TFI International looking for acquisitions, growth as uncertainty clouds outlook

TFI International Inc.’s top executive says the company continues to look for growth, despite trade uncertainty making it difficult to forecast the near-term environment.

“While tariffs and the general economic uncertainty still affect freight volumes and excess capacity has been an industry-wide concern, we continue to seek growth opportunities that our network and our infrastructure are particularly well suited for,” CEO Alain Bédard said on a conference call Wednesday discussing fourth-quarter results.

“This includes both data centers and the broader electric grid, two markets in which we’ve demonstrated recent successes.”

In January, the company said its truckload segment generated US$43 million in data centre-related revenue in 2025. The company said data center revenue grew from around US$8 million during the first quarter to more than US$15 million by the fourth quarter. It also appointed a new chief commercial officer to support its data center and electric grid customers.

Bédard said the company will also continue to “seek accretive bolt-on acquisition opportunities.”

For its first quarter, the company is forecasting adjusted diluted earnings per share to come in between 50 and 60 cents, assuming no significant change in its operating environment.

“This is down year-over-year versus 2025 because we’re still in a transition environment,” Bédard said.

“The freight recession that we’ve seen since 2023-2025 is still persistent. As we look at Q1, we’re starting to see some very early signs in our truckload sector that maybe things will start to get better during 2026.”

Bédard said that upcoming talks to update the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement make it difficult to plan for the future with conviction.

“Until such time that we have a new agreement between the three countries, where our customers know what’s going to happen in the future, then we’re going to feel way better in terms of being able to forecast what the company can deliver in terms of profitability.”

The Montreal-based trucking firm, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported net income of US$71.7 million in the fourth quarter, down from US$88.1 million during the same period in 2024.  

That amounted to earnings of 87 cents US per diluted share, down from US$1.03 during the prior-year quarter.

Its total revenue for the period was US$1.91 billion, down year-over-year from US$2.08 billion.

The company’s board of directors approved a four per cent increase to its quarterly dividend during the quarter, now sitting at 47 cents US per share.  

“During the fourth quarter, our board again raised our dividend, and over the course of 2025, we continued our track record of opportunistic repurchases, buying back over US$225 million of common shares,” Bédard said.

Companies in this story: (TSX:TFII)