Jacobs: No acquisitions for XPO in 2016

XPO Logistics Chief Executive Officer Brad Jacobs told a conference in Atlanta that the 3PL won’t buy any companies in 2016 and will instead focus on digesting recent major acquisitions and reshaping its sales force.    XPO Logistics Chief Executive Officer Brad Jacobs said Monday that his company will not make any acquisitions in 2016 as it works internally to digest a number of major acquisitions in recent months.
   “We’ve slowed down the acquisitions,” Jacobs said at the SMC³ JumpStart conference in Atlanta. “We’re going to take a year off. This year is about getting organized.”
   After multi-billion dollar deals for less-than-truckload giant Con-way Freight and European trucking and contract logistics company Norbert Dentressangle in 2015, Jacobs said the focus will be on redesigning the company’s global sales force to more effectively cross-sell XPO’s services across its brokerage, LTL, expedited, last mile, contract logistics, and freight forwarding divisions.
   Jacobs said his main motivation to speak at the SMC³ conference, primarily a gathering of LTL shippers, carriers, 3PLs and other service providers, was to make clear that XPO wants to do more LTL business with 3PLs.
   “We’re used to working with competition,” he said. “As long as it’s honest and everyone plays by the rules, there’s no reason why it can’t work.”
   He said XPO’s value proposition to 3PLs that might consider the company a competitor and not a partner is “reliable, pervasive capacity” through the LTL network it acquired in the Con-way deal, adding that the carrier has lots of empty miles that 3PLs can help it fill and better optimize its network.
   In addition, XPO plans to offer an economy-type LTL business to supplement its premium same-day and next-day service to give shippers with less urgent transit time needs more options.
   Jacobs also said there is no update as to a potential sale of the Con-way truckload division. XPO received unsolicited offers for that non-core business – offers that are still being weighed up – but Jacobs said his preference is to hang on to that business and provide more options for his customers.
   In a sideline conversation with American Shipper, Jacobs said XPO hasn’t lost any Con-way business since the deal. He noted that discussions with 3PLs have improved since the Con-way deal since XPO is in a more straightforward position to help them.