the aggregate volume increase in the near term. But we're seeing lots of good support for year-on-year volume stability and maybe 1 or 2 percentage improvement on volume year-on-year.

Thank your next question today is coming from Jason Seidl from TD Cowen.

Patrick, Kristine. I wanted to talk a little bit about your new contract wins and some of your strategic vertical focus. When I look to the percentage of your new wins coming from just strictly outsourcing, it really jumped as a percentage of overall business, right? It's 26%, I think last quarter it was 17%. Is this just a function of the new verticals tend to be more new outsourcers?

Yes, absolutely. I think that is the case, especially in Aerospace and Defense and technology, where we're seeing a lot of new outsourcer activity. I think -- as I said, I think that comes with supply chain complexity. When you look at the aerospace industry and the complexity of that supply chain to begin with and suppliers' efforts to keep pace with the backlog that exists there. The application of the solutions that we have in those industries, I think, is resonating really well, delivering real results. I think we'll continue to see that level of new outsourcing increase.

Yes, we're definitely encouraged to see that growth there, especially when you look at the margin profile. My follow-up is going to be more on the volume outlook. I just want to make sure I'm getting this right. You guys are basically just choosing to continue to guide to flat volumes as you've been doing all year long. But you do have, I think, easier comps coming up in the fourth quarter and plus what you've seen thus far, let's call it, 1/3 of the way in here is favorable. Is that a good way to characterize the outlook?

Yes. I think that's really fair. So I think we have been consistent and prudent in assuming flat volumes. And when we've been wrong, we've been wrong by 1% or 2%. And so we like the prudency of assuming flat and realizing that 1% or 2% improvement, obviously, it differs by the industry verticals that we participate in. But in the aggregate, that feels like a prudent path forward. But as you say, I think with opportunity for some upside.

Appreciate the time. Nice job in the quarter. Thank you.

Next question is coming from Scott Schneeberger from Oppenheimer.

For my first one, in the press release, it was indicated that you're converting opportunities more quickly. I'm curious, is that a result of the end markets you're pursuing where the sales cycle is just faster? Or is it something you're doing internally with the sales force that's maybe boosting that?

Yes. I think it's a combination of the industry verticals that we're focused on. And I think it is good commercial discipline in terms of moving from customer conversation to close to implementation Kristine, maybe you want to comment on the pace of implementation of the business that we're winning in comparison to the past.

Yes. So Scott, it's Kristine. So we are seeing the conversion. I think you saw this manifest in the second quarter. We had $410 million in wins in the second quarter. And with that, in a matter of 3 weeks, we rebuilt the pipeline very, very quickly with the amount of RFPs. Not only are we winning faster, but we are implementing faster. So we're kind of winning more in the year for the year. I think we're up about 10 percentage points on a year-over-year basis of business that we're winning in the year for the year versus last year. And I think it's primarily driven by data centers and that that we're able to move very, very quickly in the industry that is obviously scaling very quickly and that is a differentiator for us in the marketplace.

Great. Go ahead, Patrick.

I was just going to add. No, I think that threads perfectly to what I talked about in terms of implementation costs in the third quarter. meaning to leverage some external resources for that because we are winning and implementing faster and much faster than we have in the past. And so we're rightsized there now to meet the needs of those faster implementations, but that was definitely a reality associated with increased sales.

Sounds good. On the follow-up, I guess, probably, Mark, for you. With the -- it's essentially a CapEx free cash flow question. With the pursuit of the new verticals and expanding into more so in North America, and it sounds like a bit into Asia a bit more now. Are you seeing more open book or closed book contracts. What does that mean? And it sounds like a push towards B2B more with those verticals. Is that -- what's it going to do for the CapEx profile going forward? Is it going to increase, decrease? It sounds like it's going to be good for margins, but just curious on the CapEx and obviously, free cash flow from there.

Yes. Thanks, Scott. As you said, I mean, we're focused on the B2B and growing quicker in North America. Just generally speaking, though North America tends to be fixed variable closed book type contracts. And as you indicated, those are typically higher margin. So that's good as we think about the future from a margin profile standpoint. When we think about CapEx just holistically, as we're growing in North America, and I've looked at the data, I would say just slightly as a percent of revenue, just slightly higher on closed book contracts and open book contracts.

I've done some analysis on that. So I don't think the higher growth in North America specifically relates to fixed price contracts is going to generate additional CapEx. I think we think holistically about our entire book of business. We do know that the B2B verticals, in some instances, could create some CapEx needs but I think we continue to believe over the course of the next couple of years, our CapEx as a percent of revenue based on our growth projections will continue to be somewhere between 2% and 3%. We don't think that there is any substantial need to increase CapEx. There are some instances from an automation robotic standpoint that those services can be bought as a service as opposed to CapEx.

So we're -- we don't expect that to be significantly higher probably a tick higher as it relates to B2B in North America, but I don't think anything materially different than what we've seen in the past.

Next question today is coming from Bruce Chan from Stifel.

This is Andrew Cox on for Bruce. I just wanted to talk a little bit about the incremental wins for 2027 that have been secured. I think the presentation called out $630 million which is down about 10% -- nearly 10% from the comparable year ahead revenue at this point last year. And that's, of course, even as you guys have had strong quarterly wins and pipeline exceeding $3 billion -- you called out some expectations for strong 4Q signing expectations.

I was just kind of wondering where that's coming from. That hasn't really been the case in recent years. would love to know if there's anything incremental to call out about the 4Q signings? And then also just kind of reconciling the lower year ahead revenue at this point with your confidence of accelerating growth into next year.

Yes. So I think it's a great question for us to wrap up on. So our year-to-date signings that carry into 2027 comp against the number that included NHS, which was a very large contract in the prior year. As I said, we will exit the year at $850 million or higher, and that will be a record for us as we look at revenue carrying into the following year, so $850 million or higher into 2027. And we can say that for the confidence that we have in delivering the pipeline, closed on deals for the fourth quarter of this year. And so we will end the year this year at a $1.3 billion of new business signings with that $850 million carrying into the following year. And Kristine, anything to wrap up on that.

Yes. I think just to add a little bit of color. I think with the confidence that we have with where the pipeline was at $3.1 billion, I think we added $267 million in the quarter for 2027. I think if you kind of back into it, I think we're looking for over $300 million in wins in the fourth quarter. And obviously, a large chunk of that will set up into 2027. And driving that over $850 million.

And then just to remind you, we will still win business in the first quarter, the second quarter, the first half of the year in the year, for the year. As we mentioned, we're winning business faster with the strategic growth verticals, the pipeline growing, the commercial momentum. So I think we feel very good about the layering and the building of momentum as we move into 2027 to drive accelerated organic growth.

We reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to Patrick for any further closing comments.

Yes. Thank you very much. We're really pleased with the momentum we're seeing across GXO. Over the past year, we've sharpened our operating model, strengthened leadership in our capabilities and create a greater alignment across the business. Today, we're beginning to see those efforts reluctant in our growth, commercial momentum and operational performance from a record pipeline levels and strong new business wins, so the rollout of the unified labor management system and accelerated deployment of GXO IQ, we're seeing increased evidence that our strategy is gaining traction.

Most importantly, we're building a more connected and more effective organization that is better positioned to deliver for our customers and shareholders over the long term. We're really confident in the direction of the business, and we're excited about the opportunities that lie ahead. We're looking forward to discussing our strategy, sharing more detail on how we're positioned GXO for sustainable growth at Investor Day on November 16 and with that, thank you for joining.

Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation today.

Great. Next up, we have long-time friends of Laguna, GXO, and very happy to welcome CFO, Mark Suchinski, and Chief Strategy Officer, Kristine Kubacki. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you.

So it's been an interesting 12 months for everybody, especially for you guys, kind of lots going on. Obviously, with macro kind of idiosyncratically with you guys as well. Maybe you can start by just giving us an update on business trends and kind of how they have trended versus your expectations kind of especially since the last time you spoke with us in 2Q call?

Yes. Thanks. Things really haven't, I think, materially changed since our since our last earnings call. We started the year with the assumptions that volumes would be flat. As we've progressed throughout the year, at least through the first half of the year, what we've seen is maybe B2B a bit stronger than we had anticipated. B2C maybe a little bit softer than we had anticipated. But overall, I would say, when you think about the breadth of our customers, 30% of our customers are blue-chip Fortune 100, we've got a very diversified customer base. And we have a lot of our customers in certain sectors that are growing very strongly, like aerospace and defense, like data centers. So there's a little bit of a natural hedge as it relates to how diversified our business is and how global we are.

We're in 27 different countries. We're in the U.S., the U.K. and Continental Europe. So overall, I think volumes and from a market backdrop, we feel pretty good about where our plans are, I would say, overall, when we think about our business, it's long -- longer cycle in nature. Typically, our contracts are 5 years in length. As well as, I think, when you look at our business over the last 5 years, you don't see the type of cyclicality you see in some transport areas. We don't go as high as some, we don't go down as low. So it's a little bit more resilient and I would say that as we move into the peak season here, I would expect those trends to continue where B2B is a little bit stronger, a little bit softer, but obviously, with the macro going on and the conflicts in the Middle East and where fuel prices are, it's something we continue to keep an eye on.

Got it. That's super helpful. Maybe to unpack that a little bit. Any particular color around the strength in B2B and the weakness in B2C, especially weakness in B2C? Kind of it feels like e-commerce is doing reasonably well. What's -- is that kind of -- do you think it's [idiosyncratic] to you guys? Or do you think it's marketplace? Any color there?

No, I think you're right. I think e-commerce continues to do quite well, right? So that continues to be fairly resilient. I think the consumer continues to be fairly resilient, right? When you -- even in light of where fuel prices are. So it isn't just our higher growth verticals like aerospace and defense and data centers and some other industrials, we're seeing other parts of our business continue to be fairly resilient and I think that's a great testament to the strength of the customers that we have and the book of business that we've built over the last 5 years.

Understood. So if e-commerce is doing reasonably well, kind of does that feel like the especially European food and bev kind of non-e-commerce retailers are probably where the softness is?

A little bit there. I would say...

We have heard that at from others as well...

Yes. Continental Europe, I think not as much as the U.K., I think we're seeing a little bit more softening in the United Kingdom and Ireland. A little less so from a Continental Europe standpoint. And then our North America business has been a little bit stronger along those lines.

Got it. You guys are one of the best peak season checks of any of the companies in our coverage, what are you seeing out there. Some of the early reads we're getting from the trucking guys is that this appears to be a very strong peak season, but maybe that's just supply driven on their side. So what are you hearing from your customers so far?

At this point in time, we saw -- they've launched the summer campaigns. Inventories are filling. From a seasonality standpoint, the third quarter is shaping up how we had expected. So at this point in time, I think the peak -- the season has kicked off. The trends that we had expected when we laid out the plan at the beginning of the year, we're seeing a reaffirmation by our customers at this point in time. There's still more to go between now and the end of the year before we get to Black Friday in the higher part of the season. But at this point in time, I would just say we're not seeing any pullback in light of where the global economy is.

Understood. Obviously, you guys have made great progress or continue to build on your progress on the pipeline of new business. Can you talk about some of the trends there, both geographically and segment-wise?

Well, I think it's a testament to Patrick and the strategy that he's laid out. Before -- as he came on board as a CEO, and we've pivoted from growing and scaling the business via M&A to a pivot of we've scaled up enough. We've got the capabilities, now let's go deploy those capabilities, right? And let's go grow the business, let's focus on organic growth. Let's focus our attention on maybe where we've underperformed like North America. Let's focus on these higher growth, higher-margin type verticals like aerospace and defense and data centers.

And so as part of that overall strategy, we established a Corporate Chief Commercial Officer that is focused on customer excellence, standing up that organization, really strengthening account management, focusing on our large customers as opposed to having 3 points of contact across our regions, having 1 point of contact and then collaborating with the regions as we look at those customers that are in multiple regions. And we're starting to see the fruits of that labor.

Last time we spoke, pipeline, roughly $2.7 billion continues to be near all-time highs. In the second quarter, contract wins up over $400 million, 30% higher than the prior year, 40% of our contract wins in the second quarter came from the higher growth, higher-margin verticals, aerospace and defense and data centers. So the effort, the commercial excellence team, the leadership change in AMAPAC where we've inserted a new President of the region as well as put in a new sales leader, the momentum is there. We've got the capability.

It's really focusing our efforts in targeting our sales, our go-to-market, our value proposition to the right markets to the right customer base. And we've got great capability. And right now, we've got the bandwidth to focus our attention on -- focusing on customer, customer growth and execution. Whereas the last couple of years, there's been a lot of time consumed around M&A and the integration. So we're pivoting to the ongoing execution. And so at this point in time, when we really look at the second quarter, one quarter doesn't make a trend, right?

For us, we stacked another quarter. We felt really good at the time of our earnings release on where the contract wins were being projected for the third quarter. We continue to feel good about that. And so our goal here is to deliver another strong contract win quarter as well as show a sequential improvement in organic growth in the third quarter, and we're very focused on that. And we look forward to continuing to provide some positive news as we move through the rest of the year.

Got it. Maybe even looking back before the spin, is there a reason why you guys have been so good and so successful in Europe and kind of maybe not quite replicate that success in North America? Is it just a genesis of Norbert and kind of it started out with the European strength, and that's what you were good at. Is it an end market thing? Is it a capabilities thing? And what's the answer to that?

Well, I don't have the history, being around approximately 6 months. But I would say the Norbert acquisition led to a lot of capabilities in the U.K. Also, our former CEO was based in London. So when you have a significant acquisition made in that sector and your CEO, who from a cultural standpoint was based in the U.K., you tend to gravitate towards what you know best.

Absolutely.

And so as a result of that, I think, we've accomplished a lot in the U.K. and Continental Europe where from a market standpoint, we're #1 in the U.K. We did a couple of acquisitions to add to that. So that part of our business is solidly in good shape, mature. And so we need to continue to execute with our current customers and look for some opportunities to win.

Our UK&I team had a great win last year with NHS, the National Health System in the U.K., and it's a big win for us. Now as we think about maturing that -- those sectors of our business, those regions of our business. Now we can pivot to North America, which has been probably unsupported from a leadership standpoint. And we've got the right leader in there, and we've got the right focus. So we think UK&I and Continental Europe are in a good place from a capability and a customer standpoint. Now our focus is pivoting to the largest economy in the world, which is North America, where the greatest potential of growth for us are and really trying to take advantage of the North American market, not only with the B2B and the higher-end verticals, but just in general, there is a lot of opportunity for us to grow in North America. And our team is excited. They have some momentum and they're really ready to get after it.

Got it. Is North American success is just about that renewed focus on the market? You said new local management team -- regional management team as well. Do you need more skills and capabilities? Do you need more technology? Or is it just a case of we have what we need just go after the business?

Leadership changes are important and we've done that, partnering them with our Corporate Chief Commercial Officer from a partnership and account management, she'll bring in capabilities like digital marketing to help expand. For us, we have 340 sites in North America, 40,000 employees. So it's a big scale operation. We have a lot of capabilities in North America and I think for us, it's being able to translate and communicate to new customers as it relates to the capabilities, the things that we're doing like complex kitting and parts distribution from an aerospace and defense, like building racks for data centers, doing wiring.

We have a value proposition. We have a lot of capabilities. And so it's our opportunity now as these RFP opportunities arise that we sell our story, right, and make sure that we have the proper bandwidth to go support the growth and make sure that we're prepared for the implementations because as we're growing faster, operational excellence is going to be needed to support the customer growth.

Got it. And another kind of big characteristic of business is the percentage of open book versus fixed variable contracts. Is that something else that you're looking to address? Obviously, one gives you defensiveness, the other gives you operating leverage. And so is part of this pivot also kind of looking at that mix?

Customer mix, revenue mix, I think, over time, continues to shift, 70% of our revenue is CPG, 30% is B2B. So over time, as we focus on the new higher growth verticals, the shift will change. That will help on the top line, it will help on the bottom line. As it relates to open book, it's not totally negative. It's low risk, very consistent cash flow, okay? So open book will always be part of our overall portfolio.

Today, open book is around 55% of our contracts. And as I see over time, as we pivot and focus more growth in North America, which is more fixed type contracting, we grow faster there. It gives us an opportunity to leverage and grow margins. That pivot will continue to shift the mix of open book downward a bit more to the fixed side of things. And even some of our open book contracts, we're having lots of conversations in the U.K. about continuous improvement, where we make investments, where we get returns, how do we support the customers.

So I think there's some additional pricing strategies that can be deployed that would end up being a win-win for us and our customers. But what you just described from a mix standpoint, those mix shifts, no doubt, and pivots will help us grow the top line, but I think it will have a meaningful impact on our margins.

Got it. Let us take a little bit of a step back here and focus on maybe some broader industry or macro trends. The world has been a chaotic place for at least 6 years, if not longer than that. It doesn't look like that's changing anytime soon. What has that done to corporates thinking about their supply chains, thinking about whether to outsource or not? Does that make them want to do it more? Or does that make them want to say, hey, this is a core function for us, and so we do this in-house and have more control over it.

The trends that we're seeing is the challenges that you just described are making supply chains more complex for companies. They want to be less integrated. They want to focus their management bandwidth, their attention, their investments on their core business.

Sure.

So as part of that, you're seeing a lot of focus on onshoring, moving product closer to the home base. And I think that trend will continue very strongly. I do think that with the complexity of the world and the challenges that you just described, companies are looking to go to people like GXO who have the expertise to deal with the complexity of the supply chain of starting up operations, implementing automation, robotics, deploying AI as well as having the scale of being in 27 countries and operating in dozens and dozens of free trade zones. So I think that's a real benefit that we can deploy for our customers.

And through the first half of this year, around 17% of our wins have come from companies who have pushed their supply chain into the supply base. Historically speaking, about 1/3 of our wins have typically been by big blue chip companies that are using vendors to step in and manage their supply chain. And so those trends will continue. And I think as the world continues to be more challenging, more complex, more and more companies are going to look for people like GXO to handle the complexity of that.

Got it. Also kind of just going back to the chaos of the last 6 years, how has trade policy moving to a multipolar world again brought renewed scrutiny of global supply chains, where you store your inventory, nearshoring, what does all of this mean to you? Kind of in some ways, to your point, supply chains have become more complex and in some ways they've actually become simplified if you're nearshoring stuff, if you're storing more inventory, places closer to the end customer, what does it mean for you guys?

Want to pick that one up?

No, I think the complexity that we've seen is increasing our value proposition. So in fact, you think about maybe where supply chains were in further off places, then those weren't regions that we were playing in. But certainly, as we're moving those supply chains to North America, and we're doing more of the warehousing, the fulfillment here in North America or in Continental Europe, that helps us because it's right in our backyard and I think you're seeing that in our pipeline as well. We've -- as Mark mentioned, our pipeline is near a record. And in this last quarter, and the end of June, we ended at $2.3 billion, I'm sorry. And 3 weeks later, our pipeline was up to $2.7 billion.

So I think our customers are certainly -- the value proposition is resonating. They're looking for partners to help them with not only their complex challenges that they're facing today, but really with our Chief Commercial Officer's strategy, it's about how are we partnering with them and looking out 10 years. How are their supply chains? What's the real strategic things that they're doing and how can we help them not only over the next, like I said, the next month, but really over the next 5 years.

Got it. I wanted to spend some time talking about the competitive environment because I think one of the amazing things about your businesses is that there's basically 2 companies globally who can do what you do yourself and obviously, your large peer. Is that still the case? Do you expect that to still be the case going forward? Do you think some of the more regional competitors are getting more sophisticated, and as companies look to, like you said, kind of outsource their supply chains, is it basically a 2-player game or do you think some of the others can kind of continue to be competitive?

Well, I would say this, we don't rest on our accomplishments, right? We're very focused on continuing to be the #1 player in the market for us. We are the only sole warehouse logistics company in the marketplace, pure-play warehouse logistics. And it's a very fragmented industry. So there's lots of opportunities for us to grow our competition as well as maybe the smaller companies. And so what I would say is I worry about all of them, as it relates to their focus on growing. They're focused on their business. Everybody is going faster, looking to deploy automation, robotics and AI. And so we can't stand still.

We need to continue to move the ball forward. We've been a market leader, I would say, in adopting automation, robotics and AI. Our CEO is very, very focused on deploying the technology to support our customers, but also deploying that technology to drive operational efficiency and execution. We've done pilots from a humanoid standpoint, Patrick has talked a lot about that. But as we think about how warehouse logistics looks in 5 years, it's obviously going to look a lot different than it is today. And so we can't just sit back and rest on the fact that we're #1 in the U.K.

We need to continue to focus on getting better, gaining market share, winning new business, and that's all part of the 4-pillar strategy. And really, when you think about our business, we're in the -- we're called or kind of placed in the transportation sector. I really view ourselves as we're morphing into a tech services company, right? Really, we provide services. We solve our customers' biggest challenges, which is the supply chain. And today, more and more of our ability to solve those problems are related to technology. It's the automation and it's robotics and then the ever-emerging internal work that we've done from AI as well as using complementing that with external AI, it's allowing us to be more efficient, to be more reactive to support our customers' ever-changing needs. And today, it's more dynamic than ever.

Ravi, I would just add, I mean, you talked about the competitive dynamics, I mean, our market is massive. I mean we talked about in excess of a $500 billion TAM. And us and our nearest competitor, we make up small percentages of that. So still our largest -- 70% of the market is still done in-house today. And we've acquired a tremendous amount of capabilities with the M&A that we've done over the last 5 years and 10 years. And so now we are continuing to unlock even across our core markets, these new strategic growth verticals. We have a tremendous playing field and a tremendous runway of organic growth opportunities we've seen in the pipeline, the wins. So I don't -- again, I don't think we're resting on our laurels, but I think it's up for us to go grab and we have a tremendous opportunity on the organic growth runway.

Got it. Mark, you mentioned AI and robotics. I have a bunch of questions on that. Kristine knows that. So it's coming your way. But before we get there, just one more on competition. Obviously, there was a lot of headline focus on Amazon announcing the Supply Chain Solutions business earlier this year. You guys came out and said, "Hey, maybe that's a competitor to GXO Direct. But the rest of what we do is really complex." And can you just unpack that a little bit and maybe what investors are missing kind of still focused on that potential risk?

Yes. Let me jump into this and then I'll hand it off to Kristine. But yes, lots of questions since April on this topic. And hey, Amazon is a massive company with a lot of capability, and they do a great job of what they do. But when we look at what we do for our customers in many ways, they are very specific customized services, site specific, 1 site, 1 location with very bespoke automation technology that's being deployed from a warehouse management system standpoint. I think the criticality of our -- or the ability of us to customize solutions for that individual customer, right, is what makes us different than Amazon.

I'm not quite sure, Amazon is huge. They have a lot of space. They have great technology. And I think in many ways, they're looking to utilize the assets that they have. Do they really want to start up and build a brand-new warehouse for one customer and set up a solution for that? I don't know, right? I would say this though, we can't sit back and assume that they don't want to be a competitor. We need to make sure that we're continuing to strengthen our company from a growth standpoint, from an execution standpoint, from an automation, robotics standpoint. So that we don't give our customers an excuse to go look at somebody else. But I think at the end of the day, in RFPs, we don't see them in our competitive bids. We don't compete against them. Our solutions are very bespoke and very tailored towards our customers. I think we do a great job of protecting our customers' data and their data integrity. So I think there's a lot of differences between the GXO and Amazon, and if you want to add to it.

I think you hit it.

Sounds great. Again, maybe switch gears a little bit. Talking about the margin opportunity. Obviously, lots going on here, a pipeline of new business, shifting mix towards better mix product. Maybe looking at kind of that move towards more fixed variable contracts. There's the GXO Way, which is kind of a bunch of productivity initiatives you have. So what are the building blocks of margins look like over the next few years?

Yes. Well, you made some mention, I think the commercial excellence strategy that we have will accelerate growth and allow us to expand margins, right? But holistically, when we look at the opportunity for us to expand our margins and achieve the type of margins that we believe our company should generate is really going to be focused on further deployment of automation, robotics and AI. AI via the GXO IQ technology, the middleware that connects the systems and the warehouses as well as the GXO Way, which is with our new COO, driving standard operating KPIs measurements, true robust continuous improvement projects, the right types of KPIs, Lean, Six Sigma, running our warehouses like a small factory.

Our warehouses are like a small factory. The only difference is we don't own the inventory. So from a flow standpoint, removing bottlenecks. So the GXO IQ has shown us to improve the day-to-day operations by connecting the data within the different automated solutions, whether it's warehouse management systems, the demand platform from our customers, the AutoStore, connecting all those allows us throughout the day to pivot through the challenges of loads came in late, somebody called in sick today. The product is missing here. It is adaptive and gets smarter every single day that we run the operation.

So we've been on that journey. We've rolled out 50 or 60 sites. And over the next couple of years, the goal is to roll out GXO IQ across the entire portfolio. But with the GXO Way, driving productivity, driving efficiencies in our locations. We have 150,000 employees. That is a lot of people across 27 countries. The team has done a great job of managing that and servicing our customers, and we've done that without what I'll call a real operating platform, right, a management operating system, and what Bart is bringing on board is the operating methodology.

So we talk about automation and robotics. I talked about AI, but adaptive technology. How do we adapt technology that has a return on investment that reduces our need from a labor standpoint? And we've continued to deploy that. Right now, we have 17,000 pieces of automation throughout our portfolio. By the end of the year, we'll approach 20,000.

So for us, continue to rely and adopt automation, robotics, making those investments and rolling out GXO IQ, but a big productivity initiative that we have from a labor standpoint is implementing labor management systems and I compare that to a manufacturing operation. Right now, we're piloting 6 pilots in our regions. We've picked 2 providers, 2 vendors in labor management systems. Today, we have a clocking system we clock in when you come in the door, and then you have lunch, you clock out. You clock back in and then you clock out, you go home. People get paid.

Labor management systems enable us to have people clock on a job and clock off a job. That enables us to understand how long it takes somebody to do a job. Look at the variability of that job. And based on those jobs, you add up all your jobs in your factory to determine the amount of manpower that you need. You can drive accountability, you can understand where there's challenges. Today, it took Johnny 12 minutes to do this job. Tomorrow, it took 20 minutes, this day it took 15.

So establishing what I like to call in my old manufacturing days champion times. Each job, what is the champion time? What is the best time possible? And then translating that into a standard, and then we create standards in the factory and hold people accountable to those standards. And so for us, I think this is a way to think about our business through a manufacturing mindset to drive productivity and efficiency.

So we've got the tool set of automation and IQ to help us from a slotting and a picking standpoint. But now you have labor management tools that can be deployed to the management teams there to know what their people are doing and when they're doing it, when they're productive, when they're not productive. And so I think that's a huge breakthrough.

So when we think about getting our margins to our target margins over the next couple of years. Those are between the commercial excellence, the automation, robotics and labor management systems and the management operating system, these will deliver the results that we're talking about. For us, it's how do we make sure we have enough bandwidth to scale and deploy these timely to achieve the benefits in the time lines that we have laid out for ourselves. And so we're really excited about this. We have to remember that as a company, we didn't have a COO, we didn't have a CCO at the beginning of the year, okay?

Karen came in with no people as part of her team. So she's building a team. She's building account excellence. Bart is building his team. We didn't have global procurement. We're bringing -- we're building that organization. He's hiring an implementation solutions manager -- leader for the business so that we can then take the business at this scale. We can drive it at the enterprise level. We can share best practices across the organization.

We can put ourselves in a position where as opposed to focusing regionally "Hey, I have a great execution implementation team in the U.K. Let me pick them up and drop them into the AMAPAC where I've got a problem." That's what I'm used to seeing and those are -- that's the path that we're on to go achieve those types of productivity efficiencies.

Now some of it will be shared with customers. It would be an open book. But I also think it will make us more competitive. There's an opportunity for us to increase our margins, but it makes us more cost competitive. And I also think it allows us to deliver a better service to our customers so that when we talk about retention, 95%. How do we improve that to 96% or 97%? That's the path, that's the journey that we're on.

Got it. So lots of blocking and tackling. At the same time, you guys are also working on the moonshot projects. Want to make sure we talk about robotics here. You kind of hit on a lot of the basic details here. But again, you guys are already leaders in warehouse robotics, what people would know to be -- considered to be warehouse automation at the moment. But at the same time, you're also running 45 pilots on humanoid robots. So what have your learnings been so far? What still needs to be done here? What's the pathway for that to expand into something across all your operations?

Well, we think humanoids are the way of the future, right? They are -- humanoids have been advanced greatly in the last couple of years, not only from an ability standpoint, from a cost standpoint. And so over time, complementing automation, robotics and AI with humanoids is going to be groundbreaking. If you think about a humanoid, they don't get injured, they're higher levels of quality, they can work multiple shifts and not get tired. And so over the next couple of years, technology is advancing so quickly. A couple of years ago, a humanoid could maybe pick up a box. Today, humanoids actually have fingers and dexterity and actually can pick things up.

The issue with humanoids today is they can't work at the speed of a human. And so there's the process of how do we improve the overall efficiency and it will be done, no different than robotics years ago where robotic arms pick slow and over time, it got faster. It went through learning. So today, 2026, when we think about the advancements of technology every single day, the advancements are it's quicker and quicker, quicker. And so before you blink your eye, we'll be in the business of deploying humanoids, who are working side by side with humans in our facilities. So we're super excited about that.

Clearly, it's super exciting, maybe really quickly, what does a humanoid do for you that is different than a dedicated warehouse, like a Locus or a GreyOrange robot like dedicated warehouse robot, what additional can the humanoid form factor do for you?

Well, I think the biggest difference is a GreyOrange or Lowpad are these AGVs that bring the product to a human. Bring it and take it away. But they can't pick the product off the shelf. So the Lowpads are a great tool from a planning standpoint, this is what we need. It goes out on the floor. It brings the carts to the employees. The employees have their order. They've got to go into bins and pick them up. We can now complement the AGVs with a humanoid at a station where they'll actually be able to pick the parts or the products out of the bins and put them in boxes.

And so the goal is, over time, is to allow the humanoids and the rest of our technology to do the simple part of the work and use humans to do the more complex decision-making. And so that's how we see building out the technology and complementing automation, robotics, AI and the human factor. And I say this jokingly sometimes, but at some time in the future, maybe we're looking at a complete lights-out warehouse.

Sure. Absolutely. Very exciting times. Very much looking forward to your Investor Day in November as well, I think, is going to be a big catalyst for the stock. But Mark and Kristine, thanks so much for being here.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you so much, yes.

All right. Good morning, everybody. Welcome all of you to Jefferies 2026 Industrial Conference. My name is Stephanie Moore, Jefferies Transportation and Logistics analyst. We're very pleased to have the team from GXO today. We have CEO, Patrick Kelleher; and Chief Strategy Officer, Kristine Kubacki. Thank you, guys, for being here.

Thank you for having us.

Yes. Format is just simple fireside chat. I'll kick it off with a bunch of questions, and we can go from there.

Maybe starting with maybe kind of near-term focus just because we did come off of the second quarter results. And I do think -- I certainly have received a lot of questions on just the organic growth performance on the quarter. So on the specifics, 2Q organic growth of 3.4% moderated slightly from the first quarter. We got a lot of questions around that. But I do think on a 2-year stack, it actually accelerated, but there's a lot of nuances there. So maybe just starting with that, can you just talk through maybe some of the nuances 1Q to 2Q, how we should think about the timing of contract start-ups and maybe what drove any kind of deceleration?

Sure. So I joined GXO 1 year ago. Prior to joining, GXO has been on the decelerating path of organic growth. We were mid-teens organic growth when we spun out of XPO in 2021, forecasting 4% to 5% organic growth this year. So a lot of work and effort in the last year to reinvigorate organic growth in the business. I think that evidenced by our Q2 new business signings at $412 million, which I believe is about 35% increase over prior year. I signaled on the call in August that the third quarter would look similar in terms of new contract signings in comparison to last year on a percentage basis. And so we feel good about the trajectory that we're on from an organic growth perspective and reinvigorating that agenda.

In Q2, we saw the 3.4% organic growth. It takes about 3 to 6 months to start up a new contract in the contract logistics business. The difference between 3.4% and 4%, which I think everybody was expecting is $17 million. That represents about a 2-week slip in start-up timing. Nothing that I was concerned about, and I was quite frankly surprised how concerned everybody else was. But we reaffirmed we're on path this year for the achievement of our 4% to 5% organic growth guidance, and that still holds. And we will share our organic growth trajectory in our Investor Day, November 16.

Stephanie, I would just add also is that our incremental revenue for this year at the end of the quarter came up to over $1 billion, and that was a record for us, and it was up about 29% year-on-year. So I think as we look ahead, we already have the visibility secured in that incremental revenue in the second half of this year.

I think that's really helpful. I mean, we get at the question quite a bit is just is there any change in underlying customer demand, but maybe emphasize what you're seeing there, but also just, I think, the visibility that you do have that gives you the confidence in the second half outlook.

Yes. So in terms of customer demand, and we talked about this August 5, our current customer volumes in the aggregate have been relatively flat, plus or minus 1 or 2 -- plus or minus 1% really. We've seen softer volumes on the e-commerce retail side in Europe, but substantially higher volumes on B2B industry verticals of aerospace and defense, technology, industrial and life sciences. Those all really netting out to pretty stable volume and revenue for us. We talked about marginal improvement in pricing in terms of year-on-year pricing improvement, and the balance of the organic growth is really coming from retention of existing business, not losing business and adding new business in with the new contracts that we're starting.

Maybe just starting on net sales pipeline and a lot of the work that you've put in over the last year. So I think you called out that the sales pipeline is at a record $2.7 billion. What's driving this pipeline growth, just blanket statement there.

Yes. It is the strategic focus that we put on North America and the strategic B2B verticals I've talked about really leaning more into the capabilities, competencies that we have in aerospace, defense, life sciences, technology and our industrial verticals, that is something I feel like we have not done in the past as GXO, 70% of our business today is consumer CPG, retail, e-commerce business, 40% of our new business wins so far this year have been in North America, where less than 30% of our revenue is in North America. So I think that strategy is coming to life. Only 1% or 2% of our new business wins have been in the B2B verticals. We've talked about where we're putting additional emphasis.

I shared in the investor call on August that I'm particularly excited about the progress we're making there because we really haven't gotten started yet. Karen Bomber has come on as Chief Commercial Officer in January. We are standing up a digital marketing capability that did not exist in the past, that will be a huge catalyst to building additional pipeline for us. We are adding to our sales teams, particularly on B2B verticals. And those people are just coming in, coming up to speed. So I really feel like the teams and our people have done a phenomenal job turning focus to the areas that present the greatest growth opportunity and delivering and converting against that. And we see additional coming with the investments that we're making on the growth side.

I definitely want to touch on some of those investments in a little bit because I think there's a lot there and a lot of opportunity. But on that $2.7 billion pipeline, can you help us think about how we should think about conversion of that pipeline over the next 12 months?

Yes. We flagged approximately 28% conversion rate, am I right?

Little bit.

Ish? 28-ish conversion rate on that pipeline rolling. The pipeline turns about 1.5x a year. So that does not -- the total volume of business we will chase in any year. And I think very exciting ones, we signed $412 million of new business in the second quarter. The pipeline at the end of the quarter dropped to $2.3 billion, $2.4 billion?

$2.3 billion.

$2.3 billion. It sprung back to $2.7 billion before the investor call. So there continues to be great marketplace opportunity out there. And it's really about demonstrating great pipeline discernment choosing the right opportunities to go after and win...

And I guess maybe thinking about the building blocks to your organic growth opportunity and to your point, that the 4% to 5% expected for the full year. So you've already -- based on my math, is it locked in? Is it 9% for this year in terms of new wins? So then after that, really you're kind of talking through the volume, the pricing. Then the other piece is certainly churn or attrition. I think that's been really steady over time. Is there a potential change where the long term, that churn or attrition rate could look different than what it has over the last couple of years?

Yes. We have an opportunity to improve there. So we're at 95% churn rate today. We have an opportunity to be higher there. We have taken a couple of steps towards that. We implemented a global customer success model, which is a global account management model Ajit Kara coming on to the organization and meeting that. That is very focused both on customer retention and also growing with our largest customers around the world. So between the 2, we think that's going to be a big contributor to organic growth by compressing -- improving retention even beyond the 95% and driving additional sales.

Maybe getting into some of the actions over the last year. In the second quarter, you did announce what I think was a record deal for the quarter, but it was with a large hyperscaler, which obviously gets us all very excited. And maybe a customer that we didn't historically think would be in the GXO wheelhouse. So first, can you just talk a little bit about what you are doing for that customer? And then help us understand the life cycle of how data centers or hyperscalers can ultimately be as customers for GXO?

Sure. We're doing business with multiple hyperscalers across the regions that we operate in. So not only in North America, but also in Europe. I think everybody is excited about the build-out of data centers. There's lots of activity going on there. We participate from a supply chain perspective in supporting the build-out. We have individuals who work in our warehouses, who build the racks, who do the wiring, who deliver a completed a rack to the data center. It just has to be plugged in by our customer to start working. That is far more efficient than doing that work in the data center. If you've been in the data center, it's quite cramped, it's not easy to work in the data center, if you're building racks. So we brought a lot of efficiency to that process.

But what I'm even more excited about is we provide all of the maintenance and sustainment parts to the data centers. And that is where we see longevity in the solutions that we're providing. We can all anticipate that there'll be some sort of peak, we might be in and out in terms of data center build-out. We want to participate there. But I'm more excited about the services that we're providing around maintenance and sustainment. So if server goes down, part goes down, fan breaks and so forth, we're providing those parts to the technician for the repair. We're handling the returns of that product coming out, and that has lots of longevity for us.

And then just as a follow-up, how are these contracts may be different or in line with your company average in terms of tenure of the contracts, contract structure? Anything there would be helpful.

Yes. I think they're pretty similar. Those solutions in contrast to some that we implement are lower CapEx solutions. They are in line with the average contract life that we have right now, which is 5 years. The margins on that is good, accretive to our current margins, so that they are great contributors to our growth on all dimensions.

So touching on maybe some of the commercial success that you've seen thus far and especially calling out those key end verticals. I think there's a lot to unpack there because to your point, you're only 1 year in and a lot of the team is not exactly probably ramping at full capacity either.

They're going to be...

So what's the -- what do you think has driven the initial success in some of these key verticals? Because there's probably a lot of factors at play. And you have Wincanton, which certainly was a bit more industrial focused or defensive focused. Do you have your own personal background. So maybe if you could bifurcate what's driven this initial success? And then what kind of success we should expect maybe over the next couple of years?

Sure. I think sort of reflecting on my first year, I've had the question of what did I see at GXO when I arrived. There's been a lot of focus over the last 5 years before I arrived on M&A. I think that M&A has contributed to the competencies that we have on the B2B verticals, especially. But I don't think the GXO organization did a good enough job of leveraging those capabilities for organic growth. I think there was a lot of focus on driving synergies out of acquisition and looking for the next acquisition. So when I arrived, I went around 70 different warehouses, I don't know how many countries, 12, 13 countries. And the capabilities that I saw, 32 years in the industry were phenomenal.

I visited one of our aerospace, defense operations in Atlanta, where we support both commercial and defense activity for a large aerospace customer, and it is second to none in terms of our capability. And frankly, I was a little stunned that there hadn't been more effort put into growing that. So I think some of the success that we're seeing there is simply coming from focus, getting the message out to key customers around the capabilities that we have there, winning. We have great people operating in these businesses, lots of credibility with customers, so it's getting them in front of customers and winning. We've taken additional steps such as in the U.S., we established the Defense Advisory Board. We've got a half a dozen folks who are retired, very senior military with supply chain -- strong supply chain acumen, helping us formulate the right services and approaching the right people in the industry to win, and that's been a big catalyst.

We formed the Torus consortium in the U.K., ourselves, Maersk and Accenture pursuing large opportunities with the U.K. government, U.K. military and that is early days, but we're seeing good pipeline coming from that. So we're bringing in experts and really being open-minded and listening to what customers need, what are the issues in the industry, making sure that we're solving your own problems, and that is the best opportunity to sell new solutions.

On the hyperscaler side, we have the opportunity to start very small with one, and we built a phenomenal capability there, and that really has exploded for us with the people that we have, the expertise that we have, our ability to move quickly, which is absolutely paramount there, has made the real difference. And so it really has not been any sort of transformation or reinvention of anything. It has been about focus, unleashing people to focus on organic growth, leveraging the great expertise that we have within the organization and get that customer-facing and win.

Okay. So one follow-up on this. We've obviously touched a lot about some of these high-growth, maybe higher value-add verticals, and you called out a lot of them, aerospace and defense, being a key one here. But there is still maybe the core e-commerce side of things, so the core retail, core consumer. So 2-part question. What are you seeing from the general overall health of that, I think you called out the consumer e-commerce bucket of your portfolio. And at the same time, does growth in one area maybe come at the expense of the other?

Yes. I don't think it has to come at the expense of the other. And I also see that when we think about geographies, and I'll come back to that. We're still seeing the steady growth that we expect from e-commerce and CPG industries. And we expect that to continue. We'll outline that more specifically on November 16 on Investor Day. When you think about 40% of our new business this year has been in the B2B vertical, 60% has been in e-commerce and CPG-facing businesses. So that business continues to run very healthy. We're seeing larger, more complex projects come on the e-commerce front, a lot more automation, a lot more robotics and expectation of AI in the operations. And I think that continues to evolve quickly, maybe even more so than on the B2B side. And I think we're really advantaged there with the investments we've made and the expertise that we have in the automation and robotics.

Yes. Stephanie, I would just add in the second quarter by just a hair, our second largest win was an e-commerce win in Continental Europe. So into all the things that Patrick has been talking about, I mean, the complexity with tariffs, with trade, that's just lending our solutions to help our customers, and so that's not going away, and that's only increasing.

I think one area that we've talked about for years is that the demand for GXO services, you really do come in as kind of an essential partner, and it doesn't really matter what the problem is at the time, whether it's tariffs or labor or COVID. I mean there's always a struggle from a supply chain standpoint, it seems like. Do you think that the success going forward is just making sure all that you can provide is just simply known by customers or potential customer? Is it as simple as that?

I think it is. I think our success has to be built on a foundation of excellent service to our customers and their customers. That is where I am most passionate. We want to and strive to continue to be a great place to work. We want to create amazing associate experiences. So it really is a combination of having great people, recruiting, retaining, developing and retiring the very best people in the industry, as I always say. And those people providing excellent service to customers allows us to grow the core business, and we have the opportunity then to move into different services for customers.

So it's not uncommon that we'll start a warehousing operation for a customer, and then we'll introduce a packaging operation within the warehouse for that customer, doing consumer packaging, creating multipacks and so forth for customers on the B2B side, moving into kitting, subassembly and so forth. Those are avenues that we can grow in. And so for us, we've got the opportunity to increase share of wallet with current customers as well as bring new customers in with these services. But as you said, it is about getting the message out, customers understanding what it is that we can do for them, the value proposition that we bring, which is a great value proposition as evidenced by the new business that we're signing. I think our digital marketing capability that we're standing up, it's going to be a big part of getting that word out in a much bigger way than what we do today. So we can expect more pipeline coming from that. And then it is about making sure that we're implementing what we win successfully and providing that great service.

Maybe jumping to margin improvement, operating execution, which I think is a whole section of questions that I don't think I would have ever asked the GXO team up until you're getting here. So this is, I think, an exciting area that I think investors understand but maybe are looking to see what this could -- the future can hold in this area. So Patrick, when you first joined, I think one of your first initiatives was to transition away from a regional operating model to a more kind of globalized platform. Maybe just talk to us about that process in the last year, and we can start there. And certainly, we have other follow-ups to that, but start there.

Sure. Yes. When it comes to margin performance, cash flow -- free cash flow conversion, organic growth since I joined, especially after my first 70 warehouse site visits, I've been very vocal. GXO is underperforming from a margin perspective, particularly when you compare us to our peers. We're at 3.5% EBIT business. Our peers or our good peers are 6% or better. We -- at the time I joined, we were less than 30% free cash flow conversion. Our best peers in the industry are 50% or better. We talked about organic growth, we lag our peers there, we have to be better. I've been very vocal about that internally. I talked about that in my first town hall. That's the one thing I didn't like when I arrived, but I knew what I was stepping into. And that is an area where we have to be even more better.

So to close the gap on those margins and to be a true market leader, not only from a supply chain execution perspective, but from a financial performance perspective, our approach is multifold. One is, and you referenced, we are a $13 billion organization, which up until 1 year ago has been managed in a very regional siloed basis. While we've integrated acquisitions, some of those even entities managed on their own. We are shifting to a One GXO, leveraging the global scale of the business. When I arrived, I used the example, there was no global procurement function. You can imagine if you have ever met a sophisticated procurement person, who could look at a $13 billion enterprise, they would find significant savings opportunities, engaging strategic suppliers on a global basis rather than a regional basis. So that is in motion.

Leveraging our global scale presents a great opportunity for sharing best practice across the 1,200 operations, which we have not done, I think, effectively enough in the past. We have our operational excellence agenda, which is about improving productivity, cost out, sharing value with customers, but capturing more of the value for ourselves than what we have in the past to improve the margin performance of the contracts that we have with customers. That is all about investing in robotics, automation, AI, labor management systems in order to improve productivity, reduce cost.

And then on the other side is making sure that the new business that we're bringing on is accretive to the margins that we deliver today. So pursuing those more strategic B2B sectors that are more complex solutions come with higher risk of execution and therefore, are rewarded with higher margins. That is part of the strategy to improve margins, a focus on North America, where we have been underweight to our competitors, in growing North America. North America is our smallest region, less than 30% of our revenue. That should not be. We're putting a lot of focus on growing North America, which is structurally a higher-margin market.

And then we look at the TAM that's available to us, we're very small in Asia, less than 1% of our revenue, we're in Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia, executing very well, but there's a huge, huge opportunity for us to grow Asia. We're really going to step into that in earnest in 2027. And Asia is a very healthy margin region. And so it's a combination of actions to close the gap on the margin, improve margin performance. We're passionately going at. On the free cash flow side, we're guiding this year, 30% to 40%, up from the less than 30% in the past. And we'll talk about on November 16, our path to being a better than 50% free cash flow conversion business. That comes not only from improving working capital, which we have really good opportunities to do, particularly with the global procurement function and also looking more creatively at how we are financing and implementing robotics and automation.

I do want to touch on that a little bit. I know you launched the GXO Way, which is your kind of standardized productivity, if I'm describing it right, the standardized productivity playbook. Given labor is 2/3 of your costs, obviously, we understand the pass-through nature of what that means, but it's still a major -- it's still a pretty large labor-intensive aspect of the business. What site level tools or what productivity initiatives can you deploy specifically on the labor side?

That is such a great question, and so thematic to what we're doing. As I did the warehouse tours, foundational to great warehouse execution in latter-day times is labor management and labor management systems that support that execution. It is measuring productivity at an individual activity level, coaching performance and removing quiet time in the warehouse where people are standing and may not have work to do because it hasn't arrived at their station, for example. As I toured, I found 58 different labor management systems at GXO, but I probably only found 60 sites where those had been deployed.

So we have a very large initiative to deploy. We're moving to 2 labor management systems for the enterprise as part of One GXO. That way, our leaders, at sites can move from site to site. They'll be using largely the same tools. We can implement AI and get scale benefit around improvement in labor management and those systems rather than having to deploy improvement across 58 different systems. And typically, from a labor management system implementation at a site level, we expect a 5% to 15% improvement in productivity. We will share some of that benefit with our customers, some of that benefit will accrue to GXO. We'll share more details on the glide path in terms of specific numbers that we are driving towards there, but you can imagine with 2/3 of our cost being labor, that has to be a substantial...

And then maybe just one follow-up, and you certainly touched on the different contracts mixes and especially how that is different even from a geographic standpoint. So as you think about the open book versus closed book mix, how should we expect that to maybe change over time? And then help us think about how you -- with the focus on margins, but at the same time, return on invested capital is a key aspect as well, too. So how do you manage the mix in contracts?

Sure. I'm not so caught up in fixed variable versus cost plus. What I am passionate about is to make sure that our cost-plus contracts where our customers are reimbursing us for the cost we spend plus the margin include a shared savings component. And that is very typical in open book contracts. I think that has not been as typical enough as it should have been in the past for GXO, so that is something that we're very focused on. We're happy to be transparent with costs with customers or we're happy to be fixed variable and provide the customer the certainty in cost, which is the big difference. In both cases, we want to have the mechanism where we're investing in robotics, automation, AI and those things that can enhance productivity, and we're sharing in the benefit of that investment so that we're getting the right return on capital.

And we want to position ourselves in a way, particularly for the cost-plus contracts, where we can be taking those actions and not burdening the customer with a mutual decision that we are going to make investment in the business in automation and robotics, which many times is a constraint, and the industry has been a typical expectation is, if you invest $1 million in the customers' operation, you want the customer to guarantee that you get the $1 million back. I know what we can deliver through the robotics and automation solutions that we have. I'd rather go ahead and make the investment. And share in the value that we create for customers, renew customers, because I'm providing a great service, great cost. So we have specific initiatives driving towards that.

Maybe sticking on the topic of automation. I think you've conducted, I think, a few dozen tests with some humanoid?

45. Soon to be 46 humanoid tests.

What are some of the early learnings here?

Hand dexterity matters. I think I was quoted recently in an article where I said we don't need Olympic level humanoids. So we all saw the Olympics in China with the humanoids and so forth. We don't need Olympic level humanoids in the warehouse. We need great hand dexterity. That has been the biggest challenge. And I think the industry has surpassed this year solving that and hand dexterity used to be this, now hand dexterity is this. And it's amazing how much more you can do when you can move your fingers like this instead of just like that.

The second piece is the processing speed or the speed of the humanoids in performing individual tasks. So I have videos on my phone, I'm happy to share with people afterwards. It's painful to watch a humanoid pick a lipstick, because it's so slow, it's speeding up. But we've got to get the productivity of those motions up to what a human can perform to really get to the ROI that we need. On ROI, a humanoid industrial, I think right now, it's about $70,000. I think in 2 years, we'll be down sub-$40,000. Operating cost today is $15 an hour. I think in 2 years, we'll be down to sub-$10. We don't know the depreciation curve on a humanoid, but maybe if we do 2 years, 3 years, you can figure fully loaded operating cost of $15, $16 an hour, compared to fully loaded on an associate is twice of that.

So there are a lot of tasks in the warehouse environment that we see application for humanoid, which is why we are and have been so aggressive in piloting and working with multiple partners in the technology...

Any other areas within the -- because that's all very exciting, but any other areas from an automation standpoint we should think about? Or also GXO IQ, which is an area that I think you've adopted just leveraging AI capabilities, too. So maybe just talk about broad AI, machine learning, other automation and your quest for obviously driving efficiencies and productivity.

Sure. There's so much innovation going on in the -- just the robotics and automation space, the great work that organizations like AutoStore and Locus and others are doing to advance the technologies there. There is ROI on those technologies today, and innovation continues to come. So we continue to fill our innovation funnel with those new technologies really testing efficacy and looking for opportunities to deploy at scale. We're super excited about GXO IQ, which is our middleware solution for the deployment of AI in our operations. We'll have about 60 of our warehouses integrated to GXO IQ this year on a path to get all 1,200 integrated over the next couple of years.

What that allows us to do is to embed both our proprietary developed AI tools as well as off-the-shelf AI tools in a single system connected to our single data lake, which is very, very important. And for each of our operations to then leverage on a menu basis, the AI tools they want to use for their individual operations. So that allows us to execute globally and execute at scale globally, but customize our solutions locally for the things that individual operations need. And so we're very excited as that's rolling out. I think AI is going to make a big difference in our business.

All right. Well, last topic, but certainly not the least, there's always a lot of conversation. It seems like about Amazon Supply Chain Solutions. Unfortunately, it does seem like whenever they put out any kind of press release, your stock tends to move on the announcement.

Dramatically. Somehow. Yes.

Dramatically. So for those in the room here today, what would be -- and there's more to dig in here, but what's your 1 or 2 line of response for, if we see this Amazon Supply Chain Solution announcement, revert back to this thought on GXO.

Amazon is not a competitor to GXO. I -- it's a real treat first year as a public company CEO to have the news come out May 4 and the stock dropped 19% on what I labeled as fake news, and we have a lot of that these days. But Amazon is very clear in their strategy in terms of how they're going to market. They want to market capacity they have in their warehouses, in their planes and in their trucks, the last mile delivery, to help absorb fixed costs where I think they've overbuilt in some cases. We don't compete with Amazon on a fulfillment basis. The customer looking for a standardized Amazon solution is not the customer calling us, looking for GXO Direct e-commerce solution, for example.

So we have never, that I'm aware of, lost a piece of new business to Amazon. We've never lost a piece of the existing business to Amazon. We don't see Amazon as a competitor in our $2.7 billion pipeline. We have a great relationship with Amazon. I think they're a fantastic company. I do think for those of my competitors that compete in the parcel space, in last mile delivery, I think, Amazon is a real threat. And I think they will drive price reduction in those particular services. But for us in contract logistics, we are client-aligned solutions. So we develop our solutions that are very specific for what our customers need. And we're not about the standardized cookie-cutter solutions. So we simply don't see them swimming in our pond.

And then maybe also if you just want to touch on as being an independent partner, what that also can mean in terms of customers, meaning you don't also have a potential conflict of interest.

Sure. I think customers have been -- even when you look at maybe CPG manufacturers or others who are looking to leverage the Amazon website and their fulfillment capabilities and so forth for the e-commerce offerings. I think there is something to be said for protection of customers' data, which we're very good at. We don't share data across customers. We have no desire to become one of our customers and to compete with them in their own space. And so we provide that independence, which -- and objectivity, which I think is really important, especially when you're providing client-aligned solutions.

Our client-aligned solutions have to be about helping our customers achieve their business objectives, not just shipping a box. So our customers have many different business objectives depending on where they are in their business cycle. Some of it is achieving the lowest cost, some of it is achieving the best service, some of it you have to achieve both when you're shipping life-saving parts, for example, for MRI machines. Our solutions are client aligned to deliver at the right service at the right cost, and that's why our customers are calling us every day.

All right. Well, we'll leave it at that. Thank you both for your time. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Welcome to the GXO Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. My name is Paul, and I'll be your operator for today's call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded.

Before the call begins, let me read a brief statement on behalf of the company regarding forward-looking statements, the use of non-GAAP financial measures and the company's guidance. During this call, the company will be making forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws, which, by their nature, involve a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements.

A discussion of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially is contained in the company's SEC filings. The forward-looking statements in the company's earnings release or made on this call are made only as of today, and the company has no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements, except to the extent required by law.

The company may also refer to non-GAAP financial measures as defined under applicable SEC rules during this call. Reconciliations of such non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measures are contained in the company's earnings release and the related financial tables are on its website. Unless otherwise stated, all results reported on this call are reported in United States dollars. The company will also remind you that its guidance incorporates business trends to date and what it believes today to be appropriate assumptions.

The company's results are inherently unpredictable and may be materially affected by many factors, including fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, changes in global economic conditions and consumer demand and spending, labor market and global supply chain constraints, inflationary pressures and the various factors detailed in its filings with the SEC. It is not possible for the company to actually predict demand for its services, and therefore, actual results could differ materially from guidance.

You can find a copy of the company's earnings release, which contains additional important information regarding forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures in the Investors section of the company website. I will now turn the call over to GXO's Chief Executive Officer, Patrick Kelleher. Mr. Kelleher, you may begin.

Good morning, and thank you for joining our second quarter 2026 results call. Joining me today are Mark Suchinski, our Chief Financial Officer; and Kristine Kubacki, our Chief Strategy Officer. Before we get into the quarter, I'd like to acknowledge a special milestone. This week marks 5 years since GXO became an independent public company.

Milestones are an opportunity to celebrate progress. They're also a reminder that every milestone is the beginning of a new chapter, one this team is exceptionally well positioned to lead. The foundation established over the past 5 years, combined with new leadership and a new strategic agenda are now translating into results. We're seeing real momentum build behind our strategy, and we're still in the early innings.

Starting on Slide 4. Our first half financial performance puts 2026 firmly on plan even as we prioritize the investments that drive long-term profitable growth. Looking to 2027, leading indicators, including pipeline and wins are running ahead of our expectations, giving us confidence in accelerating growth and higher margins.

In the second quarter, we generated revenue of $3.4 billion and organic revenue growth of 3.4% with broad-based contribution across all our regions. Adjusted EBITDA was $219 million and adjusted EPS was $0.59 and approximately 40% of our new business wins came in our strategic growth verticals.

Moving to Slide 5. This was a quarter of strong commercial momentum, our strongest commercial quarter in 3 years. In the second quarter, we added $410 million in new business wins, up more than 30% versus the prior year, with marquee wins across our largest customers and strategic verticals. And that commercial momentum has continued into the third quarter, where we expect wins again to increase significantly year-over-year, particularly driven by demand from data center and aerospace and defense customers.

For the first half, wins reached nearly $640 million, up about 20% year-over-year. And even after a quarter with rapid pace of closings, our sales pipeline has already expanded post quarter to $2.7 billion. Just as important as the pipeline size is the breadth and quality of what's in our pipeline, a deeper mix of opportunities across our strategic growth verticals and our largest global customers.

We now have over $1 billion of expected incremental new business revenue secured for 2026, giving a strong line of sight into the balance of the year and underpinning our updated full year guidance. Mark and Kristine will discuss our financial results and commercial wins in more detail shortly.

Moving to Slide 6. Over the past year, we've been executing a deliberate evolution designed to position the business for its next phase of growth. The initial focus centered on strengthening the leadership team, bringing in experienced leaders across commercial, operations, Americas and Asia Pacific and finance to establish the capabilities and perspectives needed to lead the business forward.

With that foundation firmly in place, we've begun to evolve our structure and operating model to equip the business to scale efficiently and create the foundation for sustained execution. We are making significant progress on our 3 strategic priorities: sharpening commercial excellence, strengthening operational discipline through the GXO Way and leading in AI and next-generation automation through GXO IQ. These are the levers that we believe will accelerate growth and expand margins.

First, on commercial, we're winning more and we're winning better. Our wins this quarter were led by blue-chip global brands, expanding relationships with Nike, Marks & Spencer and PepsiCo and a significant new e-commerce win in Continental Europe with Ahold, just to name a few. Nothing illustrates our progress better than North America, our single largest growth opportunity.

A more disciplined commercial approach and a sharper focus on our strategic verticals have meaningfully expanded both our pipeline and our win rate here. And importantly, we're winning larger, more complex mandates than we were a year ago. We're also building on our leadership in aerospace and defense and in technology, particularly data center infrastructure, the fastest-growing verticals in our market.

In aerospace and defense, we added new and expanding work with Raytheon, Boeing and IAG, leveraging our market-leading capabilities. In technology, we signed a major new hyperscaler relationship, our largest win in the quarter and expanded with a global cloud and technology leader and a semiconductor equipment leader in Malaysia, and we continue to build our footprint in life sciences.

Second, in operations, we are beginning to scale the GXO Way, evolving from local and regional excellence to one consistent set of global standards. Concretely, that means deploying a common labor management system across sites, moving our regions on to a single global operating dashboard, so we manage the same metrics and KPIs around the world and consolidating procurement scale that was previously managed regionally. We've identified a number of near-term opportunities to improve efficiency, including global procurement and labor management. We'll discuss our approach in greater detail at Investor Day. This is how excellence becomes repeatable rather than site-specific, and it is a meaningful contributor to the margin expansion that we expect over time.

Third, in technology. GXO IQ moved from platform launch to scale deployment this quarter, and we're on track to reach about 50 sites in 2026. We're packaging our proprietary AI into repeatable product ways, starting with forecasting, replenishment and pick optimization that deploy across connected sites rather than being rebuilt one at a time. Alongside that, we will deploy 20,000 robots across our network this year. Our advantage isn't just having algorithms, it's deploying them inside live operations and turning that into a repeatable productivity engine.

Across the commercial organization, enhancements to customer-facing processes, service models and cross-functional coordination are helping create a more seamless end-to-end customer experience. This quarter, we introduced a streamlined global approach to account management evolving from a regional model to a globally integrated one, aligning GXO around the customer, not geography with a trusted adviser mindset. So our global customers experience one connected GXO across the regions. It is designed to be a true customer success model and the results are starting to show.

Technology, which is increasingly central to every aspect of our business is a massive opportunity. We're ensuring we both optimize what we have today, make the right investments for the future and connect innovation to execution through the GXO Way, standardizing where it makes sense to turn proven excellence into everyday performance. Today, our tech and operations teams are working in tandem to modernize service delivery, improve operational efficiency and elevate the customer experience to create a more agile operating environment that balances innovation with operational excellence.

So to bring it together, we've delivered a solid second quarter, our strongest commercial quarter in 3 years with a pipeline that has continued to build and record incremental revenue more than $1 billion already secured for 2026. Our 3 priorities: accelerating organic growth, strengthening operational execution through the GXO Way and translating our AI, automation and tech leadership into measurable value creation are moving from strategy to execution, and we are already seeing them show up in our results. Five years into our journey as a public company, the momentum behind this strategy is real, and we are still in the early stages of what it can deliver.

With that, I will hand the call to Mark.

Thank you, Patrick, and good morning, everyone. Having completed my first full quarter at GXO, my confidence in this business has only grown, a highly contractual model, a customer base of the world's leading brands and commercial activity that gives us a clear runway into 2027. The opportunity ahead on margins and cash generation is just as clear, and that is where much of my focus will center for the remainder of the year and as we move into 2027.

Turning to Slide 7. GXO delivered second quarter revenue of $3.4 billion, up 4% year-over-year and 3.4% organically, with broad-based contributions across all of our regions. Second quarter revenue was impacted by the timing of new contract start-ups and exits. We delivered adjusted EBITDA of $219 million and adjusted EPS of $0.59. And our adjusted EBITDA margin in the quarter was 6.4%, consistent with the second quarter of last year. We believe we have clear line of sight to expand margins, expecting margin improvement in the back half of the year as new business ramps and our cost and technology initiatives begin to take hold.

Just as important, our margin improvement path is supported by investments we are making in systems and operating infrastructure, common dashboards, enhanced labor management tools, greater procurement visibility and a stronger data foundation are giving us more consistent way to manage the business and scale efficiently. These capabilities are already improving execution across the network and will help translate growth into margin expansion over time.

Moving to Slide 8. In the quarter, we generated operating cash flow of $76 million and generated positive free cash flow of $12 million, a meaningful improvement year-over-year, reflecting tighter working capital discipline, and we remain on track against our full year free cash flow conversion target. Turning to our balance sheet. We ended the quarter with $769 million in cash and a strong liquidity position. Net leverage was 2.6x, down from 3x this time last year. After quarter end, we repaid $400 million of bonds that matured in July using cash on hand.

Our investment-grade balance sheet is strong, and we remain focused on disciplined capital allocation to maximize returns for shareholders. Consistent with that framework, we also resumed share repurchases, buying back $21 million of stock year-to-date, with approximately $280 million remaining under our existing authorization. We will continue to be disciplined and opportunistic in how we deploy capital, balancing high-return organic investment, further deleveraging and returns to shareholders. The Wincanton integration continues to move at speed. We completed roughly 90% of our planned integration actions and remain on track to deliver run rate cost synergies of $60 million by year-end.

Turning to our full year outlook on Slide 9. We are tightening our 2026 guidance ranges with midpoints unchanged. That reflects strong underlying performance of our core business and improved visibility from more than $1 billion of incremental revenue already secured for the year. We are maintaining organic revenue growth of 4% to 5% tightening adjusted EBITDA to $945 million to $965 million, narrowing adjusted diluted earnings per share to $2.95 to $3.15 and maintaining free cash flow conversion of 30% to 40%. With commercial activity increasing, operational momentum building and AI and automation scaling across our network, we're well positioned to drive growth and expand margins through the balance of 2026 and beyond.

With that, over to you, Kristine.

Thanks, Mark. Good morning, everyone. This morning, I'd like to address the 3 questions we hear most often from investors. What is driving our growth? How durable is that growth? And how are we positioning GXO for the next phase of value creation.

Turning to Slide 10. Let me start with where we're winning. We've concentrated our commercial engine on 4 strategic growth verticals: aerospace and defense, technology and data centers, industrials and life sciences, large, fast-growing markets with a combined addressable market of over $230 billion. This quarter, we added marquee wins across them. In aerospace and defense, new and expanded work with Raytheon and Boeing; in technology and data centers, a major new hyperscaler relationship, our largest win in the quarter and our first semiconductor logistics win in Malaysia.

This is different work, technically complex, highly regulated, service-intensive programs that extend well beyond traditional warehousing, a more differentiated offering that is stickier and carries better economics. And as our capabilities in data centers and semiconductors deepen, they are opening markets we historically haven't served, extending our addressable market into new geographies. That focus is converting. First half wins in our strategic growth verticals are running at nearly 3x last year's pace, the clearest evidence that our commercial momentum is accelerating.

And our pipeline is both broader and higher quality than a year ago. Larger, more complex, long-duration mandates where our scale and technology are genuinely differentiating. And 27% of it now sits in our strategic growth verticals. That tells us the success in what we're winning is being fed by a real shift in what we're chasing. That pivot is sharpest in North America, where our second quarter pipeline is up 34% year-over-year and our wins are up 85% in the first half.

Moving to Slide 11. Patrick took you through the headline wins, so let me point to what sits behind them, how much of that revenue is already locked in. We have a record level of incremental revenue secured for 2026, and we've already built approximately $353 million of secured revenue for 2027. That growth is being driven on 3 fronts. We are growing with our existing customers, winning share from competitors and benefiting from the continued secular trend towards outsourcing. This level of visibility underpins our confidence in the durability of this growth.

So to return to where I began, our growth is driven by deeper relationships with the world's leading brands and a deliberate shift into the fastest-growing, higher-margin verticals. And the next phase of value creation comes from compounding those advantages, converting a richer pipeline at better economics and scaling AI across our network to turn productivity into profitability. We look forward to sharing more at our Investor Day on November 16.

With that, I'll hand it back to the operator for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Stephanie Moore with Jefferies.

Maybe starting off on the commercial momentum that you're seeing. Obviously, the $1 billion increase in new business wins is really fantastic, is really fantastic to see. But maybe if you could go deeper into what your go-to-market strategy has changed in the last maybe year, Patrick, since you've joined that has enabled this success.

So especially, you've always had the size, you've always had the automation angle. So what from that go-to-market strategy or GXO's own services are really resonating with the complexity of what these -- a lot of these new target verticals are requiring. Probably a good place to start.

Yes, sure. I think it's really around 2 things. The first is where we're playing. And our focus on the B2B verticals, especially with data centers and technology space, aerospace and defense, industrial, a continued focus on e-commerce certainly, but focus on the B2B industry verticals, I think, has really played well to our capabilities around operating complex supply chains, dealing in a highly regulated environment, executing solutions that need to be perfect, I'll call it. We have to be on time and executing in a very precision way. And that really has lent itself to the things that GXO is already very good at.

And as I've talked about in previous calls, I think areas where GXO has been underweighted in terms of our focus in past years, leveraging those capabilities that we have. The second dimension is a focus on where to go for growth. And we really have, in the last year, put more emphasis on growing with current customers. And we've talked about the customer success model that we're putting in place, which is really about global account management, building stronger relationships with existing customers and investing more in those relationships for growth. That, coupled with winning in the marketplace from other 3PLs has been a big contributor to growth.

So being very competitive in the RFP type environment, while continuing to see the same trajectory of new outsourcing coming in, those tend to be longer lead time. We're seeing the same volume of activity around customers outsourcing for the first time to us, but that is a smaller percentage of our total wins with that emphasis on current customers and winning in the RFP environment. And I think the combination of making sure we're focused on the right market verticals with the right capabilities and strategy to win as well as focusing on the right customer segments is a great fuel for growth as we step through the year.

Got it. And just as my follow-up, maybe if you can help us walk through the algorithm to your comments about your confidence in seeing accelerating organic growth. So maybe if you could outline what the new win contribution, how that translates into 2027? Any commentary around underlying demand with existing contracts and how that impacts the volume environment? Just kind of the -- again, the algo into that accelerating growth as we look ahead.

Yes, sure. I'll ask Kristine to comment and then I'll close it out.

Yes. Stephanie. So I think our confidence, obviously, with the first half performance with the wins, the commercial momentum that we're seeing. And then I think we closed the pipeline very strong in the second quarter. And in a matter of weeks, at the end of July, we saw that pipeline rebound to $2.7 billion back to a record. So -- from a commercial standpoint, as Patrick mentioned, we're seeing that just momentum continue into the third quarter.

Through the first half, we signed $638 million in new wins. Last year, in totality, we signed about $1.1 billion. We believe just given the current momentum that we're seeing on the commercial front that in the third and the fourth quarter, we will substantially exceed that level of new wins. So feeling good about acceleration of organic growth as we move into the back half of this year and then certainly have clear line of sight of accelerating organic growth as we move into 2027.

Yes. And I'll just close it out, Stephanie. We think in the third quarter, based on what we see, we're going to have similar new business performance year-over-year to what we saw in the second quarter. And that gives us a lot of confidence both in moving towards 2027, but also confidence in achieving our organic growth expectations for 2026.

Our next question is from Chris Wetherbee with Wells Fargo.

I guess maybe I wanted to talk a little bit about the margin improvement opportunity. So I guess as we think about sort of the back half of the year and then maybe more importantly, as we go into 2027, can you sort of outline some of the key drivers that you would expect to start to see or realize some of that margin expansion that I think you guys have talked about. I'm guessing Wincanton and the synergy opportunity, it sounds like you're moving forward with the integration there. So that's an opportunity. But can you sort of expand a little bit on what we should expect to see?

Yes. Thanks, Chris. It's Mark. You mentioned the synergies from Wincanton. We've made good progress there. But really, when we think about the back half of the year, the stronger revenue volumes and the seasonality, we'll be able to take advantage of that and sequentially will help increase margins in the third and fourth quarter. But above and beyond that, the investments that we're making as it relates to technology and the GXO way, leveraging our scale from a procurement standpoint across the entire enterprise really provides us some real firepower to expand those margins.

And really, based on what we're seeing and what we expect based on the data, the dashboards, the trends that we have here, we're really expecting to see that expansion of margins kind of year-over-year really start to take hold. The green shoots are going to be coming up in the fourth quarter. And then that will accelerate into 2027. It's going to take us a little time to drive the GXO Way across the entire enterprise. We're large. We've got a lot of different sites.

But we talked about the common dashboards, the labor management tools, procurement visibility. We're putting the right things in place to go drive the cost structure in the right direction, while continuing to grow the business. So scaling up allows us to leverage the business from a fixed cost standpoint and then driving those productivity across the board. And again, it's just not leveraging the warehouse, but I think we have a lot of opportunity on the procurement side of things when we think about moving from local, regional buying and procurement to leveraging the scale of the organization.

And so we're taking it one step at a time. Our COO has been on board here a few months. I'm partnering very close with him to provide him support as we move down the path here. And so I think that's how I'd phrase it at this point in time. And when we talk with you all in the middle of November, we'll provide a lot more detail and provide updates on the progress in K and what I'd call K KPIs that we're measuring and that you should measure as we move forward.

Okay. That's very helpful. I appreciate that. And then maybe a follow-up, just I think in the prepared remarks, you mentioned a new win in Malaysia and you talked about geographic opportunities. We don't typically think about GXO from an Asia perspective in terms of a geography that you've done much in. So can you talk about that and maybe sort of combine that with either the AI sort of data center opportunity for you? Is that going to be another avenue of growth?

Yes, sure. I can comment on both. I think the win in Asia in Malaysia is a great testament to the great people that we have in that theater. We're a relatively small business there still. We opened up our free trade zone operation in the Singaporean economic development zone there, and we've been quick to fill that, and we'll continue to look to add more capacity in Asia, particularly in 2027.

In 2027, we'll be turning our eye to accelerating growth in Asia with further investment there, particularly around sales and marketing and operational depth to deliver growth. I think it represents a tremendous white space for us and additional TAM coming into the business for us to drive growth 2027 and beyond.

To your question on AI and the deployment there, as we talked about, GXO IQ is the platform for deployment of AI. We see that as catalyst to contributing significantly to operational productivity improvement. We'll have that deployed to 50 sites by the end of the year, then accelerating the deployments throughout 2027. And we're currently working, as I talked about in the comments, currently working through deployment of a package that focuses on productivity that spans inbound picking, outbound and optimization of labor planning. And so we're very excited about the potential that, that has for us. We're going to share a lot more about that on the Investor Day, November 16.

Our next question is from Scott Schneeberger with Oppenheimer & Company.

It's Daniel on for Scott. Could you please discuss what you're seeing if we think about your nonstrategic growth verticals, the trends you've been seeing both from a volume perspective and as well as new business wins and what you anticipate for the next couple of quarters here?

Yes, sure. It's hard to call any of them nonstrategic. We're putting a lot of emphasis on the B2B strategic verticals, and I know I use that language. But at the core of our business, 70% of our business is consumer-facing retail e-commerce, omnichannel and CPG. 40% of our wins year-to-date have come from our strategic verticals on the B2B side, but 60% has come to those core verticals.

Our second biggest win in the second quarter was a large e-commerce opportunity in Europe. And so we continue to invest in that core business. We want to maintain the leadership position that we have in the execution of those solutions. E-commerce especially represents a great growth opportunity as we look out to 2030. E-commerce is projected to grow still at 6% to 8% CAGR out to 2030. And our teams are focused on our growth in that space, particularly e-commerce and omnichannel. And so you can continue to see more and more growth across all 3 regions as we move forward through this year.

Got it. On Wincanton revenue synergies, do you have any incremental insights? It sounds like integration is going well, but any update there, please?

Yes. I think from a revenue synergy perspective, Mark certainly talked about delivering the bottom line synergies, and we're on track and we'll achieve that in 2026 in terms of our aspirations there. On the revenue synergies, that is really coming to life. It's been a big contributor to the pipeline improvement that we've seen throughout the year. Those teams are integrated and working together as one GXO team.

I think where we are seeing really exciting developments is around the aerospace and defense industry, in particular, where the Wincanton team really brought some deep competencies, particularly on the defense side. We're already seeing new business wins, and we've talked about those in the comments. And so I think we're well, well positioned with those teams working together to deliver organic growth in the U.K. as we report.

Our next question is from Ravi Shanker with Morgan Stanley.

Patrick and Mark, Mark, I think you mentioned GXO Way as a margin driver for '27. And Patrick, I think you mentioned larger and more complex mandates. I'm wondering to what extent this pivot in the makeup of the pipeline will also drive higher margins over time? And if you can help us kind of dimension that a bit.

Yes, absolutely. And I think the question is the answer. We have said that our focus on the B2B verticals, especially, these are high-growth markets in and of themselves. They require complex supply chain solutions, specialized execution, certifications that are required -- and so they do command structurally higher margins, and that is an important shift to margin improvement is driving more balance in our business across industry verticals.

We're going to continue to drive for market leadership in retail e-commerce, omnichannel and CPG, but we want to see a higher percentage of our business on the B2B verticals. So the B2C verticals today are about 70% of our business. We see the B2B verticals becoming a higher percentage of our business going forward, and that will contribute absolutely to margin improvement.

Understood. Maybe a quick follow-up here for Patrick or Kristine. I think you mentioned 20,000 robots across your network this year. How many of those do you think might be humanoid robots? And what do you think that count will look like by 2030, if you guys have a little more clarity given that you've been running trials or live operations for some time?

Yes, absolutely. In production, 0 will be humanoids this year. We have a number of humanoids deployed in pilot. We've done 45 pilots on humanoids so far. We have an additional pilot launching in Europe very shortly. We have not achieved ROI on humanoids yet. I think we are a couple of years away from that, but we're seeing such great progress with our partners around the efficacy of that technology and the application opportunities that it has in the warehouse environment. So humanoids will absolutely feature in our solutions. But I think in production, we're probably 2 years away from that.

Our next question is from Brandon Oglenski with Barclays.

Patrick, I think you mentioned in your prepared remarks about making investments for the future. And I think you mentioned about your tech team and your ops team working together. Maybe can you elaborate what you hope to achieve there looking forward?

Yes, absolutely. So in terms of investments in the future, we talked about that in the last couple of calls. Some of our investments have been very focused on sales and marketing. And when you think about the comments I made around our approach to global customer success through an account management model there, deploying additional salespeople to our business, particularly focused with expertise on the B2B verticals, all underpinned by an even more robust marketing agenda.

We're already seeing the benefits of those investments when you look at the commercial growth and new business signings that we're seeing, and we expect to continue from an operations perspective and a technology team perspective, we have been working through even more specific and deliberate plans around how we go about the development of AI and the deployment of AI in our business, combining proprietary capabilities with off-the-shelf capabilities in the operating environment.

We have a parallel work stream from an AI perspective on how we're leveraging off-the-shelf AI to improve back-office functions and efficiency of the business. And our tech and ops teams are working through the GXO way to look at how we add adaptive technology to our operations that would include physical AI in our operations so that the technology is connected to the concept of operations and how we operate within our facilities to ensure we're getting true productivity benefit and return on investment associated with those deployments. We'll talk more in Investor Day around how that's going to come to life, and we'll highlight some very specific initiatives that we have to drive ROI on those investments and especially margin enhancement as a result.

I appreciate that. And actually that was my follow-up on GXO IQ, but I think you kind of touched on it there. I mean it sounds like AI is impacting both your operations, your customers, the way you're approaching the market and even data centers. I don't know, do you want to expand on that, too?

Yes, sure. I think we're living in the full life cycle of AI. We absolutely embrace AI as a contributor to efficiency and the quality of execution in our business. We are certainly benefiting from the solutions that we have for our customers in supporting data centers, both the build of data centers, the ongoing maintenance and sustainment of data centers through service parts and return solutions. So we really are living across the whole life cycle of AI, not only embracing the build-out of AI around the world, but actually leveraging AI for our business, both in the operations that we're executing for our customers, but also AI in the management of our own business.

We are excited about the potential that AI has for us and certainly for our customers and for the supply chain solutions that we're bringing forward. And that's so important as supply chains are becoming more and more complex to drive for resilience with efficiency and high levels of service. I think AI is going to be a really, really important contributor that underpins achieving those supply chain objectives.

Our next question is from Ari Rosa with Citigroup.

So it sounds like a lot of encouraging developments underway. That's great. I know there have been several questions on kind of the margin profile and the margin uplift. I was hoping you could put some numbers to that. I mean if we think about GXO traditionally kind of having an adjusted EBITDA margin in the kind of 6% to 7% range, net income margins maybe in kind of low single-digit range. What is the opportunity there?

And I'm sure you'll speak about this at Investor Day, so I apologize if we're kind of preempting that. But just maybe the incremental margins on kind of the new business wins, the new verticals that you're targeting and then how that translates into the overall margin opportunity for the business if we think kind of 2 to 3 years out?

Sure. Sure. I've said before, and I'll say it again, I think we have a substantial opportunity for margin improvement in our business. And I said very, very openly, we lag our competitive peers in terms of EBITDA and EBIT performance in contract logistics. We're very focused on closing that gap and then eclipsing on the performance of our peers. When you talk about the margin levels that you referenced, we're at a 3.5% to 4% EBIT margin business right now. We really deserve to be above 6%, and we'll share more details on November 16 at the Investor Day in terms of our path to achieve that. But we are absolutely committed to closing the gap to the peer set and ultimately eclipsing industry performance on EBIT and EBITDA margins.

I think the new business -- I know that the new business that we're bringing in is margin accretive to our current performance. So that is a big area of focus on our new business agenda, not only achieving the top line growth but achieving margin expansion through organic growth has absolutely been part of the plan. I would reinforce that we are absolutely on our financial plan as reinforced by our full year guidance and our affirmation of that. And we are so excited to share the story on November 16 in terms of where we see ourselves going 2027 and beyond to achieve not only sustainable organic growth, but margin enhancement over the 2027 period and long term.

Mark, maybe if you have anything to add.

Patrick, I think you covered it well. You've talked about it at the high level. And now it's for us to execute on that, right? There are -- we have lots of opportunities. We're seeing them every single day. And we've got a good plan in place, and we're going to march to that, and we're going to continue to focus on delivering quarter-after-quarter.

Great. That's helpful. And one of the features of the GXO story that we've always been drawn to is the free cash flow generation. It looks like you guys are set up to be doing north of $300 million this year based on kind of the conversion rates that you're -- that you mentioned in the outlook. Just curious how you're thinking about priorities for that capital. You mentioned buybacks. Is there a prospect that could accelerate? What are the other uses of capital that you envision? And kind of how should we think about what kind of that sustainable free cash flow looks like?

Thanks, Ari. There's lots of opportunities for us to continue to focus on cash. It's a big priority for me, improving our free cash flow conversion. Obviously, through improving profitability and growing the top line, that helps on the free cash flow side. But I think we've got plenty of opportunities to work on working capital, collections quicker, billing quicker on the DPO side, plenty of opportunities to focus there, and we're making some progress there. And I think it's reflective small improvements. I think we're taking good steps, and we saw some of that come through here in the second quarter. We're going to continue to focus on the cash.

But from a capital allocation standpoint, first and foremost, we're going to invest in ourselves. We're going to invest on growing our business. #1 priority, we talked a lot about growth. We need to balance that with continue to focus on deleveraging, reducing our interest expense that helps bring more cash to the bottom line. But as you indicated, we went -- started to buy shares again here recently. We have $280 million left under our current plan.

And I would say that we -- with where the stock price is at this point in time, we think it's a great investment. And so therefore, we will continue to buy back shares here in the back half of the year. And then I think when we get to Investor Day, I think we'll go much deeper into our plan around capital allocation. But that's the priorities. And as I said, with where the stock price is, we're going to continue to buy shares because we think our stock is undervalued.

Our next question is from Tom Wadewitz with UBS.

Let's see. I wanted to start with just some thoughts on competitive environment. It's great that you're seeing these wins in data center and aero defense. How do you think about who else can do that business well? And who -- I'm sure it's a broad group that wants to do that. But is data center, do you compete a lot with those that have strong forwarding? Is it really kind of those that have already done data center for a long time and it's kind of the big global players like DHL supply chain? Or just how do you think about that competitive environment? And also, I think the -- just, I guess, how you differentiate in those markets as well?

Sure. I would just say we're really pleased with the competitive advantage that we have in those areas, both on data center and on aerospace and defense. And I think our success there is great evidence that we are top of the list for customers in those industries to take GXO to work with, and that's flowing through in the sales number. I think we have very differentiated capabilities on the data center side in terms of being an end-to-end provider around the data center, supporting not only the forward build, but also parts replenishment or returns and refurbishment activities required for the sustainment of data centers over the long term.

From an aerospace and defense perspective, I can say that we are the market leader in the customer base that we service today capabilities that we have both across commercial and defense aerospace capabilities that we have from a defense perspective. We are launching a number of service offerings over the next couple of months and into '27. I'd highlight we have a really unique munitions solution launching in the U.K. and I think one of the few providers in the world who would provide a service like that as a private company, publicly traded, nongovernment company. So the threads that we have into the defense space are deep. And I think we are so, so well positioned to continue to win, continue to execute, and I think we'll be the market leader for years to come.

So that -- you're commenting on both aero defense and then saying you want to be a market leader in data center, too? Or was that more aero defense?

I think we are a market leader in data center. Certainly, given the volume of new business that's coming in and the size of the business that we have today, I think we are a market leader.

Okay. And then I guess a quick follow-up would be on attrition. I think we normally think about your -- obviously, the contract wins is the big driver, but then you have something like 5% attrition is kind of normal. As you work on this mix and have traction in the strategic customers, does that imply that your attrition rate would tend to go down? And I guess that would also maybe just be a questionable [indiscernible] well, are these also kind of stickier, longer-term contracts that you're signing in these strategic areas?

Sure. Yes, it does imply that our attrition rate would go down. Our focus on our customer success model is going to be a contributor to that. We want to create stickier relationships, longer-term relationships, and we want to continue to reduce churn in the business as a lever to drive more accelerated organic growth. So that is very clearly part of our plans, and we'll share on November 16 Investor Day, the trajectory that we see ourselves achieving between the end of the year and through the end of this decade.

Our next question is from Jason Seidl with TD Cowen.

Patrick, Kristine, team. Good to talk to you guys. I wanted to look at GXO IQ a little bit closer. I mean, obviously, you guys are going to have 50 sites by the end of this year. Maybe you can sort of give us an update for some of what you're seeing in terms of the early gains and then maybe go into what do you think '27 is going to bring in terms of number of sites?

Yes. As I said, we're going to be deploying to more than 50 sites by the end of the year. I am going to defer the answer to the question to November 16. We have lots of details that we're pulling together on that, and it will best be shared in the context of the overall story that we're going to share on that.

Okay. If we can switch gears a little bit then towards your strategic growth verticals, and it's good that you guys are showing some gains there. How should we think about, in general, sort of that business from a margin profile versus some of your legacy businesses?

Jason, it's Kristine. I think in my prepared comments, we talked about and Patrick has talked about in several answers here about attractive economics in these verticals. And the more complex the operations, the more value-added services that we're providing for our customers, the more differentiated outcomes -- these mean better economics for us.

And then certainly, as we talked about, stickier, longer-lasting relationships with those customers. So I think overall, as the mix continues to evolve for us, and this is one of the levers as we look forward to margin improvement that will be a long-term driver to that as we look out over the next several years.

But if I can push on that a little bit, is there any way you guys can sort of push us in the right direction on just how much more it can add to the margins in terms of your existing business? What are we looking at? Is it 100 basis points? Is it more than that?

Yes. I think for obvious reasons, we wouldn't comment on sort of specific margin differentials between industry verticals and so forth. We can share on November 16 sort of an overall context of how the blend of the business will generate higher margins. So we'll make sure to contextualize that in a helpful way in November 16.

I'll look forward to November then.

Our next question is from Bascome Majors with Stephens.

Patrick, as you approach the yearmark here and look at the results of the GXO business versus the results of your former competitor supply chain business. Can you help us understand as analysts mostly focused on U.S. listed companies, are there some mix differences that help explain their higher recent organic growth?

I don't know, if it's the overweight in the U.S. versus you today or a little bit of Asia in there. But just big picture, where is the mix driving a faster growth rate there? And where is that an opportunity in your long-term strategy as we look forward?

Yes, sure. I think that I have spoken to this on previous calls. As GXO, we're underweighted in North America. That is a high-growth market. And we have put a lot more emphasis on growing in North America, since I joined a year ago, and we're seeing the benefits of that focus come through in the new business wins. With the new business wins being signed, we should see accelerated organic growth in North America for GXO overall as a result of that focus.

I do think that Asia represents a phenomenal opportunity for us. We're in Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia today. We have and are looking at plans for our expansion there. But that is structurally a very good growth market for the contract logistics industry, one that we should be participating in, in a bigger way. And so that, coupled with the focus on the strategic B2B verticals, I think, are all strategic decisions that we're taking that improve that mix that you referenced and sort of a portfolio view to the business that does fuel higher organic growth for GXO in the future, and we're going to share lots more details on that on November 16.

And to clarify that point, are these just markets with higher growth rates in Asia and the Americas right now than Europe, and that's part of it. And if you could add a little more intra-Europe, I know the GXO business is overweight in the U.K. DHL is overweight Germany. Are there some intra-Europe differentials that are just market growth rates not necessarily working in your direction today?

Yes, sure. So we have enjoyed great growth in Europe and the U.K. We're going to continue to enjoy that great growth as we compete in those markets. North America is a market that is growing at a higher rate in contract logistics, and we want to leverage our scale and position in this market for accelerated growth. Asia, we're a very small business in Asia today. So a focus on growing our business in Asia will be important to contributing to that organic growth. When we look at intra-Europe, we're really pleased with the presence that we have in Europe, the countries that we're participating in.

And so -- we will look carefully at country expansion in Europe, but we'll do that carefully. We are opening a new operation in Greece coming up in the second half. That will be our first entree into that market. I think if you look at the numbers, the performance of our business by country in Europe has been very strong and big contributors to our growth over the first 5 years of our history. We're going to continue to harvest that as we go forward. So I think it is that diversified geographic portfolio that not only is important for our growth, emphasizing certain markets like North America and Asia gives us accelerated growth, but also resilient growth through that diversification and careful expansion.

Our next question is from Brian Ossenbeck with JPMorgan.

Maybe first, just a quick follow-up on the short term here. Can you give a little bit more perspective or, I guess, confidence in the visibility for accelerating both kind of organic growth -- organic revenue growth and then the wins to support what I would think is accelerating organic growth in '27. How much of that is just stuff you have in the pipeline already that's coming online or maybe it's a mix of the new strategic stuff that's starting to ramp up as well?

Yes. Brian, I think -- this is Kristine here. I think we've hit a bit on all the commercial activity that has really just really gone up in a big way over the last 6 months, and we're really seeing that sustained momentum as we move into the back half. So our incremental revenues in -- for this year, obviously, at this point, are a record, so $1 billion. So we feel very good about as we're moving into the back half, delivering on the organic growth guidance that we've reiterated here today.

And then as we look out into 2027, as we're converting the new wins for the third quarter and the fourth quarter, those will largely fall into next year. And of course, we'll be building on that, layering on that, those opportunities as we move into the first half of next year. So I think we have every bit of confidence, as I've previously mentioned, that we'll exceed the wins from last year, and we look substantially and we look for accelerating organic growth as we move into 2027.

Maybe for Patrick, just stepping back, I know we'll hear a lot more in a few months at the Investor Day, but what are sort of the constraints you see here for profitable growth? I know time is always one getting new companies to outsource and take over in place. How about locations, real estate, labor availability? And also just kind of curious to hear what you think you need to do to establish a bigger foothold in Asia Pacific region.

Yes, sure. In terms of any sort of headwinds to organic growth for us, it really is going to be about managing the things that we control. And the biggest will be to make sure that our operational staff capabilities and sort of people capacity that we have in place is matching the growth that we're delivering from a new business signings perspective so that we can be managing successfully implementations and bringing new customers on new operations on as we strive to achieve those organic growth aspirations.

So we work really hard on activities around people, including succession planning, make sure that we're recruiting ahead of winning new business, training people before they're taking over responsibility for an operation, for example, making sure that we've got the talent to step up for that organic growth that's coming on. That is probably where I spend a significant amount of my time in positioning us for organic growth going forward. And the second part of your question, please remind me?

Just on anything you can preview for Asia Pac, what you might need to get a bigger foothold there?

Yes, sure. So for Asia, we really are looking to grow as much as we can organically there. We'll be investing in our sales and marketing capability, investing ahead in operating capability. We want to be careful around new country entry there. But certainly, participating in the bigger markets in Asia will be important to us as we look to expand beyond the 3 countries that we're there. That will begin to happen in 2027, and we'll preview a bit of that on November 16.

We have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I would like to hand the floor back over to Patrick Kelleher for any closing remarks.

Great. Thank you. And as we conclude the call, I want to note that this quarter marked 5 years since GXO became an independent public company. And in 2 weeks, I'll mark my first anniversary as CEO. I am so proud of the progress that we've made evolving what I truly believe is a category-defining company. Over the past year, we've strengthened our leadership team, implemented a more customer-centric commercial model, and we are strengthening operational execution through the GXO way.

We're winning more business, deepening relationship with customers and diversifying into higher-margin strategic verticals. Our strongest commercial performance in 3 years, particularly in North America, reflects the progress that we're making and reinforces our conviction that we're building the right foundation for long-term growth. At the same time, we're investing in capabilities that will define our future success. We're advancing GXO IQ, scaling automation, strengthening our talent pipeline and building an organization designed to perform consistently and grow sustainably over the long term.

We are not focused on short-term gains. We are building a stronger GXO with capabilities, talent and operating model to create value for customers and shareholders for years to come. We're still early in the journey, yet the momentum we're seeing gives me such tremendous confidence in our future. We're executing our financial plan, investing strategically for the future and allocating capital effectively, including the deployment of our $280 million open share buyback authorization and new business wins positions us for accelerating growth into 2027.

To end, I want to thank our team members around the world for their commitment and thank our customers and shareholders for their trust and support. We look forward to updating you on our progress next quarter and sharing more about our long-term strategy at Investor Day in November. Thank you for joining.

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

Welcome to the GXO First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. My name is Sachi, and I will be your operator for today's call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded.

Before the call begins, let me read a brief statement on behalf of the company regarding forward-looking statements, the use of non-GAAP financial measures and the company's guidance. During this call, the company will be making certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws, which, by their nature, involve a number of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements.

A discussion of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially is contained in the company's SEC filings. The forward-looking statements in the company's earnings release or made on this call are made only as of today, and the company has no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements, except to the extent required by law.

The company also may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures as defined under applicable SEC rules during this call. Reconciliations of such non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measures are contained in the company's earnings release and the related financial tables are on its website.

Unless otherwise stated, all results reported on this call are reported in United States dollars. The company will also remind you that its guidance incorporates business trends to date and what it believes today to be appropriate assumptions. The company's results are inherently unpredictable and may be materially affected by many factors, including fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, changes in global economic conditions and consumer demand and spending, labor market and global supply chain constraints, inflationary pressures and the various factors detailed in its filings with the SEC.

It is not possible for the company to actually predict demand for its services, and therefore, actual results could differ materially from guidance. You can find a copy of the company's earnings release, which contains additional important information regarding forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures in the Investors section on the company's website.

I will now turn the call over to GXO's Chief Executive Officer, Patrick Kelleher. Mr. Kelleher, you may begin.

Good morning, and thank you for joining our first quarter 2026 results call. Joining me today are Mark Suchinski, our Chief Financial Officer; and Kristine Kubacki, our Chief Strategy Officer. Before we get into the quarter, I want to take a moment to welcome Mark, who is joining us for his first earnings call as our Chief Financial Officer.

Mark's decades of experience driving enterprise performance through labor productivity, contracting and pricing improvements as well as deep expertise in aerospace and defense, which is one of our most important growth verticals, is exactly what we need as we accelerate growth and expand margins. His track record of driving value creation aligns directly with where we're headed in this new era of growth. With Mark on board, we have the right team in place to deliver on our strategic priorities. A big welcome to you, Mark.

Thank you, Patrick. I'm truly excited to be part of the GXO team.

And we are thrilled to have you. Now turning to the quarter. In the first quarter, we delivered revenue of $3.3 billion, up 11% versus prior year and adjusted EBITDA of $200 million, up 23%. Adjusted diluted EPS increased 72% to $0.50. Organic revenue growth was 4% in the quarter, with every region contributing, demonstrating the resilience and global strength of our business model in a dynamic geopolitical environment.

We entered 2026 with strong revenue visibility, and we have continued to build on that momentum. In the first quarter, we added $227 million in new business wins across key verticals, including notable contracts in aerospace and defense, several technology wins, including further growth in AI cloud infrastructure with hyperscalers and an expansion with the NHS in the U.K.

In consumer, we secured a meaningful new partnership with L'Oreal in Europe. We are also seeing encouraging momentum in North America with our largest win in the quarter coming from our rapidly expanding aerospace and defense business. These wins demonstrate strong commercial momentum and give us confidence in our ability to accelerate organic growth in 2026.

We now have $870 million of expected incremental new business revenue already secured for 2026, up 19% compared to this time last year, giving a strong line of sight into the balance of the year, and we are already beginning to build visibility into 2027.

Mark and Kristine will discuss our financial outlook and new business wins in more detail shortly, but I'm pleased to announce that after a strong start to the year, we are raising our full year guidance for adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS. We now expect a 22% increase in adjusted EPS at the midpoint of the range.

Now let me walk you through what's driving that confidence. We're focused on 3 strategic priorities: sharpening commercial execution, strengthening operational discipline and leading in AI and next-generation automation. These are the levers that will accelerate growth and expand margins. To execute on these priorities, we brought in new leadership across commercial, operations and our Americas and Asia Pacific region. That team is now in place and delivering results.

First, on commercial, we're diversifying into strategic growth verticals. Karen Bomber joined in January and is focused on 3 key areas: bringing an unified global approach to account management that mirrors how our customers operate, pricing that reflects the value that we deliver and faster, more consistent commercial processes, and we are already seeing momentum.

Our total pipeline now stands at the highest level in GXO's history. And in the quarter, 40% of wins were in our strategic growth verticals, aerospace and defense, industrial, life sciences and technology, particularly data centers. Our sales pipeline is accelerating, up 20% from the fourth quarter, of which more than $0.5 billion is in our strategic growth verticals.

We also saw positive year-on-year volume growth in these verticals, helping to offset softer volumes in retail and consumer. And we have seen the momentum building specifically in North America, one of the largest and fastest-growing logistics markets globally. Our new management team and targeted marketing investments are gaining traction.

In the first quarter, win rates notably increased and the pipeline grew 35% sequentially, giving us increased confidence in the opportunity ahead. In the region, we continue to benefit from our leadership position in B2B verticals, particularly aerospace and defense and data centers, while also seeing broader momentum emerging in consumer verticals, including consumer staples.

During the quarter, we launched the Defense Advisory Board in the U.S. and established the Taurus Defense Supply Chain Alliance in the U.K., a significant move that positions GXO as the leading supply chain provider to the U.K. defense industry, building on the expertise or relationships Wincanton brings to our platform.

Second, in operations, we have begun to implement the GXO Way. Our new global framework for standardizing and scaling excellence across the full operational life cycle. This gives us the platform to drive more consistent, repeatable execution at scale, which will make GXO even more competitive as a growth partner for customers and drive margin expansion.

Third, in technology, we are making clear progress on our automation and AI strategies. GXO IQ reached an important milestone this quarter as we began to scale the platform, launching several new sites with the rollout expected to accelerate throughout the year. We are targeting more than 50 sites by year-end.

The deployment of automated solutions continues to advance as well, including a fleet of autonomous mobile robots in the Netherlands and our first auto load solution in Europe. This will not only enhance how we deliver, driving greater efficiency and productivity for our customers, it creates ongoing value and strengthens the durability of our partnerships.

On humanoids, we will launch more pilots across the U.S. and Europe later this year. Our first-mover advantage is real, and we are building on it. In closing, GXO is off to a strong start in 2026. The underlying business is showing positive momentum. Our strategic priorities are beginning to gain traction, and our team is fully focused on driving long-term value creation. I look forward to sharing more on our long-term strategy and progress at our Investor Day to be scheduled after the third quarter earnings.

With that, I'll hand the call off to Mark.

Thank you, Patrick, and good morning, everyone. Again, it's a pleasure to join you for my first earnings call as CFO of GXO. In my first 5 weeks, I've had the opportunity to meet with our site teams, our customers and colleagues across the business. My initial takeaways are very clear. We have a strong foundation and a significant growth opportunity ahead of us.

GXO has built a formidable enterprise, one with significant global scale, a competitive advantage in automation and AI and a caliber of customer base that very few companies in the world can match. My priorities are fully aligned with Patrick's. To operate as a single connected global firm, powering our commercial growth strategy, leveraging the GXO Way to drive consistent global execution and optimizing our cost structure. We will also ensure disciplined capital allocation that drives long-term shareholder value. I look forward to sharing more on each of these areas in the quarters ahead.

In the first quarter, GXO delivered revenue of $3.3 billion, up 10.8% year-over-year, of which 4.1% was organic. Every region contributed, a clear demonstration of our breadth and resilience of our contractual business model in a dynamic macro environment. We delivered adjusted EBITDA of $200 million, up 22.7% from this time last year. This resulted in an adjusted EBITDA margin of 6.1%, up 60 basis points year-over-year.

We delivered net income of $5 million and adjusted net income attributable to GXO of $58 million, up 70.6% year-over-year. Adjusted diluted EPS was $0.50 per share, up 72.4% from the first quarter a year ago. We generated $31 million of operating cash flow in the quarter, while free cash flow was an outflow of $31 million, in line with typical seasonality. We are managing working capital efficiently and investing in the business at high returns.

Turning to our balance sheet. We ended the quarter with $794 million in cash on hand and a strong liquidity position of $1.6 billion. Our leverage levels held steady at 2.5x. Our investment-grade balance sheet is strong and positions GXO for profitable growth. We remain focused on disciplined allocation of capital to enhance long-term value for our shareholders. The integration of Wincanton is progressing at pace. We remain on track to deliver run rate cost synergies of $60 million by year-end 2026. We also expect to capture significant revenue synergies in the years ahead.

Turning to the outlook for the full year. We overdelivered versus our guidance for the first quarter. We saw strong underlying performance from our core business as well as benefiting from certain contract termination costs that had been anticipated in the first quarter and are now expected to be incurred over the remainder of the year.

As a result, for our full year 2026 guidance, we are maintaining organic revenue growth of 4% to 5%, raising adjusted EBITDA to a range of $935 million to $975 million, raising adjusted diluted earnings per share to a range of $2.90 to $3.20, up 22% at the midpoint and maintaining free cash flow conversion of 30% to 40%. With strong operating performance, a record sales pipeline and solid financial foundation, we are well positioned to accelerate growth and expand margins in 2026 and beyond.

With that, over to you, Kristine.

Thanks, Mark. Good morning, everyone. The first quarter results again demonstrate the strength and resilience of our business model. I'd like to provide some more context on the drivers of that growth, the durability we see across our business and how we are positioning GXO for the next phase of value creation.

Patrick has been clear about our strategic priorities, sharpening our commercial strategy, strengthening our execution and leading the deployment of AI and next-generation automation. Together, these priorities will drive long-term profitable growth. Commercially, we are making significant progress deepening our global relationships with blue-chip customers and expanding across geographies and into high-growth verticals.

In the first quarter, we won $227 million in new contracts, and our pipeline grew to $2.7 billion, a record for GXO and a clear reflection of the momentum that has built since Patrick joined in August of last year. As Patrick and Mark both noted, we are deliberately leveraging our strong positions in aerospace and defense and technology, including data center infrastructure to capture the rapidly growing opportunities in these verticals.

We are also continuing to build on our strong foundations in life sciences and the broader industrial vertical. In the first quarter, approximately 40% of our wins and 1/4 of our pipeline came from these strategic growth verticals, a direct result of our deep capabilities, technical expertise and strong competitive positioning. With supply chains continuing to grow in complexity and reshore, we have increasing confidence in the durability and resilience of our growth outlook.

And with a combined TAM of over $200 billion across these verticals, the runway ahead remains substantial. Taken together, our recent wins translate to $870 million in incremental revenue already booked for 2026, up 19% from where we stood at this point last year. This gives us confidence in our full year guidance and provides a clear visibility into our long-term growth trajectory.

The second priority Patrick outlined was strengthening our execution, leveraging our position as the leading pure-play contract logistics provider to drive better outcomes for our customers and improve profitability for GXO. Central to that is our leadership in automation, technology and AI. In the first quarter, we made meaningful strategic progress on this front as we began expanding GXO IQ into a scaled platform. We have moved from pilot to global rollout, launching GXO IQ at a large consumer product site with a seamless implementation. We are now accelerating deployment across North America and Europe with U.K. sites set to follow later in the year.

As a reminder, GXO IQ is an AI-powered warehouse technology platform that improves start-up efficiency, accelerates productivity and enhances data security. GXO IQ simplifies implementations and makes our proprietary AI modules and automation capabilities truly scalable. We are targeting to expand GXO IQ to more than 50 sites by year-end. In combination with strengthening our operating model, in the quarter, we have begun to reshape our organization to drive sharper execution.

Our new COO, Bart Beeks, who joined in January, is overseeing the launch of the GXO Way, our operating framework designed to turn proven excellence into a repeatable advantage. This means standardizing implementation best practices, accelerating frontline automation deployment and leveraging our global procurement capabilities to drive scale and expertise benefits for our customers.

Overall, these strategic priorities are serving to diversify GXO's revenue base, making our growth even more durable and driving our profitability and cash flow. We look forward to sharing more at our Investor Day after third quarter earnings, where we'll provide more detail on our long-term strategy and financial framework.

With that, I'll hand the call back over to the operator for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Stephanie Moore from Jefferies.

Congrats on the strong quarter and obviously, a really good start to the year. I was hoping that you could address a topic that is probably clearly top of mind with investors this past week. So I think most have probably seen this, but I'm obviously talking about the announcement from Amazon of its expanded supply chain services.

So I think, it would be helpful if you could just maybe speak to your competitive moat and differentiated service proposition and how that differs from other players such as Amazon or really any other well-backed company that would look to expand fulfillment or warehousing services. I think that would be a helpful place to start.

Absolutely, Stephanie, and thanks for the question. I've been in this industry for 32 years, and I really viewed Amazon's announcement this week as a fantastic validation of the opportunity that's in front of you and of the contract logistics industry. This is a massive market. It's approximately $0.5 trillion and growing. Very exciting today, roughly 70% of the market that being contract logistics is in-sourced, which is a huge opportunity. So we don't view this as really changing the overall competitive dynamic.

I would point out that we provide a fundamentally different offering. Amazon is selling access to its supply chain, whereas GXO, we build custom solutions for our customers, and that distinction means everything to our blue-chip customers. We're not a one-size-fits-all provider. What we do is bespoke, operationally complex and relationship-driven. The more complex the supply chain, the more bespoke really matters. There's a couple of differences to our model that I really want to point out.

First is control. For enterprise customers, protecting their data is a top priority. Many companies are going to be reluctant to give a competitor deeper visibility into their inventory, demand patterns, sales channels, financials. #2, we offer a flexible tech stack that is vendor agnostic, so we're not beholden to a single technology solution. And #3, our capabilities extend way beyond retail into sectors like aerospace and defense and industrial, just to name a few.

We see our moat as really deep. The combination of factors, our client-aligned customized solutions feature long-term contracts, cutting-edge technology, deep vertical know-how, high-quality execution, and I think those are all key differentiators. We're really focused on delivering value for our customers, shareholders and teammates with a focus on discipline in executing our strategic plans and executing for our customers. So we really feel great about how GXO is positioned as a leader in the contract logistics industry to continue to win and grow this year and into 2027 and beyond.

One question on just the quarter itself. Maybe if you could just speak to, I think the EBITDA performance was better than we had initially expected. So if you think about that underlying performance, do you think that this is a testament of some of the cost actions that your team have kind of implemented more recently?

Maybe talk through what this should mean in terms of the momentum of those cost actions as the year progresses. Just wanted to get a sense of your underlying confidence and the ability to really look for some of the productivity savings that you called out before?

Absolutely. I'll ask Mark to answer that question.

Stephanie, thanks for the question. As you indicated, we had a really strong performance in the first quarter in our core business. We feel good about that. The initiatives that are in place, they're starting to take hold here. And so it's a clear indication that what we're doing, we're on the right track here.

And so I think as we move throughout the year, we continue to win new business and focus on very disciplined execution for our customers, along with the initiatives that Bart Beeks, our new COO, is driving, we feel good about our ability to drive margins in the long term. And you're seeing it show up in the first quarter. And that's one of the reasons why we felt confident but prudent in our approach to raising guidance.

The next question is from Ravi Shanker from Morgan Stanley.

Just on the current environment, can you guys clarify if you've seen any blips in customer activity or planning at all because of the conflict in the Middle East and kind of what the outlook looks like the rest of the year?

Yes. First, I would say that for GXO, we have virtually no direct exposure to the region, and we are not seeing any material impact from the conflict. Our volumes for the first quarter overall were relatively flat, which is something that we had actually forecasted and saw coming into the quarter. B2B volumes in our aerospace, defense, industrial technology, life sciences sectors were slightly up and B2C volumes in retail and CPG slightly down, but netting out to being flat.

We continue to see great energy from customers around the exploration of outsourcing and through our new business delivery in the first quarter, clearly, customers are continuing to commit to solutions going forward. I think a great testament to the health of the industry and the opportunities out there is the increase that we saw in our pipeline in the first quarter. So a record pipeline now up to $2.7 billion. We're seeing great conversion on that pipeline. And based on the flow of projects coming in week by week, we see that continuing in the medium term, long term as we look towards the end of the year.

Great. That's helpful. And maybe as a follow-up on the Amazon topic. Thanks for the clarification and kind of what you see as your moat there, particularly the point on custom solutions. Is there any part of your business do you think where you do not have the level of complexity or customization that you would like to have? Or any end markets or geographies, where you think kind of as a result of this development, you would maybe want to pivot away from and maybe towards others?

Sure. So the area of the business where I do see us competing with Amazon going forward, and we have been in the past for a while is with Amazon's FBA product, which is very similar to our GXO Direct product offering, which is our shared use e-commerce offering. That business for GXO Direct grew in 2025. It grew 5% in the first quarter of this year, but it does represent just under 6% of our total business.

So relatively small in the overall scheme of GXO's business in total. I think where we do competitively differentiate as GXO Direct is that we are servicing high-value brands that will leverage our value-added services in packaging, etching and really white glove type services for those very high-end brands. It's a high-touch customer experience. And I think we're well positioned to continue to compete as GXO Direct in that space.

The next question is from Chris Wetherbee from Wells Fargo.

Maybe one sort of shorter-term question and maybe a little bit bigger. I guess as you think about demand and maybe what the second quarter could look like, kind of curious to get a sense of what you think organic revenue trends look like as you go through the year.

So you came in a little bit better than what we thought in the first quarter. I don't know if you see an acceleration as you move into 2Q. I know we're kind of in the range that you guys gave for the full year, but any thoughts on the second quarter and kind of what you're seeing from demand in the month of April?

Chris, it's Mark. Let me just respond to that. As you indicated, we had solid revenue organic growth in the first quarter of 4.1%. We expect the second quarter to be about the same that we saw in the first quarter. And with the pipeline and the wins that we've achieved and the line of sight that we have here in the second quarter, we're seeing the organic growth then accelerate in the back half of the year.

So I think the first half of the year, it's going to be at the lower end of the range, whereas in the back half of the year, it's going to be at the higher end of the range based on the visibility that we have today.

And that visibility is really reinforced by we're seeing the signings happening today, and it's really about the timing of the implementation of the business that we have sold and when that revenue is coming on in 2026. And then I think based on the signings we're seeing and particularly the acceleration of the pipeline and the conversion rates that we're seeing, we have a lot of confidence going into 2027 around the continuation of accelerating organic growth.

That's super helpful and a great segue. I guess I wanted to ask a little bit about sort of building that incremental revenue wins for 2027. So at $168 million, I think you're a little lower than what you've been in the last couple of years there. Is it just sort of a timing dynamic?

I guess, as you guys have sort of reconstituted some of the management team has not lost enough that there could be some transition dynamics that play out here. But how do you think that builds as we go through the rest of the year?

Yes. I'd see that solely as a timing dynamic around when ink hit paper in the first quarter versus actually signing contracts in the second quarter and beyond. And I think it will really come down to timing of implementation in terms of how much lands this year versus how much carries into 2027. But as I said, we're very confident in our direction there. And maybe, Kristine, if you want to comment on a pipeline perspective.

Yes. Chris, I would just simply state that we feel very good, of course, about the record pipeline that we have and the underlying trends that we're seeing in the business. I think simply, we plan to sign more this year as we move forward. And a large part of that will simply fall into 2027. We'll see that layering on. So we feel very good and have every bit of confidence that we'll see accelerating growth through -- in the back half of this year and into 2027.

Next question is from Scott Schneeberger from Oppenheimer & Company.

Patrick, I'd like to touch again on the sales pipeline, an all-time high, and you certainly highlighted the 25% from the strategic growth sectors, and it sounds like a lot of progress is being made there, and congratulations. Curious to hear on the other 75% of the pipeline, what are the -- the primary verticals that are building and where you're seeing conversion?

Scott, it's Kristine. I think we're very encouraged about what we saw in terms of the wins that we had in the first quarter. So it was $227 million and 40% of those were in our new verticals. So we had good signings from across our technology. We signed 4 more contracts, including 1 internationally for data centers.

Aerospace and defense was actually our largest contract win in the quarter. So despite that, we still have a great representation of the pipeline as we move into the second quarter. But I think, obviously, with 75% of the pipeline is in our core business. And so that just shows that we're continuing to see momentum in the core geographies and our core verticals, omnichannel retail and the like and consumer are very strong. Our value proposition is resonating with customers. And certainly, in a dynamic environment, our value proposition only grows.

Great. And then considering it was first quarter and often the time of year where reverse logistics is quite meaningful on returns post the holiday season. Any update on that area of your business, what percent of revenue it presents, what that mix may be going to and maybe some of the profitability attributes of that business?

Scott, it's Kristine again. No, great question. As you know, returns are an extremely complex operation for us and one of our skilled expertise that GXO does. And in fact, we've seen very encouraging trends across our reverse logistics business.

It remains probably around about 10% of our pipeline and of our business today. But we did see high single-digit growth for us in the quarter. And obviously, because of the complexity of the operations, it remains a very value-added service for us from a profitability standpoint.

The next question is from Ari Rosa from Citi.

Patrick, I was hoping you could comment just for some context because obviously, the market feels confused and we saw the stock get a bit hit, obviously, on the Amazon threat. Just help us understand when companies leave GXO or when they make the decision to -- to kind of not renew the contract. What are the typical reasons that, that happens?

And then if you could also comment on how often you see Amazon in a competitive bidding process? And do you have any concern that it could -- they're kind of stepping up their presence in this space could lead to something of an erosion of pricing power or greater pricing competition in the industry?

Yes. So to take the first question, our churn rate is less than 5%. That trend is continuing. When customers leave, it is typically because of rarely a bankruptcy, but we do see those. Typically, it's a restructuring of the supply chain. It is closing one warehouse node in order to open up a new node somewhere else and then a very, very small part, of course, in a competitive bid to our competitors.

But our churn rate continues to be very healthy and we see that going forward and improving as we focus on even more account management. You would have seen that with the introduction of Ajit Kara into the strategic account management role that we announced a little while ago.

In terms of Amazon's presence in the market, I think they've been very clear around selling into our existing infrastructure. Providing stand-alone bespoke solutions is very different from selling into existing capacity in standard solutions. Outside their platform, in selling stand-alone bespoke solution, the game is very different.

The market is populated with very formidable competitors in that space, which GXO leading, in my mind, in that regard in the contract logistics industry. When I look at our customers, they are the Chief Supply Chain Officers. We have many chiefs -- former Chief Supply Chain Officers on our Board within our organization running our business. When you look at their job and the things that are most important to them, cost matters, service is critical. They can differentiate between transactional supply chain activity like air freight and parcel and making -- and establishing short-term contracts for great rates and buying capacity.

The strategic decision associated with outsourcing and contract logistics requires an approach to long-term relationship of purpose-built supply chain warehouse operation, a focus on continuous improvement over what is a long term, particularly our average contract is 5 years. So the business is very different. The engagement with the customer is very different. The way in which our organization supports the delivery of those solutions for our customers is very different than if we were selling into a standardized solution as Amazon is putting forward.

So I feel really confident that at the most senior levels within our customers' organization, we are the right answer for the strategic outsourcing aspect of their supply chain. And then certainly, there is a role to play for airfreight parcel and so forth. And the competitive dynamics there are very different from the competitive dynamics in contract logistics.

And that's why I'm really confident that we're so well positioned to succeed in what is a very big market. And as I said in the beginning, I think it was really a great thing that Amazon called out what an incredible opportunity there is in supply chain, what a great industry this is to invest in.

That's helpful. It certainly seems like there's a lot of confusion out there. I was excited to see that you guys have loosely set a date now for the Investor Day. Obviously, still a while away, and I'm sure there's going to be a lot of work in terms of refining long-term targets. But at a high level, maybe help us understand how you think of the objectives for the Investor Day? And what is it that you'd really like to get across? Or what is it that you feel perhaps the market is misunderstanding or investors are misunderstanding about GXO.

Sure. You can expect on Investor Day, GXO will lay out our 3-year strategy. We will go in substantially more depth on organic growth, where to play, how to win and how we see ourselves delivering organic growth over the next 3 years. We will go deeper on the operational levers in terms of productivity improvement, glide path on SG&A, insight into the investments that we will be making -- continue to make in driving performance of the business, both on top line and bottom line.

And we want to do that with transparency. The reason for the timing after the third quarter is to give this management team opportunity to pull those plans together, make sure that we can articulate those at a level of depth that everybody can embrace and that we set the stage for our path forward and sharing how we are performing against our plan. We want to be aligned externally and internally around those key metrics and those key KPIs that underpin an assessment of our performance, so we move with even more transparency going into 2027.

The next question is from Bruce Chan from Stifel.

Mark. Maybe just want to follow-up on the demand comments in terms of what you're seeing in the various geographies and end markets. I know we've been in a pretty soft environment for a while now. You mentioned some sluggishness in retail and consumer.

So just any broad color on recovery rate in Europe or, for example, by industry? And then maybe also some comments on what's embedded in guidance in terms of volume from existing customers, just in case I may have missed that.

Mark, do you want to talk about what's embedded in our current forecast from a volume perspective and...

Sure, Bruce. As we've indicated, our guidance reflects organic growth of -- we're targeting between 4% and 5% for the year. And from an existing customer standpoint, from a volume standpoint, we're assuming about breakeven on the year. So we're looking at that sales, that organic growth clearly coming from new contract wins that we achieved in 2025 and the early part of 2026. And so that's what's reflected in the guidance.

Yes. And I would just comment across the 3 geographies, North America, U.K., Europe, where the majority of our business lies. The consumer appears to continue to be very strong. So while volume is a bit softer, it's only low single digit, very low single digit in terms of year-on-year volume changes.

As we've shared on the B2B side, certainly higher volume increase there, but that represents a smaller percentage of our business where that is netting out to being relatively flat. So we're encouraged as we look towards the end of the year in terms of at least volumes being flat year-on-year. And as communicated, I think, on our last call, we still maintain that, that is a prudent position right now, and we're hopeful for better, but no reason to think that right now that, that would materialize...

The next question is from Brian Ossenbeck from JPMorgan.

Maybe, Patrick, can you give us a little bit more details around the new aerospace and defense wins, especially the bigger ones, it sounds like in North America, like how long was that in the pipeline? If anything different than what you've seen in terms of the conditions, contract length, anything along those lines? And to the extent you can give us a little clarity and the confidence behind the ramp, anything that you've signed or have really good visibility to signing here in April?

Yes, sure. I can't go into any details on what's forthcoming in terms of specific deals on April and beyond. The opportunity that we signed in the last quarter is focused on parts distribution, which is a very strong capability of ours, not only in aerospace and defense, but in data centers and life sciences as well.

So that really plays to our core. That was a relatively quick turn project in terms of design to decision-making, which is encouraging in terms of how customers are able to move at speed in that space. We're seeing great traction in the pipeline build, particularly through the engagement of our Defense Advisory Board. That team has met on a number of occasions already. And the individuals on that board are great advocates in terms of helping us build the pipeline there, getting our name known out in the space and being able to look at real projects there.

So I'm super excited about the traction we're seeing there. That goes for the Defense Advisory Board in North America as well as the opportunities that we're planning for in the U.K. through the alliance that we've established there.

And then it sounds like we're going to hear more about the operational improvement and possibilities at the Investor Day. But just maybe give some context in terms of the GXO Way, which seems like it's just rolling out right now. How quickly can you see benefits from that?

I mean you've got a lot of different sites, long-term contracts. Can you make smaller incremental change that just adds up? Or do you feel like this can actually have some bigger impacts without having to deal with changing contract terms or maybe the operating footprint. So realize we'll hear more in the back half of this year, but I'd love to hear just how to think about that until then.

Yes, sure. So it's early days there. As you said, we'll share a lot more on Investor Day in terms of dimensioning the potential there, as Kristine said, we've had great success in rolling out GXO IQ. That is really foundational to the GXO Way and GXO IQ is the platform for us to enable AI deployment at scale in our sites. And we have good success on the AI front.

We have 8 AI modules, which we've deployed at a number of sites. We've gone live with those first instances of GXO IQ, which really provides a more standardized distribution of AI across all of our sites, and we're building towards 50 sites being on GXO IQ by the end of the year. So we're excited about that progress.

When you look at the productivity improvement opportunities that we have, even just from an AI perspective, we're focused on 2 dimensions. One is driving innovation in our customer warehouse and transport operations, and we're already seeing benefits from the new modules that we've rolled out there and more to come. The second is leveraging AI for overhead and functional efficiency. And we've got great initiatives in flight there in functions like HR, IT, finance and so forth. So we're coming at it from both perspectives and very, very excited about Investor Day, where we can dimension that in more detail.

The next question is from Jeff Kauffman from Vertical Research Partners.

Mark, congratulations. Look forward to working with you. One quick detailed question for Mark and then a bigger picture for Patrick. Mark, as you expand into North America, how does that change your tax rate?

I would say this, Jeff. I don't think it changes in a meaningful way. Obviously, the North American rate is a touch higher than the rates across the globe here. But I think it won't be meaningful year-on-year over time. I think we'll see a small tick up in that. But at this point in time, I wouldn't anticipate anything significant.

Okay. And then for Patrick, bigger picture, I'm just kind of curious your perspective last 3 to 5 years. I mean we've had COVID, we've had this AI boom. We've had tariffs. It's really kind of changed how companies are thinking structurally about their supply chains. What are some of the big changes you've seen? And how is the business shifting?

Yes. I talked about the contract logistics industry and the evolution there, and I've been in the industry for 32 years. The industry has grown every single year over those 32 years. Events such as the financial crisis of 2008, maybe even the European bond crisis 2015, COVID, various wars and conflicts that have happened throughout the years, the evolution of tariffs, which all be reminded, started to be a big deal in the '80s, not 4 years ago.

These headwinds, these changes have always resulted in fueling additional growth for contract logistics and outsourcing. Our industry is a great lever for our customers. Our solutions are a great lever for our customers to take cost out, improve service to drive change at a faster pace within the supply chain. The time and attention being put to that as a lever only continues to increase. I talked about over the last couple of months at a number of conferences, tariffs being a catalyst to supply chain efficiency.

So as additional costs are introduced to the supply chain, that creates opportunities for return on investment that maybe didn't exist before. And a great example of that is the free trade zones. So there's significant demand now for free trade zones. That's a great way to at least mitigate or delay the impact of tariffs. We have 67 free trade zones around the world. We're seeing great growth in that space.

As these headwinds come, supply chain efficiency becomes more important and outsourcing becomes a very easy lever for our customers to pull in order to drive those supply chain efficiencies more quickly in their business. And I think if you look at the evolution of the contract logistics industry, it started in the '90s around labor arbitrage and really has evolved to an arbitrage of expertise. The thing that differentiates us the most is the people that we have in our organization who bring the supply chain expertise, the technology expertise. They understand how to stitch technologies together to deliver unique solutions.

They know how to implement change and warehouse operations quickly and efficiently and deliver solutions. And I think the arbitrage of expertise now is going to be a very big differentiator going forward. So I think all sets up well for the contract logistics industry to be healthy, and I think all sets up for the market we're participating in to be healthy. And as a market leader, we are capitalizing on that.

The next question is from Jason Seidl from TD Cowen.

This is Uday on for Jason Seidl. Patrick, on this competitive subject, could you expand on the data security and governance that you mentioned as a differentiator in winning those RFPs? Like would you say that being a pure play offers prospective customers a degree of comfort maybe that their data is not at risk from leasing to other business lines. I'm just wondering how big of an enabling factor that might be really just given a lot of your competitors are conglomerates.

Yes. I think it is an enabling factor. It is certainly something important to us, something we're very respectful of with our customers. And so that is something that will continue to feature as part of our solutions going forward. I would say in terms of competitive differentiation. That's just one of many things that differentiates us. And I think really is important from an outsourced supply chain provider and customer relationship perspective. I think that -- remind me the second part of your question there?

No, that's helpful. That's clear. Maybe just a follow-up on some of the volume outlook. Are the tariff changes and refund dynamics creating any kind of new variability in customer volume forecast? And if so, I mean, is that influencing your approach to planning and capacity management? Like do facilities need to flack in the coming months or quarters in case there's stimulus effectively that drives some volumes?

Yes. So I think it is resulting in changes in volume flows. And so that, I think, is completely accepted by folks. I think what we are seeing is from a volume perspective, those shift in flows are coming from acceleration of onshoring, particularly around manufacturing. I think that is very real. I think that plays very well to our focus on the B2B more industrial verticals and the support of that activity.

And so I think net-net, volumes increasing. And that, I speak in the context of North America. When you look at the U.K. and Europe business, seeing increasing flows directly from China and Southeast Asia, trade lanes being impacted there in terms of where product is flowing. And I think we're so well positioned given our position in the countries that we operate in Europe and of course, U.K. and Ireland to capitalize on those changes in flow.

I think just to close out the other part of your first question was do we feel advantaged as a pure play in contract logistics. And I think that is one of our biggest advantages. We are making directed investments in being the best contract logistics provider. We're not encumbered by investment decisions that have to be made across a conglomerate and multiple service lines. So we intend to go deep in terms of our investment providing the very best services around those solutions that we're bringing forward to customers. And so we think that, that is a strategic...

The next question is from Harrison Bauer from SIG.

Following up on something earlier on GXO Way and executing a repeatable operating framework, implementing best practices. Is there a way to frame a range of gross profit margins across the portfolio at a site level, maybe what might be on the lower end even at a mature site or underperforming site?

Or at the very least, what's driving operational underperformance at a site level? And then as you push deeper into A&D, industrial, high-tech in North America, are you encountering heightened start-up costs or implementation friction standing up those new verticals?

Yes. So the latter question on implementation costs or friction, the answer is no. We are already deep in those verticals in terms of our operational expertise. And that expertise has come both through a number of acquisitions that have been made over the years as GXO and with the competencies that have come, especially most recently with the acquisition of Wincanton.

And so we have been executing solutions in aerospace and defense, technology, industrial, life sciences for more than a decade. And so we have great people operating those businesses and the implementations that we're seeing there have been very successful. We have a lot of confidence in our ability to execute in that space.

On the first part of your question, I'm maybe more anxious than you to give the answer to that question, but we're going to defer that to our Investor Day.

Understood. And then just a follow-up. Pricing has come up a couple of times from opening remarks as well as Patrick, your call out on Mark's contracting experience. Mark, this one is for you, I guess, drawing on your experience from your prior [ seat ] at Spirit, how is that shaping the way that you're thinking about pricing and contract structure for GXO, particularly in A&D in North America? And are you pricing the new verticals differently than the legacy book?

Yes, Harrison. It's interesting when we look at the types of contract pricing mechanisms that we have here at GXO, open book versus fixed, a combination of fixed and variable. And what I would tell you is there's a lot of similarities when we think about aerospace and defense, in particular, with the defense primes around what we call an aerospace and defense cost plus, cost-plus incentive, fixed price.

And so when we think about tackling some of these new verticals and move up the food chain, I think there's a lot that we can think about as it relates to the services that provide, the value that we bring in the terms and conditions and how we can create a pricing proposal that creates a win-win for us and our customers. And I've got a lot of experience doing that both with the big defense primes and the commercial folks. So I'm excited to really roll up my sleeves and get into that.

As I said before, I think there's some similarities on how we do that. I found it very interesting as I came on board here. But I think there's some sharpening that we can do and some real focus that we can provide that I think will create a win-win for us and our customers.

The next question is from Kevin Gainey from Thompson, Davis & Company.

Maybe we can just touch on Wincanton real quick as you guys have kind of got layered in completely. I know one of the bigger things with it was synergy opportunities. I was curious, if you ran across any more of those.

Kevin, I would say this, we outlined -- GXO outlined a target of $60 million worth of synergies to be achieved by the end of 2026. I personally reviewed the plan. We're tracking well. We've made significant progress against those targets, and we're comfortable that we can achieve those by the end of the year. I would just tell you this, we're not stopping there. We continue to look and stretch ourselves.

But first and foremost, our goal is to achieve the $60 million that we committed to. But with any acquisition, there are opportunities and risks that come associated with it. And I do think that on balance, there are some further opportunities as we look at integrating that business into the bigger GXO and for us to take advantage of that. So things are on track. I can't give you a specific quantification at this point in time, but we're working very hard at that.

That was good color. And then as you guys hit a sales pipeline record, how are you thinking about the team's capability in converting that? And then how should we think about GXO's investment that may be required with that conversion?

Yes. So we are absolutely feeling great about the pipeline development, particularly over the past couple of months. That development is the result of the amazing team that we have focused on marketing and sales, especially in building that pipeline. And we're seeing very good conversion on that pipeline, especially in the first quarter of this year. So I feel very good about the trajectory that we're on moving forward there.

Ladies and gentlemen, that is all the time we have for questions today. I'd like to hand the call back to management for any closing remarks.

Great. Thank you, operator. So to close, we are very encouraged by the strong start that we've had this year and even more importantly, by the momentum that's building across the business. As I talked about, the market dynamics are increasingly favorable. Outsourcing continues to accelerate and the addressable marketing for advanced logistics solutions is expanding.

Our unique value proposition is resonating with blue-chip customers. Our pipeline is strong, and our teams are executing with discipline. With the foundation of strength and leadership we've put in place, we're moving with greater clarity, alignment and speed. The decision to raise our guidance really reflects our confidence in both the strength of demand that we're seeing and the predictability of our operating model. We're very excited as we move towards the middle of 2026. Thank you for joining today.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's teleconference. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Have a wonderful day.

Welcome to the GXO Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. My name is Darryl, and I'll be your operator for today's call. [Operator Instructions]. Please note that this conference is being recorded.

Before the call begins, let me read a brief statement on behalf of the company regarding forward-looking statements, the use of non-GAAP financial measures and the company's guidance. During this call, the company will be making certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities law, which, by their nature, involve a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. A discussion of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially is contained in the company's SEC filings. The forward-looking statements in the company's earnings release or made on this call are made only as of today, and the company has no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements, except to extent required by law.

The company also may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures as defined under applicable SEC rules during this call. Reconciliations of such non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measures are contained in the company's earnings release and the related financial tables are on its website. Unless otherwise stated, all results reported on this call are reported in United States dollars.

The company will also remind you that its guidance incorporates business trends to date and what it believes today to be appropriate assumptions. The company's results are inherently unpredictable and may be materially affected by many factors, including fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, changes in global economic conditions and consumer demand and spending labor market and global supply chain constraints inflationary pressures and the various factors detailed in its filings with the SEC. It is not possible for the company to actually predict demand for its services, and therefore, actual results could differ materially from guidance. You can find a copy of the company's earnings release, which contains additional information regarding forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures in the Investors section on the company's website.

I will now turn the call over to GXO's Chief Executive Officer, Patrick Kelleher. Mr. Kelleher, you may begin.

Good morning, and thank you for joining our fourth quarter and full year 2025 results call. Joining me today are Baris Oran, Chief Financial Officer, and Kristine Kubacki, Chief Strategy Officer. GXO delivered a strong finish to 2025, setting a solid foundation to accelerate organic growth and profitability in 2026 and beyond.

When we spoke last quarter, I shared some of my early observations about GXO, where I see opportunities to improve the business to accelerate organic growth and sharpen operational execution. I'd like to spend most of my time today discussing the recent leadership actions that position us well to grow and expand margins. But first, let me share the highlights from our record quarterly and full year performance.

For the fourth quarter, we delivered record revenue of $3.5 billion and record adjusted EBITDA of $255 million. We did the same for the full year. Total revenue was a record of $13.2 billion with every region delivering organic growth and full year adjusted EBITDA was a record at $881 million, even against a dynamic macro backdrop. The strong results we delivered clearly demonstrate the value we create for our customers and the resilience and predictability of our business model. New business wins were $1.1 billion in 2025, providing good visibility to accelerating growth in 2026. During the fourth quarter, we won significant business in both strategic and established verticals, including notable contract wins in the Life Sciences sector, several Aerospace and Defense sector wins as well as a notable win with a global apparel brand. We have $774 million of expected incremental new business revenue already secured for 2026. This is an increase of over 20% compared to this time last year.

I'll let Baris and Kristine discuss our financial outlook and New business wins in more detail in a few minutes. But I'm pleased to announce that we've released our 2026 financial guidance today, which at the midpoint shows accelerating organic growth, adjusted EBITDA margin expansion and an increase of 20% adjusted diluted EPS growth at the midpoint. I want to recognize and thank my GXO teammates for these results. Together, we are building a culture anchored in speed, accountability and customer intensity, and that culture is directly fueling our performance.

As I shared last quarter, GXO has very strong fundamentals. We are the industry leader in tech-enabled fulfillment. We have strong regional businesses, deep operational expertise and a compelling commercial engine. Our scale, global footprint and expertise sets us apart in both execution and capability breadth, and we are well positioned to lead what's next in deployment of automation, robotics and AI versus peers. My focus right now is to bring our strengths together to operate as one global organization, to deliver faster growth, higher margins and sharper execution. Over the past 5 months, we've announced new leadership in three key areas: Commercial, Operations at our Americas and Asia Pacific region. These changes are primary accelerators designed to number one, scale consistent operating standards across the organization to sharpen execution and drive margin expansion. Number two, to sharpen growth priorities and go-to-market disciplines to accelerate organic growth; and three, grow our market share in the U.S.

I see opportunity to strengthen our operating model by moving from regional strength to global leverage. Our regions are strong, and there's clear upside from better connecting what already works across the network. Operating in a higher gear will come from deploying consistent operating standards, sharing best practice and standardizing what is best in class. To be clear, it is not about one standard for customers. We will continue to deliver the customized solutions that set us apart. It is about establishing one way of working as a global team. New Chief Operating Officer role is a critical step in enhancing our operating model. Bart Beek joined us in January after more than 2 decades at CEVA Logistics, most recently as COO. He brings decades of industry experience and proven expertise in driving increased productivity efficiency and greater value for our customers. Bart's mandate is to scale a single operating methodology across our global network, creating a flywheel effect spanning solutions and seamless implementations to service delivery, continuous improvement and renewals. Productivity gains will come from better labor planning, network-wide best practice replication and operational visibility, all key levers behind margin expansion.

Bart will also lead the operationalization of our automation and technology strategy, as we accelerate our leadership in this area. We are already at the leading edge of AI in our industry, and we plan to move even faster in AI and robotics this year, particularly with humanoid robots. A key focus will be the continued rollout of GXO IQ, our AI-powered warehouse operating system. GXO IQ's AI capabilities are already improving labor planning, inventory distribution and movement, forecasting and workflow management across several of our largest sites. We see the technology amplifying our competitive differentiation as supply chains become more complex and data intensive. This has the potential to be a real game changer for us. As we move through the year and into 2027, we expect to drive clear productivity benefits as we increase proprietary AI applications across our footprint.

I'm also very excited about our progress with physical AI and humanoids. I believe humanoid technology will be a game changer for our industry, and we have the pole position. GXO was the first to deploy this tech in a live operating facility. And as we've collaborated with top robotics developers, we are driving significant improvements in the sophistication of warehousing tasks that can be undertaken. Commercially, I also see significant opportunity to operate in a higher year, not all growth is equal, and we will be very deliberate about where we lean in. It is about building a clear, unified global approach to customer relationships and pricing with an initial focus on accelerating sales in select B2B verticals and longer term, identifying geographies for expansion.

Karen Bomber joined us 2 weeks ago as Chief Commercial Officer from ABB Industries. She brings expertise in commercial strategy and driving growth across the energy, industrial automation and retail technology sectors. Her mandate is to tighten execution through more consistent global customer engagement, sharpen go-to-market execution and strategy, ensure pricing reflects the value that we deliver and improve the speed and consistency of our commercial processes.

As we discussed last quarter, the growth opportunity in the contract logistics industry is huge with a total addressable market exceeding $500 billion. We see meaningful opportunity to increase market share by expanding the pipeline and improving our conversion rates. The good news is that we're already accelerating our momentum and priority B2B growth verticals, Aerospace and Defense, Life Sciences, Industrial and Technologies, specifically Data Centers. We achieved another sizable win in Life Sciences in the fourth quarter and won several Aerospace and Defense contracts with Boeing and BAE Systems, among others, while continuing to see strong demand in omnichannel retail, a core strength.

Bridging both elements of growth and operational execution is our North America division. We have a great platform in North America, with leading positions across the Consumer, Technology, Aerospace and Industrial verticals. The U.S. is our largest and most media growth lever to accelerate organic growth given market demand, vertical mix and the scale advantages that we can unlock. I also expect this market to be the epicenter of technological innovation as we look to capitalize on opportunities with AI and humanoid to drive greater warehouse productivity.

Michael Jacobs who I have known for more than 20 years, took the [ helm ] of our North America business 3 months ago. He is intensifying focus on operational performance, increasing labor productivity and winning new business by reallocating investments to solutioning, sales and digital marketing to realize the opportunity that we see. These three leadership changes are strategic accelerators. It's about running the playbook with greater alignment, scale and pace.

In closing, in 2026 and beyond, we have a solid foundation to build on, and I'm very excited for the future. Profitable growth is the priority. And over the past 5 months, we've moved with speed strengthening the leadership team that will execute on the opportunity ahead, simplifying our structure, accelerating expansion in priority B2B verticals and coming together as one team to define the ambition of the company for the future.

With that, I will hand the call over to Baris.

Thanks, Patrick. GXO has built momentum through 2025, with the fourth quarter performance reflecting the power of our resilient business model. With record revenue, adjusted EBITDA ahead of our original full year guidance and robust free cash flow, we are delivering on our commitment to drive profitable growth.

For the full year of 2025, we generated record revenue of $13.2 billion, growing 12.5%, of which 3.9% was organic. We delivered adjusted EBITDA of $881 million, growing 8%. Our adjusted diluted earnings per share was $2.51, and we delivered adjusted net income of $292 million. In the fourth quarter of 2025, GXO delivered record revenue of $3.5 billion, up 7.9% year-over-year, of which 3.5% was organic. Every region delivered organic revenue growth, highlighting the value of our contractual business model throughout the dynamic trade and macro environment. We delivered record adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter of $255 million, ahead of the implied midpoint of our guidance at $249 million. We delivered net income in the fourth quarter of $43 million and adjusted net income of $101 million. Our diluted earnings per share was $0.37 and our adjusted diluted earnings per share was $0.87.

Our free cash flow in the fourth quarter was $163 million, and we delivered our target adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow conversion for the full year. We remain disciplined in our capital expenditure and working capital management, which allows us to continue to invest in our business with high returns. Our record operating return on invested capital remained consistently strong, driven by solid operating performance. Our leverage levels improved to 2.5x net debt to adjusted EBITDA, even after executing $200 million in share buybacks in the first half of 2025 at an average price of $37.34. We also successfully completed our first European bond offering, securing EUR 500 million on competitive terms and using the proceeds to refinance upcoming maturities. Our balance sheet is strong and positions GXO for long-term growth.

The integration of Wincanton is moving at pace and we are on track to deliver the run rate cost synergies of $60 million by the end of 2026. We also expect to gain significant revenue synergies over the coming years. Given our excellent operating performance in 2025, I'm pleased to share our 2026 guidance, where we expect to deliver organic revenue growth of 4% to 5%, adjusted EBITDA of $930 million to $970 million, an increase of 8% at the midpoint. Adjusted diluted earnings per share of $2.85 to $3.15, an increase of 20% at the midpoint and adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow conversion of 30% to 40%.

With strong operating performance, a solid financial foundation and a robust sales pipeline GXO's resilient and predictable business model continues to deliver exceptional value to both our customers and shareholders. With that, over to you, Kristine.

Thanks, Baris. Good morning, everyone. With the fourth quarter and full year results, demonstrating the strength and resilience of our business model, I want to provide more context on the drivers of growth, the durability we see across our business and how we're positioning GXO for the next phase of value creation.

Patrick has been clear about our priorities of that strategic road map, accelerate organic growth and expand margins. And from where we sit, two aspects of GXO's story continue to gain traction. The resiliency of our contractual highly diversified business model and the durability of our organic growth across cycles. These pillars enabled us to deliver another record year of performance in a dynamic macro environment. And more importantly, they give us confidence about the future. On growth, we are making significant progress building our global relationships with blue-chip customers and expanding across geographies and into high-growth verticals.

During the fourth quarter, we won $248 million in New contracts, bringing full year 2025 wins of $1.1 billion. Critical to growth are significant opportunities in fast-growing, high-value verticals such as Life Sciences, Aerospace and Defense and Industrial, specifically Data Center infrastructure. These areas remain a strategic focus for us, and I'm excited to share the meaningful progress we've made this quarter.

First, in Life Sciences, we're gaining good momentum in the $34 billion Life Sciences vertical, with another notable win in Q4. Even with the largest win in the quarter, our Life Sciences pipeline continued to grow quarter-over-quarter with several new strategic opportunities. Second, we're seeing increased activity in Aerospace and Defense and Industrial across all our regions. During the quarter, we further expanded our partnership with Boeing, on new business, including BAE Systems and TELUS the direct result of the [indiscernible] acquisition. We also established a defense Advisory Board in the U.S. comprised of defense industry experts. This Board will provide market insight and strategic guidance on business development.

Third, we continue to build momentum in the fast-growing data center market, a critical part of the rapidly expanding AI and cloud infrastructure ecosystem. As a key logistics partner in the complex supply chain, we are well positioned to capture share in the $28 billion technology vertical. During the quarter, we secured 5 new contracts, including for the first time, wins across multiple regions with a leading hyperscaler, demonstrating our ability to scale globally with high-growth customers. Looking to the growth outlook for 2026, our $2.3 billion sales pipeline is robust and well diversified across regions and verticals with accelerated activity in strategic sectors. We continue to see strong opportunities in Life Sciences, Technology and Aerospace and Defense. These trends reflect on our ability to scale with high-growth customers across critical industries. Altogether, our recent wins translate to $774 million in incremental revenue already for 2026, up over 20% where we were at this point last year. This gives us confidence in our 2026 full year guidance and provides visibility into our long-term growth trajectory.

The second priority Patrick outlined was strengthening our operating model to drive even better profitability. Core to driving operational excellence is our leadership in automation, technology and AI. GXO IQ accelerates this differentiation, bringing best-in-class consistency and security while driving clear productivity benefits for our customers. We began successful pilots of GXO IQ in the second half of last year and are excited by the early results, especially in the areas of proactive replenishment and slotting. GXO IQ is expected to go from pilot to scaling across more than 50 existing sites this year. And in automation, by the end of 2026, we expect to have nearly 20,000 robots in operation, plus several humanoid pilots launched across all three regions. We have a strong foundation and are poised to scale these market-leading capabilities further. This will serve as a powerful lever for long-term profitable growth, and we look forward to sharing more about our road map at our Investor Day later this year.

And with that, I'll pass the mic back to the operator to begin Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Our first questions come from the line of Stephanie Moore with Jefferies.

For Patrick and [Audio Gap].

[Audio Gap] that they are competing in. [indiscernible] line solutions will deliver the most value for the customer. And we think that will come with pricing power in terms of being able to commercialize value that we're creating to our customers in the right way. And that is why I think the specialized agenda around those industry verticals, and particularly, as we're stepping into the strategic industry verticals of aerospace, defense, industrial, technology and life sciences, we can bring significant value for customers, and we want to commercialize that investment.

Understood. And then actually, just a follow-up to the guidance commentary Baris, can you walk through how we should think about the cadence through 2026. You've announced some pretty big wins to start the year and the like. So maybe just how we should think about how growth in EBITDA flows through as the year progresses?

Sure. On the EBITDA phasing, the phasing we expect this year reflects the timing of specific project start-ups and exits. These quarterly swings tend to be material on a full year basis. These have been reflected in the percentages we've provided in our presentation. We have high visibility due to New businesses we have already won, and we expect to have new wins more business throughout the year.

Our next questions come from the line of Chris Wetherbee with Wells Fargo.

This is Ryan on for Chris. Just a follow-up on that last one. The second half run rate looks to be a little bit more elevated. I guess, what does -- how should we think about that as we exit 2026 into 2027 from a fairly strong base?

Yes. This is Patrick. Maybe I could take that to start, and then Baris can close out with a few comments. When you look at the contract logistics industry in our business, the typical sales cycle is 6 to 9 months with then a ramp-up period to start up new operations, which could take up to 6 months. We exited 2025 with a great book of New business win, $775 million already identified to implement this year, and we are selling opportunities and closing opportunities right now, that we expect to start in the second half of the year.

Our pipeline exited 2025 at $2.3 billion. The pipeline as we stand today is $2.5 billion and growing especially in the strategic industry verticals that we're participating in. And so we think we are going to see the benefit of New business wins from that pipeline accelerating in the fourth quarter, and then especially into 2027. Baris, anything to add there?

Yes. On the EBITDA side, remember, we have an integration that we kicked off 2025 and you will see the benefits of that even more visible in our numbers in the second half of the year.

This is Kristine. I just thought I'd add a little bit to double-click about why we are so excited about where and the momentum that we're seeing in the business. As you know, we have a huge addressable market, and it's over $500 billion. Our core markets around consumer facing, we're seeing good momentum there in terms of pipeline wins. But in the new verticals that Patrick just spoke of, we're really unlocking and seeing some very good trends.

As you know, in Aerospace and Defense, I mean that's -- and Industrial, it represents hundreds of billions of dollars of TAM. And in fact, we have over $200 million in the pipeline, and that's even after notable wins with BAE, with Boeing with TELUS and even BMW. So we're very excited about the strategic initiatives that we have in Aerospace and Defense.

And then in Life Sciences, $34 billion TAM for us. That pipeline has more than tripled in the last 12 months, and that's even having our largest win in the fourth quarter come from the Life Sciences. And of course, I talked about the tech side. We're seeing, of course, very strong momentum there. And even as we enter January more opportunities are popping up for us, and we're very excited about how that plays out and more wins coming as we move through 2026.

Appreciate the color. Then I guess just on fourth quarter organic growth came in a little bit light versus our expectations. Can you maybe walk us through what happened in the quarter? Maybe you could touch on [indiscernible] and dynamics and how volumes shook out by vertical and geography? And then on the cost side, it seems like there were solid productivity, that beat be our expectations. Can you help us frame why that doesn't carry fully through to like 1Q and 2Q EBITDA?

Let me take that. Our growth was on balance, very strong in Q4 with the net New business wins and milder volume trends, especially in Continental Europe and U.K. The delta we see in Q3 and Q4 is primarily driven by the volumes. And if you look into 2026 onwards, our guidance implies in 2026 and EBITDA margin expansion around 20 basis points.

At the same time, we are making targeted investments to drive our productivity faster and accelerate our organic growth. Absent these factors, margins would have expanded faster this year but we are taking a multiyear strategy, which we will outline at an Investor Day at a later phase, and you will see a clear margin opportunity than we benchmark ourselves in the market against GXO's own history.

Our next questions come from the line of Ravi Shanker with Morgan Stanley.

This is Madison on for Ravi. I was just wondering what you guys are thinking about in terms of timing for Investor Day if we should be expecting that some time this year?

Yes, definitely 2026, and we'll be out with the date for that shortly.

Got it. Okay. And then I was wondering if you could talk about your macro assumptions that you have baked into the low end and high end of the guidance range, and kind of what you're also assuming at the midpoint if it's just a continuation of what we're currently seeing right now?

Let me go over some of the numbers. We do expect an acceleration in organic growth in 2026. We already have $774 million of incremental revenue secured or up 6% gross growth. This will continue to grow, and we expect our new business wins to provide the growth uplift. The inflation pass-through and retention rates seemed to be roughly the same 2025 to 2026. We are assuming flat volumes in our operations, which we believe is prudent.

Yes. And I think that's very important to highlight. So the guidance for this year is assumed on flat volume as we consider the overall macroeconomic situation and really anticipating how that is going to materialize. We've taken a very conservative view there as with respect to current customer volumes. So the lever for this year is really about organic growth driving top line.

Our next questions come from the line of Scott Schneeberger with Oppenheimer.

I guess I'd like to follow up on that guidance question and ask at the low end of the range and at the high end of the range, what are some items that you all are considering most of what could put you at the high end and the low end? What are you worried about? And what are you most excited about heading into the year?

Sure. I can take that. In terms of our guidance on revenue, we feel very good about the revenue that was won in 2025, carrying into 2026, $775 million, as mentioned. We feel very good about the current pipeline growing from $2.3 billion to $2.5 billion from the beginning of the year to now, and that continues to accelerate. The sensitivity around the top line will come with speed in which that those new business wins can be implemented and how quickly we're realizing profitability from that. And that really underpins the low end of the range.

In terms of the high end of the range, it really is about bringing to life new business wins from the current pipeline and the timing of the implementation of those new business wins this year. As I move on to EBITDA and the guidance there, that is about not only driving organic growth, which contributes to EBITDA but also progressing our agenda of productivity and cost improvement in the business, of which we have a number of areas of focus.

We talked about Bart Beeks coming on as COO. He is driving already productivity improvement initiatives, centered around especially labor planning, where we think we have a big opportunity. Michael Jacobs is really amplifying that in our business in North America. That, coupled with our agenda on robotics automation and AI in driving those technologies into our business for productivity improvement, cost improvement. And finally, a focus on our overall SG&A and operating costs and making sure that we're responsibly spending those dollars, getting the best leverage out of SG&A as we move through 2026, will all be the levers that we're focused on to deliver within EBITDA range that we put forth.

Great. And following up, it sounds like, Patrick, you alluded to earlier, that we probably have to wait to Investor Day to get a taste of how you're thinking about margin long term, and we look forward to hearing about that. Any color on that now would be great. But a more specific question in the near term. Just with regard to investments, you're clearly making them here, as Baris mentioned, we would see a higher margin, if not for these investments. What is the strategy with balancing investments at this juncture in the business? And what type of investments are you making right now in 2026?

Sure. Maybe with respect to the margin improvement opportunity, yes, we will be providing details associated with that in the Investor Day 2026. But I can confidently say right now, we are aiming to deliver at margin levels at or better than our peer group. I am very confident from experience that GXO is well positioned as a foundation to achieve that. In the Investor Day 2026, we will put definition to the plans associated with getting there and the time line in which we think we can achieve that. But I feel that is well within reach. Baris, i can hand it over to you for the second question.

Sure. When you look into the type of investments we are making in 2026, which are included in our guidance, by the way, there are primarily two buckets. One is improving our growth and capabilities in the new strategic verticals such as digital marketing, Defense Advisory Board and aligning our systems to capture more Aerospace and Defense business. Number two is structurally increasing our cost efficiency by investing further in labor management systems GXO IQ, AI and simplifying our ERPs. That is all included in our EBITDA bridge.

Our next questions come from the line of Richa Harnain with Deutsche Bank.

So just a quick follow-up on that last question. I know it's a heavy investment year for all good things, but in light of the question around -- or Patrick, your answer just around like all these productivity enhancements that are putting -- being put in place today. Is there upside risk to the margin outlook for 2026 if things go right, the 20 bps of margin expansion? Can it be better? Or is this really just going to be more longer-tail projects and it's going to be maybe more of a 2027-plus type development?

And then just I wanted to hear more. Data centers, you guys spoke about them a couple of times and that plan you had someone in the U.S. data center play very strong orders this morning, so timely. Like you mentioned the vertical is a key pillar in our growth strategy. Kristine, you talked about how you service this market, but maybe it will be helpful to get like an update there and how your automation plans sort of play into serving the vertical in a more differentiated way, if at all?

Yes, sure. So on the margin point, I'm very excited to share the detailed plans in the margin opportunity that we have in the 2026 Investor Day. We feel very good about the range that we're providing in terms of EBITDA and revenue performance this year, the resulting margins associated with that. We're very focused on growing in the high-margin verticals, and we talked about those in the B2B vertical, very focused on pricing and making sure that we're getting paid for the value that we're delivering, and that is really important this year to make sure that, that is set in motion. We're driving for site level productivity. We've got a number of initiatives underway being led by Bart and that really is about driving towards even more global operating standards, driving to a high level of maturity on our labor planning and then especially leveraging AI.

I think our guidance contemplates the results that we can deliver from the initiatives that we have in place today. And finally, leveraging SG&A more effectively as we accelerate growth. We have a $2.5 billion pipeline today, we're [indiscernible] that pipeline higher, certainly that can only lead to a good performance. So we're very focused on organic growth as well as the performance levers that we talked about.

Yes, Richa, this is Christine. Just to give you a little bit more about on the tech side. As I mentioned, we're very excited about this. It represents a $28 billion TAM. And as you mentioned, it's only just expanding from here and expected to grow over the next several years at a very high pace. For us, it fits right into our wheelhouse because it is a very complicated a complex supply chain that we're supporting everything, not only from the start-up of the data center, but also the life and logistical support. It's really just one of the core competencies that we have from a very complex that operation that we're supporting there. It is a high-value vertical for us. So we're very excited in terms of the opportunities, just to learn in the last 6 months, as I mentioned, we've seen the pipeline more than double, and that's even with the 5 contracts that we signed alone in the fourth quarter. And again, that was the first time after we've seen that in multiple regions. So our business is expanding from a geography standpoint. So we're very excited about the opportunity set ahead, and we have a huge vertical to go unlock for us.

Our next questions come from the line of Patrick Creuset with Goldman Sachs.

Hi Patrick, Baris, Kristine. First of all, what time line would you set yourself to start to see some meaningful commercial traction and therefore, organic growth lift off in your U.S. business? And sounded perhaps from your previous guidance comments that we could see something maybe towards the latter part of this year already, but rough time line there to see that accelerate?

Second question on margins. Same one really. I mean, from when would you think we start to see some progress there in terms of converging towards the margin levels we see at your large European peers? And the rollout of best practice and AI tools you mentioned. I mean, is that something that already drives the much stronger guided second half EBITDA performance?

Yes. So let me take those and then Baris, maybe you want to comment. From a North American market perspective, I think we are already seeing traction in terms of an accelerated growth agenda there. We've got a fantastic opportunity great foundation, particularly in the strategic verticals that we see as very contributing to growth going forward. There's a total market opportunity in North America at $250 billion. Michael Jacobs, who I said I've known for 20 years, he's been in the seat now for 3 months and already intensified focus on operational performance, increased labor productivity, which only makes us more competitive in the market and he's really driving towards winning new business and allocating resources to solutioning sales and digital marketing.

And I think that's critical to converting the pipeline that we have there I think it's important to remind that the sales cycle for this business is 6 to 9 months within a period of about 6 months to start up new business, to realize full profitability of opportunities that are won. And so I think our guidance for 2026 accurately reflects stepping into that growth based on the sales and start-up cycle, and that has us very excited for 2027 as well. It's a key focus in mind to reenergize our customer relationships in the region, and that's going to be a key focus of mine in this new era of growth and stronger execution that we've talked about.

With respect to your question on margin expansion and margin opportunities, I believe firmly now 6 months and that there is a structural margin opportunity for GXO. In the near term, and Baris can comment, our margins have been diluted by the delays to the Wincanton integration process. That begins to correct itself in 2026 as we deliver the $60 million run rate synergies, which will be in place full run rate by the end of the year. But again, given my experience, I see no reason why GXO can't be performing at or better than our industry peers. We're definitely going to outline how that happens in the Investor Day 2026.

If I may add a couple of things on the Wincanton contribution. Wincanton has traded solidly and is a contributor to our incremental year-over-year EBITDA results. We began the integration in the third quarter, we realigned the organization structure and we are beginning to combine support functions, procurement benefits, become more obvious in 2026 and beyond.

Total today's integration benefits were around $15 million by the end of 2025, including some in 2024. By the end of 2026, as Patrick highlighted, we expect both businesses to be fully integrated in the savings program to be implemented and meaning we will enter the 2027 with a full run rate of $60 million, which should provide us another $20 million year-over-year benefit, which is included in our guidance for 2026. In addition to cost synergies, the combined [indiscernible] and Wincanton are already contributing on new opportunities for new customer tenders, which will accelerate GXO's growth [indiscernible] into our target verticals.

So to the last question on productivity improvement, I would highlight, especially our initiatives around rolling out GXO IQ. We are really excited about the opportunities that AI presents for our business. GXO IQ is the path to implement AI across our 1,200 operations and how we're bringing AI to life. And Kristine, maybe you could comment on our progress there.

Hi Patrick, just to give you a little bit of background, I mean, we've been deploying proprietary AI modules across our sites for about 18 months now, and it's in a number of sites. We got actually our first non-pilot savings just last year in 2025. So we're seeing very good things. We have gone from the pilot stage of GXO IQ in the second half of last year, and we're going to begin scaling that to more than 50 sites as we go through 2026. And then most of our new start-ups from here, so that will be existing sites, some existing sites and then most new start-ups will be launched on the GXO IQ platform. So we're very excited about the things that we're already seeing, the opportunities in the pilots that we did in the second half we will provide more details of how this rolls into the margin opportunity over the long term at our Investor Day later this year.

Can I ask a follow-up just on the AI point. Just in terms of conceptually, what are the exact cost buckets that GXO IQ tackles? is it sort of site level SG&A, more group functions or something else?

We have two dimensions that we're chasing in terms of our AI strategy. The one is, as you referenced on SG&A, improving overhead efficiency where we focus on our own operations. That's our functional activities. We look to leverage our corporate functions like HR, IT, finance more effectively, and AI plays a big role in that we see ourselves leveraging market available AI to drive those improvements.

The second dimension is driving innovation within customer warehouse and transport operations. So some examples of that, we have AI modules deployed for dynamic route planning, corrective replenishment, slotting, forecasting, those will all drive to impact the cost basis for how we execute in our operations, sharing that value with our customers, we drive to lower cost, better service in the solutions that we provide. So we expect great results from those two areas of focus. We got a number of deployments already underway and seeing good results of the work that we're doing.

Our next questions come from the line of Jason Seidl with TD Cowen.

This is Uday Khanapurkar for Jason Seidl. Thanks for the question. Maybe a couple for Baris. On the organic growth guide, I think based on '26 locked-in wins appears to imply like a mid-single-digit churn rate. So maybe if you could confirm the algo there. Just curious if that implied churn is if that's an estimate based on typical churn at this point in the cycle? Or have those conversations with customers concluded? And then maybe if you see some support from the from the broader market, to see in our performance on that this year?

Yes. On the retention rates, we assume steady retention for 2026, similar to 2025. And the inflation pass-through is also specifically valid for this business model. That's what makes us resilient. And as Patrick highlighted, we are assuming flat volumes in our existing operations, which we believe is prudent for 2026. We won already 6% of our gross growth, and there will be more wins coming up this year, which is going to uplift our growth numbers.

Right. That makes sense. And maybe just a follow up on the -- so you said the flat volume expectations for '26 embedded in the guide. On the U.S. side, there's a few signals pointing to inventories being drawn down quite low and impending restock, so maybe potentially better volume throughput in warehouses in the U.S. Is that something that you're seeing? And is the offset in the guide maybe implying a softer U.K. and Europe? Or are your U.S. [indiscernible] maybe more discrete from the market?

In Q4, our trends in North America and the U.S. were stronger than Continental Europe and U.K. For 2026, it's too early to call for the entire year. You just take a flat number for prudence. Just take it as prudence, nothing more than that.

Our next questions come from the line of Jeff Kaufman with Vertical Research Partners.

And congratulations with all the levers moving around and the changes going on. I just wanted to follow up on the question on the operating environment. I hear everything you're saying in terms of the new verticals and where we're focused on growing, but I want to see what the the aggregate market is doing. I mean, it did look like U.S. growth slowed a little bit. France and Italy slowed a little bit on the covenant based on your numbers. Can you just tell us on the macro side, where you're seeing changes incrementally positive and negative, either on a geographic or an industry vertical basis?

Sure. I think the most important thing to call out there is that contract logistics outsourcing as an industry is increasing. Customers are increasingly looking at outsourcing as a very viable alternative to in-source execution of supply chain. I think the challenging macro economic environment only intensifies the value proposition that we have for our customers. We are able to invest in robotics, automation, AI, humanoids in a way that our customers cannot do for themselves. We have the people and the expertise to solve complex supply chain challenges.

So as customers and potential customers are under challenging situations on a global basis across multiple geographies, the value proposition of contract logistics, our business only strengthened. So we are not pinning our forward growth trajectory based on just the performance of the overall broad economy. We want to be a part of solving customer problems and opportunities in the challenges that they face in good times and bad. And I think for the 32 years that I've been in the supply chain industry contract logistics specifically, the industry has continued to grow irregardless of those macros. We'll be very responsible in terms of how we are guiding on our performance within the year as it relates to how volumes are going to materialize for customers in the year. But as we look to the long term, we're really confident that we're playing in the right industry. It's a growing industry. We are a market leader in the industry, and we've got a great opportunity to capitalize on that industry growth.

And just to follow up on that. And I think in Kristine's presentation, she was talking about humanoid and how tech's changing, but and I know we'll hear this on the Investor Day, but can you talk a little bit about AI, how that's changing warehouse automation versus, say, the warehouse automation concept that you were selling 12 or even 24 months ago?

Yes, sure. A simple example, I think, is -- there's an opportunity to use AI to solve for the completion of repetitive tests that our team members don't want to do. There's efficiency in getting those repetitive tasks done either more quickly or more cost effectively. But the bigger benefit that we're seeing as AI is becoming more sophisticated is the upstream and downstream impacts that AI focused on a process can have on other connected processes. So when we look at AI that we have deployed in one of our large e-commerce warehouses today for forecasting, where we're able to use AI to forecast demand in the e-commerce environment, which is inherently unpredictable.

We are able to do Monte Carlo analysis around how forecast may come in based on weather, promotional and so forth, and create models for labor planning to be able to respond quickly to what actually happens in reality. So AI, in that case, didn't necessarily make the picking and processing activity more cost-effective. But -- it made the labor planning more cost effective, allowing us to put labor in the operation when it's needed, when it could be most productive, eliminating a team member downtime, people who are there without work to process -- and we are really focused at not only leveraging AI for discrete activity which is I think we were a couple of years ago as an industry. But how do we look at the connected benefits of various AI tools, improving processes and how do we improve overall execution end to end as a result of that. And I think that, for me, is a very exciting landscape for where AI and then humanoid and robotics and automation play driving cost reduction and service improvement for our customers.

Our next questions come from the line of David Zazula with Barclays.

Just wondering if I could ask on how the rollout with NHS is going? I think you've previously talked about some opportunities to expand that relationship. Have those talks progressed at all? And any outlook on the NHS side?

Sure. So the NHS business implemented late third quarter and all the way through the fourth quarter of last year, that is continuing on plan. And our team members in the U.K. are doing a fantastic job of providing amazing service to the NHS. And we're very pleased with how that is progressing. We have built up a pipeline with the NHS. We're progressing on that. We're confident that there's a great opportunity to grow our relationship there as well as that being a great foundation for continued growth in Life Sciences and the relationships that we're building, through that execution for NHS and the capabilities that we're able to bring to market as a result of work that we're doing.

Especially from the Wincanton acquisition and our team members who came from Wincanton are just amazingly talented in this area. We're already seeing the benefits of that in the pipeline. And as I mentioned, some of the new business wins that we had in the fourth quarter.

So by hearing you right, it sounds like having NHS as an anchor customer gets you into ecosystems that you didn't have access before, and that's creating some incremental commercial opportunities?

I think that is absolutely correct. And we see ourselves growing with not only the NHS, but that is the foundation for growth in the space. And that is very similar to the approach that we're taking in Aerospace and Defense, by the way. We have a great foundation of business in Aerospace and Defense, only enhanced by the acquisition of Wincanton capabilities they brought there, and we're seeing similar momentum in terms of building on that foundation. And Kristine, maybe...

Yes, David, just to add color a little bit there. I think as we announced the NHS back in the fourth quarter of last year, last year -- that is really the landmark deal that got us in the marketplace and really got noticed. We added great names like Siemens [indiscernible] and [indiscernible]. And as I mentioned that in the last 12 months, the pipeline in life sciences alone has more than tripled. So really that's a result of the importance of the NHS win. And now with the start-up going very successfully, we think that momentum only continues.

Our next question is come from the line of Kevin Gainey with Thompson Davis.

Good morning Patrick, Baris, Kristine. Maybe if you could touch on the North American expansion and how you're thinking about it as an opportunity for organic growth? Or maybe you would want to visit that via acquisition? And then does it -- does the North American market represent maybe the most outsized organic growth opportunity for GXO?

Sure. I can answer that very quickly. North America is a priority for organic growth, and it will be the primary driver. Organic growth to be the primary driver of growth in North America. We see a great opportunity there. We've got a great foundation of the business. We are underrepresented in North America in contrast to our participation in the U.K. and Europe. And so we are very confident that we have upside there. We're executing that to that. And pulling in the question on M&A.

Our M&A strategy is to invest in areas where we can accelerate our growth. We want to be very selective around M&A, our M&A priorities, really centered on North America and the strategic verticals that we're focused on, aerospace, industrial technology, life science, as I've mentioned. We don't have M&A in our short-term agenda, not being the next couple months.

From a capital allocation perspective, we're very focused on investing in organic growth. We want to continue to deleverage the balance sheet, which will get us greater flexibility as we move through 2026, Baris how many 2.5x right now and moving towards 2x at the end of 2026. And then beyond that, from a capital allocation perspective, we'll take a very balanced approach as it relates to M&A opportunities and share buyback. But to round out your question, North America is a big focus for organically.

Appreciate all the color there, Patrick. And maybe for Baris, just one last one on cash flow conversion. Talk -- maybe if you could talk about the confidence in raising the guide there? And what drove that?

Yes. We have lower M&A transaction costs in 2026, and we do have opportunities to improve our working capital management throughout the year. Our CapEx has been -- as a percentage of revenue will be roughly the same. The delta will come from less transaction costs and better working capital management.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that is all the time we have for questions today. I'd like to hand the call back over to management for any closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. Before we close, for me, the message is really clear. I want to leave this with you in a straightforward message that GXO is accelerating deliberately and from a position of strength. Our fundamentals are very strong. The team is aligned and GXO is poised to perform in a higher gear. We see clear opportunity to unlock organic growth and margin expansion through sharper commercial focus greater operational consistency at scale and disciplined execution of our U.S. growth opportunity.

While several leaders have joined only recently, the increased alignment across our leadership team is already proving to be an accelerated strength is further reflected in GIO's recent recognition as one of Fortune's most admired companies. This recognition would not have been possible about the dedication and performance of the entire GXO team, and the vision of our founder, Brad Jacobs, who stepped down as Chairman at the end of last year.

Our future [indiscernible] always be rooted in the foundations of culture and performance that Brad expels. I heard him say recently move boldly and with speed. And I think that personifies our path at GXO.

On behalf of our employees, I want to thank Brad for his leadership in building a truly category-defining company and we wish him continued success. With that, thank you for your questions and your continued interest in GXO. I look forward to speaking to you again soon. Thank you so much.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's teleconference. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Have a wonderful day.

Welcome to the GXO Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. My name is Shamali, and I'll be your operator for today's call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded.

Before the call begins, let me read a brief statement on behalf of the company regarding forward-looking statements, the use of non-GAAP financial measures and the company's guidance. During this call, the company will be making certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws, which, by their nature, involve a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. A discussion of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially is contained in the company's SEC filings. The forward-looking statements in the company's earnings release or made on this call are made only as of today, and the company has no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements, except to the extent required by law.

The company also may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures as defined under applicable SEC rules during this call. Reconciliations of such non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measures are contained in the company's earnings release and the related financial tables are on its website. Unless otherwise stated, all results reported on this call are reported in United States dollars.

The company will also remind you that its guidance incorporates business trends to date and what it believes today to be appropriate assumptions. The company's results are inherently unpredictable and may be materially affected by many factors, including fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, changes in global economic conditions and consumer demand and spending, labor market and global supply chain constraints, inflationary pressures and the various factors detailed in its filings with the SEC. It is not possible for the company to actually predict demand for its services and therefore, actual results could differ materially from guidance. You can find a copy of the company's earnings release, which contains additional important information regarding forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial measures in the Investors section on the company's website.

I will now turn the call over to GXO's Chief Executive Officer, Patrick Kelleher. Mr. Kelleher, you may begin.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to the call. Also joining me on our call today are Baris Oran, Chief Financial Officer; and Kristine Kubacki, Chief Strategy Officer. This is my first opportunity to speak with you as the CEO of GXO. I am looking forward to discussing our third quarter results and sharing some early reflections from my first 90 days with the company. I'd like to begin by thanking my predecessor, Malcolm Wilson. Our transition has been very smooth, enabling me to hit the ground running. I've visited many sites across the U.S., U.K. and Continental Europe. Malcolm played a pivotal role in establishing GXO as the global leader, and I am so energized to build on the strong foundation that he set.

That strong foundation is evident in our third quarter results. GXO drove record quarterly revenue of $3.4 billion with organic revenue growth across every region. Adjusted EBITDA grew 13% from last year to $251 million. New business wins of $280 million were up 24% year-over-year, including a fully automated win in the U.S. with one of the fastest-growing global sportswear brands. Alongside significant wallet share expansion with existing customers, our visibility to growth continues to improve with nearly $700 million of revenue already secured for 2026, an increase of nearly 50% compared to this time last year. I want to recognize and thank our GXO teammates for these results. Our people make the difference with attention to detail and a passion for providing the very best customer service.

And I want to welcome the Wincanton teammates to the GXO family. Wincanton integration is underway and primed to unlock growth opportunities for us across Europe, most notably in the industrial and aerospace and defense sectors. The Wincanton and GXO business units were integrated in October with back-office functions following this month. We are actively collaborating on a range of strategic customer tenders and have already realized our first win as a combined team. Synergy realization remains on track.

Looking ahead to next year, further growth in new business wins, coupled with the Wincanton integration now underway, gives us confidence that we'll see growth and margin expansion in 2026. Baris and Kristine will discuss our results and the new business wins in more detail later in the call.

Since I joined in August, I've been on the road under the hood of our operations and culture. I've connected with our leaders and operations teams, engaged with investors, customers and prospects and done a lot of listening to understand what's working and where our opportunities exist. As many of you know, logistics is in my blood. Over the past 32-plus years, I've held operational, commercial and management roles across every facet of the supply chain, which has given me a unique view of the operational and commercial landscape and opportunities within it. I've kept a close eye on GXO since the spin.

We are a category-defining company that put contract logistics on the map and one that I'm honored to lead. A personal motto that has fueled me and the teams that I have led is even more, even better, and it exemplifies the opportunity that I see at GXO, an impressive track record of growth, nearly doubling the size of the business since the spin and with the attitude of a high-performing team, a clear opportunity to achieve even more. Profitable growth is the priority. Organic growth is a critical element of this, and every decision and action will be taken with an eye to accelerating this engine. I see clear opportunities to expand margins as we focus on profit market verticals and geographies, leverage technology to drive performance and share in the value that we generate for customers.

I'd now like to take a moment to share some more detailed views on these 2 key areas. Number one, first, where I see the opportunity to drive even more organic growth; and second, to ensure even better execution behind it because the 2 go hand in hand. Despite our global scale, we hold less than 3% of the global TAM, so there's a long runway of growth ahead. With a sharp commercial strategy on where to play and how to win, there are clear near-term opportunities to accelerate in North America, especially and across high-growth customer segments and verticals globally.

First, North America. GXO has a strong and well-established position in the U.K. and Europe with meaningful opportunities for continued growth. North America represents a similar opportunity for us, one of the largest and fastest-growing logistics markets globally with a total addressable market in excess of $250 billion. We are energizing our approach to meet its dynamics and opportunities. Michael Jacobs joined us this week as the new President of the Americas and Asia Pacific region. Michael is a 30-year industry veteran whom I've known for more than 2 decades. He brings terrific experience from Ferguson Enterprises and Keurig. He has a proven track record of managing complex supply chains, increasing productivity through automation and robotics and improving cost and service. To further capitalize on the North America opportunity, we are strategically reallocating resources towards sales, solutions and digital marketing, all to accelerate organic growth.

Second, regarding customer segments, technological innovation continues to redefine what's possible within the warehouse. As I visited our sites, I have seen firsthand use cases of AI in large retail operations, including volume forecasting and proactive replenishment. These highlight the opportunity to further improve our cost to serve. This is already a differentiator for GXO, but greater focus in this area will enable us to grow our market share, especially with midsized companies, a market opportunity in excess of $100 billion TAM.

Lastly, within our verticals, we are leaders in retail, luxury, technology and CPG to name a few. In recent years, we've made strategic inroads into high-growth sectors like aerospace and defense, data centers, industrial and life sciences. In aerospace and defense, as an example, we have deep competency in North America. And following our acquisition of Wincanton, we are one of the leading supply chain providers to the U.K. defense industry. We leverage our relationships and expertise to export this capability to other markets. In Life Sciences, our landmark $2.5 billion 10-year deal with the U.K.'s NHS supply chain went live flawlessly last month, and we are already exploring opportunities to expand that relationship as well as our overall growth in the life sciences space.

In short, we have all the ingredients for growth. You'll see us doubling down on what differentiates us and being disciplined about where we play and how to win.

Turning to operations. Execution is one of our greatest strengths. As I visited our sites, I have seen countless lighthouse examples of operational excellence. And as we accelerate growth, our operating model must keep pace with our growth ambitions. I see significant opportunities to benefit from sharing solutioning best practice globally, increased site level productivity through our technological leadership and a clear rational and global approach to customer relationships and pricing. That's why we've introduced the Chief Operating Officer role to take the very best of what we already do so well and scale it consistently across our global operations. We believe operational discipline will not only drive margin expansion, but also accelerate profitable growth by making us even more competitive.

In closing, we are embarking on a new era of growth. GXO is a fantastic company operating in a fast-growing, highly fragmented industry with a path towards higher organic growth, structurally higher margins and strong free cash flow. There is a fantastic opportunity to generate strong shareholder returns. And with this in mind, I will be focused on allocating capital to generate the highest possible returns with organic growth as the priority. Under my leadership, you can expect a sharp commercial focus, strong operational discipline and clear consistent communication about our progress. I look forward to sharing our strategic plan to deliver long-term value for our shareholders in future quarters and at an Investor Day in 2026.

With that, I will hand the call to Baris.

Thanks, Patrick. Building on the strong momentum year-to-date, GXO's third quarter performance reflects the power of our resilient business model. With record revenue, higher margins and robust free cash flow, we are delivering on our commitment to drive profitable growth. In the third quarter of 2025, GXO delivered record revenue of $3.4 billion, up 8% year-over-year, of which 4% was organic. Every region delivered organic revenue growth, highlighting the value of our contractual business model throughout a dynamic trade and macro environment. We now have about $800 million of incremental revenue secured for 2025, which, in combination with a retention rate in the mid-90s, puts us in excellent shape to achieve our full year organic growth target.

We delivered adjusted EBITDA of $251 million, up 13% from last year. Our margins expanded by 100 basis points sequentially and were up 30 basis points year-over-year. The margin increase was driven by improved site level productivity and the sizable automated start-ups we discussed last quarter, which matured faster than expected. We recorded net income of $60 million and adjusted net income of $91 million. Our diluted earnings per share was $0.51, and our adjusted diluted earnings per share was $0.79. Our free cash flow in the third quarter was $187 million, and we are on track to deliver our target adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow conversion for the full year. We remain disciplined in our capital expenditures and working capital management, which allows us to continue to invest in our business with high returns.

Our operating return on invested capital improved further and remains well above our target, driven by improved operating performance. Our leverage levels improved to 2.7x net debt to adjusted EBITDA, even after executing $200 million share buyback in the first half of the year. As Patrick mentioned, the integration of Wincanton is moving at pace, and we are on track to deliver the run rate cost synergy of $60 million by the end of 2026. We also expect to gain significant revenue synergies over the coming years. We remain laser-focused on disciplined capital allocation. We continue to prioritize investments that accelerate our organic growth and drive the greatest returns.

Our focus for the remainder of the year will be to deliver strong free cash flow, further delever our balance sheet and set the foundation for 2026. Given our excellent operating performance year-to-date, we are reaffirming our full year guidance. As a reminder, for 2025, we expect to deliver organic revenue growth of 3.5% to 6.5%. Adjusted EBITDA of $865 million to $885 million, adjusted diluted earnings per share of $2.43 to $2.63 and adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow conversion of 25% to 35%. With strong operating performance, a solid financial foundation and a robust sales pipeline, GXO's resilient and predictable business model continues to deliver exceptional value to both our customers and shareholders.

With that, I'll pass the mic to Kristine. Kristine, over to you.

Thanks, Baris. Good morning, everyone. The third quarter demonstrates the strength of our business. The priorities Patrick outlined, accelerating the organic growth agenda and enhancing our operating model will drive real value creation for customers and shareholders. On growth, we are making significant progress building our global relationships with blue-chip customers and expanding across geographies and into high-growth verticals. During the third quarter, we won $280 million in new contracts, up 24% year-on-year. This brings year-to-date wins to over $800 million with a clear line of sight to exceed $1 billion in 2025. We continue to grow with top brands like Boeing, BMW, L'Oreal, Sephora and Unilever. Last quarter, we highlighted the significant opportunities we see in fast-growing verticals such as life sciences, aerospace and defense and data center infrastructure. These areas remain a strategic focus for us, and I'm excited to share the meaningful progress we've made this quarter.

First, in Life Sciences, we reached a major milestone with the launch of our landmark operation with the U.K.'s NHS supply chain in early October. We're gaining good traction in the $34 billion life sciences vertical with another notable win expected to close in Q4 and a robust pipeline of strategic opportunities expected to close before year-end. Second, we're seeing increased activity in industrial, aerospace and defense across all of our regions. During the quarter, we further expanded our partnership with Boeing and with a significant percentage of Wincanton's pipeline concentrated in the industrial, aerospace and defense verticals, we are well positioned to capitalize on high-value opportunities and drive sustained growth in these sectors.

Third, we continue to build momentum in the fast-growing data center market, a critical part of the rapidly expanding AI and cloud infrastructure ecosystem. As a key logistics partner in this complex supply chain, we are well positioned to capture share in the $28 billion technology vertical. During the quarter, we secured 3 new contracts with a leading hyperscaler and expanded our strategic partnership with NetApp, demonstrating our ability to scale with high-growth customers.

Turning to our pipeline. Our $2.3 billion sales pipeline is robust and well diversified across our regions and verticals with accelerated activity in strategic sectors. Opportunities in life sciences and aerospace and defense each increased 30% quarter-over-quarter, while technology tripled. These trends reflect our ability to scale with high-growth customers across critical industries. Altogether, our recent wins translate to approximately $700 million in incremental revenue already for 2026. This gives us confidence in reaffirming our full year guidance and provides visibility into our long-term growth trajectory.

The second priority Patrick outlined was strengthening our operating model for growth. Core to driving operational excellence is our leadership in automation, technology and AI. As of the third quarter of 2025, we have over 15,000 automated units and cobots deployed at customer sites, rolled out 8 proprietary AI modules to numerous sites and secured 2 large-scale, highly automated contracts during the period, building on the more than 40% of revenues from automated operations. With this strong foundation, we are poised to scale these capabilities further, enhancing execution and serving as a powerful lever for accelerated growth.

As we continue expanding our customer base, deepening expertise across high-growth verticals and advancing our technology capabilities, we are well positioned to deliver even greater value. Through seamless digital solutions and sharper customer insights, we see significant opportunities to win new business and grow with existing customers. Looking ahead, we have a strong foundation to drive organic growth, margin expansion and compelling returns in 2026 and beyond.

And with that, I'll pass the mic back to the operator for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Stephanie Moore with Jefferies.

First, Patrick, welcome. Looking forward to working with you as well. I wanted to -- I appreciate the commentary in terms of the opportunity that you outlined in North America, in particular, the growth area. If you could maybe give us some perspective based on what you've observed over the last 90 days or so, where do you view the biggest opportunities within North America? And then maybe let us kind of highlight to us what you believe will be done differently from a go-to-market and execution strategy within North America specifically.

Yes. Thank you, Stephanie. As you point out, I think the North America market is a tremendous opportunity for us, a total market opportunity there over $250 billion. The introduction of Michael Jacobs to the business, I think, is a big catalyst. Michael is a seasoned supply chain veteran, and I think it will have a big impact on operational execution and organic growth in the region. I see big opportunity for us as we shift focus to add aerospace and defense to continue to build on the great foundation that we have in industrial, particularly with data centers, as Kristine talked about, and life sciences.

Our historic business in North America has been very oriented to omnichannel retail, CPG and those historic market verticals that we focus on globally. I think the addition of the market vertical focus in aerospace, defense, industrial and life sciences is a big catalyst for growth in the region. I think additionally, the addition of our Chief Operating Officer and Chief Commercial Officer will go a long way globally to sharpening commercial execution and driving organic growth as well as from an operating perspective, making sure that we're really well positioned to execute against increased organic growth going forward.

Great. And then just a follow-up. I wanted to ask on the 2025 guidance and really the implied 4Q organic growth guidance. If you could just maybe give us what the underlying assumptions are as it relates to this holiday season as well as just underlying demand trends compared to the third quarter.

I'll pass that to Baris.

Stephanie, in Q3, there was an acceleration on organic growth, which was driven by higher new business wins and slightly improved volumes. And on a sequential basis compared to Q2, the volumes were the main drivers. They are higher than last year, but lower than Q2 in Q3. As we switch to Q4, we expect more contributions from new business wins, including the ramp-up of the huge NHS contract we won. We expect the softer trends in volumes to continue, and we fully expect to be within the full year guidance range.

Our next question comes from the line of Scott Schneeberger with Oppenheimer & Co.

Welcome, Patrick. I'm going to follow up on Stephanie's first question. It sounds like you're looking to branch out in North America into a lot of areas and kind of maybe -- you mentioned non-consumer areas. It doesn't sound like you're moving away from consumer, but want to get a lot more diverse. How should we think about the business mix in a few years, if you're prepared to answer that at this point?

Sure. We are absolutely going to continue to focus on the core of our business that has been in the past with omnichannel retail, CPG and those other various market verticals. We do want to focus in on the ones that I talked about in terms of aerospace, defense, industrial, life sciences, and there are tailwinds in terms of growth opportunities there, particularly in North America that we want to capitalize on. I don't want to predict yet the mix a couple of years out, but that is something that we can speak to in our investor event in early 2026.

Looking forward to that event. I guess, Baris, for you, could you speak to what went well in the third quarter with regard to your EBITDA outperformed our expectation. Could you just speak a little bit more to the success of what drove profitability and maybe some thoughts on EBITDA specifically looking out?

Sure. As forecasted, we have improved our margin sequentially by 100 basis points in Q3. This reflects our usual seasonality and positive contributions from our productivity initiatives at both site level and central level. As you will recall, we have highly automated contracts mature more rapidly than budgeted as it was the case in Q2. And then looking into Q4, we have harder comparisons in the fourth quarter, and we expect a more muted year-over-year margin performance. This is mainly down to phasing of prior year effects. We have delivered ahead of our EBITDA plans 3x this year. As Patrick mentioned, we expect margins to rise in 2026 as Wincanton synergies become more material.

Our next question comes from the line of Chris Wetherbee with Wells Fargo.

Welcome, Patrick. I guess maybe I wanted to pick up on the margin commentary. So you noted in your prepared remarks some of the opportunity for margin expansion. That has been one thing that has been a little bit more difficult to achieve. The top line growth has been pretty solid, but we haven't necessarily seen consistent margin expansion. So I guess I get the Wincanton synergies as we think about 2026, but can you talk a little bit bigger picture about what you think you can do to drive margin expansion across the portfolio?

Absolutely. And thanks, Chris. I believe there is a structural margin opportunity for us here. Margins have been diluted, as you say, to the delays -- by the delays of the Wincanton integration. That will correct itself in 2026 as we focus on delivering the $60 million run rate synergies that are available there. I see a number of other levers that we can be leveraging to improve margin performance.

Number one, the verticals that we're looking to expand faster will bring in higher margins, and we're committed to making that happen. There is an opportunity to share best practices across the group globally from an operations perspective. I'm particularly focused in on driving greater labor productivity through technology and AI, and there's great work already started by the team on that front. Additionally, I see an opportunity for ongoing cost discipline and leveraging our existing SG&A as we are driving more organic growth into the business going forward.

Okay. That's helpful. I guess we'll get more details on that as well on the Investor Day next year. And then maybe a little bit more specific for the fourth quarter. When you think about organic revenue growth, you've given kind of a wide range for the full year still that gives some variability into the fourth quarter, but there should be an acceleration. I'm guessing you have NHS, which started up, so that's a fourth quarter contributor. I think you also mentioned another new opportunity that's starting in the fourth quarter. So can you give us maybe a little bit of sense of expectations around organic revenue growth for 4Q?

Yes, sure. I'm going to pass that to Baris for comment.

Yes. For Q4, we expect more contribution from new business, as I highlighted and softer trends to continue. And we fully expect to be within our full year guidance range. Shape of the peak and volumes will drive the magnitude of the growth in Q4.

Our next question comes from the line of Brian Ossenbeck with JPMorgan.

Welcome, Patrick. Just wanted to ask you, I guess, a bigger picture question first about deploying technology and how it's implemented across the suite of services. You mentioned a little bit on that earlier, but is there anything different that you're looking at implementing in terms of either sourcing the new technologies, how you're pricing it into some of these contracts and redeploying them and then ultimately, with a look at getting the returns from that. So maybe you can give a little bit more thoughts on how you see that with GXO initially here.

Sure. I've been really impressed by GXO's capabilities, our capabilities around robotics, automation and AI. And there really is deep expertise within the organization. I think as even more -- even better opportunities there focusing in on the technologies that really create the most value for customers and a strong return on investment is an opportunity for us in working with a few strategic partners to really advance and accelerate the rollout of those technologies. I also think that global alignment around the development of these technology solutions and how our people are partnering with our strategic partners to develop -- co-develop new technologies going into the future. That will be really important on the AI front, especially. I'm really passionate that we continue to build consistent expertise with our people.

We have great people focused on these solutions, and we want to extend the breadth and the number of people that we have focused on that. I think a great platform for this is GXO IQ. We went live in the third quarter. We're going to report back on a later date in terms of the progress on that. But that is our platform for rolling out especially AI solutions across our business. We've got 8 AI modules, which we've deployed at a number of sites already. And we have further work with GXO IQ making that happen. The other dimension on IQ, which is not lost and should not be lost is we see opportunity to improve overhead efficiency, where we can improve our own business through use of AI focused on corporate functions like HR, IT and finance, and those agendas are progressing as well.

Let me just quick follow-up on the NHS contract, it sounds like it's off to a good start, but it's a fairly big one, obviously. So what are some of the I guess, early impressions of that is going faster than you expected. And if this is going to have -- it sounds like it's going to have a decent mix impact, at least here in the fourth quarter.

That business has started. The start-up there, as I said, has been flawless and is going to lead, we believe, to additional opportunities. And I'll ask Kristine maybe to comment on what we see there.

Sure, Patrick. It's Kristine here. Yes, we're very excited. This was a critical milestone, really on track as we expected. We started that contract up in the 1st of October, certainly, and so the teams are doing a great job. Again, this is just the beginning here. As I noted in my prepared comments, we're seeing already a lot of momentum in the pipeline, and it's up 30% quarter-over-quarter. And this is just a huge addressable market for us globally. So over $34 billion opportunity that we're really just getting started at. So we're very excited. More to come here.

Our next question comes from the line of Ravi Shanker with Morgan Stanley.

Patrick, in your initial kind of introduction, meet and greet conversations with customers. I bet you also got a little bit of a sense of what they're thinking about the current environment. So hopefully, in a world of some level of tariff normalization post de minimis, et cetera. What are they telling you about how they're going into 2026 and what they're thinking here and how GXO can play a part?

Yes, I would say, well, for us, while there's still uncertainty around current tariffs and trade discussions, there hasn't been a material impact on our business. I think our customers as you point out, are working to solve the complexities and challenges that come with that, and we're a big part of helping them do that. I would emphasize that 2/3 of our business is outside North America. We also have no direct exposure to China. We operate long-term contracts with our customers, which protects us on volume volatility.

I mean the big thing is the macroeconomic is driving supply chain change that is happening. And we win when there is change because we are so well positioned to help our customers make those changes. As I emphasized on the focus on aerospace defense, the industrial sector, and life sciences. All of those market verticals are seeing additional activity, manufacturing coming back to the U.S. in many cases in those verticals or additional volume and new infrastructure being implemented in the U.S., and that is an opportunity that we're standing in front of with our strategic focus there. Kristine, anything to add to that?

Patrick, I think you summed it up nicely. I think we also have an opportunity with that complexity with the long value-added services that we can offer our customers that would be everything from restickering, rebagging and tagging and also with free trade zones. So that definitely obviously is an inbound that our customers are looking for to help solve those complex operations. And so that's another opportunity of growth -- accelerated growth for GXO.

That's really helpful. And as a follow-up, maybe for you, Kristine. The AI hyperscaler opportunity sounds really interesting. Can you expand on that a little bit? How different is this business versus your kind of, I'd say, if I would use the word regular industrial or consumer-based customer in terms of margin, complexity, automation and if we can kind of maybe size the TAM there?

Thanks, Ravi. It's Kristine here. So you hit on all of it. It is obviously a high-value strategic vertical for us, not only in the U.S. but globally. The TAM is $28 billion today. But as you know, it is booming and growing very rapidly. This is a complicated and complex supply chain. We're not necessarily supporting the construction of these data centers, but really what we're providing is the, as I said, complicated, lifetime logistical services to support those data centers and really grow and scale with our customers. And you need a partner like GXO with our global reach in order to scale. This is, again, a very critical part of our pipeline. And again, quarter-over-quarter, just to contextualize it, we saw the pipeline in this area grow -- it tripled quarter-over-quarter, and we just see the opportunity to continue to grow globally.

Our next question comes from the line of Jason Seidl with TD Cowen.

Patrick, I wanted to go back to your comments about expanding the long-term margins. You spoke about pushing into some higher-margin verticals. I was wondering if you could talk about the difference in terms of these new verticals and your legacy business in terms of the margins? And then also, can you maybe expand on what are the things GXO needs to do to penetrate these verticals going forward? And then I have a follow-up on 4Q.

Sure. I could say in the first 100 days here, I've been in a number of operations and was very, very excited about what I saw in terms of our capabilities and competencies, especially in aerospace, defense and industrial, where I feel like we're just getting started, but we have lighthouse examples of operations that we've already implemented and can build on. The complexity of those operations and the value-added services associated with the services out of those operations really lends itself to being profitable market verticals for us. We, certainly see from a total business perspective, the margin expansion opportunity from our participation in those verticals going forward.

And it really is about continuing the great execution that we have demonstrated already there, and that is why the focus for the Chief Operating Officer is so important to make sure that we're sizing our operations and our capacities there to meet the organic growth that we're going to generate in those market verticals going forward so that we can ensure we capture the margin expansion opportunities associated with that growth.

And in terms of trying to size the difference in the margins between those verticals in the legacy business?

Yes. I would say just from a portfolio perspective, marginally higher than what we've seen in our current business.

Fair enough. I wanted to jump back to the 4Q outlook. I guess I was a little surprised you guys didn't raise the bottom of the guide, given what you did in 3Q, which you exceeded our estimates pretty easily. You called out a little bit of softness, I think, as we head into 4Q here. I was wondering if your views on peak season has really changed any? Or is this just you being a little cautious given what you're seeing?

Yes, I'll start and then maybe Baris can comment. We're experiencing a normal peak season going right to that. It's not strong but not weak and right now in line with our full year expectations of flat customer volumes. We've done a lot of work early in this year to position customer inventory in the right place for peak. A lot of that activity happened earlier than in years past. Customer inventories right now are at a level where our customers' peak season expectations can be fulfilled. We need to see the demand come through for that. In line with that, we've got the labor in place in order to deliver against that. And as you point out, the impact of the ramp-up of the NHS contract and the pace of that will have an impact as well.

From a numbers perspective, for Q4, as I highlighted, NHS is coming online. That's going to improve our new business contributions in Q4. We do expect softer trends in volumes to continue, but we are confident on achieving our full year EBITDA guidance of $865 million to $885 million despite FX weakening marginally in the recent weeks and the volume environment being dynamic as we head into peak.

Our next question comes from the line of Ari Rosa with Citi.

And Patrick, let me echo others in congratulating you on the new role. So I'm curious, Patrick, you've held a number of roles across the supply chain. As you said, you have extensive experience in this area. I was hoping you could speak to what attracted you to GXO? How do you think about GXO's place in the market? What does GXO do differently or better than its competitors or anyone else in the industry?

Sure. I've shared with many I watched GXO for a long time with a lot of admiration, maybe even a little bit of envy, especially since the spin-off in 2021. GXO has continued to be a leader in the technology space, particularly around automation, robotics and AI. The people and the culture at GXO is really what differentiates the organization. This is a performance-oriented culture. And stepping in has been really excited just to be around the people at GXO and the attitude that people bring to work every day around creating amazing customer experiences, delivering great customer service and a passion for growth and performance.

I would say, from an operational execution perspective, I've seen so many great examples, and I talked about a few in aerospace and defense. I would add the capabilities that we have in GXO Direct in our multi-customer network presents a great opportunity for us to service midsize customers, who I think can really benefit from our value proposition, the investments that we're making in technology, automation, AI and especially our people in a way that midsized companies can't invest at that level for themselves. I think we've got a great value proposition for that marketplace.

The geographic breadth that we bring as a business, 27 countries that we're operating in today allows us to truly be a global partner for customers. We have 50% of our customers who are doing business with us in 2 regions and a handful that are in all 3. So for me, the excitement is that the foundation is there. We've got great operational execution. We have the very best people and for me, the organic growth opportunity here is something that has really excited me coming in, and that's been a big part of my career in the past and something that I really thrive on and looking forward to driving forward.

That's great. We're definitely excited to see you execute on that. If I could just for my follow-up, I'm curious, you've mentioned a desire to hire a COO and that's obviously a big focus area. What is it that you are hoping a COO brings to the organization? If you could talk a bit about the extent to which best practices have or have not been kind of shared between regions or between customers and what the kind of margin opportunity that could be created from that might look like?

Sure. We have a way of operating today. That is the GXO way. We want to continue to increase the level of maturity -- operational maturity that we have in executing the GXO way. That includes how we incorporate technology automation and AI into our operations and how we create the best operational environment for our people and how the GXO way delivers the best service for customers. The Chief Operating Officer is going to focus on how we're driving forward continued increased productivity in operations, continued improvements on quality, making sure that we're seamlessly sharing best practices around the world.

And then especially making sure that we're positioning our operational capacity in a way that we can meet the demands of the organic growth that we are going to deliver and doing that in a consistent way around the world. And so this is very much about making sure from an operational perspective, we are well positioned as we're embarking on our new era of growth going forward.

Do you have a sense on what the margin uplift could look like from that? I mean are we talking like 100 bps? Are we talking more or less? Or is it too early to say?

As I'm in early, I think that will be something I'll be well positioned to talk to when we get to the Investor Day in 2026.

Our next question comes from the line of Richa Harnain with Deutsche Bank.

Patrick, first off, congrats to you and looking forward to working with you. You just went through some of GXO's biggest competitive advantages, be it the tech, the people, the global reach and those allowing you to win strong business. I mean we've heard on these calls consistently the strong TAM across a number of verticals and that being multiples above GXO's annual top line. So obviously, a lot of exciting room for growth. But can you also talk to if there's a key benefit to being a stand-alone entity? And on the flip side, what are some of the benefits your competitors naturally enjoy that you might have to overcome? Is it overhead scalability? Or do you do not necessarily see that?

We are the largest pure-play contract logistics provider in the world. As you point out, we have the scale to successfully win in the marketplace. Our biggest competitor isn't the competitive set. It is our customers' decision to in-source or outsource. And we are positioned to make that decision easy for our customers and the things that we bring forward, like I talked about on technology automation, AI and especially our people and the focused solutions that we have to meet the needs of companies that are competing in the target market verticals that we are pursuing.

It is really about making sure that we continue to execute really well, and we're putting more effort as I talked about, into building out our pipeline through things like digital marketing and focus on our sales teams and making sure that we're positioning from an operations perspective, the capacity to deliver our organic growth aspirations. So I feel really great about the position that we're in to win going forward.

That's great. And then just a quick one. You guys reiterated your Wincanton synergies today. Baris, I think you mentioned significant revenue synergies potentially down the line as well. Patrick, you talked about securing your first win in collaboration with Wincanton. So any early thoughts on potential revenue synergies if they could be similar to the cost synergies or how to think about those?

Wincanton has been trading solidly so far as a good contributor on a year-over-year on the especially EBITDA results. We began the integration in the third quarter. We have realigned the organization structure and beginning to combine the support functions. Procurement benefits will come more obviously in 2026 and onwards. We expect integration benefits to be about GBP 10 million in this year and $60 million by the end of 2026 is the full run rate. These are mainly cost, and we do expect sizable revenue synergies.

You have -- you can see clearly how we were able to grow other enterprises, we acquired. You've got a lot of NHS business through the acquisitions. We're growing our health care business quite robustly. We have grown different geographies through acquisitions as well. It's too early to call the numbers out. I think we would better wait for the Investor Day in 2026, where we can highlight the details and go over the numbers with you.

Our next question comes from the line of Bruce Chan with Stifel.

Nice to have you on the call here, Patrick. Just another follow-up on Wincanton, especially now that you've had a quarter or so of it fully under your belt. Maybe first, just to clarify, I'm assuming that any legacy pipeline in Wincanton has been kind of included in the numbers that you're quoting today? And then, Patrick, you talked about sharing of best practices a couple of times. Just specific to Wincan, can you remind us what the margin differential looks like between those 2 businesses? And maybe also comment on the level of automation in that acquired portfolio and what opportunities you see going forward to maybe deploy some of your capabilities into those legacy contracts?

It's Kristine. I just want to contextualize a little bit about the pipeline. As we stated, our pipeline as a consolidated company is at $2.3 billion. Very robust even in terms of the wins that we had in the quarter of $280 million. But looking at Wincanton, a majority of what they're bringing in terms of the pipeline, a significant portion of their pipeline is coming over via aerospace and defense. So we're very excited about those opportunities. And again, as Baris just touched on, we're just at the starting gate. If we look at the broader global aerospace and defense and industrial total addressable market, it's hundreds of billions of dollars of opportunity. And for us, that -- again, that aerospace and defense pipeline has already started to move up, and we're seeing good momentum. So quarter-over-quarter, it was up 30%.

From a margin perspective, as I highlighted before, Wincanton margins are lower than GXO as a less scale, and they are extremely capital light. Their return on invested capital has been very high. They're almost working capital neutral. As we get more and more synergies, cost synergy benefits, we do expect a margin uplift in 2026 and onwards from Wincanton and the revenue contributions will follow that.

Our next question comes from the line of Bascome Majors with Susquehanna International Group.

Patrick, we've heard organic growth come up in the vast majority of your answers today, and that clearly seems to be something you intend to lead within your tenure here. But if you take a step back to next 2, 3 years, high level, like -- can you rank order the key drivers of what you think will drive bottom line growth for GXO between organic optimization and efficiency and maybe even kind of absorption? And lastly, if M&A is part of your plan?

Sure. Without specifics, which we'll talk to in Investor Day 2026. In terms of advancing the bottom line, as you point out, that is a blend of a focus on organic top line growth being cost disciplined around SG&A. We absolutely see productivity improvement opportunities in our current operations. On top of that, as we've talked about, the Wincanton contributions that come as we continue to integrate that business going forward.

From an M&A perspective, and you highlighted it, organic growth is primary area of focus. M&A is not in our short-term agenda. We will be doing M&A in the future. We're going to be very disciplined about M&A. We've done a fantastic job as GXO over the last 4 years in assembling the combination of companies through M&A that have given us the platform that we deserve organic growth now and we can deliver against that, and we want to capitalize on the M&A that has been done. Our M&A strategy will be focused on, especially North America and the key verticals that we want to participate in. But again, not in our short-term agenda as we look forward. We really want to emphasize the organic growth engine and driving for performance there.

Just as we think about the Investor Day, do you have a sense of what the right timing is? Or maybe a better way to ask that is what sort of operational learnings and key personnel you need in place before you can have that discussion with the investment community? .

Yes. I think you just pointed it out there. The key is getting the executive leadership team assembled and filling the recruiting efforts that are currently underway for our CFO, COOs and the Chief Commercial Officer, I expect those to be completed late this year, by the end of this year or January of next year latest. And then from there, we'll identify the best timing for Investor Day in 2026.

Our next question comes from the line of Patrick Creuset with Goldman Sachs.

Patrick, you set your focus on accelerating organic growth in the U.S. and raising margins. We start with the U.S. growth initiatives. What do you think is achievable in terms of scaling the U.S. business, perhaps relative to the business you have in Europe? I mean looking at your U.S. business, about half the size of your U.K. business right now looking at relative market size, is there any reason it couldn't be substantially bigger than the U.K. business in the medium term?

And then on margins, looking at some of your peers in Europe, that's been operating, albeit with different vertical mix that at least a couple of percentage points higher EBIT margins through the cycle. So would you see that as a useful benchmark for us to start thinking about your margin potential? And if not, why not?

Sure. In terms of the North American market, again, I see substantial opportunity here. I don't want to predict in the future what percentage North America will make of the total portfolio. And it's really important to point out, we're going to be growing all regions that we participate in. So the denominator will change there as we move forward. But I will emphasize the $250 billion market in North America. We are really well positioned to capitalize on that opportunity through organic growth, and we're positioning the resources and teams in place to make that happen.

From a margin perspective, as it relates to our peers and so forth, we have line of sight to being high performing, and we'll share more in the Investor Day 2026 in terms of our specific aspirations there and what we're targeting. So more to come on that.

Ladies and gentlemen, that is all the time we have for questions today. I'd like to hand the call back to CEO, Patrick Kelleher for any closing remarks.

Great. Thank you, operator. Before we close, I just want to leave you with a few takeaways from me. First, we delivered a solid quarter with a record quarterly revenue delivered. Our sales pipeline is strong. It's a diversified and scaling in high-growth sectors. Wincanton integration is on track and thanks to solid revenue visibility and our resilient model we're reaffirming our full year guidance.

Second, in my first 30 days, I've seen firsthand the depth of talent and potential across GXO, and I've talked a lot about that today. This company is so well positioned to grow going forward. with that strong foundation and now the opportunity to achieve our full potential, we are entering a new era of growth. This is one where we realized GXO's promise to be even more, even better. That means even more growth driven by commercial focus and customer intensity, even better execution powered by the innovation and operational excellence that has defined us.

I really appreciate your questions today. I'm looking forward to meeting many of you in person in the weeks ahead. I'm confident in the path, and I look forward to sharing our continued progress as the quarters come. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's teleconference. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Have a wonderful day.