Trimble’s first-quarter transportation revenue falls 25% to $146M

“Annual recurring revenue in transportation grew 7% to a record $459 million,” Painter said in a call with analysts on Wednesday before the market opened. “The split of revenue in this business is 40% Europe, Middle East and Africa, 57% North America and 3% rest of the world. Our systems are mission-critical, which we believe provides a downside ballast if China-U.S. trade further deteriorates.”

Trimble (NASDAQ: TRMB) is a Westminster, Colorado-based provider of technology for trucking companies, freight brokerages and 3PLs. The company also operates in industries such as construction and buildings, geospatial hardware and software, and resources and utilities.

Trimble reported total first-quarter revenue of $840.6 million, an 11.8% year-over-year decrease. Adjusted earnings per share decreased 5% year over year to 61 cents.

The company beat Wall Street revenue expectations of $807.4 million and EPS predictions of 59 cents in the first quarter.

Trimble’s second-quarter earnings guidance calls for revenue in the range of $815 million to $845 million and per-share earnings of 59 cents to 65 cents.

Trimble expects full-year earnings in the range of $2.76 to $2.98 per share, with revenue ranging from $3.37 billion to $3.47 billion.

Painter said the company sees double-digit growth opportunities in the Transporeon unit the rest of the year.

Transporeon is a Germany-based logistics company that uses a cloud-based TMS to connect carriers, logistics service providers and shippers. Trimble acquired the company in December 2022 for $1.98 billion. Transporeon mainly operates in Europe.

“When we look forward to the rest of 2025, we still believe we’ve got the pipeline to drive double-digit growth in the bookings of the business on a year-over-year basis,” Painter said. “Within Transporeon, we get an interesting view in the world of shippers and what volume of goods that they’re moving. … [W]e can see automotive units down. That’s because there’s less automotive transport happening on the Transporeon platform.”

While automotive transport demand is down, Trimble sees growth in movements of retail and consumer products.

“We can see the number of units transporting retail and consumer products continuing to grow on a year-over-year basis,” Painter said. “Transporeon is majority European-based today. That gives us … probably a little bit of an incremental level of confidence for that business as compared to North America. Both markets are in a freight recession, but at the moment, I like some of the setup of Europe, especially if Germany is going to do its infrastructure bill.”

The company closed on the sale of its global transportation telematics business units to Platform Science on Feb. 8.

Trimble officials said the divestiture of the units to Platform Science frees up capital, while continuing to provide recurring revenue.

As part of the deal, Trimble has a 32.5% stake in the newly expanded global Platform Science business and will receive a Platform Science board seat.

“The [transportation and logistics] segment is now greater than 90% recurring revenue following the divestiture of the business,” CFO Phil Sawarynski said during the call. “We made good progress bringing the global transportation teams together in the first quarter as we executed our connect-and-scale strategy, which allows us to access the $400 million of cross-sell, upsell opportunities within this segment.”

Sawarynski also said there is a potential quarterly tariff impact of $10 million in Trimble’s field systems segment. That segment is focused on software and hardware in the construction industry.

“The total impact adds approximately $10 million per quarter to our cost of goods in the field systems segment. We’ve already implemented surcharges to offset this, thus we expect no impact to profitability,” Sawarynski said.

Trimble Inc.’s key first-quarter performance indicators.