Strategic acquisition broadens Freightos’ digital freight-booking vision by pairing Freightos’ spot offering with Shipsta’s best-of-breed tender management platform. Deal accelerates revenue growth and reaches breakeven with cash on hand.
Freightos has announced the acquisition of Shipsta, a leading freight-tender procurement platform used by dozens of Global 1000 enterprises to procure freight at scale from leading freight forwarders and carriers. This transaction expands Freightos’ existing industry-leading spot pricing, quoting, and booking capabilities by adding tender procurement, thereby advancing Freightos’ vision of comprehensive freight digitization and meaningfully increasing its total addressable market, both in ocean and contract procurement. This acquisition accelerates Freightos’ growth, supports its financial goals of achieving positive Adjusted EBITDA by the end of 2026 with available funds, while strengthening its market position as a technology leader in the global freight industry.
Supply chain efficiency and agility have become critical in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing Red Sea crisis. The combined Freightos-Shipsta offering will provide the most comprehensive modern platform for selling and procuring freight services, connecting carriers, freight forwarders, and importers/exporters on one unified digital booking platform.
Shipsta, headquartered in Luxembourg, supports the freight procurement of global companies by streamlining the tender management and procurement processes across air, ocean, road, and rail, enabling companies to easily solicit tenders from their freight forwarders and carriers. Shipsta technology serves dozens of multinational organizations across industries like retail, industrial, pharma, automotive and others, and counts market-leading customers in all of them, including Puma, Thyssenkrupp and Rockwool.
“The acquisition of Shipsta is a strategic milestone for Freightos, enabling us to advance our vision of digitizing the freight industry end-to-end,” said Zvi Schreiber, CEO of Freightos. “Shipsta’s platform, outstanding customer roster, and experienced team will add significant value to our offering by introducing tender management and contract procurement – a segment representing an estimated 50-70% of the total air and ocean freight market. The acquisition addresses the needs of our importers, exporters, forwarders and carriers that seek comprehensive solutions beyond spot freight bookings and sales and we think customers will love the joint offering. We’re also excited to welcome Shipsta’s outstanding talent into the Freightos team.”
This acquisition joins Shipsta’s product capabilities, customer base and team with the Freightos ecosystem, enhancing the overall Freightos offering and driving revenue growth with immediate cross-sell opportunities.
Shipsta’s team, led by Christian Wilhelm and Stefan Maratzki, will continue to lead Shipsta’s product development, innovation, customer success, and go-to-market strategy. As part of the acquisition, Shipsta’s current team will join Freightos, and parts of Shipsta’s roadmap will be accelerated to further enhance tender management, provide improved operational integrations and expand on market intelligence capabilities.
“Joining forces with Freightos marks a thrilling new chapter for Shipsta,” said Shipsta MD and founder Christian Wilhelm. “Shipsta and Freightos share a mission to bring global freight online. Now, our customers will continue to benefit from the outstanding Shipsta product and team, with service and efficiency further enhanced, while driving new efficiencies to the thousands of forwarders that leverage Freightos and WebCargo by Freightos. Together, we expect to accelerate market penetration, drive innovation, and set new industry standards in freight.”
The acquisition will be financed through a combination of cash and equity. The consideration includes a cash payment of approximately €4.5m from existing reserves and the issuance of approximately 640 thousand Freightos shares to a key Shipsta shareholder, subject to adjustment for working capital, and customary holdbacks. This investment reinforces the Company’s confidence in having adequate cash on hand to achieve positive cash flow. Shipsta is expected to contribute approximately $800 thousand to Freightos’ revenue during the last four months of 2024, with a moderate negative impact on Adjusted EBITDA. Revenue contribution in 2025 is expected to be between $4-5 million.
“We are pleased to meaningfully enhance our offering on favorable deal terms”, said Ran Shalev, Freightos CFO. “This acquisition provides us with immediate cross-selling opportunities for incremental growth while further aiding our path to positive Adjusted EBITDA by the end of 2026 without requiring additional capital. This acquisition strengthens our market position and positions us well for future growth and success.”
