Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the nine months 2022 results conference call and live webcast. I am Sandra, the Chorus Call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Mr. Stefan Paul, CEO of Kuehne+Nagel. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, Sandra. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our nine months 2022 analyst call. I'm here together with my CFO colleague, Markus Blanka-Graff, and we are happy to present our results. Before we begin, we would like to highlight three topics. First, we have achieved record high 9 months results, as communicated this morning. Let me take the opportunity to thank all business unit and functional colleagues for their great commitment during this year. Second, we have the flexibility and resilience at Kuehne+Nagel to adjust quickly while maintaining the strength of our core business, which is very important in these volatile times. Third, our focus remains on yield management and customer experience. We at Kuehne+Nagel, we are committed to create the best customer experience in our industry. Let's look into the figures. Page number three of the analyst presentation.
The results for the first nine months of the year point to a strong organic top-line growth, with more of that growth converted to EBIT than in the previous year. This extends to the most recent quarter, when EBIT grew by 17% versus the prior year, and to a total of CHF 924 million. The strength of these figures points to our resilience and ability to continue to provide an exceptional customer experience. I was just alluding to it in volatile markets. We remain in a strong position to manage through future market dynamics, leveraging our long-standing experience, technological capabilities. Yield management is and will continue to be a top priority. One of my key learnings from leading the Road Logistics business unit the last 10 years and what I'm going to leverage for the group moving forward.
Page number five, strong earnings growth in all business units. You see on the left-hand side, Group, Sea, Air Logistics, Road, and Contract Logistics. As stated, we have achieved strong results across all business units, which is a reflection of our focus on yield management. Top-line growth was boosted by increased yields and solid market share development. We come to that on the next slide in more details. In Sea Logistics, the average yield was 2.7 times that of the 2019 average, and still 2.4 in Q3 alone. For Air Logistics, 1.7 for the nine months and 1.6 in Q3.
A record nine months EBIT result of more than CHF 3.1 billion marks a 71% increase year-on-year and reflects a conversion ratio of 36% for the first nine months versus 27% in the prior year. An increase of almost 10 percentage points on the conversion rate. Let's go into the business updates. As usual, we start with the volume development. The upper graph is Sea, the lower, as always, the Air development. Sea Freight volume in Q3 is down by 4.9% at Kuehne+Nagel versus our market estimate of 6%-7%. Air Freight volumes in Q3 are down by 7% versus our estimate 8%-10% decline. Overall, in both business units in Sea and Air, we were able to expand our market share during the Q3 accordingly.
Let's go into Sea Logistics, page eight, where we see the details. Yield, cost per TEU, and EBIT. What you see is our flexible business model continued to deliver reliably for Sea Logistics customers. As congestions eased, we talked about it quite frequently during the last couple of weeks, but volatility persisted. Unit gross profits or yields remained at a high level in Q3, while the corresponding EBIT per TEU was 4x the average for 2019. This reflects a robust conversion rate of 58% in Sea Freight in Q3. Looking into the future, we are focusing on yield management, market share optimization, which you have seen already in Q3, and cost reduction measures, which have kicked off already in the last couple of weeks. If we move to Air Logistics, page 10 on the details. Yield GP per 100 kilo expenses and EBIT.
Here the strengths of flexibility in our business model are equal versus Air Logistics. A key distinction is the resilience of yields over the period with relatively modest change quarter to quarter. This speaks to a closer matching of capacity to the demand environment. Unit EBIT in Q3 remains at 2.8 times that of 2019, and reflects a conversion rate of 46% in Q3. Here as well, looking into the future, we are pretty much focusing on market share expansions and cost optimization. Now to Road Logistics. Detail page 12. Road Logistics delivered a record result of over the first nine months of the year. In Q3 alone, CHF 40 million of EBIT reflected a conversion rate of 12.3%. This is a credit to effective yield management and high-end utilization of networks across all regions.
The US business showed particularly strong momentum, as did demand for digital solutions. For example, strong traction of the eTrucknow product in Asia, which we have launched approximately three years ago. The focus is on further scaling and leveraging of the US platform, our brokerage model on domestic for our existing air and sea customers, global expansion in customs standalone, and maintaining a high-end network density in Europe, particularly for the groupage business. Last but not least, Contract Logistics. Detail on page number 14. As you can see from the graph, Contract Logistics delivered a very solid growth over the period and meaningful improvement in profitability. The Q3 result of CHF 58 million revealed a best ever conversion rate of 7.1%.
These results are a product of continuous systematic efforts to improve margins through portfolio optimization, combined with nearly full utilization of warehouse capacity, which is currently at around 99%. Our focus remains on high value creation for selected verticals. Remember, we were always talking in the past about healthcare and e-commerce. This remains. A seamless implementation for all new customers and customer contracts. With this, I would like to hand over to Markus for more details on the financials.
Thank you, Stefan, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. First of all, thank you for interest in Kuehne+Nagel and taking the time today. As Stefan has outlined, these business unit results clearly demonstrate our capabilities and the long-standing resilience to respond to changes in market dynamics. In addition, before I get into the details of the income statement, I would like to emphasize one thing. There's a very strong earnings result that indeed has translated again into a healthy free cash conversion and generation. Let's start with the income statement as usual, page number 16. Very clearly, Q3 continues to outperform last year's numbers on nearly every P&L line. More gross profit, higher earnings before tax, outstanding incremental conversion rate.
The group conversion rate, to highlight one of the numbers, was at 34% in the Q3 and 36% on a year-to-date basis. We have been able to maintain this conversion rate now at a very high level for more than three quarters. A brief look into greater details on the incremental development of GP, one of the KPIs we monitor very closely. We can see a steady growth in GP in absolute terms against even the tougher comps in Q3 2021. When we look at this incremental gross profit development, you should notice the incremental gross profit to incremental EBIT ratio. This conversion ratio is in excess of 75%, so every incremental gross profit value translates to 75% into incremental EBIT. Something that we are aiming for also in the quarters to come.
On the very right side of the schedule, you will identify some headwinds coming from currencies with negative impact of around 3.8% on the gross profit level. Represents approximately CHF 264 million, so quite a significant number. The same calculation, negative Forex impact on earnings before tax with around 3.1% equals CHF 56 million. Operational efficiency, and when we talk about income statement, that immediately comes to our mind. On the side of operational efficiency and digitalization efforts, I just want to remind you of our eTouch project. I can report another improvement of the conversion rate in sea and air freight. eTouch itself is all about internal operational gains in efficiency with automation clearly as one of the main pillars.
Now, we will talk about that probably during the Q&A session, but as operations in sea and air freight start, or we expect them to start becoming more plannable and foreseeable, eTouch will help optimize execution and therewith contribute more significant to the conversion rate. Every improvement we do on the eTouch side is permanent because then we have eliminated or automated or optimized a process or a task. Let's move to the balance sheet, page 17 in the presentation. Balance sheet is extremely solid. As usual, the largest balance sheet items are trade receivables, standing currently at around CHF 6.4 billion, and trade payables standing at around CHF 2.9 billion. The balance sheet continues to provide the stable platform for all of our businesses, and it is the backbone for our resilience.
It's an important building block for our confidence also in turbulent economic conditions. Another important factor, cash and free cash flow generation, page number 18. As you certainly have discovered in the presentation, we have strongly increased our cash and cash equivalent positions to around CHF 2.9 billion at the end of September. Additionally, we see a positive trend on the interest side so that we do expect to generate some positive interest gains in the future. The business continues to deliver a healthy cash flow. Free cash flow at around CHF 2.6 billion is on the same trajectory in line with the previous years. Some more details on the working capital development. Let's move on to page number 19, working capital.
Changes in working capital, one of the topics that has been on the agenda for the last couple of quarters, and just to highlight that, have been driven by the increase of trade receivables and contract assets together currently at around CHF 7.3 billion. In the future, we anticipate stable net working capital that we currently utilize for running the business. Illustrating what I just said on the working capital, we have around 1.9 billion level of working capital unchanged over the last quarters to run the group. Comparing the DSO and DPO, so days of sales and days of purchase outstanding, you see very consistent levels between 54, 55 days on the DSOs, around 56 on the DPOs. I do expect quite similar level also in the next quarter. Moving on to the return on capital employed development, page number 20.
Very nice graph, clearly, and we continue to focus on the trend in our return on capital employed, knowing that the current levels are a top range. In Q3, we managed another small increase and expect to stay at this level in the next quarter. With this comment, I would like to hand back to Stefan for the slide of the current perspectives.
Thank you very much, Markus. Current perspective, I believe, this is a slide where you are pretty much interested in what we are going to share in the next couple of minutes. Let's look into the market first and then the response of Kuehne+ Nagel. What we see is still a high demand for effective solutions and high-quality services. That's the reason why I was mentioning customer experience at the beginning. We all see that and have seen that the GDP growth expectations continue to decline. Bloomberg consensus 3.5% in July, now backed up with 2.9%. There's a global inflation ongoing and a certain economic crisis driven by the recession in Europe, and certain supply chains remain insufficient.
What we have seen as well is that the consumer demand, the end consumer demand, is slowing down, especially from Asia to the westbound, less prominent through to the US, driven by the higher energy consumption prices, in particular in Europe. How do we reflect on that? What is our answer from a Kuehne+ Nagel perspective? Our goal is to create a unique customer experience, as stated a couple of times, by providing superior service quality. We are striving to have the best product offering in the market. The question is how will we do that? We will enhance our offerings in the industries where we have already a strong position. In addition to that, we will explore value creation potential in other industries by building on our success in the healthcare industry.
Remember, we have started healthcare pharma six-seven years ago, and now we are one of the leading providers in clinical trials, primary distribution, and in the vaccine business. Looking at the current market expectations for earnings over the coming quarters, we consider the current median EBIT estimate for 2023 of CHF 2.3 billion to be conservative. Yield management is high on our agenda and is prioritized over volume, but both are important. We will maintain our organic growth agenda. We will not give it up. Pretty clear, we always look into the portfolio mix and yield management is very high for the key account and our SME sales force. Kuehne+Nagel's long experience and asset-light model ensures our flexibility and our resilience in changing market environments and circumstances, which I believe is extremely important in the current market environment.
This has enabled us to manage through countless economic cycles and periods of unforeseen volatility. This is part of the Kuehne+Nagel DNA. With this, I will hand over or back to Sandra for the Q&A session.
We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question or make a comment may press star and one on the touchtone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered a queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use only one line that is asking a question. In the interest of time, please limit yourself to two questions only. Anyone with a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from Alex Irving from Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon, and thanks for taking my questions. Two for me, please, both on cost. You mentioned earlier on cost reduction measures that have kicked off in the last couple of weeks. Could you please provide some additional detail on what these are, the areas that you're targeting for cost reduction and also areas where you are protecting spend? Second question, we're seeing. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Robert Joynson from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Oh, good afternoon, everybody, and welcome, Stefan Paul. I know you're gonna get a lot of questions today on downside risks and cost reductions, et cetera. I'll focus on something different and ask about the balance sheet and potential cash returns. Firstly, on the balance sheet, you had almost CHF 3 billion of cash at the end of Q3, and by year-end, I guess that figure will be something closer to CHF 4 billion. Just in that context, how much cash would you like to maintain on the balance sheet going forward? I'm conscious that before the pandemic, it was around CHF 1 billion on average, but I guess given that you're more keen on doing M&A nowadays, perhaps you'd like to maintain something higher going forward. How do you think about that?
How can you help us to think about it?
Thanks, Rob. That's a good question for me, I think. Yes, you're absolutely right. Cash levels are high. I usually answer that question with that first line that says, the most important is the free cash flow generation of the business. I think that is the comfort level that Stefan and I, and the team has that we can deliver that. Clearly the CHF 2.93 billion we are talking about, this is a decision for the board of directors.
That said, we believe that we will take into consideration a desired net cash balance that we usually keep on the balance sheet with respect to the overall macroeconomic, let's say challenging outlook, difficult outlook, and the size and the likelihood of some of near term. For the M&A part, I think we had also been relatively clear over the past. We struggle currently with valuations and expectations from the sales side for sure, sustainable EBIT, same as you have probably in your models. Sustainable profitability long term is a difficult thing to assess currently. I would think the capital allocation basically that you were talking about is we will keep always a net cash position on the balance sheet for safety and stability.
We are active in the M&A market, maybe not in an imminent deal situation that we could expect anything closing in the next three weeks or so. You know, we are keeping our opportunities open. Other than that, I can only refer to the historic fact, whenever there was excess cash, so beyond the net working capital requirements, the net cash position and nearer term M&A opportunities, historically, that excess cash had always been paid towards the shareholders.
Just in that context, I guess historically when you've paid out excess cash, there's a track record there of paying it out as a special, as opposed to just kind of increasing the size of the ordinary dividend. Is that consistent with current thinking in terms of distinguishing between an ordinary based on a, let's say, 60% payout ratio, and then any excess is paid as a special?
When memory serves me right, we only declared one time dividends as special when there was a larger real estate portfolio sale a couple of years or many years ago. Other than that, we usually have increased payout ratios to deal with the payback, if you like, from the payout from dividends. I would think that's also our current thinking.
Very clear. Thank you.
Thanks, Rob.
The next question comes from Muneeba Kayani from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I just wanted to go back to your comments on the focus on product mix and yield management. If I understood correctly, this is more focused on the sea side. Can you kind of talk a little bit more about what would you focus on, and how can you maintain market share and kind of yields at elevated levels or not going back to 2019 levels, from product mix? That's my first question. Secondly, just from a capacity side, how much of your A and C capacity is on contract versus spot, and how should we think about this mix going forward? Thank you.
Thank you very much, Muneeba. Let me tackle the first question, the product mix and the yield and the volume question. As you know, we have two different sales forces. One is the key account channel, and the other one is the SME. SME basically is medium-sized customers, and I think what we will see in the next couple of weeks to come due to the ease of the capacity we have access to a lot of capacity more than a couple of weeks- ago. We can really tackle now the Blue Anchor Line, our bread and butter business for the SME customers, and they have normally a higher margin. At least that was the normalized margin expectation before the pandemic.
On the key account side, what we will not tackle is commoditized business. Commoditized business with very low margins, which we had in the portfolio years ago. This is not in focus. Taking the example of, for instance, our six key verticals, you have verticals where the supply chain end-to-end is more complex than other verticals, and we will pretty much focus on the complexity 'cause we like complexity 'cause this is where we can add value and create value for our customers. I think I've touched a lot of times already on healthcare. Just a little bit food for thought. There's untapped potential for us in the semicon industry that goes for air freight, for instance. Renewable energy is at all levels at our agenda.
We see that pretty much kicking in now for the Sea Logistics, for the aftermarkets later on in Air Logistics, as well as for the domestic activities out of the warehouse and distribution facilities for Road Logistics, and last but not least, for Contract Logistics. The message here is we look into the different verticals outside of the SME portfolios, and we tackle areas and customer bases where we see there is more value creation from a demand perspective, and which will give us and grant us a higher yield moving forward.
The second question was on the fixed capacity for both sea and air freight. Let me start with sea freight. In sea freight, it's around 10, 15, maximum 20%, 80% is not fixed. In air freight is a little bit higher, is around 20% is block space agreements. Before you ask the new two charters which we are operating, one already in service, the other one is coming soon, is between 1% and 2% of our entire capacity. That is not going to move the needle. By the way, this is already sold back-to-back to customers, so there is no basically risk portfolio from that perspective. Hopefully, that answers the question.
The next question comes from Sathish Sivakumar from Citi. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Stefan. Thanks, Markus. I got a follow-up on the yield and product mix, and then I just quickly want to touch upon the Apex as my second one. First on the yield and product mix. Does that imply that low-value cargo, like recycling that were part of your mix, say, back in 2019, and that won't make a comeback as we see the rates coming under pressure? Any, like, color on that would be helpful. And also, what was your exposure back in 2019, say, on this low-value cargo? The second one on the Apex. If you could just share any color on the volume and yield trends and how the actual business has performed versus the group.
Is the volume decline and the rates broadly in line, or it's kind of outperformed or underperformed? Any clarity around that would be helpful. Thank you.
Thanks, Sathish. On the product and volume mix, you are right. For instance, these kind of commodities, trash and so on, will not come back. We will not focus. What we have done, 2020, we have in the key account arena established a new sales channel, which we call Global Development Accounts, ties into the six key verticals. We have a portfolio of roughly 500 new customers, identified, of which half of it is new labels. New labels, completely untouched, with a huge potential for us to grow. We shift our activities from a key account sales perspective more into this DA arena, in order to unleash the potential which we see in the marketplace. That will replace the low yield cargo moving forward.
Sathish, on the Apex question. You're aware that Apex is predominantly a transpac player with a good share of capacity on charters and a good share on the capacity also with co-loading. From that perspective, that piece is not entirely comparable with the Kuehne+Nagel mix, if you like. On the transpac route itself, if we compare the Kuehne+Nagel and the Apex development on that isolated route and with comparable cargo, we would be very similar. That means both of our performances is indeed very good. Although the transpac has been hit due to the lockdowns.
You know, it's the lockdowns in the zero COVID policy, obviously something that hits the numbers but is not a macroeconomic component, right? It's not about consumption. It's about restriction of activities through governmental ruling, right? We do see both of us in that transpacific trade lane performing very much according to the market. When we slice and dice the elephant correctly, both of us perform actually very well.
Yeah. Thank you. Thanks, Markus.
The next question comes from Samuel Bland from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Oh, thank you. Thanks for taking the question. I have two questions, please. The first one is going back to this comment that consensus in 2023 of CHF 2.3 billion might be conservative. I mean, do you view 2023 as a sort of new normal year? Or actually could we have then a further step down in profitability in 2024? Just based on, obviously, if that 2.3 is a sort of plausible new normal EBIT assumption. The second question is, you mentioned in the sort of prepared comments, you talked a lot about unit margins versus 2019 levels.
I'm sure they're gonna come down from where they are now, but do you have any sort of target in mind on where you might like to see, or hope to see unit margins, in let's say, the midterm versus 2019? Thank you.
Hi, Sam. It's Markus. I think the comment around the consensus into CHF 2.3 billion being conservative, I think what we wanna say is that, looking at the trajectory that we see in the GP per unit and our ability to manage cost per unit in sea and air freight, which always is the main drivers for that, would give us some confidence that we should be able to perform above that consensus. Is that the new normal? I think also the question 2024 is, I cannot answer that. There is really no visibility that I would have on hand that would put me into a position to actually answer that in a comfortable way.
I think we have to live with the current setup, that we are flexible in our business model and that we rely on that resilience and agility, if you like. That we manage the yield, we manage the cost, and for 2023, this is what we can comfortably say. 2024 is honestly out of reach.
Let me tackle the unit margin question, Sam. We always said that we don't believe that the rates will come back to the 2018-19 level, and we still strongly believe this is correct and intact. From an outlook perspective, the calculation is we see that from an air freight perspective, yield per 100 kilo will be above the $100 range. For sea freight, we expect a $500 range per container unit. $100 plus and around $500. That is our expectation on the next year.
Thank you. If I could ask a brief follow-up. If that CHF 2.3 billion conservative, could that be the case? You know, I guess there's a lot of people think we're heading into a difficult macro environment over the next 12 months. Do you think that CHF 2.3 billion can be conservative even given that sort of more pessimistic macro backdrop?
I think our base case, that is what we talk around is that the current macroeconomic situation and geopolitical situation is resolving itself over the term of 2023. If this is not the case, of course, then we talk a different framework and environment.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Sure. Thank you.
The next question comes from Alexia Dogani from Barclays. Please, go ahead.
Yeah, thank you for taking the questions. Just first one, could you just remind us the churn rate for the white-collar workers that clearly is a tailwind for you on the cost base that you mentioned earlier in the call? Can you also talk to us a little bit about the productivity gain when things normalize, and how much does that translate to sustainable conversion ratio gain when things normalize? Thanks.
Thanks for the question, Alexia. Unwanted attrition rate. Before the pandemic, we had basically on the white collar, we had an unwanted attrition of between 5% and 6%, which was rather low, I think, for our industry and as well outside. During the pandemic, that has grown significantly, the unwanted, in particular in the North American marketplace, to up to 15%-18%. What we see is a little bit of a slowdown, a cooling down of that, of course, 'cause the market is going down. We would expect that the overall unwanted is in the range of between 8% and 12% moving forward, maximum, most probably a little bit on the lower side.
This was what we are going to leverage for the cost side, as stated a couple of minutes ago.
On the productivity side, very much connected to that as well, I have to say. One of the mechanics of the productivity, of course, is how much effort we have to put into each and every single shipment. I think the two developments that we had been highlighting during our presentation, that supply chain is getting easier and disruption is getting a bit lower. I think that indicates also that operational efforts may be reduced. What I want to remind ourselves is that our eTouch project, the automation, digitalization, and optimization of the processes becomes every time more effective and also effective, I have to say, when operation becomes more standard.
I think I mentioned it on our half year result call as well. I think the reality is when we look today into the cost base and when we look today into the potential that eTouch is offering, we would have lifted or we can lift these targets from approximately 3%-5%. I think that is what we need to look at from a productivity gains perspective. Notwithstanding the automation and eTouch, of course, when we just look purely into what has happened in 2020, 2021, and 2022, this was an extraordinary, you know, reduction of productivity due to the circumstances.
We first have to get back to the trajectory of organized and structured operation, and then the automation will take with a much larger effect. But as I said, we are very strong on the eTouch project and it's gonna return more than what we anticipate.
Thank you both. If you don't mind asking a follow-up on the previous question on Sam's response, because I got a little bit confused. When we look at 2023, obviously the current economic conditions are fast-moving and quite unclear. I guess, are we saying that 2023 could be a recession year? Or what? Based on your comments that things continue as they are, we still see some global GDP growth?
I cannot answer that question in either way. I have never said, and I think we have never said it's gonna be a recession year, neither did we say that it would be a normalized year. We just read newspapers, everybody else on the call, I think. We work on a projection that works with global GDP expectation that is common knowledge around 2% for 2023.
Great. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
Absolutely. Thanks, Alexia.
The next question comes from Sebastian Vogel from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hello. Good afternoon. I've got also two questions. The first one would be on the payout ratio. Of course, a bit early in the year, but nonetheless. I noted down somewhere that Markus, you said in the past that you're feeling quite comfortable with a level of around, like, 68%. Is that still a statement you would subscribe to today?
It is always the decision of the board of directors. The number of percentage sometimes is a bit what's coming out of the decision of the board of directors. I think we have been always, or the board of directors had been always very cautiously weighing the risk profile of the current macroeconomic environment with the potential of the M&A acquisitions. At the same time, with the best interest of the shareholders, of course, weighing these three elements, whereby the risk and the stability, I think, component has been always a prevailing one. If we look at these three, we historically came to a payout ratio, at least over the last couple of years, even the difficult years, if I may say now, between 55% and 65%.
If it turned out 68 mathematically, so be it, yeah. I think we should rather think in that range because the risk environment probably has not changed much, has not improved a lot. Keep these three components in the mind, and then I think you have a fair view of what needs to be assessed from the board of directors.
Got it. My second question is, I guess I'm mistaken. I saw an interview with you, Markus, this morning that you suggested a conversion rate of 50%-55%. I guess it was on Sea that would be feasible for the Q4. On what sort of volume and rate spectrum was that based on, or what sort of expectation were baked into this statement?
Yes, it was meant on the Sea Logistics business unit. I think what we should look at is when we also look into Q3 numbers, gross profit per TU is still at a much elevated level compared to the 2019 numbers, 2.5 times or so. I think in the Q4, we will see a slow continuation of the trends that we have seen in the Q3. At the same time, from a volumes perspective, I think many of our colleagues as well have mentioned that, the September, so the back end of Q3, has certainly seen a slight reduction within the volumes in the market.
I think the combination of the reduction of volumes starting at the back end of Q3, if this continues in reasonable terms, our model does not foresee now a 50% reduction, yeah. It's a reasonable model that we are applying with GP development in line with the Q3. I think that was the basis of what I mentioned today before.
Got it. Many thanks.
Thank you. Thanks, Sebastian.
The next question comes from Lars Heindorff from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you for taking my questions. The first one is regarding how you source your cargo. You mentioned earlier during the call, that you were back-to-back on most of what you do, at least in the spot markets. If I'm not mistaken, historically, you've been structurally long on the market, how you source your cargo. So any comments on any changes to sourcing of capacity, now that we stand at something which might be sort of either at the peak or past the peak in terms of the volume and rates. Thanks.
If I understand correctly, it's the procurement part, right?
Yeah.
We traditionally went long basically, right? I think we did not went or go long in the past. We neither did it for air or for sea freight, basically, right? What we have done is, as some of our competitors as well during the pandemic, especially last year, starting end of 2020, we have secured capacity for a certain price level, and that was backed up with certain customer contracts. I can only echo basically what we said already a couple of days ago to some of you. We see that customers still honor these contracts. Of course, they are as well challenged with the volumes, but we don't see a massive issue here.
On a future protection ratio, looking into the future 2023 and the following years, at least now, for the next year, there is no need for these kind of contracts anymore. The customer base, of course, is not requesting that, as it looks like, currently. We will, as I said, repeating ourselves is in sea freight, 20% is midterm, the rest is spot. We have a combination in terms of the freighter capacity and the block space agreements in air freight. Here we are extremely flexible in handling our procurement and our commitments towards the different carriers, whether it's belly or whether it's charter.
All right. Thank you. Very clear. The second one is, maybe a little bit more fluffy, if you can call it that. It's regarding sort of customer reaction to what goes on now in the market, particularly in sea freight, where there's clearly more space available. We have seen maybe a tendency, at least some of the carriers, which are aiming for more bundling of contract, both not only port-port, but also other part of the journey. I just want to hear your maybe a few comments on whether you see any change in behavior from your customers. If again, it appears that freight forwarders maybe have lost a bit of market share towards some of the ocean carriers during the pandemic, and if that's sort of swinging back.
I cannot confirm that. What we haven't seen is the carriers in particular have gained market share. I think they had an advantage, a certain advantage when it comes to the capacity and the price level during the pandemic, basically, when the capacity was very scarce. I think what we see is now exactly the opposite. Now it's time for the 3PLs. For us at Kuehne + Nagel, we are flexible. We look at the customers. The customer experience is key for us, and I said it a couple of times. With a clear quality measurement and a high quality and focus on customer service and customer experience, you can clearly distinguish yourselves from the crowd.
What we see now from the customers, of course, they had a very difficult period with the price levels the last two years, and now they come to us and to the marketplace in order to ensure that they get a fair share of the advantage back, right? Which I fully understand. For us, it's the ultimate focus on customers. I believe that we as Kuehne + Nagel, especially in the 3PL industry, we can gain market share now in the declining environment. For us, this is good. I do not see any threat coming from the vertical integration in some of our liner competitors at this point. This is how I see it.
All right. Thank you.
The last question for today's call comes from Gian-Marco Werro from ZKB. Please go ahead.
Good day, everyone. Hi, Stefan and Markus. Thanks for taking my question. Three questions from my side. The first one, also on the market share gains. There I was just wondering how you could gain them. Was it mostly from smaller players that were struggling to provide the same agility and flexibility as you do, or was it also from bigger competitors? The second question is on the Road Logistics business there. I remember that you were struggling really also to staff people, finding enough truck drivers. Can you maybe quickly give an update there on the scarcity? A third question is on a sustainability perspective, and also from your customer behavior.
Do you observe currently a decline in the demand for sustainable logistics solutions during the time of such high energy prices? Thank you.
One question too much, but anyway, I will answer that, right? First of all, market share gains. We haven't seen a certain pattern between competitors, smaller or bigger ones, right? Especially in the pandemic, I think when the capacity was scarce, we have taken most probably more from the smaller ones, which we're not able to grant that, right? Currently we don't see any certain pattern. I think what we might going to see in the key account arena is that customers try to really leverage their position, and we most probably will get more requirements or requests from BCO customers, so direct customers from the liners. That is what I expect. On the Road Logistics piece, as you might know, we have only very limited own drivers.
We have 1,500, 1,600 or so in France, where you need to operate with own drivers, tractor units and so on and so forth, based on the setup of the business. We see, of course, that we miss a certain hundred of thousands of labour forces, especially the drivers in Europe. Here I can only mention is if customers and we resell from our industries are willing to pay a certain price level, then we can overcome that, right? We should not squeeze the lemon too much in order to really maintain that as an attractive area. The last one basically was sustainability. Companies, key accounts who are as well committed to the SBTI target, they are actively requesting alternative fuels, alternative routes.
This is a discussion point which is happening in every sales call, so to say, with the key account customers, especially with the ones who have committed them, themselves already. I think, let's call it after the pandemic, this is the one of the most important topics, themes which we will see in our industry and in others as well, high on the agenda. Here I think we are very well positioned. We have good plans, good ideas, and we constantly train, coach, and educate our sales force in order to create value for our customers.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question.
Thank you very much for listening. I see some of you in this week already, and then in the course of the next coming weeks and months to come. We are planning the Capital Markets Day as we have shared, and Markus will allude to that and will communicate further. Thank you very much for listening, and talk to you soon then.
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