XPO Logistics reports loss, acquires 3PL

   XPO Logistics said it had a net loss of $2.7 million for the first quarter, compared to a profit of $1.1 million for the same 2011 period.
   Total revenue was $44.6 million for the quarter, a 7.4 percent increase from the same period last year.
   Bradley Jacobs, XPO’s chairman and chief executive officer, said the company has a strategy to “scale up our operations through acquisitions, cold-starts and organic growth” and had made its first acquisition this week, buying Continental Freight Services, a non-asset based 3PL based in Columbia, S.C., with satellite offices in Texas, Florida and the Carolinas.
   XPO said Continental Freight generated trailing 12-months revenue of about $22 million as of March 31, 2012. The cash purchase price was $3.4 million, excluding any working capital adjustments and a potential earn-out of up to $300,000. XPO said the acquisition is expected to be accretive to earnings in 2012.
   “Our cold-start program is running ahead of plan: Ann Arbor (Mich.) opened in mid-April, and Dallas started operating last week. Phoenix, our first cold-start, has exceeded our expectations – it launched in December and quickly ramped up revenues to $760,000 in April,” Jacobs said. “Given our cold-start performance and healthy backlog of acquisition candidates, we’re comfortable with our target of a $500 million revenue run rate by year-end.”