DHL Says AI Will Help It Beat "Digital-First Competitors"

Its Own Numbers Show Why It Needs To

On page 19 of DHL's second-quarter investor presentation, under the heading "Divisional Growth Focus" for Global Forwarding, there's one line:

"Accelerate Digital Sales — Digitalization/AI are key to accelerate growth, optimize yield, and outperform digital-first competitors."

The world's third-largest freight forwarder just told investors three things: its plan for forwarding is digital, the problem it's trying to fix is yield, and the competition it's watching is digital-first.

The rest of the filing shows why.

Last quarter, DHL moved 60,000 more TEU than a year earlier and made less gross profit doing it.

The yield problem, in DHL's own numbers

DHL grew air freight volume 7.0% and ocean freight volume 7.5% last quarter. Nearly identical growth. Here's what each earned:

Same company. Same quarter. Same volume growth. Air gross profit up more than a third, ocean gross profit down.

And look at why air was up. DHL's own words on that page: "volatile, elevated rates and tight capacity." That's the market handing them a good quarter in air, not DHL getting better at anything.

Meanwhile ocean — where DHL had no rate windfall — went backwards on yield. Every additional container earned 9% less than it did a year ago.

That's the yield problem. DHL named it on the same page it named the fix.

Every forwarder has lived this quarter. You win the lane, the volume shows up, and the year somehow gets harder. This is what it looks like on a public company's books.

Now unblend it

The yield problem is one layer. Underneath it is something more useful, and DHL used to hand it to you.

Until this year, every DHL reporting period carried one sentence:

"EBIT in the division thus corresponds to 17.5% of gross profit and 23.8% for the Global Forwarding business unit."

Two ratios. Same division, same six months. 17.5% for the whole thing, 23.8% for the forwarding business on its own.

The difference is European road freight. The division used to be called Global Forwarding, Freight — and "Freight" was the European road business, reported as its own unit. In the first half of 2025 that unit turned €577 million of gross profit into an operating result of roughly negative €7 million. You can derive it from DHL's own figures: 23.8% of the forwarding unit's €1,702 million gross profit is about €405 million of EBIT, against €398 million for the division as a whole. Whatever road freight contributed, it was slightly less than nothing.

Now stack the layers:

630 basis points appear the moment road freight comes out. Go one level deeper and air and ocean sit nearly forty points apart on gross profit growth.

Every time you unblend, the number moves — and it keeps moving. A blended ratio isn't a summary of your business. It's an average of books that may have nothing to do with each other, and it will describe none of them accurately. Keep splitting until the numbers stop surprising you.

Give DHL credit here: it published both figures side by side for years, and said plainly that the division's weaker earnings were down to the road freight unit. Nothing was buried.

Which is what makes this year worth noticing.

The un-blend is gone

DHL changed its 2026 reporting from business units to products — air, ocean, road, and an "Other" line. The report says the segment "previously known as Global Forwarding, Freight has been renamed Global Forwarding," and reporting "now distinguishes by product rather than by business unit."

The sentence described a business unit that no longer exists as a reporting entity, so it went with it. No cover-up.

The effect is real all the same. The word "conversion" now appears nowhere in DHL's Q1 statement, its Q2 presentation, or its 44-page half-year report. Divisional EBIT was always blended — road freight has always been inside it — but DHL used to publish the figure that let you see past the blend. Now it doesn't, and because EBIT isn't broken out by product, nobody outside the company can reconstruct it.

And that is the position most forwarders have always been in. DHL had the un-blend and chose to publish it. If you run ocean, air and drayage through a single P&L, you have never had it at all — one number, every mode inside it, no way to tell which book is carrying which. Your ocean desk may be subsidised by your air desk, and your accounts will never say so.

What DHL's real conversion ratio did

You can still compute the division-level ratio. It takes one subtraction.

DHL reports first-half gross profit of €2,357 million and first-quarter gross profit of €1,104 million. Subtract: Q2 2026 was €1,253 million. Same for last year — first-half 2025 of €2,279 million less €1,147 million in Q1 — gives €1,132 million. Check both against DHL's own statement that second-quarter gross profit grew 10.7%: €1,253m ÷ €1,132m = 10.7%. It ties out.

At a glance: revenue margin flat, conversion ratio up nearly two points. Looks like the better metric caught something.

It didn't. Both years carry a one-off, pulling opposite ways. DHL's July preliminary release spells it out — this year's €240 million "includ[es] an estimated positive effect of low-to-mid double-digit million from successfully managing market disruptions," and last year's €196 million included "EUR -19 million Cost of Change."

Put both years on the same footing. Add the €19 million charge back to 2025 and last year's ratio was 19.0%, not 17.3%. Take €30 million out of this year and you get 16.8%.

Cleaned up, DHL's conversion ratio went down.

Which fits everything above. Air rates spiked. Ocean yield fell. The road book bled. Strip out one quarter of good trading in a volatile market and the underlying forwarding business didn't get more efficient — it got less.

That's the honest read, and it's why DHL is talking about AI and yield rather than taking a victory lap.

Three numbers to run this week

Gross profit per shipment, by mode. Total gross profit for a lane or mode, divided by shipments moved. Monthly. This is DHL's yield problem in your own book.

The yield check. Take last year's gross profit per container on a lane, subtract this year's, and multiply by this year's volume. That's what growth cost you. DHL's ocean version: a €32 drop per TEU across 856,000 TEU. Do it on your top three lanes.

Conversion ratio, split by book. Operating profit divided by gross profit — where gross profit is revenue minus what you paid the carrier. Never blended. DHL's own retired disclosure is the argument: 23.8% for forwarding, 17.5% once road freight was mixed in.

Then do what we just did to DHL. Check the quarter against the half-year. Read the footnotes on both years. Back out anything that only happened once.

The part DHL can't do quickly

DHL needs a group-wide AI programme and a reporting overhaul to see and fix what its own filing describes. That's the position of a company with a quarter of a million people and a segment structure it just rewrote.

A forwarder running one connected system can pull gross profit per TEU by lane this month and reprice next week.

Same problem. Completely different reaction time. DHL just told its investors which kind of competitor it's watching.

Know your number

In thirty minutes, we can help you compute yours. Bring your shipment counts by mode and your P&L. We'll work out your conversion ratio and your gross profit per shipment by lane, show you where you sit against the published benchmarks, and map where a connected platform changes them.