Radiant Logistics (RLGT) Earnings Call zum 4. Quartal des Geschäftsjahres 2026: Bereinigtes EBITDA steigt um 31,6 %

Radiant Logistics (NYSE American: RLGT) berichtete über stärkere Ergebnisse für das vierte Quartal des Geschäftsjahres, da die US-Spedition, die internationale Luftfracht und sich verbessernde Bedingungen im inländischen Frachtgeschäft das Wachstum stützten. Das bereinigte Ergebnis für das Gesamtjahr blieb unter dem Niveau des Geschäftsjahres 2025.

Wichtigste Erkenntnisse

• Der Umsatz im vierten Quartal des Geschäftsjahres 2026 stieg im Jahresvergleich um 18,5 % auf 261,4 Millionen US-Dollar, während der Nettogewinn um 53,1 % auf 7,517 Millionen US-Dollar zulegte.
• Das bereinigte EBITDA stieg um 31,6 % auf 10,362 Millionen US-Dollar, wobei sich die bereinigte EBITDA-Marge um 240 Basispunkte ausweitete. Der bereinigte Rohertrag wuchs um 10,6 %.
• Der Jahresumsatz erreichte 934,4 Millionen US-Dollar und der Nettogewinn stieg um 8,7 % auf 18,786 Millionen US-Dollar. Das bereinigte EBITDA für das Gesamtjahr ging jedoch um 5,4 % auf 36,684 Millionen US-Dollar zurück.
• Die US-Spedition war der Haupttreiber der Verbesserung im Quartal, unterstützt durch inländische und internationale Dienstleistungen. Die internationale Luftfracht profitierte von Katastrophenhilfe im Zusammenhang mit Taifunen im Westpazifik, wäre laut Unternehmensleitung aber auch ohne diesen Beitrag im Jahresvergleich gewachsen.
• Navegate entwickelt sich zu einem Wachstumskatalysator. Ein Großkunde nutzt die Plattform zur Verwaltung von mehr als 1.400 Lieferanten, was potenzielle Cross-Selling-Chancen eröffnet.
• Radiant ging ohne Nettoverschuldung in das Geschäftsjahr 2027, nachdem eine vorrangige Kreditfazilität über 200 Millionen US-Dollar mit Fälligkeit im Jahr 2031 und eine auf Übernahmen ausgerichtete Aufstockungsoption über 100 Millionen US-Dollar abgeschlossen wurde.

Wichtige Finanzkennzahlen

Geschäfts- und operative Entwicklung

Die US-Spedition war der Haupttreiber der Verbesserung im vierten Quartal des Geschäftsjahres, mit Beiträgen aus inländischen und internationalen Dienstleistungen. Das Management hob die besondere Stärke in der internationalen Luftfracht hervor.

Die inländischen Kapazitäten im Komplettladungs- (Truckload) und Intermodalverkehr verringerten sich aufgrund des Ausscheidens von Frachtführern, der verringerten Verfügbarkeit von Fahrern und der Normalisierung der Flotten weiter. Spotraten und Auftragsablehnungen stiegen im Laufe des Frühjahrs an. Laut Unternehmensleitung begann diese Wende Ende Mai und Anfang Juni, sodass sich die Verbesserung im Ergebnis des vierten Quartals des Geschäftsjahres nur etwa einen Monat lang widerspiegelte.

Radiant startete zudem ein Programm für unabhängige Agenten bei Radiant Road & Rail. Das Programm bietet Logistikunternehmern Zugang zum Frachtführernetzwerk, zur Technologie und zur Back-Office-Infrastruktur des Unternehmens sowie einen strukturierten Pfad zum Aufbau von Eigenkapitalwert.

Navegate wird in erster Linie als Instrument zur Umsatzsteigerung und Kundenbindung positioniert und weniger als Quelle zusätzlicher Marge. Je nach Kundenwunsch können die Technologiekosten separat abgerechnet oder in die Transportpreise eingebunden werden. Radiant erwartet, dass die Plattform dazu beiträgt, größere Kunden zu gewinnen, die Bindung zu erhöhen und Leads aus den Lieferantennetzwerken der Kunden zu generieren.

Auf internationaler Ebene verbesserten sich laut Unternehmensleitung gegen Ende des Quartals die Seefrachtraten, da die Frachtführer Kapazitätsdisziplin wahrten und Leerfahrten nutzten. Die Nachfrage nach Zollabwicklung wurde weiterhin durch die Komplexität der Zölle und eine erhöhte Einreichungsaktivität im Zusammenhang mit dem IEEPA gestützt.

Ausblick des Managements

Das Management geht davon aus, dass sich die verbesserten Bedingungen in der Lkw-Vermittlung und im Intermodalverkehr in dem im September 2026 endenden Quartal deutlicher bemerkbar machen und sich je nach Marktbedingungen in den darauffolgenden Quartalen fortsetzen könnten.

CFO Todd Macomber erklärte, dass das organische Wachstum im vierten Quartal des Geschäftsjahres etwa 8 % betrug, und beschrieb den aktuellen Trend als stärker als in früheren Perioden. Das Unternehmen nannte kein spezifisches Wachstumsziel. Das Management betonte, dass der bereinigte Rohertrag in Dollar ein relevanterer Leistungsmesswert als der Umsatz ist, da Treibstoffkosten im Allgemeinen an die Kunden weitergereicht werden und den ausgewiesenen Umsatz aufblähen können, ohne den Rohertrag wesentlich zu verändern.

Radiant plant, neben organischem Wachstum auch disziplinierte Übernahmen zu verfolgen. Laut Unternehmensleitung ist die Übernahmepipeline nach dem anhaltenden Abschwung im Frachtgeschäft aktiv. CEO Bohn Crain beschrieb zudem einen potenziellen Weg, das EBITDA durch Übernahmen innerhalb der bestehenden Kapitalstruktur „praktisch zu verdoppeln“, wenngleich weder ein Zeitplan für Transaktionen noch ein formelles Ziel genannt wurden.

Zu den Prioritäten bei der Kapitalallokation gehören die Umwandlung von Agenturstandorten, synergistische ergänzende Übernahmen sowie gegebenenfalls Aktienrückkäufe.

Risiken und wichtige Faktoren

• Die Erholung des inländischen Frachtmarktes befindet sich noch in einem frühen Stadium und ist von Kapazitäten, Kraftstoffpreisen sowie den allgemeinen Marktbedingungen abhängig.
• Das internationale Geschäft sieht sich Unsicherheiten durch die Handelspolitik, Zolländerungen und Störungen im Nahen Osten ausgesetzt, einschließlich der Schließung der Straße von Hormus und Aktivitäten der Huthis, die die Durchfahrt durch den Suezkanal beeinträchtigen.
• Neue Vergeltungszölle zwischen den USA und Kanada könnten den grenzüberschreitenden Lkw- und Schienenverkehr stören, wobei das Management auch potenzielle Chancen bei der Zollabwicklung und Spedition sieht.
• Kraftstoffkosten werden im Allgemeinen an die Kunden weitergegeben, jedoch räumte das Management leichte zeitliche Verzögerungen ein.
• Die Katastrophenhilfe leistete im vierten Quartal des Geschäftsjahres einen bedeutenden Beitrag zur Luftfracht, wenngleich die Luftfracht laut Unternehmensleitung auch ohne diesen Beitrag im Jahresvergleich gewachsen wäre.
• Radiant erklärte, die Haftung bei der Auswahl von Frachtführern ernst zu nehmen und sich auf dokumentierte Überprüfungsverfahren, Sicherheitsbewertungen und Versicherungsprüfungen zu stützen. Das Management wies jedoch darauf hin, dass das Unternehmen gegen entsprechende Risiken nicht immun ist.

Highlights der Analysten-Fragerunde

Wann wird sich die Verbesserung im inländischen Frachtgeschäft auf die Ergebnisse auswirken? Das Management erklärte, dass sich die Bedingungen in der Lkw-Vermittlung und im Intermodalverkehr hauptsächlich Ende Mai und Anfang Juni verbessert haben. Die Vorteile sollten im September-Quartal deutlicher sichtbar werden, vorbehaltlich einer anhaltenden Marktverbesserung.

Wie sollten Anleger das Wachstum im Geschäftsjahr 2027 beurteilen? Das Management lehnte es ab, eine genaue Umsatzprognose abzugeben. Es verwies Anleger auf das Rohertragswachstum, da Treibstoffweiterreichungen den Umsatzvergleich verfälschen können. Das organische Wachstum im vierten Quartal des Geschäftsjahres lag bei etwa 8 %, wobei das Management zu Beginn des Geschäftsjahres 2027 einen stärkeren Trend sieht.

Welche finanzielle Rolle spielt Navegate? Das Management sieht Navegate eher als Beschleuniger für das Wachstum denn als Initiative zur Margenausweitung. Die Hauptziele bestehen darin, Kunden zu gewinnen, die Bindung zu verbessern und Lieferanten, die die Plattform bereits nutzen, in zusätzliche Unternehmenskunden umzuwandeln.

Was war die Ursache für die ungewöhnlich niedrige Steuerrückstellung im vierten Quartal des Geschäftsjahres? Das Unternehmen führte dies auf eine Anpassung zum Jahresende im Zusammenhang mit dem „One Big Beautiful Bill“ zurück, die es ermöglichte, bestimmte zuvor aktivierte interne Softwarekosten in den Steuererklärungen zu berücksichtigen.

Wie aktiv ist der Übernahmemarkt? Das Management erklärte, dass die Zahl potenzieller Verkäufer nach der Rezession im Frachtsektor gestiegen ist. Radiant beabsichtigt, diszipliniert zu bleiben, verfügt jedoch dank seiner unverschuldeten Bilanz und der erweiterten Kreditfazilität über erhebliche Kapazitäten für Transaktionen.

Vollständiges Transkript der Telefonkonferenz

Vollständiges Transkript der Telefonkonferenz

Ausführungen des Managements

Operator

[Audio Gap]

This afternoon, Bohn Crain, Radiant Logistics' Founder and CEO; and Radiant's Chief Financial Officer, Todd Macomber, will provide a general business update and discuss financial results for the company's fourth fiscal quarter and fiscal year ended June 30, 2026.

Following their comments, we will open the call to questions. This conference is scheduled for 30 minutes. This conference call may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The company has based these forward-looking statements on its current expectations and projections about future events. These forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and assumptions about the company that may cause the company's actual results or achievements to be materially different from the results or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. While it is impossible to identify all the factors that may cause the company's actual results or achievements to differ materially from those set forth in our forward-looking statements, such factors include those that have in the past and may in the future be identified in the company's SEC filings and other public announcements, which are available on the Radiant website at www.radiantdelivers.com. In addition, past results are not necessarily an indication of future performance.

Now I'd like to pass the call over to Radiant's Founder and CEO, Bohn Crain.

Bohn Crain

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining in on today's call. We are pleased to report another quarter of solid financial results, delivering $10.4 million in adjusted EBITDA for our fourth fiscal quarter ended June 30, 2026. Our fourth fiscal quarter results were strong across the board, with revenues up 18.5%, adjusted gross profit up 10.6%, adjusted net income up 34.5% and adjusted EBITDA up 31.6% and adjusted EBITDA margin expanding 240 basis points, all measured against the comparable prior year period.

Our quarter-over-quarter improvement was driven principally by our U.S. forwarding operations and contribution across the board from both our domestic and international service offerings, including notable strength in our international airfreight operations. On the domestic side, Navegate is beginning to prove itself out as a catalyst for growth, providing customers with better visibility and tools to manage complex supply chains with one of our enterprise customers now actively managing over 1,400 vendors using the platform.

More broadly, capacity has continued to exit the North America truckload and intermodal markets through a combination of carrier attrition, tighter driver availability, and the normalization of a fleet that had expanded aggressively in prior years. Spot rates, tender rejections, and other cyclical indicators moved higher through the spring and carried into our fourth quarter.

While these market trends are not fully reflected in our results for the June quarter, we view these developments as constructive for our domestic operations in general and our U.S. brokerage operations in particular. If these trends continue, we believe they support a broad-based and durable recovery for the domestic freight market. Also during the quarter, we extended our 2-decade track record as 1 of the industry's premier freight forwarding agent networks into the truck brokerage and intermodal space with the launch of a new independent agent program at Radiant Road & Rail. The program brings the same value proposition that has long distinguished our freight forwarding business, access to our carrier network, technology platform, back office infrastructure, and a clear structured path to build long-term equity value with a built-in exit strategy to a new population of logistics entrepreneurs.

We're pleased with the early response to the program and see this as a meaningful new avenue for organic growth as we bring the Radiant model to an entirely new market. The international picture, while still shaped by a complex and evolving trade environment, showed encouraging signs of improvement during the fourth fiscal quarter. Global trade flows continue to be influenced by 2 significant forces, the first is the ongoing disruption to traditional ocean shipping routes stemming from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and continued Houthi activity affecting Suez Canal transits, which have kept capacity tight across key international trade lines.

Despite all of the complications impacting the ocean markets, we saw an encouraging uptick in ocean freight rates late in the quarter as carriers exercise continued capacity discipline, an early signal that the prolonged downturn in ocean pricing may be starting to stabilize. The second is the ongoing transformation of the global tariff landscape with U.S. trade policy sustaining a high degree of compliance complexity for shippers. This complexity together with a period of elevated IEEPA-related filing activity across the industry has continued to drive demand for our customs brokerage expertise as customers rely on experienced partners to navigate the evolving tariff structure.

More recently, escalating tariff action between the U.S. and Canada, including new retaliatory measures Canada put into effect in early September, add a further layer of complexity for shippers moving goods across our border. While it's early to gauge the full impact, we expect this cross-border dynamic to remain a source of demand for our customs brokerage and compliance capabilities and it may also create additional international air and ocean freight forwarding opportunities for our Canadian operations as shippers look to diversify away from cross-border trucking and rail.

Notably, our airfreight performance was up meaningfully during the quarter, driven in large part by our work in support of disaster relief following typhoon activity in the Western Pacific earlier this year. We are entering this next phase of the cycle from a position of real financial strength. In August of 2026, we completed an amended and restated $200 million senior credit facility extending its maturity to 2031, expanding our acquisition focused accordion to $100 million and improving our pricing terms, and we enter fiscal 2027 with no net debt.

That capacity, together with our long-term strategy for growing organically where our network gives us an advantage, and supplementing that growth through disciplined acquisitions positions us well to build on the encouraging, though still early, signs of a domestic freight recovery.

With that, I'll turn it over to Todd Macomber, our CFO, to walk us through our detailed financial results, and then we'll open it up for Q&A.

Todd Macomber

Thanks, Bohn, and good afternoon, everyone. Today, we will be discussing the financial results, including adjusted net income and adjusted EBITDA for the 3 and 12 months ended June 30, 2026. For the 3 months ended June 30, 2026, we reported net income attributable to Radiant Logistics of $7.517 million on $261.4 million of revenues or $0.16 per basic and $0.15 per fully diluted share.

For the 3 months ended June 30, 2025, we reported net income attributable to Radiant Logistics of $4.907 million on $220.6 million of revenue or $0.10 per basic and fully diluted share. This represents an increase of approximately $2.610 million of net income over the comparable prior year period or 53.1%.

For adjusted net income, we reported $7.373 million for the 3 months ended June 30, 2026, compared to adjusted net income of $5.487 million (sic) [ $5.485 million ] for the 3 months ended June 30, 2025. This represents an increase of approximately $1.886 million or approximately 34.5%.

For adjusted EBITDA, we reported $10.362 million for the 3 months ended June 30, 2026, compared to adjusted EBITDA of $7.886 million (sic) [ $7.890 million ] for the 3 months ended June 30, 2025. This represents an increase of approximately $2.472 million or approximately 31.6%.

Moving along to the full year numbers. For the 12 months ended June 30, 2026, we reported net income attributable to Radiant Logistics of $18.786 million on $934.4 million of revenues or $0.40 per basic and $0.39 per fully diluted share. For the 12 months ended June 30, 2025, we reported net income attributable to Radiant Logistics of $17.291 million on $902.7 million of revenues or $0.37 per basic and $0.35 per fully diluted share. This represents an increase of approximately $1.495 million over the comparable prior year period or 8.7%.

For adjusted net income, we reported $25.253 million for the 12 months ended June 30, 2026, compared to adjusted net income of $30.944 million for the 12 months ended June 30, 2025. This represents a decrease of approximately $5.691 million or approximately 18.4%.

For adjusted EBITDA, we reported $36.684 million for the 12 months ended June 30, 2026, compared to adjusted EBITDA of $38.756 million for the 12 months ended June 30, 2025. This represents a decrease of approximately $2.072 million or approximately 5.4%.

With that, I will turn the call over to our moderator to facilitate any Q&A from our callers.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And your first question today is coming from Ryan Meyers from Lake Street Capital.

Fragen und Antworten

Ryan Meyers

You guys noted in the prepared remarks that you've seen some improving metrics that were not fully reflected in the June quarter results. And maybe can you talk about what you've seen since quarter end and when you would think some of these trends will begin to show up more meaningfully in the financials?

Bohn Crain

Sure. So those comments were pointed directly at what we're seeing in the over-the-road truck brokerage and, kind of, related intermodal moves. So as capacities continue to come out of the market and fuel prices have gone higher, it's created incremental opportunities for our truck brokerage opportunity, and it's also created an environment where more and more shippers are looking to move ship back to intermodal.

And so both of those segments of the business, in particular, are, kind of, enjoying this current market environment. And I think it's going to continue for some time based upon everything that we see. So this kind of market pivot or evolution really didn't start happening until late May, early June. So we really -- in my mind, kind of, only have 1 month of the good news of what's happening at Road & Rail in our fiscal year-end results. But we expect that to, kind of, continue to manifest here into or, I guess, what will be our quarter ended September and then on into subsequent quarters, depending how the market continues to evolve.

Ryan Meyers

Okay. Got it. No, that's helpful. And then just thinking with fuel and energy prices, obviously, kind of, top of mind here. Is there -- or just sort of remind us the risk between higher transportation cost and your guys's ability to be able to kind of, pass those through to customers? And just, kind of, what you're seeing there and how we should think about the potential impact there?

Bohn Crain

Generally speaking, fuel is a pass-through. There may be modest lags between fuel fluctuation and when and how that gets passed through to the customer. But all in all, we're able to pass those increasing fuel cost onto the customers relatively quickly.

Operator

Your next question is coming from Jason Seidl from TD Cowen.

Elliot Alper

Yes. This is Elliot Alper on for Jason. Nice results in the quarter. You discussed some of these major shifts playing out in the market right now. Curious if we could get a bit more perspective on, like, how structural some of these shifts are? Maybe how we should think about forwarding in the back half of the year. You've historically had some helpful commentary on China bookings and outlook there. And then maybe along those same lines, interesting comment on the cross-border opportunities with Canada. I appreciate any more context around, kind of, what you're seeing and how that play out.

Bohn Crain

No. So thanks for your question. So we have a very broad, diversified platform between our domestic and international forwarding and our over the road brokerage and contract logistics capabilities and customs brokerage and the new technology. And in -- but I'm not sure if normal is the right word, but kind of thinking of the portfolio effect, I would say we're operating in an environment right now where most all of our businesses are actually kind of heading up into the right, which is encouraging.

Now who knows based upon trade policy and this evening's tweets and what's going to happen in the Middle East, how some of these things change over time. But I think the general market sentiment, at least with respect to the domestic freight market, it's seeming like it's setting up to be a fairly durable longer run, if you will, and I guess, anecdotally, I would say we're due because we've been in an extended softer market for a number of years. And so it will be nice to see things getting back to something that feels more normal. The international is just much harder to conclude on other than to say the steamship lines are doing a better and better job of managing capacity and doing blank sailings to try to constrain the market and support price on ocean freight, which ultimately is helpful from a freight standpoint.

And then I think there's also kind of an adjacent catalyst with it, that there's so much business going on in and around the data centers and the capital moving towards data centers, but that's drawing on capacity and kind of tightening capacity broadly, including international airfreight. So I think there's a lot of, kind of, underlying trends that, kind of, set up for a longer more durable positive freight environment, certainly on the domestic side, but you don't have to lean too far to see it also setting up positively on the international side of things as well.

Elliot Alper

Very helpful. And maybe just staying on the air freight side of the business. I mean we've heard some commentary about pull forward. Curious if you have any comments on that and then you guys called out some of the disaster relief business that fell in the quarter. Any way to size that up just to think about maybe the back half of the calendar year?

Bohn Crain

We -- I guess, I'll -- we don't want to get into too much detail on it, candidly, for competitive reasons but it was certainly meaningful on the air freight side. But even without it, we still would have been up year-over-year. So it wasn't -- it didn't tip the results but it's certainly, kind of, contributed to the improvement on the on the disaster relief as it relates to the broader international airfreight than what's going on.

It's -- ocean has been the more challenging mode up until recently and the more traditionally, kind of, West Coast imports drive the market in terms of demand and pricing. And that, kind of, demand or call on capacity has softened more recently because of trades and tariffs and some of those things. But that seems to be beginning to behave a little more like we would expect. And so time will tell. But again, I think we're -- seem to be finding our way back to more normal footing in terms of the broader marketplace.

Elliot Alper

Right. Okay. And then -- maybe just on the Navegate side. Nice to see some of that adoption you called out with customers on your platform. I guess, is this something that's being priced into customer agreements now? Or can you speak to maybe how in the future you guys think about pricing this offering at a high level or any way to frame up maybe the margin opportunity, maybe looking out a year or 2.

Bohn Crain

Yes, I'm not sure I'll do it quite that way, but let me try to be as responsive to your question as I can. And that is we want to meet our customers where they want to be met. And what I mean by that is some customers might say, "we love the solution, we want you to effectively embed that cost in our cost of transportation." We might have other customers that say, "we want to be effectively billed for the technology separately." So in some cases, the tech might effectively map into our value-added services, in other cases and more often the case, it's embedded as part of our transportation margin more broadly.

So I think of it as making of us basically providing a higher value solution to our customers making our -- I don't necessarily think of it as more margin. I think of it as winning more customers, making our customers stickier and hopefully, really Navegate really representing a catalyst for growth that hasn't been part of Radiant's historical narrative. I think we have a value proposition that's relatively unique to the marketplace and certainly new to Radiant and our ability to support larger customers with more complex supply chain, helping them manage their vendors, and then those vendors representing warm leads to turn those vendors into incremental customers themselves, is a really interesting intersection that we find ourselves in.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is coming from Jeff Kauffman from Citizens Bank.

Jeffrey Kauffman

Well, first of all, congratulations on a real solid quarter. It was terrific to see. Just a couple of questions. So how should we be thinking about revenue growth rate as we head into 2027? And the reason I ask is with tariffs, seasonality is jumping all over the place, but we were kind of at a flat revenue growth rate on the year-to-date through the third quarter and then up almost 19% in the fourth quarter, and you did call out a lot of typhoon-related activity, which has been a little more than normal this year, even though typhoons do occur every year. But just in terms of thinking about the right way to think about, kind of, where the business is growing as we head into '27, we really shouldn't take that 19% growth rate and kind of straight line that out. How should we be thinking about that?

Bohn Crain

Well, we like to underpromise and overdeliver, Jeff. So keep that modeling relatively modest, and we'll continue to outperform. It will be interesting to tell -- well, I guess, first, I would reframe it just a little bit because as you know, we like to think about growth in our gross margin dollars rather than absolute growth in our top line revenue. And that does a couple of things relative to the question you're asking, which is kind of neutralizes fuel and what's happening in fuel because as we talked about earlier with some of this Q&A, kind of, what's happening in fuel can also drive those numbers with really not much of a net gross margin impact because fuel is a pass-through.

So I'm still not going to give you a very crisp answer, but I would -- I would kind of move you down the income statement a little further to the gross margin line item, the top line revenue to help field that question.

Jeffrey Kauffman

Yes. No, I just -- you called out the typhoons as a driver of revenue growth on the international side. So I was just trying to figure out is, kind of, what's the right way to think about growth for your business right now.

Todd Macomber

I could speak a little bit to it. I mean if you look at Q4, our organic was up about 8%. And we are seeing things improve overall in the market. I think it's going to -- it will uptick from that. Bohn mentioned, we were seeing things late in the latter part of the quarter. that trends into -- segues right into Q1. So it's -- things are looking good, let's put it that way. We can't give you an exact number or anything, but it's definitely at a stronger trend than what we've been seeing in the past.

Jeffrey Kauffman

Okay. And then Todd, while I got you. Fourth quarter tax rate is always a little wonky, right? Because that's, kind of, the catch-up that neutralizes the year. But in your pro forma to get to the adjusted, you were using a 24.5% rate, the actual rate was a little closer to 4% this quarter. And I know fourth quarters are always a little bit wonky, but what was the primary driver of the difference between...

Todd Macomber

Yes. That was the One Big Beautiful Bill where it allowed us beginning in January, and we really kind of captured that in the Q4 to take items that were previously capitalized as far as internal software. And so basically, that was a true-up that occurred with the -- when we go to the provision on a quarterly thing, it's estimated, of course, we're using the projections and when we get to the year-end and we do the actual -- the entire thing. We go through a deeper dive. But that was the driver.

It was basically taking previously capitalized expenses that we were allowed to include in the tax returns. So it -- so it was basically lower in the Q4 purely for that reason.

Jeffrey Kauffman

Okay. And then a broader picture. Bohn, you talked a little bit about what's going on in U.S. domestic brokerage. Montgomery is sending a lot of shock waves through the brokerage industry in terms of responsible selection, and every one of the traditional brokers is, kind of, rethinking their selection process. What does Montgomery mean for you guys? Are you potentially exposed for brokerage operations? Are you buying brokerage capacity from other people, so it's not really such an issue to you, but, kind of, how is all the consternation in brokerage impacting what you do? And I understand you're domestic forwarders, so it's not as relevant, but I was just wondering if you could touch on that.

Bohn Crain

Yes, sure. Well, so I think ultimately, everybody has got to be mindful. For me, I think it's -- you need to have a well-documented defined carrier vetting process in place, and you darn well need to be following your defined program or process. And we -- we have that in place. We had that in place before the ruling came out but it certainly has, kind of, heightened everyone's awareness and, kind of, what's at stake but we are in -- in my mind, as good of shape as we can be around the process and some of the software that we have in place that make sure that, kind of, the counterparties that are on the other side of the transaction are vetted and have the appropriate safety ratings and the appropriate insurances and so on. We're not immune so we're taking it very seriously.

Jeffrey Kauffman

All right. And then last question. Congratulations on the success with Navegate. As we think about modeling Navegate as its importance grows, how do we think about bringing that into the P&L. Are Navegate margin is a little better than average margins, are they a little less. Does it result in some margin dilution. Does it result in margin accretion? Clearly, it's going to help drive revenue. But as Navegate becomes a more successful business for you, how should we think about that affecting the models?

Bohn Crain

I'm -- at least in my own mind, I don't think about it in extra basis points in margin. I think about it as extra basis points in growth rate.

Jeffrey Kauffman

All right. So we should think about that primarily as a revenue driver.

Bohn Crain

Yes.

Jeffrey Kauffman

Okay. Very good. Well, again, congratulations, and thank you.

Operator

Our final question is coming from Mike Vermut from Newland Capital.

Michael Vermut

Great quarter and great release there. So a couple of quick ones for you on Navegate. I know it's the first time you really kind of discussed it a little more in depth. When you're saying enterprise customers, I assume that's one of a large anchor kind of customer. What do you take the -- or what's our pipeline like in landing more of those enterprise customers? Because it seems like that's what gets you into the multiple vendors and then bring those vendors into kind of -- it's a multiplier effect. So how does that look the pipeline for the enterprise customers? And expand on that, when we look out 2, 3 years, how does this accelerate the growth?

Bohn Crain

Good question. I don't have a crisp answer for you on that. Time will tell. I mean -- but I think 1 of the most interesting aspects of this, at least where we are right now is, back to this 1 particular example, account, each of those vendors represents an opportunity to kind of transform into an enterprise-type customer themselves, and they're already on the system. They've got familiarity with the system.

And we've -- it's not unusual for us to receive reverse inquiries from some of these vendors themselves, trying to learn more about how they would internalize the solution for themselves in their own business with their own sets of vendors. So I think there's a real amplification opportunity for us, particularly as we get -- let me backup just quickly for a second. When we -- when Navegate was selling itself, originally, they were trying to unbundle the freight forwarding from the tech, sell the freight forwarding, keep the tech, become a freight tech company and go and kind of take the proceeds from the sale and go instantiate a sales organization and go become a freight tech company.

But as we looked at the acquisition looked at the opportunity, we saw kind of the value proposition we weren't prepared to buy 1 without the other. And we believe we have through our 100-plus operating locations on the forwarding side a virtual sales organization where we can -- we hope to activate current and prospective customers on to the Navegate platform in a way that can really be a catalyst for incremental growth. So I'm sorry I can't better quantify it, but you get the thematic opportunity that we're pursuing.

Michael Vermut

And so it's an accelerant, really, over the next few years, and it could be significant, it seems.

Bohn Crain

Yes.

Michael Vermut

Okay. End markets. So how much are we doing data center related? I know there's so many markets construction-wise, all of that. Is that really driving a lot of business for us or not much? And then yes, sorry, go on...

Bohn Crain

No, I wouldn't say it's a driver, but we certainly have exposure to it. And we have a handful of long-term customers that are in the space that we're supporting and benefiting from, and we have a handful of incremental new customers that have come to us that we're supporting in the data center space. So I would say we have exposure, but it's not a big enough piece of our pie chart today to be driving the financial performance of the business.

Michael Vermut

Excellent. Okay. And then surprisingly, nobody touched on the acquisition market. And it looks like our organic growth over the next few years is looking great. What about the -- I don't think we've ever been in a position like this and...

Bohn Crain

I'm glad you asked. I was trying to figure out how I was going to answer the question that wasn't asked because, it's the -- it's a very interesting market right now. I think it's a byproduct of the freight recession that we're coming out of. There are several years' worth of potential sellers that are coming to the marketplace. So I can't remember a time where there were more CIMs flying around and people looking to transact. So we expect to remain very disciplined in our approach. But when I say that, we also hope and aspire to be acquisitive.

We've always been good allocators of capital, but we've got a lot of dry powder and an unlevered balance sheet, and we're looking for opportunities and ways that make sense to put that capital to work. And there's quite a bit of EBITDA growth that we can deliver against within our existing capital structure. I think it's one of the somewhat missed aspects of the Radiant opportunity is the -- is our unlevered balance sheet. And if you overlay some basket of acquisitions and, kind of, model out the pro forma effect of that, again, you don't have to get -- you don't have to look at it too aggressively to see a path to practically double our EBITDA within our existing capital structure.

Michael Vermut

Look, I also think it's probably difficult. You've done an amazing job on the acquisitions with the earnouts to find much as cheap as we are with our quality. So I assume that's part of the problem, right, that we're still not being rewarded for what you've done over the past 3, 4, 5 years. Hopefully, 1 day, our multiple will get there, and we can use multiple sources of capital.

Todd Macomber

Agreed.

Operator

This does conclude today's question-and-answer session. I would now like to pass the floor back to management for closing remarks.

Bohn Crain

Thank you. Let me close by saying that we remain optimistic about our prospects and opportunities to continue to leverage our best-in-class technology, robust North American footprint and extensive global network of service partners, to continue to build on the great platform we've created here at Radiant.

At the same time, we intend to thoughtfully relever our balance sheet through a combination of agent station conversions, synergistic tuck-in acquisitions, and when appropriate, stock buybacks. Through our multipronged approach, we believe we will continue to create meaningful value for our shareholders, operating partners and the end customers that we serve. Thanks for listening and your support of Radiant Logistics.

Operator

Thank you. This does conclude today's conference call. You may disconnect at this time, and have a wonderful day. Thank you once again for your participation.