XPO Logistics Plans to Slow Acquisitions in Near-Term Company will focus on combining back-office operations from recent acquisitions
By LAURA STEVENS
Oct. 8, 2015 10:49 a.m. ET
XPO Logistics Inc. plans to slow acquisitions in the near-term as it integrates trucking company Con-way Inc.
Over the past four years, XPO Chief Executive Bradley Jacob said he has built a logistics giant primarily through acquisitions totaling $15 billion in revenue, about 80,000 employees and more than 50,000 customers in industries ranging from trucking to contract logistics. After the $3 billion transaction to buy Con-way goes through, the company will focus on combining back-office operations from its recent acquisitions, as well as reducing costs and improving profitability.
“Now we have to redesign the whole infrastructure,” Mr. Jacobs said at the JOC Inland Distribution Conference in Memphis. “By being leaner, by being more well-designed, we will function more effectively, and we’ll be able to save costs—a lot of costs, in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”
As a result, “the pace of acquisitions will slow over the next year. They will not slow over the next five years,” Mr. Jacobs added.
Additionally, Mr. Jacobs said that while further acquisitions will continue to be on the table, the company may have finished expanding into new areas of the logistics and transportation space.
“We don’t have a lot more verticals to go into, in fact, I don’t know that we have any more to get into,” Mr. Jacobs said.
Mr. Jacobs added that XPO has ruled out going into the small parcel business after looking at buying several of the U.S. regional delivery companies to form a larger network a year or two ago.
“We’re several decades too late for that. It’s not going to happen,” he said. “We would never be able to compete with UPS and FedEx.”
Write to Laura Stevens at laura.stevens@wsj.com
https://www.wsj.com/articles/xpo-logistics-plans-to-slow-acquisitions-in-near-term-1444315790